Note: Due to very large tables in this message, I strongly suggest you an alternative web page to read this blog post. Much easier to read this way!

This blog post has the following structure:
1. How to read this blog post?
2. Why am I biased in this evaluation?
3. Parallel reading: Facts versus Impression of facts on me
4. How can you contact Carmen CUCUL?

1. How to read this blog post?

Note: As the length of the scroll bars of the browser you use might also indicate you, this is yet another of my long blog posts.

I think it would be nice first of all to explain what corporate social responsibility is. I needed the explanation for myself too.

According to Wikipedia,

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) [...] is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. Ideally, CSR policy would function as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby business would monitor and ensure their adherence to law, ethical standards, and international norms. Business would embrace responsibility for the impact of their activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. Furthermore, business would proactively promote the public interest by encouraging community growth and development, and voluntarily eliminating practices that harm the public sphere, regardless of legality. Essentially, CSR is the deliberate inclusion of public interest into corporate decision-making, and the honoring of a triple bottom line: People, Planet, Profit.

The practice of CSR is subject to much debate and criticism. Proponents argue that there is a strong business case for CSR, in that corporations benefit in multiple ways by operating with a perspective broader and longer than their own immediate, short-term profits. Critics argue that CSR distracts from the fundamental economic role of businesses; others argue that it is nothing more than superficial window-dressing; others argue that it is an attempt to pre-empt the role of governments as a watchdog over powerful multinational corporations.

If you look carefully at this self-regulation of companies, you may notice the insert of some peculiar things into a business model – ethical standards (care for people and planet, not only for profit) and responsibility for the impact of their activities (we don’t look only at us, we also look at the environment). Ok, the ethical standards are there, the responsibility is there. The real question might be – why? Why would a business need such things?

If you look in the second paragraph, you notice that the very first criticism Wikipedia quotes is the distraction from the fundamental economic role of businesses. In other words, “Help us, don’t help others. Focus, people!”. It also says that by doing CSR, one might affect the role of governments (who needs CSR, when you have governments to care about?).

My blog post doesn’t answer the “Why?” question from a business perspective. I can’t say if CSR is a good thing (And for whom? For the person coordinating the CSR? For the company that person represents? For the customers? For the stakeholders? For the business partners? For the future generations? For the planet? For ethical standards?). CSR is a hard thing for me to understand. The “Why do CSR?” is a tricky question, and my blog post should be read with this in mind – I start with the assumption that CSR is neither worse nor better than other business model. If you like it, you decide if CSR is good or not.

Sure, I will have a very biased opinion on CSR on the “Impression of facts on me” section. But that’s a different thing. What this blog post is about is actually how well does Carmen CUCUL follow what I think are CSR best practices. You will see this in the section about facts. Interpret this blog post the way you like, the facts on the left column remain.

So, why the Interpretation thing? More than the facts, I’ll also have a parallel presentation with the “Impression of facts on me”. The reason I do this is because CSR actually cares about this – how would the actions of an organization member affect the lives of others. You’ll see how Carmen CUCUL’s actions made an impact on me. So, the logic is simple: Carmen CUCUL does CSR via HR Club, I’m affected, what do I think and feel about the CSR measures? This is on a separate column. Oh, and HR comes from “Human Resources”.

Please note that to me ethics and God are separated by a very thin line, and I’ll have a tendency to mix these, in my very own Impressions section, of course. Leaving facts aside.

The blog post is made such you can read only the facts, this is fine by me. The impression of the facts on me presents my opinion on how things developed on the facts side.

2. Why am I biased in this evaluation?
a. I’ve known Carmen CUCUL for a long time. I’ve been in Bucharest since 2001. In 2002, when I first entered into LEADERS Romania, an NGO dedicated to promoting leadership in Romania, Carmen CUCUL was just being interviewed. From 2002 until (about) 2005/2006, I’ve been a volunteer in that organization with Carmen CUCUL. After the NGO time ended, I took part in HR Club’s projects (Carmen CUCUL is Executive Director of HR Club since January 2006);
b. I’ve worked on projects lead by Carmen CUCUL more than once. In LEADERS Romania I worked under Carmen CUCUL’s supervision on Global Youth Service Days repeatedly. Afterward, I was hired by HR Club (see below);
c. I’ve been paid by an organization lead by Carmen CUCUL more than once. I did two research projects for HR Club – one in the summer of 2007, gathering materials for a CD for a conference, and another one in this very summer (the project ended on 31^st of August 2009. I looked for documents for the new HR portal);
d. In the summer of 2007 I took part, for free, to a summer school organized by HR Club. I found out about the summers school via an internal email sent to LEADERS Romania members. But this was only the start. After this, …
e. … I took part to quite a few conferences, seminars, workshops and presentations organized by HR Club, most of the times in exchange for giving a helping hand of some sort;
f. My hope is that I continue with points from a. to e. This should not be the end of it;

3. Parallel reading: Facts versus Impression of facts on me

4. How can you contact Carmen CUCUL?
On HR Club web site there’s a contact page (in English) with all the contact data. If you can’t get to the English version, and then to the Contact page, you can blame my poor review of the website.

Blog post structure:
A. Introduction
B. Interview:
1. Please tell me a few things about you, as a team
2. What is your role in the moderators’ team? If you were to present your activity for the Romstudyabroad Yahoo! group as a tutorial to a complete stranger of Internet, how would you do it? What do you do in a typical day of working for the Yahoo! group?
3. How does it feel to do your work for Romstudyabroad day after day?
4. What drives you to volunteer your spare time, in order to help people that most of the time you know nothing about and you’ll most likely never see in person?
5. What was the most rewarding experience you ever had as a moderator?
6. Why should Romanians study abroad? What’s so good about this experience?
7. What would top five tips you’d give to someone interested in studying abroad?
8. Let’s say I’m an investor and I wish to buy the group. How would you react?
9. How would you make a business presentation of the Yahoo! group?
10. How could others make your work easier? How could you be helped in your work?
C. Conclusions

A. Introduction

Romstudyabroad  is a Yahoo! group which currently has almost 9.000 members (this means that most of them receive the group messages in their inboxes). I personally know no other Yahoo! Group in Romania with more members. I don’t exclude this possibility, but I personally (Olivian BREDA) know of no other larger group.

In the past five years, the average number of monthly messages was 460 (in 2009, until this month), 376 (for 2008), 311 (in 2007), 452 (for 2006), and 511 (in 2005). Divide these numbers by 30 days, and you will see that, on average, in the past five years, at least 10 messages have been sent on the group each day. Each day, including Saturdays and Sundays. Some of these messages came from the group members (and these had to be moderated), and some came from the moderators themselves (and these had to be formatted). Managing so many messages is enormous work!

Also, see below what “moderating” implies on this group. Typically, “moderating” means approving or rejecting messages, and sometimes banning members. On Romstudyabroad, it implies: editing messages (a lot of them wrongly formatted), editing the subject line (needed due to lack of care), and sending individualized rejection messages (so that you know why your message was rejected). And, of course, it also implies banning members.

In addition, gathering information for the group is a titanic effort. There are dozens of Yahoo! groups and online resources that are continuously monitored by the moderators.

And the team – to manage a team of 6 people which collaborate efficiently – now that’s a result! The 6 people are all located in different continents/countries. As far as I know, the moderators only know one another online.

Tell me how many Yahoo! groups you know that have a web site created especially for the mailing list.

One issue with the interview below that I acknowledge is that I don’t ask about the negative side of story. I don’t ask about the repetitive nature of the work, about “flame wars” (where spirits get inflated) launched on mailing lists, about hate mail and spam, and the precious time spent online for the well functioning of the group. Although I stayed away from these questions, you, the reader of this material, should retain one attribute about the moderators’ work – it is hard work.

From my experience with other mailing lists, when I have to choose between (i.) spending my time doing things I really love and thus limiting my presence on mailing lists, and (ii.) spending more time surfing the Yahoo! groups, I typically go for the first option. Thus, over time, my activity on mailing lists has shrunk considerably. And if I could pass on to others some of my moderating duties, I would gladly do so. But things are as simple as that: very few are willing to contribute their time and efforts for the good of people you have only met in a virtual world.

I won’t delve further on that as for to me it is emotionally difficult to become attached to a virtual community. I thus I admire the moderators of Romstudyabroad for their efforts and accomplishments.

B. Interview:

1. Please tell me a few things about you, as a team

Romstudyabroad is a six-person project: three moderators who administer the group (Bogdan, Camelia, and Raluca) and three group members who help out by posting information (Cristina, Laura, and Silvia). All of us have studied or are currently studying abroad.

2. What is your role in the moderators’ team? If you were to present your activity for the Romstudyabroad Yahoo! group as a tutorial to a complete stranger of Internet, how would you do it? What do you do in a typical day of working for the Yahoo! group?

Bogdan: I am the most inexperienced member of the moderating team. I only take part in those decisions that are relatively easy to take, for instance approving answers to threads already started, and approving new members. I also take part in the team decision-making process, and in promoting the group, if and when I have the time. The Romstudyabroad formula is a very common-sense and time-tested one, and that’s why I always have to ask for my colleagues’ opinion when it comes to dealing with more complex problems (i.e., opening up new threads, or the best way to calm down tensions between group members, etc.).

Camelia: I have been a Romstudyabroad moderator for 5 years now. When I joined, back in 2003, I used to send info to the group about summer schools, student conferences, advice on the application process, and my own views on the quality of some study programs abroad. About one year later, the group’s owners asked me if I wanted to join their team. I was sort of hooked on the group, so I immediately said YES. Back then, like now, Romstudyabroad was by far the best managed Yahoogroup I had seen. As a member, you only receive relevant information, and you have access to huge archives of Files, Links, Contact Lists, and Messages that are easily accessible with keyword searches. Furthermore, you never have worry about receiving countless reminders or spam.

Briefly, Romstudyabroad is a forum hosting relevant information about studying abroad, both by browsing announcements, as well as by taking part in discussions and interacting with other group members. Anyone who is thinking about studying abroad, or who has already done so and wishes to share their experience, can benefit from subscribing to our group.

Raluca: I am the oldest moderator of the team, both in terms of how long I have been with the group (6 years) and in terms of age. I was a group member from the beginning when there were less than 100 of us. We did not dream at that point that this initiative would be so successful. I became a moderator when we passed the 200 member limit and the group founder felt that some help was necessary. Under my very eyes the group has grown fifty times over its initial size, and at each step of the way, we had to reinvent our roles in parallel with redefining the group concept.

Nowadays, I am not as active, at least when it comes to the most visible aspects of our activity, such as finding and disseminating information, answering to members’ questions, keeping in touch with external collaborators and approving new members (though it is true, I do use from time to time the “ban” button . My work is rather that of a consultant, a supervisor and a crisis-cell member, partly because of the growing age gap with the average Romstudyabroad member.

A day on Romstudyabroad… Even if I am no longer involved in all the moderating activities, I review all the messages sent to us and all pending memberships. From time to time I give my piece of mind about some of them. I read and select some information on scholarships and academic jobs abroad and forward it to the group. I try to stay informed about the changing landscape of educational opportunities for Romanian citizens, even if this is no longer an area of personal interest. I exchange a lot of messages with the other moderators on administrative issues and “when disaster strikes” I intervene immediately to contain the damage. I work a lot “behind the scenes:” formulating disclaimers, setting up forwarding rules and messages that are sent out automatically once per week, at subscription or when leaving the group, and staying in touch with our external collaborators.

3. How does it feel to do your work for Romstudyabroad day after day?

Bogdan: It’s definitely extremely interesting work. Internally, as a new moderator, my main concern is keeping in with the line my colleagues have set to ensure uniformity in the group’s content. We on Romstudyabroad always seek to avoid needlessly throwing information at our members’ inboxes, and that’s why it always comes down to deciding which information is potentially useful to a sufficient number of group members. The messages that pass this test are not too much of a headache, unlike those messages which I have to reject for one reason or another. Most times we seek to give a reasonable reason for the rejection, and to offer as many leads as possible that can help the user in the hunt for information, if the question we have to reject is one we come across frequently. Also, if a user happens to post information we find interesting but not exactly on-topic as far as Romstudyabroad is concerned, we usually direct them to other forums that would welcome their contribution; sometimes we even redirect rejected Romstudyabroad messages to other groups ourselves.

Camelia: Working as a moderator has never been boring, although sometimes things can get a little frustrating. Most of our work concerns sorting messages, deciding which to publish and which to reject; writing back to those whose messages are rejected explaining the reasons for rejection––typically the messages are off-topic or the subject has already been discussed on the group. To the best of our ability we give suggestions where to look for answers, how to search the message archive, or where to look in our Files or Links collections. Finally, we edit the subject line before publishing messages. We insist on informative subject lines because these can help filter individual messages using Gmail or Yahoo! Mail labels. We also advertise our group on a fairly frequent basis, for instance by posting information about us on other Yahoogroups. Finally, we initiate and maintain contacts with many other Yahoogroup moderators with whom we have cross-posting agreements.

Raluca: This work brings me a lot of satisfaction, even if recently I have grown somehow frustrated with my inability to do more–mainly because I am now in another age group, at a different stage in my professional career, and have other personal interests.

4. What drives you to volunteer your spare time, in order to help people that most of the time you know nothing about and you’ll most likely never see in person?

Bogdan: As we always speak in the name of the Romstudyabroad team, our work on the group is somewhat similar to being part of a secret society, where no one from the outside knows your identity. I think of this as an extraordinary advantage, because unlike all other projects in my professional life, my work here derives me no visibility whatsoever. My satisfaction comes precisely from the group working the way it’s supposed to, as well as from the moderators’ presence being felt to the least extent possible by the 9,000 members. And if we’re talking members, it’s fun to look at the numbers every few days; I’m always excited by the fact that this informational flow to which I bring my own contribution reaches so many people who have actively chosen to receive a not-at-all-insignificant number of Romstudyabroad emails in their inboxes.

Camelia: This is a good question, and I do not really have an answer. There is no particular reason why I volunteer to do this work: I simply enjoy the thought that someone out there benefits from our group, be it by receiving interesting information about studying abroad, or by not having their inbox filled with Yahoogroup spam.

Raluca: Mainly because I have received help myself when I needed it. I also think we can only contribute to general growth and personal development by helping one another. I got the first kick from learning about various educational opportunities for which Romanian citizens were eligible, but which did not materialize because Romanians lacked access to that information.

5. What was the most rewarding experience you ever had as a moderator?

Bogdan: Once again my lacking experience prevents me from giving a truly edifying example. As a Romstudyabroad member since 2003 I have had nonetheless a good number of experiences from which I have gained a whole lot. After getting into college, I have personally advised around ten or so persons who have found my address and on the group, and I sought to steer and guide them as much as possible on the path to studying abroad.

Camelia: I would like to give a very concrete example here. Some 4-5 years ago I sent to the group some suggestions and advice on how to approach the admission process at master’s programs in some European schools. Competition for admission at the top schools is quite fierce. (Some programs receive 10-40 applications per spot.) A Romstudyabroad member was interested in applying to one of these programs, so she emailed me with additional questions. Over the course of about one year we continued our conversations and she kept me informed of how things were going. She actually followed my advice–now I’m not being too modest –but I have to say that this year she got her master’s degree from a top European economics school. I am very proud of her and glad that Romstudyabroad facilitated this contact.

Raluca: Very hard choice. We frequently receive “Thank you” messages that simply make us blush. All of these messages are unique and extremely rewarding.

6. Why should Romanians study abroad? What’s so good about this experience?

Bogdan: In addition to the possibilities of getting to know other cultures, of traveling and so on, there are also the advantages of working in a modern academic environment, one that has better resources than its Romanian counterpart.

