Here goes:
1. I’ve done Karate (Shotokan and Kyokushin kaikan styles), I now do some other sports, such as weight lifting and running, and I think I have a pretty good physical condition; Yet, I don’t consider that one should be just a bit of an aggressive with others; Me – I tend to think I have power, but I would prefer not to use it; I like to think of myself as powerful, but non-aggressive;
2. At Karate Shotokan, I had to do some fights (simulated, not real), and one aim of the exercises was to hit the opponent in such a way that the person could only feel a pinch; So you do a real hit, but at the end of the blow you stop just in time not to do real damage; I had problems coordinating my punches, and to solve this, I hit with real power, but not on target, but rather near the target; Thus, instead of hitting the body, I was hitting the air; The same algorithm can be applied to aggression – I find it difficult to control the “right” amount of aggression to use and thus, I avoid aggression altogether;
3. To me, although baptized when I was a little baby, the Orthodox life began mostly when I was about 15; Prior to being a practicing Orthodox, I tend to think of myself as having aggressive behavior; Therefore, I tend to associate aggression with non-Orthodox thinking;
4. I also like father’s Nicolae STEINHARDT thinking in “Happiness Diary“; He says something similar to this: he knows he contradicts 1 Corinthians 6:18-19:

¹⁸ Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. ¹⁹ Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

(this quote says that fornication is the most compromising, and fully engages the human being). In spite of that, he considers the sin of being upset and angry is much worse; He then gives the example of a person who enters a store, a bus, a tram, an office or sits at a queue, is pissed off and yells, says bad words and steps away from typical behavior; That person, Nicolae STEINHARDT claims, totally breaks the connection with God; The argument is that these bad words are not simple things as being upset, but show a human spirit in total opposition with the world created by God; He then gives the quote from Saint Apostle James (James 3:2):

² We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.

5. I tend to be aggressive in communication via ideas, not raising voice; So, I tend to say hard truths and sometime offensive opinions; To me, this is too close to being truth to yourself to change it;
6. “Feedback should be focus on the idea, not on the person” – one basic theory states; Opposite to this, aggression is, by its nature, an attack on the person, instead of the idea;
7. What’s the reply to aggression? How to react when being attacked? My favorite writer in this life, Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI, was interviewed by “Adevarul” and had an algorithm similar to this: in order to disarm aggressiveness, you have to let it pass by you, as difficult as it may be; He also said that you can have a dialog with violence acts only you admit their validity;
8. To me, the aggression (be it verbal or physical) is a sort of stress; What’s the answer to stress? How about the fight-or-flight-or-freeze response? I like this reaction: “Many animals freeze or play dead when touched in the hope that the predator will lose interest.” (Wikipedia)
9. Thus, my reaction to aggression is simple: I do nothing, say nothing; You have to be very close to me to receive a reply on an aggressive note; Other than that, any kind of aggression (physical or verbal, made by yourself or a social group) gets one reply and one only: silence and ignore; Then I have to apply my favorite quote, from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines movie:

Terminator: “Desire is irrelevant. I am a machine!“

After an aggression, I still have to be a good Christian; This passage (Matthew 5:43-48) applies:

⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ⁴⁶ If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? ⁴⁷ And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? ⁴⁸ Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

10. Recently, I’ve had the occasion to see this pattern repeatedly – on one hand non-aggression is seen as a lack of maturity and to get more mature I need to do military service; First, for the non-aggression, seen as a lack of maturity – I think this is a misconception; What’s power? Is it being able to control yourself? Is it being able to do what you like and not do what you don’t like? Is it having physical power? Because I think I have most of these; Or is it, at some people consider, an ability to impose your point of view on others using manipulative tactics? To me, the latter affirmation is false;
11. Now for the part with “to get more mature, one needs to do military service”; What would military don’t do to me? It won’t bring me any more physical force, more structured thinking; What would the military do to me? Learn (in one way or another) how to handle a Code Red (a euphemism for a violent extrajudicial punishment in “A few good men“), how to blindly follow orders (this is so not like me) and finally how to deal with some imposing things onto others (via brute force); Army might also be associated with just a difficult time from which might get some insights; My answer to a Code Red is simple: if I think I’m right, I will do my best not to change my behavior; I don’t agree with following orders and rules just for the reason of following order and rules; I consider manipulation via brute force as a wrong thing; Finally, while the Cabirian model of solving a crisis (smile with optimism in life, no matter how harsh life is), I don’t consider that self-torture in any way can bring very good kind of insights; A crisis may be a good way of learning things, or it may just be a traumatic experience;

These were my thoughts on aggression.

A. Radiography of the pharmaceutical market in 2009

1. “Medicine with human use in Romania – a law perspective” – Robert ANCUCEANU, General Director of the National Medicines Agency (Agentia Nationala a Medicamentului – ANM) (download PPT)
- While Wikipedia has a different approach on the “Chinese word for crisis” (basically saying that it’s most of the time misquoted), Robert ANCUCEANU quoted a thing also said wrongly by president John F. KENNEDY, who said: “When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters – one represents danger and one represents opportunity.”;

2. “Health status of the pharmaceutical market to the crisis impact” – Petru CRACIUN, General Director, Cegedim (download PPT)

- There is no try to signal from other players that “low price” implies “poor quality”;
- The market went down with a 2.5% in volume, but in the same time the market rose with 8% in value;
- The Over-the-counter (OTC) medicines market fell in volume, and had a slight increase in value (EUR);
- For the drug stores there will be a pressure on liquidities in the following years;
- Hospitals have a financing and credits problem;
- A lot of profit will be made by distributing products;