Camelia: Whether to study abroad is a personal choice that depends on many factors: personal interests, personal drive, the willingness to travel and to be away from family, whether one already has a family of their own, the family’s willingness to be apart or to move to a new place, and so on. Typically there are better educational opportunities abroad when it comes to graduate studies. I am of the view that–to make it worthwhile–graduate school should be pursued at well-known research universities abroad.

Raluca: Romanians can no longer afford to live in isolation. While studying abroad, one has the opportunity to learn about successes and failures of other educational systems, to become more tolerant and open-minded, to see that things can be done and/or interpreted differently, and to create social networks which can help later on in one’s professional career.

7. What would top five tips you’d give to someone interested in studying abroad?

Bogdan:

a. Persistence is what matters most here. Very few people receive a scholarship because they got lucky.
b. Choose your priorities wisely. What matters in Romania may have very little bearing abroad and vice-versa. For instance, many Romanian students choose or are forced to work full-time jobs during college, damaging their grades in the process. While in Romania a barely passing grade is oftentimes seen as sufficient in college, in many other educational systems such a grade does not constitute a good recommendation for a more advanced degree.
c. Motivation matters. If you want a scholarship solely because you feel like bumming around other countries, then your chances are pretty weak. You have to know what you want to get out of an educational program to be successful.
d. Be flexible in your options. A quality educational experience is not restricted to Harvard, Yale or Princeton. You risk a whole lot by adopting an all-or-nothing strategy in any admissions process.
e. Adapting to a new culture is hard but not impossible. Especially if you do not have any experience of living abroad you may find that a lot of things are different and start missing Romania, especially in the first months after you leave. It’s a normal thing to go through, but you have to keep a positive attitude towards the new culture and avoid making value judgments during your adjustment period.

Camelia: Never give up, be patient, choose your study program carefully (quality matters!), prepare your applications carefully, and make the best of all the time you have on your hands!

8. Let’s say I’m an investor and I wish to buy the group. How would you react?

Bogdan: As far as I’m concerned this group cannot be for sale (otherwise we would stray away from the entire volunteering idea). Maybe a partnership could work though I believe Romstudyabroad is an extremely successful group. Not only do we have an impressing number of members who receive as many as hundreds of messages every week, but our group is one of the few truly professional Romanian e-mail discussion lists. Romstudyabroad discussions are exclusively on-topic, and that is why Romstudyabroad fulfills its mission. And unlike other discussion groups Romstudyabroad undoubtedly changes the life of many through the information the group disseminates.

Camelia: If we were to receive financing for our group, the money could usefully be employed to advertise Romstudyabroad, to make it better known among Romanian students. I would like us to have a permanent team of representatives in Romania and our own stand at university and job fairs. Looking forward, we could establish contacts with universities and have them send their announcements directly to our membership.

Raluca: I am afraid my feeling is that the group does not need a financial investment, but one in time and experience. We need dedicated people who want to invest their time and their knowledge in this project.

9. How would you make a business presentation of the Yahoo! group?

Romstudyabroad–arguably the largest Romanian language Yahoogroup–was founded in 2002. Since 2003, it has grown 18 times, with the number of members rising from 500 at end-2003 to 9,000 in September 2009. As of 2006, we have roughly 1,500 new subscribers every year, and we post some 10-12 messages per day on average. Despite the large volume of information circulated on our group, our members prefer to have the information delivered as Individual Messages rather than Daily Digests. Our announcements about study programs and scholarships, conferences, summer schools, etc. make up about 60 percent of all messages posted on the group, while discussions between the group’s members account for the rest.

Our highest growth rates in terms of membership and messages were recorded in 2005, when we clarified our group’s concept, set up posting and forwarding rules, became more selective and focused about which information was appropriate for posting. That year, we also started a large-scale advertising campaign including, among others, our participation in the Romanian International University Fair (RIUF), articles in large circulation newspapers such as Adevarul and Capital, and posts about Romstudyabroad on other online fora. Whenever possible, we renew our advertising activities, and we often benefit from our group members’ volunteering to assist us in these efforts.

10. How could others make your work easier? How could you be helped in your work?

Bogdan: My work is not really that complicated, so I do not see the need for any direct help. If members would better understand the way in which we format messages and that they have to do their homework prior to posting a question, this would definitely make our lives easier. But moderating the list is not a terribly hard thing overall, not even in the current situation.

Camelia: Yes, our members would make our life easier if they

– did not send off-topic messages;
– wrote meaningful subject messages–and every time you send a question, please write “Intrebare:” at the beginning of the subject message;
– filled out the short university and scholarship questionnaires they receive when joining the group–this helps our Contact lists grow!;
– were more proactive in sharing information about summer schools, conferences, study programs, and scholarships; and
– shared–out of their own initiative!–more of their experiences studying abroad.

Raluca: Oh yes… If we stopped receiving off-topic or irrelevant messages and requests for personalized advice… if more of our group members did not think about Romstudyabroad participation as a public good on which to “free-ride,” but rather as a forum where we “bring and share” our experiences… and if there were no technical problems with Yahoo!…

C. Conclusions

Conclusions to be drawn are simple: an united team, a tremendous work and very good results. For a Romanian version of this interview, you can see Fiieficient.com.

For details about the Yahoo! group, I invite you to Romstudyabroad home page.

This blog post’s contents:
1. What’s the basis for comparison?
2. How have I met Ana-Maria CORLAN?
3. What impressed me?
4. How to contact Ana-Maria CORLAN?
5. Conclusions

1. What’s the basis for comparison?
Besides teachers, I think the number of persons I’ve seen talking for more than 40 minutes with an audience that included me are professionals speakers. Speaking in public has many meanings, from conference speakers, seminar trainers, moderators, but all-in-all I can say I’ve seen quite a lot of speakers.

2. How have I met Ana-Maria CORLAN?
In the winter of 2008 (20th of February to 26th of February 2008) I took part to a winter school about Programmes and Project Management in Predeal, Brasov, in a lovely location on some mountain (or hill). It was organized by National Agency for Supporting Youth Initiatives – ANSIT Romania.

How I got to Predeal? Me and a person I’ve known only via Internet arrived by car in the first day in the evening from Bucharest. After I met my apartment colleagues, we go to dinner. I decide I should sit at a crowded table, with no familiar face (very easy to meet conditions in the first evening). There were 5 persons, not a single boy. After I present myself, another person takes initiative and presents herself, and everybody says a few things. I thought everyone was from the same group of persons, and I only replied to conversations, didn’t initiate any (but I was not very silent, either).

After dinner, an official presentation of the program takes place. One trainer presents his program joyful, full of life, funny. He then invites the other trainer to speak – surprise! It turns out Ana-Maria CORLAN was at the table I was sitting. She gives a less-than-enthusiastic presentation. We are then told by the organizers that we’ll be separated into two groups, randomly. My preference was for the first trainer – I could communicate, laugh and he could motivate me. The second trainer spoke very little both at the table and at the presentation and she wasn’t that funny for my taste.

The next morning I see the lists (we were separated into two groups). “Huh? I’m into this group? No way! I wish to switch!” Switching was not possible, we were told the day before. I go to the training with low morale. I was the last one to enter the room. The chairs were ordered in a U-shape, and there was one empty chair right in the middle of the imaginary U. Someone suggests me to take the chair. I give a “Huh?” look, take a chair from the back of the room and place it right near one end of the U letter, the closest to the flipchart (and where the action takes place).

I knew no one in the room, nobody was talking one to another, after a failed initiation of a conversation with the only person sitting next to me, I get a newspaper and start reading. The training didn’t start yet. The trainer comes and suggests I should put my paper away. “Huh?”, I think, “But there’s really nothing else to do. I can’t just sit here and look at the ceiling. What a waste of time!” Anyhow, I put my newspaper away.

There’s an introduction to the course, we write our names on a name tag, and things start moving. At the end of the first day I was thinking something like “I can’t believe what just happened! This can’t be a training! Wow, and to think I would have switched the trainers. No way!”

What happened next? Imagine courses of roughly 6 hours per day (with minor and major breaks), each day. It was quite intensive.

There were two groups, each with about 20 people, each with its trainer. As said, I was lucky enough to be in Ana-Maria CORLAN’s group.

The training methods involved a theory part (rather short), a work-in-groups part (much longer) and from time to time some fun activities (also known as “energizers“).

The group I was in was kept for the whole week, which meant we could establish good bonds and by the end of the training I had a lot of fun in that group.

3. What impressed me?
At the very beginning of the training there was a definition: What does “Project management” involve? The very first words of the trainer were not “The project is…” Instead, they were “What is a project, from your perspective?” It takes quite a bit of courage to put even the definition of the project, the very first words you start the training with, in the hands of others.

And people were telling things on Project Management, some closer to the definition, some further away. Words pop up, people came with ideas. And the trainer was writing them all on a flip chart. At the end of this there were a lot of words written down.

I was expecting to challenge a few ideas (“wouldn’t you think that it’s better?”, “hmmm, why do you think that?”, “are you sure that’s true?”), to politely refuse others (“yes, this is a worthwhile idea, but I prefer not writing it down”, “yes, that’s true, but it’s better we keep to the core of the definition”), to avoid repetition (“this was said before, even if with different words”) or to come up with hints (“what would you say project management involves on the financial aspects?”) or some brand new ideas by themselves (“would you think that the GANTT chart is involved in the project management?”). Nothing like this ever happened. The trainer carefully listened to each idea, wrote it down. No idea was even challenged, not to say refused, a lot of ideas involved repetition (and they were all written), no hints were given by the trainer (not to mention brand new ideas).

So, at the end of the task, we had a page of flipchart filled with words, some closer to the truth while others further away. Clearly some of the ideas were less important, and we had to know which one was good and which one was bad. Who was the one person in the room who knew most about project management theory, much more than anybody else? You’re right: the trainer herself (Ana-Maria CORLAN). Now she had to have the list reduced to a little more than the current list. And what does she do? Instead of cutting the words on the current page of flipchart (which might offend someone’s feelings), and instead of picking up the right words herself (a thing for which she had the most expertise), she challenges the class: what would you pick to be the right definition of a project?

Now I am shocked: I had to write down on my notebook a small list of words chosen by my colleagues from a larger list of words coming yet again from my colleagues. And I had to learn this definition for a end-of-winter-school examination. At that very moment I didn’t quite realized what happened. But by the end of the day I knew this was one of the most unexpected things I’ve seen in a training until that date. It was huge. After day one I was all eyes-and-ears to everything that happened in the training room. It was just unbelievable.

You may think that this was a one-time event. No way! There were more and more examples of coming up with ideas. I think that a lot of the training was question-based. I came to the winter school eager to accumulate, and I was challenged to give. Now that’s what I call change of perspective.

Hadn’t I known better, I would have doubt her judgment abilities – “you can’t empower others so much. This can’t be. There’s something wrong with your abilities”. But no, it was her option to do it like this. Quite contrary, she was a good trainer also. This is breathtaking.

What determined such thinking from me? The thing that impressed me mostly was empowering. According to Dictionary.com website, citing Princeton University’s WordNet, “empower” means to “give or delegate power or authority to”. Days passed and many things happened, but the most important thing that impressed me was empowering.

Another thing that struck me was the emphasis put on working in teams. This was, by far, the longest type of learning I’ve done at the winter school. We worked on teams a lot. And, for myself at least, I had a lot of fun doing this. What can I learn out of this? Even if I was mostly impressed with the abilities of Ana-Maria CORLAN as a trainer, she still allowed the participants to better express themselves in teams, rather than present them with information. So, she put emphasis on teams, even if she could have done a great presentation, or good interaction with the participants. Now how can’t that be great?

Some people put little emphasis on feed-back. Others more. Ana-Maria CORLAN made it like this: in the first day she asked for a feed-back via a fill-in form. In the last day she asked for feed-back in a form. In the last day she also asked for feed-back in a live manner, with real discussions. I think feed-back is important. How did she treat the feed-back? I’ve noticed a change in the way she reacted to the persons who were late after the first day. Also after the first day she said that some persons asked for energizers. We had plenty of energizers from that day on, and the second day started with two energizers.

At the end of the training, in the last day of training, prior to the examination session, we had the option of switching sides. Yet again I could pick things. My alternatives were this: a cool trainer, funny, very sociable and a trainer which encouraged personal thinking and initiative to the maximum. My general pattern of thinking when choosing this is simple: “if I don’t know you, if there’s something new about you, if I can learn something new from you, I’m your man.” This means I prefer diversity, and I would rather see a new trainer than the same training or trainer again and again. There is just one exception to this: the trainer has to be very good, or to impress me in such a manner that the option of diversity simply fails. In this case the choice was very simple. After knowing her, Ana-Maria CORLAN was the obvious choice for me. It’s nice to mention that I have looked on the presentation written on a large paper for both trainings and the written presentation for Ana-Maria CORLAN was much better this time.

In the last day I found out with great surprise that the class I was part of didn’t behave according to the trainer’s expectations. My reaction was something like “Huh? What did you mean? It was perfect. It was great”. Well, it wasn’t that great after all. It seemed that some things which I appreciated a lot – empowering others, letting them express, encouraging communication -, were misunderstood. Some persons, including me, expressed too freely. It seems the training participants exaggerated the very large options they had. I hope nothing changed with the trainer’s behavior after that.

Regarding empowering actions: she asked for help whenever needed (help with materials, arranging the room). During games, she asked for help from some participants.

4. How to contact Ana-Maria CORLAN?
You may find another training with her. Leaving a comment for her on this blog post might also help.

5. Conclusions

_______________
Bottom line: I took part to other summer and winter schools, to other trainings, conferences, seminars and workshops. I’ve made friends at the winter school in Predeal and I have some great memories in there. But the empowering abilities as a trainer of Ana-Maria CORLAN impressed me most for any public speaker I’ve seen.

Related posts to this blog story are:
a. English message: How to make a career decision? IT – Economics – PR – IT back again (personal case study);
b. English blog post: Status on self-improvement: March 2008. What you can learn from this;
c. Romanian text: Cea mai penibila intamplare din viata mea si ce am invatat din asta.

Have I left a mark on you? Do you have an opinion you wish to share with the world? Please post a comment below.

This blog post has the following structure:
1. What’s the basis of comparison?
2. How have I met Jim BAGNOLA?
3. What do I like about him?
4. How can you see him?

Note: I hope you’ll understand why I don’t mention too many things about what Jim actually does. Is it magic? Is it so-carefully-planned science? I don’t know. Each time I watch Jim I’m amazed. I always hope – “You do something bad. Say something I can pick upon. Have a wrong feeling at a wrong time”. And he always lets me waiting for nothing. Nothing like this ever happens. I really can’t pick the one thing that he says, a way of thinking, some patterns of behavior. But I’m always amazed.

First of all, I think you should see more of him. This is his professional web site. Here is Jim BAGNOLA doing some trainings (filmed on YouTube). He also has a LinkedIn profile, a Facebook profile. In Romania he works closely with HPDI, and they’ve made a page for him. Contact HPDI for details in seeing him live in Romania.

1. What’s the basis of comparison?
At the very first glimpse, one can say that a person who’s job is public speaking must be compared with everyone that does just that: public speaking, training, seminar, coaching etc. Even stand-up comedians, preachers, teachers and singers might entitle to be public speakers.

But I’ll reduce the circle rather abrupt and only compare Jim BAGNOLA to the people that have a life led by design. You can truly be a public speaker that is only interested in your own good, you have a message to say, you say it one way or another, you get paid, go home and the next time you speak in public you speak the same. Or you only learn and apply the few things that are to be learned in a natural way of leaving (if someone tells you in a loud voice that you do something bad, you change; if everyone’s happy, then you stay the same).

How do I view Jim BAGNOLA’s solution? Instead of not learning by your mistakes or instead of learning by your own mistake, I think that Jim BAGNOLA’s closest solution comes with learning from other people’s mistakes. This is living a life by design: instead of just waiting for things to happen to your life, skills, attitudes and actions, you choose how should life be like.

In that way, I can’t compare Jim BAGNOLA to every public speaker I see. Perhaps I’m thinking all wrong in here, but to me most people learn, most of the time, by their own mistakes. I myself may be mistaking when assuming that Jim BAGNOLA learns by others’ mistakes.

Just by this challenge only, you should understand the level at which I compare him: people that are doing their best to have a perfect behavior. The circle of persons I compare Jim BAGNOLA with is small.

2. How have I met Jim BAGNOLA?
The story goes back to the year 2001. The organization for students Volunteers for Ideas and Projects had a Business School between 1st and 15h November. In one of those days, the organizers announce us that they’ve managed to borrow Jim for a session with us from a foundation (it was the first time I’ve heard of this – LEADERS Romania). I was a freshman, who got to Bucharest for less than two months, very quiet.

And then it happens: I see Jim. We had some trainings before him, we had some trainings after him, and this is really how I separated things – the trainings before Jim and the trainings after Jim. He was funny (I laughed a lot), he challenged us with questions, he put us to work (exercise and such), and I remember to this day some things he said about leadership.

I took part in an exercise, I watched and learned a lot of things. At the end of the Business School, we had a poll about which speaker did we like best. I was a very serious student back then, didn’t miss all of my classes at school, so I missed a few speakers at the Business School. But I do remember that not only me, but also most other people picked Jim BAGNOLA as a favorite speaker. It wasn’t even on the list at the beginning of the business school.

Now the business school ends and I remained in wonder – how can I see another of such beautiful thing? I knew he came from the United States of America, invited by the LEADERS Foundation. I had very little hope of them getting Jim BAGNOLA back, but I could still try to join that great organization that brought Jim BAGNOLA to Romania.

In May 2002 there was an event in one location in Bucharest about entrepreneurship organized by LEADERS Romania. Great to know more about them.

That very first year of study I applied to about three organizations for students. Rejected. The second year I tried again, to two of those old ones, to a new one (so again I apply to three organizations). Same result. All-in-all I had 6 rejected interviews in those two years. Sometime in October-November 2002, something magical happens: there are some posters in the Academy of Economic Studies that LEADERS Romania wants some new people in their team. I might have even not notice the posters, they were only on a few posting boards in the large University that the Academy of Economic Studies is. I announced a friend about this, we both went to LEADERS Romania, we both got in.

Here comes the second year of study, I was announced in LEADERS Romania that Jim BAGNOLA is coming, once again, to Romania. It was a sunny day outside, I was rushing from a class I had to keep and got to the training a bit late. And, while sitting at a table with Jim BAGNOLA, I couldn’t believe that I am in that position. Thoughts went into my mind again and again. He talked about Romania, about leadership, about teams. While I was still hearing what he said, I was mostly interested in the way in which he communicated non-verbally. And I liked that a lot.

And things got better and better. Jim BAGNOLA came from time to time to Romania and, for quite a few times, I went again and again to see him. The last two events I’ve seen him were held for large audiences, in some quite-good locations in Bucharest, chosen by the LEADERS Romania’s team and from now on it wasn’t only the LEADERS Romania team who saw Jim BAGNOLA – a lot of other persons saw him.

3. What do I like about him?
Perhaps you expected that in this blog post I’ll write about specific behaviors and words of Jim BAGNOLA, and I would say how I feel about them. But the thing is – there is not such thing. Detailed as I may think, the thing I like most about Jim BAGNOLA is everything: I like it all. I will try to detail just a bit below, with my remark still remaining valid (I like everything on him):
A. The things that he says – His basic principle is saying simple things in such a way that everyone understands; He won’t complicate things; I think he’s actually tricking us: Some basic things he says can create broader insights; So, by saying simple things he can actually create very smart affirmations; Then there’s this Latin quotation: “Non idem est si duo dicunt idem” (If two persons picture the same thing, each still has his own idea – translation source); I don’t think it’s the same if Jim BAGNOLA and the person who hears him share the same thought; If he speaks for four hours, I must say that from time to time I disagree with him; But most of the time he says things on which I agree; (even if I just thought about them) And while hearing him speaking on the same subject, I still learn new things;
B. The way in which he acts – I’m sorry to disappoint you, but to me it all seems perfect; He has some gestures which I’ve only seen on him, but somehow they seem natural; He has a lot of exercises in which he involves the audience; Hopefully, you’ll be able to take some things home with you;
C. The way in which he makes me feel – Sometimes I wonder if that’s a training or an hour of stand-up comedy; And most of the things he says are strictly related to what happened in that moment; He will make an affirmation relevant to what you say, and somehow you might get to laugh; I wrote messages about quite a few persons on this blog; Writing about Jim BAGNOLA was easiest;
D. My relation with him – He has this nice way of entering in your life in such a way that you’ll like it; He’ll come with jokes, with good humor; But he’ll also come with trust, and empowerment, and loads of common sense; And to me all these matter for a good relation.

4. How can you see him?
This is his own web site. You can see a few videos on YouTube with him. You can also check out his Facebook profile. He’s also on LinkedIn.

LEADERS Romania and HPDI might help you if you wish to see him in Romania. Contact HPDI for details in seeing him live in Romania.

What about other countries? Back in 2001, the CEO of LEADERS Romania, Ovidiu BUJOREAN, managed to get Jim BAGNOLA from the USA to come to Romania. I’m sure there are options for you too.

This blog post’s content:
1. Why am I biased in this evaluation?
2. What’s the personal history of knowing him?
3. What have I already written about him on this blog?
4. What impressed me most about him?
5. How can you see him?
6. What’s next?

Note: I have doubts if the title of this message wouldn’t be better as “Eric KISH – a paradox of thought in hard truth vs. creative doubt”, but I’ll keep it more professional.

Executive summary: If Bruno MEDICINA is all about saying things which create my own thoughts and, following that, I get insights (from my thinking), Eric KISH has a different training-via-coaching method. He says something and that very thing he says create an insight, not my own thoughts. So, he’s speaking method involves creating insights via his words. At least this is what happens to me. How is this done? Find out below.

Regarding the length of this message: this should quite easily be the biggest message I’ve written on a person on this blog. Why is that? Because most of the evaluation is based on the facts that he says. It’s not really how Eric KISH speaks, it’s not really on what emotions he brings me, it’s mostly on:
a. the facts that he says;
b. the way he chooses to say those facts;
c. the way I think about those facts.
Sure, there are emotions, it’s more than a boring presentation, but all-in-all the things he says and the method of speaking is most important. I give you bellow my thoughts on that. I can’t do any cut-offs, it’s better I keep things fully open. You will know exactly why I like his speeches. All the ideas are in there.

First of all, who is Eric KISH? See his LinkedIn profile, and a page on him on Business Summer School web site. If you’re Romanian, you may Google his name.

1. Why am I biased in this evaluation?
First of all, I probably have relatives for which I am not as biased in an analysis as I am with Eric KISH. Why is that?
A. I’ve worked in a project which was ultimately led by him in 2001 for two weeks (I worked at Rompetrol Refining, Navodari – I’ll call it Petromidia from now on, this is how it’s known in the area);
B. Eric KISH ran for quite a while an enterprise which is a major for which Navodari is today a town, rather than a village; By 1930s Navodari was still a village; After Petromidia was brought to life, in 1975, the population of Navodari rose to 26,000 inhabitants (today there are more than 32,000); How am I connected to Petromidia? If I randomly analyze four houses in Navodari with people I know, at least one inhabitant of that house works for Petromidia or for a company directly employed by Petromidia; I lived for about 16 years in a block of flats built for Petromidia workers (my family was the first to live in that flat); Quite a few of my secondary school and high-school (Lazar Edeleanu high-school, the only high-school in Navodari) colleagues work directly or indirectly for Petromidia; The high-school I graduated has a profile dedicated to creating employees at an chemical industrial company (I let you solve the puzzle – which one?); Petromidia is not an abstract thought, somewhere in the ideas circle; Petromidia is the toys brought to school be my colleagues and me after a Christmas offering by the company; It’s the company that made me and my colleagues go “Wow!” when we found out that they are paying in the equivalent of United States dollars, so there are low problems with the inflation; It’s the company that does advertisements on TV in which I see people that when I was in kindergarten came to my house and brought me chocolate (and now they’re on TV);
C. Finally, I might work for Eric KISH in the future in a project; (this was decided after I publicly took the decision to write this blog post, not prior to this decision; also, I think that the following approximate logic, first heard on Isaac Asimov – I think -, applies: “If I don’t write this blog post, I win or lose nothing; If I do write this blog post, I don’t win anything, but I might lose the current relation”; so, to me, writing this it’s a risk with no perceived value)

How can I solve these biased issues? I’ll try to present more facts and the way in which I respond to those facts, rather than jump to conclusions. In this way, you can better evaluate for yourself. Hence, the lengthiness of the message.

2. What’s the personal history of knowing him?
In the spring of 2001 I was in the final year of high-school. In Romania we have a final graduation examination, and another examination at University-level if you wish to enter a good faculty. So I had two big exams in my life for that summer, the time was scarce.

And we are announced sometime that we are invited to go to Petromidia for a company presentation. The details were little-to-none, me and my colleagues didn’t know what to expect. It was in the final period of the school year, most of the colleagues were concerned on what to do next in life.

I can remember a large room, nice architecture and lights, good chairs and, surprise!, lots of speakers at a long desk. There was Eric KISH, CEO of Petromidia, there was the principal of the high-school, there was the director of human resources of Rompetrol (I think that was the position she held), there were teachers from Ovidius University and Lazar Edeleanu, there was a school inspector for physics in Constanta county and possibly other persons. Most of them held a speech.

What I remember from Eric KISH’s speech? He said things like (I hope you can forgive my forget-after-8-years’-time memory situation):
A. We will offer you a decent work place, with legal contracts (this is quite rarely met in a lot of jobs in Romania, even nowadays, and a lot jobs are only half-legal); That didn’t leave a mark on me; What was I to know about the workplace back then? Looking backwards, it was quite a tempting idea; Perhaps insisting on what the reality is, with some statistics on how other companies do this, would have helped solved the mystery;
B. We will create an IT laboratory at the local high-school; (We were graduating; Why would we care about that? But for the we’re-such-a-great-company image it was a good thing)
C. We will give you scholarships for your studies, if you decide to come back and work for Petromidia after graduation; (this really spotted my attention back then; Right now I think there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and I would politely refuse the offer)
D. You can work for us even if you go to University; (the condition was not to have full-time studies, which was very bad for me)
E. (at the end of the session) You have to go online and apply for a job at us (creating a CV and applying to a job); (Besides checking the IT abilities and will power of the candidates, I think this was an uninspired idea, but I was amazed to see just how many people actually did this)
F. Eric KISH said the very first thing he did when he came to Navodari (after managing some oil business) was going to the high-school and contacting the principal; He wanted to get a confirmation from the principal, which he did;
G. He also said that at some point he wants to teach at a University.

At some point, after the speech, he said he wants to see who out of the audience has courage. He provoked us to speak. And while my cheeks turned red and I started thinking of the-perfect-question-to-put-in-such-occasion, others spoke with him. Microphones were flying, people were laughing, I was all red, thinking what I can say.

How did other people react to what Eric KISH said as reply to such things?
A. I remember a thing the physics inspector for Constanta county said: Petromidia tries to be like the Western companies, that employ good policies for the community; (he was referring to CSR practices) I was amazed – this is a typical situation in the West?
B. The Ovidius University teacher invited Eric KISH to come not only to the high-school, but to the University also; (at this point Eric KISH laughed)
C. When one girl said she wants to candidate for a Marine life, Eric KISH said a thing similar to “A girl wants to join the Marines. I think she deserves applause”; And the whole room, including I, applauded her; I didn’t even notice that thing, not to mention consider it applause was called-for; I was intrigued;
D. At some time he said (I think) something about sports; He asked “What age would you think I am?”; There were three replies, all of which were lower than his actual age, revealed by him; There was some rumor in the room; Quite a living audience in Navodari;
E. One girl asked him “How much to you earn?” At this point Eric KISH laughed and said that his salary is proportionate with his responsibilities (I think this is pretty much the very first PR answered I’ve heard and remembered in my life; so corporate, so telling-me-nothing-and-avoiding-the-answer-in-a-not-so-upsetting-way); But more interesting than Eric KISH’s reaction was the reaction of an important person in the high-school; That person looked down, tilted its head, and clapped its hand on the forehead; (“Is this girl representing our high-school?”) Quite amusing, I must say.

How did I felt about Eric KISH’s presentation techniques? Much later, Bruno MEDICINA asked the persons in a room – “Who has the most guts/indolence/lack of sensitivity out of you?”. And he would give great assignments to those persons. I think that was the emotion that came to me most at the beginning about Eric KISH – I saw a person that just said tough things. (which was quite annoying and provoking to me; and I really didn’t like it all that much, but it was very intriguing)

Also, I was very impressed by the fact that Eric KISH managed to invite so many important people at the same desk. When, that very year, at the inauguration speech at my Faculty, there was a similar desk with lots of people, I found out that this was a method rather than an one-time-idea. I loved the procedure, it really struck me – “If you wish to impress a group of people, put in them a number of persons with good functions”.

What happened right after that presentation? I found out from a colleague that Eric KISH is the “Executive director” of Petromidia. “He’s what?” “Executive director” “What does this mean?” (he laughs) “He can fire you anytime” “That young guy is the chief of Petromidia?” “Yep”. I left confused.

I also had lots of hopes following the presentation of that day.

So I put my CV online at an Internet cafe, and find out with surprise at the end that I have apply to the job after I put my CV online. I warn my colleagues at the high-school about that, most of them listen.

I take my final graduation exam at school, I apply for three universities in three different regions of Romania (and the same faculty at all three), and luck shines on me. I pick Bucharest, and my future is then set.

I come back from Bucharest and find out, via email (most colleagues also got a phone call), that I’ve been selected to the “Our home is like a flower” program (I won’t comment anything on the name, which is quite hard for me; just think of “home” as an “industrial complex with specific smells, specific colors and specific looks”; now associate this with a “flower”; to the defense of this name, I do get lots of insights when thinking about it).

Now, imagine high-school time as the time in which I belonged to the most important community in my life. Sure, the later years in some hostels in Bucharest, sharing a room with three people for an year (you only had two options with the colleagues: love or hate), were nice also. Sure, the secondary school years were lovely themselves. Sure, I’ve had some great time in the very first years of life, somewhere in Bacau county, at an aunt. But high-school was the best period of my life, concerning social interactions.

This high-school period ended in two different times: after the last exam we had as whole class at the final examination (Informatics), we were all walking by a road. The whole class. I remember that road pretty well, it lead me apart from high-school and it’s quite painful (I had yet another examination to complete that exam). Then there is a moment when about half of our class was gathered in front of the high-school, waiting for the Rompetrol bus to get us to work (after the Universities exams period ended). There was a list of admitted students, some pupils tried to get in but after filling out their CVs online they didn’t apply to jobs, so they were not accepted in the bus. And while the bus left, some memories of mine remained there with a few colleagues of mine, as the last memory of high-school time. At Rompetrol I had a few colleagues, we laughed and enjoyed ourselves, but it was different. We were on groups, we actually worked for a change, we were just a few. We even went to the beach at the end, but it was just not the same. Not in my mind, at least. High-school time was already over.