3. “Medicine distribution from producer to the drug store. Frame of laws and non-competing behavior” – Raluca VASILACHE, Associate lawyer, Tuca Zbarcea & Asociatii (download PPT)

- From a fixed exchange rate, each of the two parties involved in the money exchange lose some money;
- In a cartel, the competition meets and establishes a minimal level, a certain margin, they split the market between each other or they have unfair auctions;
- It takes 5 years for such a bad action to lose its validity;
- Any practices like these are obviously forbidden;
- There are some grey lists – imposing or recommending maximum prices;

4. “Sales force management” – Nicolae IORDACHE IORDACHE, Independent Consultant (download PPT)

- In the ’80s and ’90s a lot of emphasis was put on medicines for treating heart diseases, ulcers, infections; After this time passed, those diseases offer little advantage for growth;
- In the recent times, more emphasis was put on tobacco, hair loss, erection – helping others living a better life;
- Nowadays a lot of emphasis is put on rare but grave diseases – these are niche medicines, very expensive;
- The blockbusters are influenced by the generic sector;
- Industries in China and India determined price reduction of 50% from one year to another;
- Estimate: prices for medicines will fall;
- In Romania the crisis mentality is a standard; Nothing’s new on this side;
- Something to take home: in a few decades, we’ll all be dead; You should learn something from the crisis;
What’s to be done?
a. Returning to the clients;
b. Do the boring stuff well: processes, performance management, talent development, team work, passion for work, responsible management, discovering and keeping values;
c. Develop the companies;

B. Crisis versus development opportunities

1. “Can the crisis change the pharmaceutical industry in Romania?” – Adrian LAKATOS, President, AL Pharma Consulting (download PPT)

- The market has a lot of rulings in place;
- The dependency to political decisions leads to instability;
- There is a dependency to system financing;

2. “From current crisis challenges to future opportunities” – Monica CRACIUN, People & Organization Manager, Expand Health

- There are both opportunities and challenges in any crisis;
- Focusing on opportunities can yield better results;

3. “Success recipe: protect your client from the crisis” – Andreea IONESCU, Marketing Retail Director, A&D Pharma (Sensiblu)

- People need to connect to real examples;
- If you need a sudden change, you have to take into account: Where are the hypotheses you start with and How do you do it;
- Sensiblu is recognized as trust in counseling and recommendation;
- Sensiblu has 94% brand awareness;
- Clients of Sensiblu have 1.4M fidelity cards;
- They did a complete redrawing of the shopping experience (they can differentiate with that);
- Stop talking about the product, talk about the lifestyle – “You will not get sicker anymore”, “You should live a healthy life”;
- You can’t go wrong with a client-focused strategy;

4. “Adapting the organizational branding process during the economic crisis” – Marius URSACHE, Chief Creative Officer, Grapefruit (download PDF)

- Grapefruit worked for brands such as Banca Transilvania, Dacia, e-On, NNDKP, OTP Bank, Petrom, Prigat, Renault;
- Brand is what the client says and thinks about you;
- You should invest in leadership;
- A good idea is to recruit good people at reasonable prices;
- Charles DARWIN was quoted to have said “It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.” I found an interesting article on this quote on Cosmos Magazine, which basically says that this famous quote of Darwin is not his; This is the second misquote for the day;

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Bottom line: Quite a nice conference, good speakers, nice location; I’d try to involve the audience a bit more, I felt a certain distance between the speaker and the audience, and perhaps a little bit more follow-up, like the previous events had;

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.

One year ago I was writing:

In March 2008 I talk to quite a few persons in PR and I confront them about these two premises: “PR is all about peace” (it’s mostly true, in their opinion), “PR is on saying true things, but mostly positive” (I think they would say true, but no clear answer was given). And one person gives me reasons for the “say only positive things”: you don’t say positive things, you are just so much impersonating with the company, that the true things are mostly positive (OK, and probably you control a few others). Anyhow, it was an argument that if I have the urge to say mostly negative things about a company, then (again) there is a problem between the values of the company and mine: it’s not normal to work for a company for which you see mostly bad things. Then I think: what company and institutions I would recommend as great? Google, GMP (Romanian advertising & PR company; I mostly like them for their works, this generally does not extend to their clients, except, say, Itsy Bitsy radio) are fine, but most of the people from Obor marketplace (in Bucharest, Romania) are great. These are the companies or institutions I would present nicely in perfect accordance to my values. Not a very long list to work for in PR. Again, a problem on personal values: I can’t fit with any organization’s values. Creating financial reports for a company you don’t value 100% may be fine, but being the voice of that company with the external world can lead to problems.

What changed from that time?
1. I am working as a Search Engine Optimization specialist (see my blog about SEO) for Webvertise;
2. I am working indirectly for Google (the one company I best view in this world);
3. I am working for other companies also (Webvertise clients and freelancing clients);
4. Some things I do at work involve not following my own values.

So what changed in my perception?
1. I realized working for the best company you can imagine is great (and Google is really great);
2. Not working with the ideal companies is fine;
3. I can work for a company even if this doesn’t follow 100% my values; Sure it would be great if it did, but working in a less-than-perfect environment is fine also;
4. I still love my job.

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Bottom line: You can still live a decent life, even if not working for the perfect company. I’d love to work directly for Google and do everything 100% perfect, but a lower percentage of value-to-results ratio is good enough. And that’s actually an improvement. Still, switching to SEO from PR seems to have been a good career decision.