Now we got to Petromidia. There were just a few people speaking at a desk (not-as-advertised-at-the-presentation), the speech was short and we were not provoked. I also noticed a reply by Eric KISH to a question. “What’s the salary? It’s the minimum wage per economy, as said.” I can’t remember why I was so upset by this reply. Oh yes, it might have been because I didn’t remembered the sentence having been said before (“as said”).

So, from now on we did another thing for a change: we started working.

The time passed. I would have loved a questionnaire at the end of the project to be able to associate the project with something, based on emotions, and see how many of the participants would pick a “Lovely flower” as a common association, but I had no such opportunity. We learned some things on project management (theoretical aspects), we had a good meal each day, and I personally even managed to to keep about 10 percent out of the salary given, as it was deduced by a fine I paid two years later for not submitting my revenues information to some Fiscal authority in Navodari.

At the end of this work time, there was another meet with Eric KISH. He gave T-shirts to all of us (quite a good model, although branded it felt good) and a diploma, and he has personally shaken hands with all of us. He even put a T-shirt over his costume which left me with a very weird feeling. (“Eeew!”) Looking backwards, it was not all that bad.

But before we get to good-bye time, there was another event. Eric KISH said something about some scholarships by Rompetrol given to students to return later to work for them. I had this situation prior to speaking:
a. At a previous meeting, I didn’t spoke and felt bad about this;
b. When announcing the minimum salary, I felt I poorly understood the situation;
c. At that very moment I had a very good question to pose, a real question, and an opportunity to speak;
d. I was sitting very far away from the desk, with no colleagues closer to me than 15 meters.

So at this point he asks for questions, no question is posed (I think it was this way). Anyhow, right now I basically yell at Eric KISH, and due to the emotions, I sound an angry voice. “What’s the salary you’ll pay us when we return from studies?” I think this is a situation. Now comes the psychological solution of freeze-fight-flight. Which to pick? I’ll just say that he mirrored me (of course, for me to hear better) and says “I haven’t heard that question before. If I say to you that I’ll pay you after all those years the current minimum wage per economy, would you accept?” (in Romania at that time both inflation and salary increases made a current salary look small after a few years) I could have given solutions like evaluating in dollars, but just mentioning minimum wage salary cleared my questions. And I was like dead nervous.

So the Rompetrol experience ended there, me and a few colleagues went to the beach that day. I told a friend that I’m thinking about that “I haven’t heard that question before” thing and I wonder if I did wrong. The friend says that it was a justified question, so I calm a little.

To see what effect made this affirmation on me, I’ll present you two situations:
a. Third year of studies – during one exam; The teacher calls the list of present students; He gets to my group of 20 people (in the room there were about 1-200 people; all seminar hours were done with my group of about 20 persons); He calls one name, another, almost the whole class; There was basically one large group with all the students in my group and another “island” with two persons; He finally gets to me; I was in the back of the room, no other of my group mates was any closer than 20 meters, in a corner; I yell at the teacher “[I'm] Present!”; Like a Romanian writer (Ion-Luca CARAGIALE) used to say: rumor in the room;
b. The end of second year of studies, last real class (the last one was mostly for fun); A teacher finally says to me, after two years of waiting for this moment: “You should do like everyone else does!”; (regarding my staying all alone, putting not-so-pleasant questions, doing things like I want, and not one time caring about “I haven’t heard that before”).

So, I’d say I really did change my behavior after meeting with Eric KISH. Now I place myself farther away and act more annoyingly different.

And I must add that while most speakers would say “That is a very good question”, Eric KISH’s solution of “I haven’t heard that question before” is a quite welcomed differentiator.

So this is how my Rompetrol experience ended. And while I entered life, in that autumn of 2001, with high hopes in my skills and with good feelings about my emotions, the Bucharest life would soon change this. So much that four years later, in the summer of 2005, after graduation, I was entering life yet again with lesser hopes in my skills (good in Navodari, not-that-great in a competition environment), with crushed emotions (Bucharest and all), but with a brand new hope: neither the skills nor the emotions are that important, but the willingness to continue to fight is. What’s that? The basic thing that in a no-need-to-be-improving situation, I still need to improve. It’s that simple.

During the first year of studies, I found out about a colleague in the hostel who has seen him as a presentation of an volunteering organization in the Academy of Economic Studies – Volunteers for Ideas and Projects. He was impressed by what Eric KISH said about doing great stuff about Petromidia. Now the flower thing pops up in my head and I argue with him, but I didn’t convince him.

I think it was sometime in the winter of 2002. I was sitting in a hostel from my University (the area where I lived is known in Romanian as “Agronomie” – Agronomy – due to the closeness to the main office and University campus of University of Agronomical Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Bucharest). In a certain week, sometime in the week-end (Saturday or Sunday, perhaps even in the time-frame designated to learning by the University and used for a lot of other activities by the students, see below), there was an event with Eric KISH. I called upon my room-mates at the hostel to come with me, they refuse me. (and follow their financial career, instead of wasting time like me) So I go all alone, in a not-that-busy town (Bucharest can be quite Ok with low traffic of morning week-end) to the Academy of Economic Studies – Aula Magna. I place myself in the first or second row of seats of a room filled with people and watch the show. What really amazed me (besides the fact that no one was learning in this school) was the fact the room was full of people. And I don’t speak about a small seminar classroom. No. It was a very large room. I was surprised that so many people came. He was the only speaker on the list.

What did Eric KISH say in there? I mostly forgot, but I do remember some things (approximate understanding):
A. (being invited by AIESEC organization to this event; they put all the work in making that room filled with people) “You know, doing volunteering work for an organization such as AIESEC doesn’t really impress me as an employer. I’d much rather see a McDonald’s employee coming to my office”; He went on to tell us just how much McDonald’s invests in trainings and that an employee must smile no matter how its feelings are in that moment; (he actually spoke some unpleasant words in here, for which he apologized) My reaction to this? (and other times he says he can predict what changes people – a certain action) Well, putting it simple you can’t predict anything; I can surely make a person to sing for money, work in foreign countries, serve the military, do karate, be a workaholic, love challenges, and be nowhere near Eric KISH is; The fact is that:
a. Besides behavior, there are things like environment and genetics; (some people may live a different life in the Israeli army right now due to changes in the environment; and some people won’t have a voice to sing, a body to do karate, or they can need more sleep to perform well – genetics plays a huge role)
b. If I can make an association to what Eric KISH says, it’s like that: “If I learn Greek well enough to read Plato’s Dialogues in Classical Greek, and the book puts its mark on me, then Plato’s Dialogues are the one book to be read by everybody to live my life”; But Classical Greek can be understood well only if I read other literary works, not only blunt Grammar; If I read works on arts in Classical Greek to learn the language, I’ll interpret the book differently than if I read works on philosophy in my learn-the-language period; If I read religious texts, I will understand things differently than if I read historical texts of that time; It’s not only Plato’s Dialogues that form me, it’s my whole experience that surrounds it; And while I can say that Plato’s Dialogues are a great thing to read, life is much more than that; Coming back to the example, there are many other forming things in a career than a job at Mc Donald’s; It’s just not that one event, is the never-repeating mix of events;
c. I also believe that while there are sure paths to failure, there is no sure path to success;
Anyhow, saying to AIESEC in their face that they are not such a thing to be joined took some courage; It’s also a paradox that he accepted their invitation, while Rompetrol sponsored them; I can assume that the paradox is only on the surface – He can say that a sea is green (it really is; and it sounds cool), he can say that the sea is blue (it is; lovely thing to say), but he would much rather say that the sea is not green and blue at the same time (it sounds so boring); So, to me Eric KISH’s paradoxes are expressed in such a way that do a little thing called “Shock you!”, while they not fully express what he means; It’s definitely not a lie, just an incomplete truth; You can associate this with the answer to “What are you doing”: “I’m doing great!”; Surely, you may be doing some things which are not that great (and Eric KISH’s might actually go into those answers, to shock you), but the answer itself is not a lie; It’s a just a way of partially saying the truth; It’s also one of the reasons why I left the PR career;
B. I think it was at this event that I’ve heard him saying that he used to sing in the faculty for some events;
C. (related to point B.) He said that going to school was a big waste of time, we are much better skipping classes; (I remind you that he was speaking in the most important room of the Academy of Economic Studies) Also: “Teachers are failed persons who can’t get a decent job elsewhere”; You can’t but wonder why at Navodari he invited so many teachers near him, while he also said that he wanted to teach at a University; I would say that he feels that his sentence is true, and in the same time there is another factor which holds the paradox together; He just chooses to tell you one side of the paradox;
D. At some point some one in the audience asks him how useful was the MBA for him; He does a zero with his fingers; He gave some examples that he already knew some of the stuff thought in there; Now, returning to the “zero” argument; You have to option into judging Eric KISH in here: one doubting his intelligence (he could have left the MBA anytime), and one feeling there is another balancing reason for taking a long-term enterprise; So, the full answer would be “Even if I consider the MBA time not that useful, I chose to stay for that long time and study it full-time because …”; He just gave us the short version; Mark it with a live metaphor and you get a great response from the audience and big points for the PR industry;
E. He told us that the moment in which Rompetrol went to the Bucharest Stock Exchange, the informatics system of the institution crashed due to the huge number of transactions in that day; “We crushed the Stock Exchange”; Quite a hard-to-forget sentence, won’t you say?
F. Eric KISH spoke also about making informatics a big part of Petromidia’s life, with real examples; (examples with what I’ve read about him mix in my head, so I’m not sure what he said in there)
G. (tough subject) One person in the room asked him for a change in his life regarding values; Eric KISH said it’s not his task to change the world, but that of the future generation – the persons present in the room; He said he’s too old for that.

Time passes yet again. I get to find out about some projects of Rompetrol to offer scholarships for students, for some projects to hire fresh graduates from Universities, the commercials on TV for Rompetrol were quite lovely. (see a IQads page in Romanian on that – scroll down)

By that time, I was from time to time asked in an organization I was part of – LEADERS Romania – what speakers I would invite to the conferences? It’s hard for me to remember a time in which I haven’t recommended Eric KISH. But my colleagues were smarter than that, and it would take years before Eric KISH was invited by LEADERS to speak at their events. I wonder what he has to say about the organizers of these events.

Here comes the spring of 2006. It was a time between jobs. I was so stressed by that fact, that I went to every conference I could, from time to time being out from dusk untill dawn. In this period of time I take part to a three-days event at Sutu Palace in Bucharest: Expedition in Human Resources.

If you wonder how could I, a masters’ student, join a conference in which there was a registration form for only for students interested in HR, well let’s just say I have nothing to declare on that. But I was strangely silent those days. I was sitting in the first rows.

I’m looking at the list of speakers, and Eric KISH is marked as a special guest. What did he said? At this point I’m pretty sure I was writing everything down, so somewhere in my home there is a paper with this. But I do think it’s more relevant to say about the things that really left a mark on me and I remember them by memory:
A. Eric KISH gets to speak right after a representative of another multinational company; At the very beginning of the presentation (which was more like a workshop, the audience was involved a lot), Eric KISH picks on the company before him; He knew some cool stuff (only from the spectators’ point of view) about their leader (he forced some good transaction for its company and bad for the providers due to the size of its company; he fired a lot of persons); At some point, he said a memorable fact (approximate quotation): “They always tell you you could be CEO. You’ll never get to the CEO position”; (which is quite funny, considering his own positions; I think you know it by now – add this to his quote “but I do have mention that” and things get clearer) Anyhow, this is right about the very first time I ever heard someone picking so hard on the previous speaker; Funny thing to imagine: “Who’s next on the discussion list? Oh, no! It’s Eric KISH. He’ll pick on us. Nooo!”;
B. Somewhere at the beginning he defined his presence in the room: “I’m here to provoke you”; And provke us he did;
C. He started doing this right with the title of the conference – “How do you define success?” he asked; People spoke mostly about career, and he put emphasis on the personal part; By this time, it should make no surprise to you that a person who declares that works a lot, goes from a country to another following a career path, considers personal life so important;
D. The “Why?” thing: He said at some point that in a factory there were a lot of problems solved by the fact that a manager kept asking “Why?” and they got to a very nice observation and helped solve a problem (or I might have read this in a paper and now I wrongly associate it with this event); Anyhow, he started picking on a poor student (the student enjoyed this, I think), continuously asking him “Why?”; At some point the student was blocked, but it was funny to see it; A psychologist might tell him that “Why?” question has some bad interrogatory-like associations with it, and it can be rephrased with things like “What’s the reason …”; (or you can also use “Why?” it even more thoroughly, if provoking was the intention)
E. (regarding D.) He said that this is why he has a problem with God – God doesn’t answer the “Why?” question; I think that besides Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI and Nicolae STEINHARDT, both self-declared Orthodox persons, I won’t comment on any religious views of persons I talk about in this blog; So, let’s us the declare-in-public opportunity and give a reply; There are two options for reply – defensive reply or provocative; Let’s try both – How can one Christian (such as I) reply to the “Why?” question:
Defensive reply:
a. If by “Why?” question one intends the very means through which one gets to God (“Why is it that God …”, “Why do priests …”, “Why do churches …”, “Why do believers …” – a lot of people stop on these), I can give comforting news: means don’t really matter all that much; You are told not to do this and that; You are told not to do this and that; (this is where means get involved, a lot of people stop here) But you are also told that you can be forgiven for all those things in the very moment you wish to stop doing them and confess past things; You are also told to be perfect, and in the same time reminded that only God is truly good; (so it’s somehow not expected from you to be perfect, even if you should strive to be so) You are also not given a scale; (I do this good deed X – this values like Y sin; they compensate; we’re even now; No! You don’t know the scale; You can’t tell how much value does a good deed bring and how much bad value does a sin bring; Not having a scale means that you can’t tell if you really did all that good on Earth or you did bad; You don’t have the scale to judge it) Through all that, I think there is enough evidence for this: There are a lot of ways to get to God, it might be simpler than thought, and not one person on this Earth can thoroughly evaluate another person – “This one will get to heaven, this one will get to hell”; The uncertainty solves, at least to me, the means: you can save your soul in different ways, unexpected perhaps; The thief on his right of Jesus, on the very basic level, only said two things right before dying.
He is thought to be the first one to enter the Heaven, in front of all those patriarchs of the Old Testament; The “Why?” question regarding means is really not that much of a deal; Regarding my own observation on this level: I have yet to meet a priest (doing everything he can regarding the thought-to-be-good means) about whom to write on this blog; Perhaps I evaluate on different ways than expected; This doesn’t stop me to consider that I am an orthodox;
b. If “Why?” question refers to the very question of God: I will solve this with the help of a paradox; You have two options:
i. Don’t believe in God, try the empirical method – “I believe in what I see, feel, touch, hear”;
ii. Believe in a God who has, among others, the purpose of letting me free to decide – “I believe in something that is present in my untouchable soul. He deliberately chose to keep Himself hidden.”
I can’t answer the paradox, I can’t tell you why i. is to be preferred to ii. That’s for you to decide. On a logical level, you might only pick i. The lack of proof make it a clear choice. On a wish-to-believe, dare-to-hope, try-to-love level, things might be a bit different. (you might pick ii.) Anyhow, I can solve the paradox just by creating it: you have reasons to trust sciences, you have emotions to believe in God. If there is an option, the paradox is created and option given. The solution is not mine to live, but, nevertheless, it still exists.
Provocative reply: How could I attract one to orthodoxy? To Nicolae STEINHARDT, described on this blog, considers orthodoxy to be best explained by paradox. It doesn’t give you a solution, by the contrary – it asks for opposite things in the same time. (you can’t be perfect, you must strive to be perfect) This quote about paradox is a favorite of Nicolae STEINHARDT: “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) I’ll consider this: if you pick one side of the paradox, briefly explain it to make provocative assumptions, what would you say about this – you can live a life the paradox unsolved (not one thought to the left, not one thought to the right; not to the middle; and each of them, taken separately, can be great solutions), while the life will be much tougher than a provocative assumption. Choosing a side of the paradox may create good PR, may be an excellent way of presentations, but living the paradox (and Nicolae STEINHARDT thinks that orthodoxy is just about it) can be so much better right within you. The feelings might be better than making one’s mouth drop. End of advertisement;
F. At some point Eric KISH spoke with a student: he put a question, the boy answered fast; Then Eric KISH said we shouldn’t be really speaking from textbooks; He wants to hear our own words; Not too many rushed to say something;
G. (regarding F.) Eric KISH gave us a little test: What was (at the beginning of 2006) the biggest car producer in the world? An answer came to say that it was General Motors; Eric KISH contradicted him, and said that recently (for that time) Toyota‘s sales were announced to be higher; Now it was really unimportant for me which was number one on the market, but I’d have to say that the point was well taken: you can’t learn the latest news from the books and I understand why it is important to practice more than reading stuff in books;
H. At some point, he asked the audience on a dilemma: he is doing a nice life in Israel, and yet he has a job opportunity in Hong Kong; (I hope I haven’t mixed locations) Good job, but would require a lot of changes in his life; What to do? Even if he spoke quite a few things on living a perfect family life should be the real success, there were a few replies, all of them in favor of the “leaving” part; (perhaps the stay-in-Israel people were quieter; family persons) He said he hesitates on this one, the answer is not that clear. (which, if this phrase is not added: “although I must say”, would mean something bad about his actual decision; he did go to Israel, so the phrase must be longer than that)

3. What have I already written about him on this blog?
In a message written in March 2009 – Why, to me, the Strategy Conference in Human Resources, organized by HR Club Romania 12th March, 2009, at J.W. Marriott, Bucharest had the best conference organization I’ve ever seen? – I have already spoken about the last time I’ve met Eric KISH. Here’s what I said (I hope it’s clear now why the MBA part is trickier):

But the speaker I liked most at this conference wasn’t present with his name in any of the speakers’ lists. He was serious, no joke when he held his speech. He had a less-than-one-minute speech, which he started with “I am not a HR person”. In that one minute, he made two affirmations which made my mouth drop:
a. (approximate understanding by me) We will launch a HR Software solution for the US market;
b. (approximate understanding by me) Within companies with a turnover of a range from millions to billions USD, we wish to hire CEOs and CFOs. All of these positions come with no special MBA required.

The affirmations (or at least how I understood) were made by Eric KISH (VP Retail The Rompetrol Group). It made me wish to include him on this blog with a dedicated blog post.

What have I learned from Eric KISH? In his one minute of speaking it made me understand that the MBA has some value (he said exactly the opposite thing, but, nevertheless, it made me wonder).

I could add that in that very morning of the Strategy Conference in Human Resources, I talked with a HR Club little helper and I said “Wow! Eric KISH is on the invites’ list!”, while the reply came “You like Eric KISH too?” Girls …

4. What impressed me most about him?
By now, you should have right about all the major facts that impress me most on Eric KISH. And when I mean “all” it’s like “all”. You’ve got the full picture. I have even given you from time to time my reaction to the things he said. To answer the question is this: what impresses me most about Eric KISH is the way he handles the paradox: from one sentence
“I consider that X is totally …, but on the other I hand I have to admit that X is still …”,
Eric KISH’s style is something like:
“I consider that X is totally …”,
although I feel that the sentence is only spoken that way and thought differently. But hearing him speak like that always makes me wonder “How would this phrase continue?” And I get to lovely emotions, ideas and thoughts just by filling the blanks. The insights I get most of the time are just great.

Yes, he says some smart things, he doesn’t bore you, he makes people laugh (and laughs whenever he chooses), but the main mechanism that makes him so interesting to me is exposed above and that’s why I like him as a speaker so much.

5. How can you see him?
Eric KISH has a way of participating in all kinds of events, and if you’re a student in Bucharest (and not only), you should be able to get to see him sometime. Here’s his public LinkedIn profile, while Googling his name (in Romanian) will also yield some other interesting results. This blog post is strictly referring to the way in which he helds speeches, I can’t tell you about anything else.

6. What’s next?

_______________________________
Bottom line: If you like being provoked, moved, touched, make yourself a present and participate in a conference with Eric KISH. I’ve had the most insights in a given period of time, more than any other speaker I’ve seen.

This blog post’s content:
1. How many Romanian trainers did I see? (with whom do I compare?)
2. History of events (when have I seen Bruno MEDICINA?)
3. What do I like most about him? (What makes Bruno MEDICINA a great trainer?)
4. How to see Bruno MEDICINA for yourself?
5. What decision to take?

Note: you may wonder why in this blog post I say little to nothing on what Bruno MEDICINA actually says. The reason is very simple: the thing I like most about this speaker is not the way in which he speaks or the things that he says. It has mostly to do with what I feel when he speaks. And this is largely unwritable. I will describe some general feelings on Bruno MEDICINA, but I can’t give you too many examples.

First of all, who is Bruno Medicina? You may wish to see his profile on Business Edu web site or his own web site.

1. How many Romanian trainers did I see? (with whom do I compare?)
In the autumn of 2001 I joined the Faculty of International Business and Economics (the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest). I would stay in there for four years. After college, I’ve worked full-time, and then for almost an year I’ve been a freelancer. Now I work for another full-time job.

Most of those four college years, and the year working as a freelancer, I’ve taken part to a large number of activities involving public speaking (other than formal education). Even when working full-time I went to a lot of public speaking events. I have even created a mailing list dedicated to such events, where I informed my readers about conferences. I’ve been a member of some NGOs specialized in event organization, and basically I have been always interested in hearing someone speaking. You might want to note the fact that the “trainers” category of professionals I recommend is currently the largest one. Most of the speakers I’ve seen were Romanians, but some International speakers also. I can say I compare Bruno MEDICINA with quite a few other trainers or speakers.

2. History of events (when have I seen Bruno MEDICINA?)
The very first time I’ve seen Bruno MEDICINA was actually at a fair, rather than a conference event. I was living in a hostel of the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest, somewhere near RomExpo exhibition centre (the area is know in Romanian as “Agronomie” – Agronomy – due to the closeness to the main office and University campus of University of Agronomical Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Bucharest). I think it was in a winter or spring, perhaps in 2001-2002 or 2002-2003. Anyhow, sometimes between autumn of 2001 and spring of 2003.

I came to the fair with two thoughts: to see the fair itself as quick as possible and to attend to at least one workshop. By the time I finished seeing the fair, the Bruno MEDICINA workshop already begun. It was in a room with multiple entries, there weren’t that many people present (it’s natural for this to happened at an under-promoted fair), and I sat in there. I didn’t understand everything Bruno MEDICINA was saying (he was speaking in Romanian, but with an Italian accent), and this lead me into not paying attention. Writing down wouldn’t help either – I was writing down words, but wasn’t paying all that much attention. I left disappointed. Time passed and I forgot his name, but the attitude remained with me. Back then I was only focusing on what can I learn from a speaker, not on the things that happen within me.

In the second (or third maybe?) year of faculty, I found out about a fire walking experience, first time in Bucharest, for free. Just the thought of it provoked me badly. “Me on fire? Wow, now that’s something!” But I managed to cut down on enthusiasm and self-convince that it isn’t all that great (not that I was, by any chance, afraid). I thought “What a waste of time”. I didn’t know back then who Bruno MEDICINA was, even if I’ve seen him before, so I didn’t associate the two events.

I think I’ve seen him after that at some other conferences, one-time-only events (my memory doesn’t help me all that much). While working as a freelancer (2007-2008), I had a lot more time to go to conferences. I went to see him a lot of times in the middle of the day at a tea-shop in the Bucharest center. I was enjoying this a lot, mostly due to the sense of emergency (Some announcements went like this: “Come to see Bruno MEDICINA today, in two hours time, at a Tea-shop”; Quite funny to be always vigilant). I’ve seen him quite a few times like this. The event was filmed and broadcasted on the Internet.

In the autumn of 2007 I went for the very first time at a firewalking. Lots of preparation prior to the event, excitement and fear, enjoyment and stress, all in one. Great day, great memories.

I’ve also seen him a few times in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Studies, at events organized by ASPSE students’ organization.

I’ve seen him two times at Palace Hall, in the spring of 2008 and 2009 (I have made a video at the last event in here: Bruno Medicina on the things that really matter).

And in the autumn of 2008 I went for the second time at a firewalking event (and this time I had quite a physical experience). You can see me in this YouTube clip: Bruno Medicina – Firewalking at Studentiada (I’m the second one to pass, after Bruno; I’m the white-collar guy).

3. What do I like most about him? (What makes Bruno MEDICINA a great trainer?)
I told you that the very first time I’ve seen him, sometime in 2001-2003, I had a bad impression after meeting him. The two faults I saw were:
A. He said blunt things;
B. I had problems understanding what he said (he didn’t do a lot of question and involvement of the room).

If I were to look at the current behavior, I would say that the biggest two problems are:
A. He says blunt things;
B. He doesn’t involve the audience by communicating directly (even though now I can follow what he says much better).

So, where’s the evolution? Why since 2007 until this day I constantly went to see him again and again? Why is it that I went through fire (literally) two times at events where he lead the action? Why is it that I consider him such a good trainer that he is on my blog? The answer is simple: it’s not the things that he says, it’s the things he provokes in my mind via the things that he says. I evolved during those years, and now I interpret his actions differently.

He has a way of putting my mind to work, that I leave most of the presentations thinking “What was that!?” He says simple things, some things that are really boring. But the way those things make me feel is out-of-ordinary. I’m touched, I have insights, I get new perspectives, I find new paths of thinking, I develop my creativity. He’s that good.

I’m pretty sure that if Bruno MEDICINA would pick a subject he knows nothing about and he would speak about this subject for the first time in his life, I would have some things to learn. Because it’s not the things that he says, it’s not the way in which he says it (he mostly puts rhetorical questions, not involving the audience), but it’s all on how he makes my thoughts wander.

I could go see Bruno MEDICINA for countless times, speaking on no-matter-what. I’ve heard him speaking on firewalking for a quite a few hours, and one year after I repeated the experience. My feelings on that? I want to go again this year. I’ve heard some of his ideas for three to four times. And yet I go again and again to hear him talking.

Unfortunately, it’s not him the one that talks. It’s me. The things that he says wake up thoughts in me. And that’s plain wonderful. Yet I can’t really describe this in detail.

Sure, he has other qualities that make him a great trainer: he’s sincere (to the point that you may wonder if he wouldn’t be losing money if he says some things like that), he’s funny (and laughs at his own jokes, which is cool – I know when to laugh), he’s supportive (I’ve always felt support from him), he does CSR, although he wouldn’t call it like that (how many free events have I seen from him?), he does engage the audience when he wants to (at the firewalking sessions he’s a totally different person than when he speaks in public at a conference), he’s good with technical part (better than a lot of other trainers at least).

There are other persons from which I got more insights on a given period of time. There were people who made my mind wander in a better way. But for a training / public speaking / workshop / conference / seminar of 30 minutes to 5 hours to constantly give me fresh ideas, to constantly provoke me, to fully break barriers in my mind, I’d definitely pick Bruno MEDICINA. Because it’s not on what he says. It’s on what you think about what he says. This is all about coaching.

4. How to see Bruno MEDICINA for yourself?
Bruno MEDICINA is an international man of business, but you can mostly see him in Romania. You can sure provoke him for another country, see what happens. He has a web site, an Yahoo Group, a Facebook profile, a Facebook group, a Facebook page (these three are different one to another), a LinkedIn profile and he works on all of them thoroughly. You can find him on YouTube, you can search for him on Google and see a great article on him on Business Edu. But I do suggest you see him in person to have a clear glimpse on what he can do.

5. What decision to take?
Bottom line: I read articles by Bruno MEDICINA from time to time (I actually read them all). I see him on videos. They’re not that bad, but they’re not that good. But being in the same room with him, letting him play with your mind, is one of the best experiences one can have. Bruno MEDICINA is all about real experience, is all about the things he puts in me. And that’s why I deeply admire him for: for making me think in a really creative way.

Contents of this blog post:
1. History of events
2. Implications into my life
3. What to do next?

Who was Nicolae STEINHARDT? See a page on Wikipedia for him, read some texts and see some photos on OrhodoxPhotos.com, if you speak Romanian there is also a blog on his texts.

1. History of events
The spring of 1999: I am in the yard of a high-school in Constanta, waiting for a regional contest for a subject in the curricula (if you were good at a specific subject, you could compete with fellow pupils from the County – “Olympiad” it was called). This was a few years I discovered Gala GALACTION, an Orthodox Christian writer I mostly admired for what it seemed to me was the closest resemblance to the Christian values. This implied a lot of fanatical/bigot values. I won’t get into too much details, but to me, at that time, Orthodoxy was merely a set of rules – living by those rules would make things right for me. If those rules meant breaking conventional wisdom – well, this is fine also. Gala GALACTION was the ultimate model in Orthodox life for me, nothing else ever existed.

So, I’m that yard, in a morning. I was talking with a girl I barely new, also from Navodari. She recommends me a Jew writer converted to Orthodoxy in the prison. He went through a lot of pain in the prison, the girl said, while he kept a lot of memories within himself. Later he wrote a journal, based on those memories. The person was Nicolae STEINHARDT, while his book was “Happiness Diary”. From this description I left with a poor impression. (Pain and torture in prison? Me to read a book on that?) But I had a very profound respect for her, so I decided to read the book.

It took me a while (more than a month, I think) to finish the projects I was involved (that meant mostly finishing to read some books), going to the high-school’s library, not finding the book, going again, nothing yet, going again. Finally the book was there, it was a bit old, pages were falling.

And I began reading. To my surprise, I really liked the writer’s style. Easy enough to understand most words, hard enough for me not to get any references (he often has mentions to I’ve-never-ever-heard-of-this-book-or-writer; and he has a lot of mentions like this), but most of all very intelligent book. Soon I was not reading the book, I was devouring it.

The concept of paradox, the new ideas, were all great. I would then understand the world through these variables. But what really struck me at that time was:
A. The brand new emphasis put on emotions; A true Orthodox should always be smiling; (tell that to Galaction, who’s love for a military-style life was obvious, and who on most pictures I saw back then seemed so frowned) And while politeness rules should be a minimum in life (my life wasn’t ruled by those at the beginning), the Christian life is much more than that – you should be much better than polite: love, care, help etc.; (this was also new to my style) The Pharisees were all about dogma and rules, but Christ, according to Nicolae STEINHARDT, was more than that – he dared to change conventional wisdom; All-in-all, it was very likely that I should put things in order a lot on the emotional part and leave some rules apart;
B. There is a only a small reference in the “Happiness Diary” regarding Gala GALACTION:
English: “Also be blessed father Gala Galaction for finding – even as a balance pan with two or three faces, as it was – for some of his books, titles with an wonderful echo: Bells of the Neamt Monastery, Near the Water of Vodislava, The Chief Cornerstone, The Small Church in Razoare” (titles translated with the help of Wikipedia) – translated by me from:
Romanian: “Blagoslovit fie si parintele Gala Galaction ca a gasit – asa taler cu doua sau trei fete cum a fost – pentru unele din cartile sale titluri cu minunat ecou: Clopotele manastirii Neamtu, Langa apa Vodislavei, Piatra din capul unghiului, Bisericuta din razoare.”;
Now this can be understood easy or hard; (to me it’s so hard that even today I can’t really tell what it means) But due to the logical construction of the phrase one can easy see that it has negative implications; (“Although Gala GALACTION is …, God should still bless him”) This got me into an all-or-nothing thinking: either Nicolae STEINHARDT is right on this point, and life is really nothing on dogma, and is mostly on love, or Nicolae STEINHARDT is all wrong and Gala GALACTION is the right model for me; I worked on solving this very troubling mystery for me and within a few weeks Nicolae STEINHARDT was the new person leading my life, while Gala GALACTION would get very far from me; So far that even today one of the basic criteria on which I analyze a Christian is on this level – “Are you putting religion so high that you get to be dogmatic?”; I’m sorry to say this, but besides Nicolae STEINHARDT (who I only knew in writing) and, in some part, Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI, no other person in this life is a relevant criteria in Orthodoxy; Putting the dogmatic filter upfront helps me clear things quite fast.

I reread The “Happiness Diary” in the summer of 2003. I reread it about two years after, in 2005. I was happy to see that I understand, as time went by, more and more of the references in the book. I was sad (for my part) to see that the percentage of what I knew compared to his knowledge is ridiculously small.

I also read two times (last time in the spring of 2007) “Through Giving You Shall Receive”, and that’s a very good book also.

I read once “Monologul polifonic” and “In the Manner of… Youths”, but they impressed me little.

2. Implications into my life
A. If you would have asked me in that spring of 1999, prior to the discovery of Nicolae STEINHARDT, when did my real Christian life begun, I would probably answer: in 1997; If you’d ask me now, I’d say that 1997-1999 were discovery years (the concept does not really apply to Orthodoxy; you can’t really discover God in two years; but this is how I see those years), while the period from that spring of 1999 and until today (11 years after) was mostly a time of what I perceive as Orthodoxy in my life;
B. How did things go after 1999 until today? I started loosening, more or less, most of the rules I made for myself; Right now I am tightening them a little (after more than 10 years!), but it’s still nowhere near what typical wisdom says on being a Christian; (things I do as a Christian are really atypical, from my perspective) See an analysis of the movie I love best – Le Notti di Cabiria – The best movie I’ve seen. The one movie I recommend seeing to anyone I know over 15 years of age. Go see it now! – and see for yourself if that’s an Orthodox perspective or not;
C. There are things that are easy to understand in Orthodoxy (“You shall not steal”), and there are things which are not simple; (ecumenical approach on religions) Whenever in doubt, my first thoughts go to Nicolae STEINHARDT;
D. I can say that I own only a few books: Nicolae STEINHARDT’s “Happiness Diary”, “Through Giving You Shall Receive”, “Nobleman articles” (I haven’t yet read this one), a few books by Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI (to be completed with the whole collection, or at least the books I can understand), and a book on Psychology – “Essentials of Understanding Psychology” (by Robert S. Feldman); I have a few books more, but my plan is not to keep them after I finish reading them; So, I really own quite a few books, and three of them are by Nicolae STEINHARDT; (I plan for a few more with or on him)
E. I once saw a show on Realitatea TV with Stelian TANASE and Mircea DINESCU; Mircea DINESCU suggested that Nicolae STEINHARDT should be sanctified; Stelian TANASE (who knew Nicolae STEINHARDT in person) replied “I agree”; A lot of thinking from my part on that small dialogue.

3. What to do next?
The “Happiness Diary” by Nicolae STEINHARDT is more than a book on religion. It’s a book on the condition of the human spirit. You may find it useful even if you understand it via a non-orthodox perspective. Thus, I recommend you to read two books by Nicolae STEINHARDT: the “Happiness Diary” and “Through Giving You Shall Receive”.

You can support Polirom‘s Publishing house initiative for publishing the entire series of works by Nicolae STEINHARDT by buying right from them.

First of all, you can find out more on Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI on Wikipedia.

So, what’s this blog post about?
1. How have I known Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI?
2. What does Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI mean to my life?
3. What’s in for you?

1. How have I known him?
I think it was the first year of study (2001-2002) at the faculty in Bucharest when I saw an announcement of a lecture by Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI in a seminar room of the University of Bucharest. I have never heard of him before, but it sounded interesting. I invited a friend a fellow room mate at the hostel to come with me, and he accepted. We both went to a room that soon became crammed with people (it was not a very large room; there were also people standing, due to the lack of room).

I remember just a few things from that meeting:
A. I noticed both I and my friend needed to know much more words in Romanian (today I understand what he says, but back then either he used more neologisms, or we knew too little);
B. At some point one woman in the back asked that Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI speaks louder, she couldn’t hear very well; Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI ignored her; The woman insisted; No reply; Yet she said the same thing; Nothing happened; And again she said the same thing, still no reply; I think that this was the reply by Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI to an aggression – refuse to accept that it exists; On the other hand, the woman may have been right, it was truly hard to hear something from the back of the room;
C. From time to time Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI used mathematical demonstrations and references to those; he even had mentions of Physics laws and equations; I graduated an Informatics high-school, was good at Physics in high-school and did some Mathematics at the University; I understood little to none of the things he spoke about in there; I wonder what some people with a formation in Literature understood; The basic idea behind this is simple: if people don’t have the required preparation to understand what you are saying (they should know Mathematics and Physics laws to be able to properly understand a demonstration based on these), then perhaps it’s better that you don’t bother on this, and still say what you wish to say, even if close to no one understands you; While this may be great in writing a philosophical book (he won’t want that a person that doesn’t understand neologisms to read his books), in Mathematics (if you don’t understand the basic signs behind an equation, leave that Mathematics book away), in real-life things get trickier; He might as well speak in Arabic, but why was he there? To speak to Literature-oriented persons about things in Science? A bit wrong;
D. At some point he referred to his hat, saying he must buy things, so he needs to buy products;
E. Back then, he made no joke, and to me the atmosphere seemed pretty stressful.

Here comes the second year of study (2002-2003). An international organization for students – AIESEC – kindly invites students to go to ACT Theater (in a room bellow ground). The subject of the conference was similar to this: Should we emigrate or have a patriotic behavior? I went in there with another of my friends and we had a lot of fun. The meeting was about emigration – should youngsters leave the country or not? Also invited were Adrian CIOROIANU and Neagu DJUVARA, while Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI was a moderator. What do I remember from this meeting?
A. You might think that if there were only two speakers, Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI would have said his own opinion on the subject; He avoided that, to my surprise, I couldn’t clearly understand what was his opinion on the subject; But I do remember the fact that at the end of the discussion Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI summarized the talks and said something similar to this: “Most people in Romania chose not to leave the country. You should pick the path of the majority, and chose a similar path”;
B. (related to A.) When summarizing things, I was shocked by the memory abilities of Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI; He summarized what each person said, he had all the observations said in that day in his mind; Nothing jotted down, and, as far as I observed, nothing was forgotten; All in the right order; I was stunned;
C. At some point one young person from the audience tried to impose its point of view; He was aggressive and reluctant to order; All that Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI was putting his right hand in a “Stop” position and ignore what the other person was saying; (and also sometimes intervening and not letting him speak)
D. Yet another person started arguing with one of the speakers in front; They used bad words, totally inappropriate; What happened next? The speaker made some sarcastic remarks on that bad-behaving person; At each remark Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI was laughing loudly, obviously supportive to the speaker; It was the first time I saw Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI laughing;
E. Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI said back then about a memory of his: he was in a bus, going to a workplace of his (Physics-related); He was talking the bus right from the starting point, and he was sitting; While reading a book by Lucian BLAGA – “The Mioritic Space”, he compared the things he was reading with the surrounding people in the bus and found a deep difference;
F. One of the speakers was confronted – Why does he write in history manuals (addressed to young pupils) only some things on the history past, hiding the complete facts; (for being disturbing) While the answer of the speaker was: “You can’t predict how the forming mind of a child can react to hearing hard truths”, Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI also addressed this question and said a thing similar to: “While philosophy books can be easily read by most people due to a similar language (philosophers communicate using common words), Mathematics books are largely inaccessible to the persons that can’t interpret mathematical conventions”; He went on to say that this is a similar relation to the history books; I think this also meant it was a good thing that common people can’t read Mathematics books;
G. The writer I analyze in this blog post considered that there are two kind of people in this worlds: some which consider that the fact that they were born within the borders of a country comes as a mere statistical probability (you have no connection to the land you were born on), while there are others for which the past matters a lot and live with an eye into the past.

In the summer of 2004, there was a conference organized by “Cuvantul” magazine, at the Central University Library of Bucharest. Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI’s role in here was to give arguments for and against another speech. I liked his speech more than the original speech. I also remembered seeing that Ioan T. MORAR also came to see the speech, and this made me feel good about things.

I then saw him at a conference again at the University of Bucharest. This time the room was much larger. The room was again crammed with people. I met Mihail NEAMTU in there, and Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI saluted him right into his speech. What struck me:
A. His ability to pick on (but in a kind way, joking about it) a large corporation he belonged to;
B. He also made fun (his style was obviously different by now) to a specific page in a magazine he was managing and writing in;
C. Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI had a fantastic way of making your mind go into structured worlds; He made us imagine things on different levels; (imagine Romania, Europe, world, go back) Very nice;
D. He had interesting observations on how different languages of the world (English, German and French were his examples) create different worlds for their writers; He argued (as far as I remember) that a book written in English is based on ideas and logical thoughts, in German you can easily go structured and rather rigid, while French language is perfectly suited for sarcasm; He even made us imagine how specific writers would write in a different language;
E. He excused himself for being late. (Although he left his office more than one hour earlier, the traffic jam was a big problem; This was the only time I saw him being late) He even promised to write his thoughts on traffic jams (which I would later read in an interview).

It was my birthday on 3rd of May 2007 when there was yet another conference by Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI, this time at one room at the Faculty of Philosophy. I went from work earlier and by the middle of the day I listened to another speech. I was impressed by these things:
A. At one point one person in the room said that she was recording things; Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI made a joke similar to this: “Oh, I must be then careful to what I’m saying, this is for the posterity”;
B. At some point, Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI made an observation: we are not ready to have a proper communication; (I forgot the actual example, but this was the main idea) One person in the room said she thinks practicing debate would be a good solution to this problem; (it was my idea also) To my surprise, she was contradicted by the writer; This solution, Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI said, doesn’t take into account the ability to say the right things; Sure, it may give you the means, but you still lack the basic ability to create a proper idea – you know how to say things, not what to say; Whoops, I was wrong also;
C. This meeting was soon after the last meeting at the University of Bucharest, and, to my surprise, at one point Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI touched my shoulder; (I was in the very first row and I think he recognized from last time) What can I say about this? I was touched;
D. He mentioned something about a soon-to-come-to-life web site; (which really happened; although not that soon)
E. He once had a doubt about a word and another one about a thing he has read; He promptly asked for help via a teacher at the Faculty that he knew, and to the audience; It felt good to see him trusting other persons;
F. I also remember him saying good things on some politicians in the early 1900s; He suggested we compare them with current politicians.

The last time I saw him was at the National Theatre in Bucharest. He held a conference: About the missed chances in history. What did I like?
1. He made jokes on the microphone synchronization; I felt much more comfortable hearing him at this conference;
2. He showed me he could hold a huge speech about a tough (to me at least) subject with no aiding materials; All in his mind; This really showed me I should read more things;
3. At a the beginning of the presentation Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI explained why he picked “Private researcher in the history of ideas” as a current occupation; (it once helped him to go into a French – I think – library)
4. It felt good that I understood the vast majority of words in the speech. (perhaps his style was different, not necessarily my skills improved)

I’ve also seen him speaking at some book fairs. (at one time at a small stand regarding Physics, with some small pupils, I think it was some sort of a Physics club)

From the ever-growing list of works by Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI, I have only read: “The Sky seen through the Lens” (three times) and “Politics” (one time). I also tried to read “The Recent Man” for three times, but never made it for more than 10 pages. (too complicated for my abilities to understand things) The reason for which I have read so few books written by him is simple: I can’t understand what he is saying. The last try to go for “The Recent Man” was a success (I could read 10 pages quite easily), but for many years I couldn’t understand a thing he wrote. So I stopped at books written early in his career, with lesser neologisms. I will read them all sometime. (there are some books which require preparation, like reading other books prior to his books)

But I have read all his articles on “Evenimentul Zilei” newspaper (he has a weekly article), some articles (but I plan to read them all) in a magazine by him (“Idei in dialog” magazine), and most interviews that are available on the Internet.

I have also seen quite a few of his shows on TVR Cultural – “Idei in libertate” and “Inapoi la argument”, live or on a PC.

2. What does Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI mean to my life?
To me, it is a landmark. I try to see the world as close as I can through his eyes. I really enjoy reading his articles, hearing him talk (live, on a CD or on a TV show), and it’s always a pleasure to understand what he means by one thing or another.

To what degree do I follow the things which he says? I think I do it so much that most of my economical views and modern-life issues are understood via what I think is his perception. For example, staying in Romania is a definite answer for me due to the opinions of Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI on the subject.

I try to follow Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI’s opinions on Orthodoxy (he’s a self-declared Orthodox Christian), economy (he likes Libertarian measures), and life (I think he appreciates, among other things, politeness; but it’s much more than that).

3. What’s in for you?
I suggest finding some books and articles on him, in whatever language you find suitable. If you can hear him speaking, you might want to fight the impediment of hard-to-understand words and do your best to hear him speaking. You can find a list of his books in Romanian on his Wikipedia page. He also has a few shows he made in the past years on TVR web site. You can see some videos with him, some of which are controversial, on YouTube. But, in the end, I do recommend you to read things about him, see him, listening him (he even has audio books), or watching him live.

What can you read in this blog post?
1. What’s the basis for comparison?
2. What’s the academic background of Nicoleta CORBU?
3. How things happened for my February 2008 dissertation? (story line)
4. What was so great about Nicoleta CORBU coordinating my dissertation paper?
5. How would I improve on being a good dissertation coordinator?
6. How to contact Nicoleta CORBU?

1. What’s the basis for comparison?
I’ve graduated the Faculty of International Business and Economics – REI (Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest – ASE) in August 2005. For the final testing, I had to make a graduation thesis and take part to an exam.

Two years later, I graduate my Masters’ Degree – MD – in Communication and Public Relations at the Faculty of Communication and Public Relations – FCRP (State University of Political and Administrative Studies Bucharest – SNSPA) and I only had to do a dissertation paper.

For both of these I had to choose a coordinator. The coordinator at the MD was Nicoleta CORBU. So the basis for comparison are only two coordinating teachers. I can add to this my personal image on how what a coordinating teacher behavior should be.

Why did I pick only persons who were less known figures in the Universities? I was mostly interested in persons who would have more time for coordinating my paper. Thus, I didn’t choose very well known figures in the Universities (at least from my perspective). I have only picked teachers that had seminar classes. Also, these teachers coordinated a smaller number of persons in the same time, so I think they had more time for coordinating each paper. I also think that they were easier to contact and get a fast reply, and it was easier to meet face to face. Of course, these can all be in my mind only, since I only chose teachers with seminar classes and don’t know the other side of the story.

I’ve learned a lot of things from the first coordinator: I had to read some documents to have an overall look on the paper (readings on liberal economics), I had to read a lot of things on making the paper (and make reviews of what I read, and comment on this, even if I wouldn’t actually use my notes on the paper). There was little emphasis on writing the paper and even less on the presentation.

I’ve also learned a lot of things from the second coordinator. The reading part was on my own – “this is suggested reading, read what you want, you may find other sources, and you don’t have to make notes”. As you might expect, I have only read one whole book, and only excerpts from other books. Adding the excerpts would bring just two whole books, so in total I’ve only read about three books. For the first thesis I’ve bought and read more than 10 books, and read some 5 more from the library. There was a lot more reading involved. I have to say that for the second thesis I’ve also read some materials on the Internet (skimming involved there too), and the one book I’ve read from cover to cover was the whole Romanian literature on the Web 2.0 subject at that time (so the subject was not fully documented in the literature I consulted). I’ve done the writing part for the second paper much better. I received quality feed-back from the teacher, my paper was actually read, I was advised on the strategy of writing and I got hints on what’s hot and on what’s not that hot (“hot” was not the actual word used). I also got a feed-back on how to write a paper with minor details, which although a bit annoying for my taste, helped me understand how scientific papers are written. Also, I got some basic advice on how to do the presentation part (I have to admit that at the MD paper I actually asked for advice, and on the Bachelors’ Degree I don’t remember to have done this).

How did I pick my subject for the two papers? In the International Business and Economics faculty it was simple: I looked at all the subjects and I gave up subjects which involved numbers and geopolitics. From a list of almost 200 suggested subjects, I remained with 6 subjects, all involving Negotiation. The list of teachers that could coordinate my paper on this subject was small, and I picked one of them. In the Communication and Public Relations masters’ it was even more simple: I looked at all the possible fields of studies in the MD and removed those involving numbers and Geopolitics. That removed Statistics and Geopolitics subject itself and that was it. I was faced with a huge list of fields I liked, so now picking a teacher was more of a problem.

If you’re interested on the final results, you can view online and download as .doc or .pdf files both thesis at my Thesis Olivian BREDA page (they’re in Romanian, and I can’t easily translate papers of more than 80 pages in English).

2. What’s the academic background of Nicoleta CORBU?
I think it’s relevant for you to know more things on Nicoleta CORBU before anything. A Curriculum Vitae (CV) is a good place to start. This is the CV page of Nicoleta CORBU in the comunicare.ro web site (the website of FCRP – SNSPA).

Studies:
1. Bachelors’ Degree from the Faculty of Letters – University of Bucharest, graduated in 2000;
2. MD in French Linguistics from the Faculty of Foreign Languages – University of Bucharest, graduated in 2003;
3. Studies in Communications and Public Relations from the FCRP – SNSPA, graduated in 2003;
4. PhD in Sociology at the Faculty for Sociology and Social Assistance – University of Bucharest, started in 2005.

On the CV page there are also listed some internships in the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company and Polirom Printing House. Nicoleta CORBU also organized and coordinated events at FCRP – SNSPA, including scientific communications of students and round table. She has been an editor for the FCRP’s Publishing House.

Nicoleta CORBU has also been an author of Romanian and French publications, such as: Le français au quotidien (2004), History of communication (Romanian, 2007).

Finally, there is a list of prizes and awards at Romanian National Olympics (Olympics are Romanian Regional and then National contests for pupils in Primary and Secondary School on different subjects; a National contest gathers best pupils for a specified subject in each county) for Mathematics, Informatics, Romanian literature, Romanian culture and civilization.

3. How things happened for my February 2008 dissertation? (story line)
I told you that picking a teacher at SNSPA was a bit more difficult. I’ll explain why. In December 2006 I started contacting teachers at SNSPA to coordinate my dissertation paper for the July 2007 presentation of the paper. Prior to this, I’ve skimmed through their CVs on the FCRP web site – comunicare.ro. Had I seen them in person, the task of choosing a coordinating person would have been much easier, but it was not the case in here. I was enrolled in distance learning, and I have only seen a few teachers. From those few teachers I saw, I chose two, and contacted them. It didn’t go as wanted, so I contacted a few more. Still bad results (the bad results had different causes: teachers’ unavailability, my Economics background, poor communication, etc.). I then contacted a larger group, and I got two positive replies to my requests, and I picked Nicoleta CORBU.

Why did I only contact persons via email and not via telephone or going to the Faculty? The answer is simple: it’s likely that I would have received a much better response via phone or direct contact. Unfortunately, this would have involved that each time I had a question I would have to go to the faculty, each time I finished a chapter I would have to deliver it in physical format, and I didn’t want to do such things. Contacting teachers only via email helped me filter the teachers that would never answer my emails fast. If I only got two positive replies on this – well, that’s fine.

Since I contacted a lot of teachers via email and got some negative answers at the beginning, I learned from this and made a better speech – I presented myself, I came up with a subject for the thesis (even if it was made in 30 seconds worth of time), and made a bit of a sales pitch. The two teachers that responded positively to my emails had some notes on my titles. It was either a wrong year right in the title of the thesis (Nicoleta CORBU), or it was a poorly picked subject (some other teacher). After a while, I changed the subject of the thesis with Nicoleta CORBU, so even I admitted it was a not-so-great title and subject. So making a lot of sales pitches might have been a good idea for finding which teachers reply to emails fast, but not so good on making a good, personalized, sales pitch.

There’s one more aspect I want to mention: before starting my paper I thought there were lots of materials on Public Relations (PR) on the Internet – more or less legal ones (which is false, I could only find ridiculously small numbers of illegal books on PR after hard searching). I thought the teachers would have such materials, and, after I talked a bit with the first teacher I contacted, I asked him: “Could you provide me with some electronic materials?” (I didn’t mention illegal, but it was rather implied). He didn’t reply to any of my further emails. This made me angry, and all of the emails I’ve sent from that point to teachers had the question about providing electronic materials. Yet another filter on you-would-annoy-me-a-lot-if-you-never-reply-to-this. The filter would allow me not to waste some back-and-forth emails before finding out that the teacher has too high standards to offer me electronic materials (I didn’t specifically asked for illegal ones, even if the idea was implied). Nicoleta CORBU didn’t had a problem with my request and provided me with legal materials on PR.

From the very first email she sent to me, she asked for a strategy. It would take more than a year for me to create a paper that had a strategy, and in the final paper only the last chapter (and perhaps the previous one) have a very good strategy. So I had to learn a lot on this, and the fact that she put emphasis on strategy right from the first emails tells me it was a good learning experience from my part.

The second email insisted on having a theoretical background for my thesis – in order for me to prove anything, it would be better to have a theory from which to start. It seemed that my sources – Internet articles – were less-than-perfect sources for an academic paper, so I was advised to read some hard cover books (and given five examples). I only took some specific notes from those four (I couldn’t find one at the library). I’ve also went skimming through other books and written down just some paragraphs (they added to about 5-10 hand written pages of notes).

I was then advised to actually get a result and start writing on the paper. I could add that the emails in the whole coordinating period actually put emphasis on me doing things, they offered solutions, and contained good feed-back.

May 2007 comes. Finally, I have done my theoretical part and send it at the end of May. I have received negative feed-back on it. My initial theoretical part was filled with bullets and numbers (and should have generally contained paragraph texts, graphs and tables). A lot of small paragraphs had a title on their own, and I had a lot of paragraphs with no connection one to another. I also had some problems with formatting and citing papers.

In order for me to get things done quickly, I ignored the errors on my theoretical part, and focused on writing another chapter. My biggest problem? I had almost no strategy in writing the paper. I was just writing, analyzing, seeing small things, but I lacked on the big picture (this would remain a problem until the last four days of writing the paper). I still had some formatting issues.

Now I could have ignored the theoretical part, but the not-so-small chapter I’ve written on this phase was also bad. Time was short and life was full of surprises. My professional activity went to a change (I changed the job). Therefore, I decided I’d postpone the paper from July 2007 until February 2008 (I had much more time available, and trying to force myself to finish the paper for July 2007 didn’t look like a very good idea). This was all in the end of June 2007, very close to the paper’s deadline. I think I could have done a poor paper in time, but doing the paper and failing the presentation exam was not really an option to me. Postpone was a not-so-bad alternative.

I’ve received some basic tips and tricks at this time from Nicoleta CORBU and I’ll tell you about these. But first, an intro. In the beginning the title for my paper was “Particularities of the press campaign in the Romanian media space. The campaign of Traian BASESCU for presidency in 2004″. I was going to compare Traian BASESCU’s campaign with that of Adrian NASTASE for the end of 2004 and show that Internet and other modern media like Short Message Service (SMS) helped Traian BASESCU a lot. Unfortunately, I could barely find materials in the campaign of 2004. But my luck changed. In May 2007 there was a national referendum in Romania concerning suspending from Presidency of Traian BASESCU (you can see the Wikipedia page in English on the national referendum subject). The referendum used even more modern media, and materials were easy to find. So the new subject for the paper was “The importance of the Internet in Traian BASESCU’s campaign for the referendum of May 19th 2007″. Both of the initial title were faulty, they contained general terms like “Particularities” and “Importance of”, and such things made the thesis very broad, instead of being specific.

Now for the tips and tricks received from Nicoleta CORBU. The teacher advised me to pick a less broad theme. I came up with “Web 2.0 from the non-youths’ perspective. The campaign of Traian BASESCU for the referendum of May 2007″. Main thesis: does a campaign focused only for youths drive away the non-youths? Do they feel rejected from you? Another tip: I should follow that theme throughout the paper and stick to it. My basic hypothesis for the paper should not be a truism (everyone knew that new media helped Traian BASESCU’s campaign both in 2004 and in 2007; I needed something a bit different). Finally, I shouldn’t have a lot of suppositions and use them all, it’s better to have a very small number of theoretical aspects, and elaborate on them in the paper.

December 2007 comes and I decide I’ve waited long enough. I now had the brand new subject, I came up with some ideas. I meet with the teacher at SNSPA (I’ve only talked with her in person two times in more than a year) and I receive some suggestions. She gives me some electronic materials to read, and suggests me some literature.

I then redo the theoretical part, and use about 50% of the texts I’ve written in May. I’ve added to this a lot more information. I would then work on the theoretical part whenever necessary (I read some electronic texts while doing the case study, and added to the theory). The feed-back was overall positive (the first positive feed-back).

Here comes February 2008 and I’ve done yet another chapter (so I now had two chapters out of three). About 20-30% of this chapter was taken from the paper I’ve done in June 2007. There was a lot of text unused, and a relatively not-so-big percentage actually used. I received a neutral feed-back, with emphasis on citing papers. Also, I was advised to move quickly (I had a maximum four, perhaps five, days and yet another chapter to be done, and read by the teacher).

In ASE I learned the (bad, I might add) habit of doing things in the last moment. I’ve done my thesis for REI in four weeks, while working full-time (but the reading and taking notes have taken me much more time). I’ve done 70% of the dissertation for SNSPA in the last three weeks, and 40-50% of the whole paper in the last four days. The habit of doing things in the last moment is bad. It’s also very engaging (thinking that I have to wait for a lot of time to be able to present my paper, it’s very motivating to write).

Four days passed quickly, and when writing the third chapter I thought a fourth chapter was necessary, and I’ve written two chapters in four days. They had a good overall strategy and I was finally feeling I had something to write. The teacher congratulated me for the paper, she said it was very well documented and written. After the presentation she said she would have given me a 10.

Now it’s time to tell you a joke:
“To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.”
Adapted to my story, the joke goes like this:
“To the teacher, the paper was very good.
To the commission, the presentation I made was less-than-good.
To me, getting a 9.50 grade out of 10, when 7 grade out of 10 was good enough, meant that I worked a lot harder and unnecessarily more than I planned.”
It was good for the CV, though.

I printed the confirmation email from the teacher, printed the paper in three copies, I put some covers on it, went to the Faculty and gave the paper. When printing the email I printed with full email headers (see the article on Interpreting Full Email Headers on ualberta.ca web site). The secretary gave me a surprised look when I showed her the email with full headers (full headers are a better way of proving the email is not forged, but they look very complicated).

The teacher suggested I don’t do a communicating presentation (with questions, messages going back and forth). I should much rather do a classic presentation, with me, the speaker, just sending a message.

The presentation went well and didn’t went well. I had some negative feed-back on my presentation skills. You can see me speaking on the YouTube to have an idea on how do I speak – in YouTube – Olivian BREDA’s videos. I got a lower mark on the presentation skills, a good mark on the writing skills, and an average of 9.5 out of 10. Pretty good, after all.

4. What was so great about Nicoleta CORBU coordinating my dissertation paper?
1. She replied to my emails. Fast. This might look like silly reasoning – “Why wouldn’t she answer your emails?”, but from my experience with contacting teachers at FCRP, the reply speed is not so great (if they ever reply). This is a huge advantage for students in distance learning – you get a reply via email and this means you don’t have to see the person by yourself;
2. I received good quality electronic materials on the subject – and they were not illegal (I think this is a good aspect, I wouldn’t know);
3. Great emphasis was put on motivation: “you should start writing now, you should keep the dead-lines”;
4. The teacher understood the value of time: she said I should work on the paper way ahead of the last period of time, not procrastinate;
5. The feed-back offered solutions and practical steps – “you can improve on this by doing that”;
6. She actually read my thesis. Very important thing. Very rare thing;
7. I was given tips and tricks throught the writing of the paper and for the presentation part.

5. How would I improve on being a good dissertation coordinator?
1. Going off the beaten track. Regarding citing papers, I was advised to see a book of Septimiu CHELCEA (which I had in electronic format; err, forget that, this should be an illegal act; sorry, I bought the book and scanned it; right; this is it). The book presented some ways of referencing, variations of the widely used Author-date referencing citation system. It is also known as Harvard referencing or parenthetical referencing. You can see the Wikipedia page on referencing. For my MD paper I used the less popular documentary-note, also known as Oxford, system. You can see the Deakin.edu.au page on the subject – Referencing using the documentary-note (Oxford) system for more information.
I wanted to use this system for my dissertation, and I was told I’m simply referencing badly. That was the whole argument – I was not citing right. Now I know it’s a less-than-popular citing method, but it’s the one I liked better and it’s still a citing system that can be used;
2. Courage for innovating (this is different than point 1.). When writing a paper on the Internet subject, you should reference to some web pages. These pages generally have either large Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), or they are intricate. I give two examples from my paper. This is a huge URL:
http://www.iqads.ro/stire_6933/felix_tataru__gmp___campania_pentru_referendum_l_a_costat_pe_basescu_550_000_de_euro.html
and this is a not-so-huge, but a intricate and hard to type URL, using numbers and special characters:
http://www.cotidianul.ro/index.php?id=10504&art=28123&cHash=c6847003be
The second URL now actually redirects to a more friendly URL concerning Search engine optimization (SEO), yet it’s longer and thus harder to type. URLs are mainly used in electronic format, and linking is possible. When being forced to type an URL from a printed material, things get trickier.
What was my idea for improving this? For my license paper I came up with this solution: instead of just using a long URL, I can also put an URL created by a web site for small URLs. Tinyurl.com is such an example. This is how the two URLs above look when done with tinyurl.com:
http://tinyurl.com/4ays9s and http://tinyurl.com/3umbwe. You don’t even have to type http://, it works without it. Quite easier to type, isn’t it?
So I told Nicoleta CORBU about my idea. She said she does not recommend doing this. The argument was: “this is not common practice”. OK, it isn’t common practice, but I still want to use it. It’s still a valid idea. I don’t really care what’s the common practice, I care about the good practice;
3. Create a hand-out for the presentation part. There is a written book by Septimiu CHELCEA on how should a student write a dissertation paper (regarding formatting, citing, using sources, etc.). Unfortunately, I could not find any materials on how to do the presentation part, there are no tips and tricks on this. Perhaps Nicoleta CORBU should write such a material and provide it to the students she coordinates. It’s important to know that a high percentage of the grade you take for the final examination is provided for the very presentation one student does. A text (small, bigger, huge, it does not matter) can be provided to each student coordinated;

6. How to contact Nicoleta CORBU?
In case you want Nicoleta CORBU to coordinate your dissertation paper, you can get in touch with her. You can get contact data from the CV page of Nicoleta CORBU on the comunicare.ro website.

You can also phone at FCRP secretarial office and find the schedule to meet face-to-face or get a phone number. See the Contact page on comunicare.ro web page.

Would you care to comment on this blog post? I’m looking forward to hearing your opinion on these. Thanks for reading.

What’s this blog post about?
1. What’s the basis for comparison?
2. Who is Nigel RISNER?
3. History of events (how I’ve known him)
4. Why do I consider Nigel RISNER to be great?
5. What I’d focus on more if I were Nigel?
6. Get Nigel to motivate you!

1. What’s the basis for comparison?
In most of my college years (four in total), and while working as a freelancer (one year) I’ve been involved in a quite a large number of activities which involved public speaking (other than formal education). I have even created a mailing list dedicated to such events, where I informed my readers. I’ve been a member of two NGOs, and basically I have been always interested in hearing someone speaking. You might want to note the fact that the “trainers” category of professionals I recommend is the largest one (three persons I recommend are trainers). So I can compare Nigel RISNER with quite a few other speakers.

2. Who is Nigel RISNER?
First of all, Nigel RISNER is not only a motivational speaker, but also an author and television presenter. You can find out more about him on his web site. I especially likea nice article of Nigel’s that can be downloaded in a PDF about “Nigel’s top 10 tips for primary business champions”. Good to know.

Luckily, I can show you three live performances of Nigel in front of an audience. First, there’s a brief Ecademy Presentation. Then, there’s a larger presentation on a Ecademy Power Network Meeting (December 2006). To see it, you have to go to the members’ area, after you first register on his web site. Finally, you can view Nigel in a TV show on UK’s Channel 4 “Richard & Judy Show” (it was broadcasted in February 2004). You can see by watching his performances if what I say bellow is right or not.

3. History of events (how I’ve known him)
In October 18, 2007, at the Howard Johnson Hotel in Bucharest, HR Club (see HR Club web site) organizes a conference on “Aligned at Top: the Strategic Promise of the Human Resources”. I had the role of an observer and to be of little help to the organizers (“little” being the right word here). The day starts, the presentations keep on coming, then there’s a cool workshop, a third break. It was 6 PM, the conference day begun at 9:30 AM, and some of the persons went home. But at 6 PM it was time for Nigel RISNER’s training: “How to Create IMPACT as an HR Partner”, and those persons may have lost an opportunity.

Anyhow, in general I am not impressed by a training itself. I go to a training, I may like the way the trainer reacts (like with Jim BAGNOLA), I may like the way the trainer involves the audience (such as Ana-Maria CORLAN), but to actually like the things the trainer says – that’s rare (also rare are the first two examples). So it’s quite unusual for me to be impressed by the actual words. Nigel used in his training three things: verbal communication (it was great; I will present it below; it’s the only training I want to present from everything I’ve seen so far), motivating games (I like them all, but I won’t present any – it spoils the surprise; they are also not so motivating to me; finally, you can view some of them on the videos on his web site), and finally funny clips (I consider ads, and some funny clips to be some of the greatest things one can see on TV or sites like YouTube; but generally speaking an ad and a funny clip is not that of a great thing; I can’t say I didn’t like the clips Nigel presented, it’s just that a clip by itself is not very entertaining to me).

So Nigel starts in a very energetic way, noted that it’s a bit late and even offered tips on how to make the session shorter (so he motivated the audience in a rather unusual way – something like “Let’s keep this short, shall we?”; thus he accepted that his training may be boring to some; it takes guts to say that) .

One of the first things he said fascinated me: how long can a person pay attention? You can see this blog post of mine to understand why attention is important to me. He said that children can pay attention for 37 minutes, while adults only for 20 minutes (this should contradict the bad remark that some successful businessmen of, say, 30 have the intelligence of a 5-years-old).

He then redefined feed-back. To Nigel feed-back is not actually feed-back, but much rather a feed-forward. An observation on one’s activity should only bring the person in a better place: forward.

I noted that Nigel RISNER talked with pauses between sentences (so you have time to recap the last sentence). He put a lot of questions, to keep the awareness level high (I think).

One of the most influential affirmations on the workshop to me: you go to a conference, there are some good presenters, some bad presenters. How do you give feed-back? Is it OK to just use the feed-back form that some event organizers provide? No, it’s much better, Nigel said, to give feed-back in person. I generally considered that a speaker’s time, even after the persentation ended, is much more important than mine, so I almost never gave personal feed-back. Hey! If Nigel says it’s like this, I should do it (I think Nigel has one of the most expensive cost-per-hour of the persons I’ve met; if he’s a successful trainer, and if he says that one should give personal feed-back, then yes, I really should do it). And for the next months, at each presentation I went I gave positive feed-back (including reasons) whenever possible (I won’t wait at a long line of persons wanting to talk to you just to say you were great and why). I didn’t gave negative feed-back, because it’s hard to change anything since most of the time it can be resumed in a few words: “You are boring me” (I can give some easier-to-change motives, but still these things are not easy to be said and the results are not always for the best).

What did he focus on next? (here comes shock again) Awareness. This is yet another text of mine presenting why awareness is important to me. He noted that while everybody is in the room physically, not everybody is focused on what’s happening.

Again he says something on attention: if you write the texts in the conference (like I was doing), you are likely not to pay attention on the speech itself. This hugely challenged my previous knowledge on this: you retain just a few things while watching television, more things if you read texts, and even more things if you read texts and take notes in the same time. I tried to be aware on the “don’t take notes on conferences, just be involved” affirmation on his seminar and, to my amazement, he was right. Unfortunately, I can’t apply this knowledge to other conferences. My mind easily gets away. I do note just when interested by something, I don’t just note every word I hear.

To make things more enjoyable, he used some funny videos (as funny as a video can be – which is not that funny, to me) .

He made a quick game on awareness (very cool game).

Nigel also presented a way to handle the “I don’t know” answer. He said that if someone tells you so, you can say “If you would know the answer, what it would be?”

Then a new game on why are people afraid of acting.

At one point he says: “I’ve worked in prisons. I know some familiar faces in here.” Also a text similar to this: “After they are 12, people are responsible for their faces” (by Abraham LINCOLN, referring to people smiling). Also: “You’re either in tense, or in past tense”.

Another game was aimed on positive thinking effect on muscles.

From time to time he said “Does this make sense?”

He ended with: “When all is said and done, more is said than done”.

4. Why do I consider Nigel RISNER to be great?
1. When his presentation begun, it took him just a few seconds to get people’s attention; Everything, and I mean everything, on his training had attention-helpers: lots of questions, energetic speaking, provocative affirmations, humor, interaction, audience involvement, call for action, clips; I have yet to participate in a training where my focus was so intense; Everything else being equal, after a workshop you hold on to memories where you were most involved;
2. The subject he picked were of very high interest to me – attention, awareness, human action, positive thinking, even human resources;
3. The training took about 35 minutes. I don’t think I ever changed so many patterns of thinking in such a short time frame;
4. Good humor;
5. (related to 4.) Good logic & intelligence;
6. I left the seminar with the impression that he honestly wanted to help the people around him (due to his actions); It was not all a brand image, he actually applied what he thought was right.

5. What I’d focus on more if I were Nigel?
First of all, I want to present you a small text:
“The shaper is a task-focused leader who abounds in nervous energy, who has a high motivation to achieve and for whom winning is the name of the game. The shaper is committed to achieving ends and will ‘shape’ others into achieving the aims of the team. He or she will challenge, argue or disagree and will display aggression in the pursuit of goal achievement. Two or three shapers in a group, according to Belbin, can lead to conflict, aggravation and in-fighting.” This is from the Belbin Team Inventory page on Wikipedia. I am familiar with the characteristics of the shaper, because it best defines me.

One of Nigel RISNER’s advices (other than people should smile, which he didn’t seem to do) was to be comfortable with a state of discomfort.

I can’t say wether Nigel is a Shaper (according to the Belbin test) or not. I will say that on the single conflict in the workshop (a man didn’t like a personal joke on him), Nigel said: “Do you think I came all the way from UK to argue with you?” (so even in a conflict, he still challenged the situation). I will also say that although it was the best learning experience I’ve had, I’m not sure everybody in the room felt fine with being provoked.

So, if I were Nigel, I’d just be aware on the fact that shaping others leads to discomfort. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, just something to be aware of.

6. Get Nigel to motivate you!
On his contact page on nigelrisner.net web site, you find information like phone, email, contact form, fax and postal address.

You should first check the services page on nigelrisner.net web site, to see what Nigel can do.

What impression did this blog post left on you? Please leave a comment below.

Contents
1. With whom do I compare Marius BURCUS?
2. History of knowing about him?
3. Why do I say Marius BURCUS is the best dentist I’ve known? (and more than this, he’s a professional)
4. What I would do better?
5. What do others feel about him (in Romanian language)?
6. How to contact?

1. With whom do I compare Marius BURCUS?
The basis of comparison in the dentist world is rather small – I can only compare it with a few dentists I’ve visited in the past three years (two) and with another on with whom I’ve had contact with (one). It’s thus helpful to have the opinions of other persons that speak about this dentist. Also, if I extend the the “dentist” world to the “medicine service” the range is much broader. I will only say that Marius BURCUS is the best dentist I’ve known, but I have seen persons providing professional services in other fields of medicine also. Also, you might want to use some perhaps-existent campaigns in your country where you can visit a lot of dentists for a free check-up. But generally speaking, you don’t want too many tests on your teeth before picking the right dentist. There’s little margin for error.

2. History of knowing about him?
My visits to dentists in general begun in the childhood, continued until I was about 12, then comes a long long period of time when I saw no dentist.

Finally, I’ve made a one-time visit to a dentist in the summer of 2005, in the last year of college. I had a small problem which was solved by filling (I had a small cavity behind two upper central incisors). I was terribly scared and I don’t think that the dentist used anesthetics. The sound of the high-speed dental handpiece was a killer, and I associated this sound with the lack of comfort I’ve had during the operation itself. Visits like these make you want to care a lot more on your teeth (so you do prevention, instead of later fixing things).

Now begins a period in which I’m looking for a dentist, and can’t find any relevant information on what a good dentist is (my best friends in Bucharest were in Bucharest just since college, and information on the Internet about dentists was scarce and questionable). In May 2006 I visit another dentist for a free check up of my teeth and he leaves me a poor impression. I contact a dentist I knew from a forum where I was very active, but things don’t evolve. Then it happens. A person I valued posts a forum post on the Internet about a dentist in Bucharest. I go “Wow!”, contact the forum guy immediately, get the contact data and … I wait. Finally, I go to the dentist a few months later.

I go, I tell him I’m scared of pain, I haven’t been to a dentist for more than two years, but I do a relatively good personal hygiene for the teeth (actually, it’s hard for me to see where I can improve on that). He sprays a little anesthetic for me not to feel the pain of the injection (he would not repeat this in the days to come, but it was fine), he then makes an injection (after a while I can’t speak normally – whatever “normally” is). He goes for the lower first molar from the right. Things advance for a bit to another teeth, and soon I’m able to see a nerve (he makes a joke to the dental assistant – “Wow! What a specimen we have in here!”; And the dental assistant was actually looking; Until he explains me it’s a joke, I took it seriously and I was actually thinking “Hmm, so I do have good nerves!”). For the next session I go to make a radiography, and he continues working on those teeth. Since the very first operation lead to a relatively big thing (we got to the nerve, two teeth were involved), I was feeling uncomfortable with the process itself (I’ve had a lot more bad teeth to go), but things got better from there.

For the coming weeks, I’ve had a lot of fillings done, some even to the third molars (wisdom teeth). When possible, the dentist made more than one filling in one day. I’ve never experienced pain, none whatsoever. I always felt comfortable. I never felt that I wasted my time.

3. Why do I say Marius BURCUS is the best dentist I’ve known? (and more than this, he’s a professional)
1. He had a very kind, attentive and followed each of my requests. He talked slowly, in a low voice. He answered to each of my questions in detail. He told me things that I didn’t care about, but made me feel important. He smiled, and I felt that he cares about me as a patient. Very polite person.
2. He was wise. When I came with the request: “I’m afraid of pain. Kill me with anesthetics, but don’t make me feel any pain”, he used anesthetics even for the preparatory anesthetics injection. But at the very next meeting he “forgot” about that. So he first paced with my feelings, and followed my wishes, then he changed them for the best choice. He didn’t argue, he tricked me. Beautiful.
3. He made jokes. OK, some of the jokes might be dentist jokes (so funny just in a context), but nevertheless he tried to make a pleasant atmosphere.
4. He didn’t rip me off. “You don’t have to pay me today, you can pay me a bit later. If possible, I will combine the price of two operations into one, so I won’t charge the price of two operations, but a larger, and cheaper one. I will always charge you with the smaller operation, not the larger one, when possible”. This seemed to be the pricing philosophy of mr. BURCUS. What I can say is that I’m very satisfied with this.
5. I felt no pain. I don’t know how he did this, but my one and only concern (other than the teeth problems themselves) was solved. This was nothing like my past experiences with dentists.
6. If someone would describe a programmer’s work without having any idea on what the programmer does, he would say: that programmer types all day, he gets paid and he works intensively. It’s the basic thing which any programmer should do (so, he would analyze the programmer’s work from what he should do, not how well he does it). You can’t really tell whether the programs he writes are good, excellent or poor. The situation is similar with my dentist: I can say that he uses the right equipment, and that I’ve had no problems so far with the work the dentist has done to me. But I can’t really evaluate the work he has done for me professionally (has he used the right tools? has he treated me correctly? could he have done it better? I can’t say; I was very satisfied with his work, though, and felt it was all fine).

4. What I would do better?
1. I would do a little manual, with instructions on: what toothpaste/dental floss/mouth water to buy, how to use these things, what are the precaution I must take not to hurt the teeth, what are some general advices on tooth care, some tricks & tips that I will value much higher than general advice found on the Internet, for example;
2. I would call if I’m late.

5. What do others feel about him (in Romanian language)?
I’ve found out about the dentist by reading this topic on the XF Forum (it’s in Romanian): “La dentist” (“to the dentist” – Romanian also). More specifically, I’ve read this blog post of whiskas (a Romanian forumist): “Stomatolog care rulez” (“A dentist that rules” – in Romanian). whiskas also wrote this forum post (Romanian). I’ve contacted whiskas, and he gave me some details. I then visited the dentist and wrote a forum post (Romanian) myself. Finally, another person (Marius ’95) visits the dentist and writes this post of “Dentist Review” (Romanian). These are all pretty good ways to find more things on other people’s perceptions on the dentist. The topic itself is quite useful for knowing more things on teeth problems and solutions.

6. How to contact?
You can contact Blue Clinic, and ask for Marius BURCUS. Marius BURCUS works also on a different clinic near Constantin Brancoveanu, but I don’t have the contact data for this one, and I can’t recommend it since I haven’t been there. You can ask the dentist for this other clinic, if you like to.
Blue Clinic’s contact data:
(close to Calea Dorobantilor) 15 Brazilia st, District 1, 07000, Bucharest. Map of Blue Clinic on Salut Bucuresti web site.
Phone: (+4) 021-231.23.75
External link on cabinetedentare.ro.
You can say you found out about Marius BURCUS as a result of a recommendation of Radu OBADA (whiskas on XF Forum).

Would you like to add something valuable new to my words in here? Do you have a personal experience with Marius BURCUS? Post it below.