A. Pictures

First of all, here are some pictures I’ve made at the event:

There are even three YouTube videos at the conference (in English): 1, 2, 3.

B. What did I learn?

Some ideas I jotted down:
a. (a conclusion of another person) When will computers reach human-level intelligence? We’re five years away and always will be;

b. Regarding one of Charles DARWIN‘s trips:
Charles DARWIN noted that Galápagos tortoise that lived on different island had different evolution; One could tell which turtoise came from which island with precision; They evolved differently;

c. According to the Tree of life, all animals come from the same origin;

d. A typical logic for believers:
i. “X” looks designed;
ii. I can’t think of how “X” was designed naturally;
iii. Therefore, “X” was designed supernaturally;
This is known as “God of the gaps”;
Example: People can’t imagine how the pyramids were made; This leads into thinking they have been done by aliens;

e. Quote:

This most beautiful system [The Universe] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.

-Isaac NEWTON;

f. The fate of all mysteries: they get “filled” eventually;

g. Two explanations for life:
i. Supernatural designed (from Top to Bottom);
ii. Natural designed (from Bottom to Up);

h. (funny, I might add) Psychoanalysis is just as effective as doing nothing (this argument also had some scientific proofs);
Talking to a friend or relative is best;

C. Extra readings

If you want to know more about the conference or Michael SHERMER himself, you can see:
(English)
a. Wikipedia entry;
b. Personal homepage;
c. A magazine he founded and runs;
d. Personal thoughts on Twitter;

(Romanian)
a. (Romanian, with English videos) An article on HotNews.ro;
b. (Romanian) An online discussion on HotNews.ro;
c. (Romanian) Conference review;

D. Personal opinion on the conference

Now for my thoughts on this. In a typical society, if my conviction is to be a vegetarian, I could go to a conference on the advantages of eating meat without raising an eyebrow – “Why are you here?”. In the orthodox world, things are more complicated. Do a search on [thou shall not read heretic books] (Romanian) and you’ll get to strong arguments (such as this – Romanian) not to ever read anything that would affect your belief. It’s basically a sin.

Things are that simple – don’t go. But I complicated things, and I went to the conference. To me, sins are:
a. Sins not to be done; Avoid as possible;
b. Sins that are really sins, but I still do them;
c. Sins that are considered by others to be seen, not by me, I do them.
I confess all of them, erase the table.

The conference went into c. Lucky (what a strange word for an Orthodox) for me, in Orthodoxy there are more than the laws, there are interpretations. Sometimes they clearly oppose, and you (or at least me) can:
a. Pick the one that you favor if there are two;
b. If you happen to find out an opinion that you like, stop reading;
c. If you happen to find out an opinion that you don’t like, keep searching until you find an opposite one, then apply a. scenario.
That’s a bit funny to think. In this case, I once read/heard that you can read heretic books if you are more advanced into Orthodoxy/read some things. I can’t apply this logic without getting into the “being proud” problem, but at least I’ve switched sins. Phew, that was though.

Now writing in public about the conference is a bit more complicated. Now I don’t only hear things, I also speak about them. Tricky. Last night, I asked my spiritual father about this, and said I should write it down, but also mention my opinions on the subject (which I didn’t intend to do in the first place).

So, here goes.

A very first observation is this: when there’s a conference on Dalles Conference Room about Orthodoxy, with some monks and priests and orthodox thinkers, I usually can’t see anything. The room (very large, I think there are more than two times more chairs than at the Faculty of Philosophy Titu Maiorescu amphitheater) is crammed with people. There is a balcony. Crammed. There are rooms between the chairs, behind the chairs, between the chairs and speakers’ desk. Crammed. I went two or three times to basically stay outside, could see barely anything, hear almost nothing. That’s how many people go in there. At Michael SHERMER you could get plenty of seats, and while the announcement required prior registration via email, I don’t see that as a too much problem.

Now the question comes – where are all the Orthodox people? There was a public conference from a much known scientist talking about God. The conference was clearly better advertised in the media (at least from my point of view), the speaker was an very good authority on the subject. In this time of year there are not that many public conferences. It was a Wednesday evening, a time similar to the Dalles conferences. So where was everybody? Perhaps they didn’t like the date (9.9.9. is a funny number).

So, now for my views:
a. The science part doesn’t really matter to me; You have proofs the Earth is billion years old? Good for you; You have problems with a, b, c, d, e (whatever) episode in the Bible, you can prove with a big accuracy it didn’t and couldn’t have happened? Great; This has nothing to do with the way in which I believe in God; If tomorrow, one proves to me with high accuracy that a lot of the facts in the Bible aren’t there, it doesn’t matter; It’s all fine; Prove what you want, the Bible to me is an ethical thing, not a miracle of multiplying the five loaves and the two fish to an X number; That’s not about it; It’s not about dinosaurs, Noah’s arch, dividing the Red Sea, or whatever; The dilemma that dinosaurs exists or not has nothing to do with the 10 commandments (oh, and the fact that they were written in stone by God – or not? – is also not a criteria; Prove whatever you wish to, Orthodoxy, to me, it’s not about things, it’s about ethics);

b. What if I cared about the a. things? What then? It’s a quite simple and amusing solution; We start with the assumption that miracles happen even today; Would God do anything to reduce your faith in Him? Probably not; Would the devil do? Well, perhaps; So I can, theoretically, see all the scientific proofs as devil’s work; You found a skeleton? It was planted; That DNA thing? The devil does miracles; And so on; This could be an easy escape hatch; I know, it sounds a bit silly; But as said, it doesn’t matter to me; And we’re on miracle land; Anything could happen;

c. There were some parts at the conference about Orthodoxy in schools; How do I view things? Is religion in school a bad thing? I don’t know; Is religion in school a good thing? I don’t know; Ask me to vote on the subject and I won’t vote; Force me to vote via mandatory voting and I’d vote for science-teaching, rather than religion-teaching (but it’s not the case nowadays – I’m not forced into this); Why my belief?
Things are simple: to me God exists; I’ve “proven” it to me; Let’s say you are near me; What can I say to you about God? I can say to you, if you ask me on the subject, that I believe God exists; And … that’s about it; I can’t tell you to believe in Him, I have no real evidence to convince you; All I know is that to me it exists and, when confronted, I will tell you that; I can’t really transmit why I believe in God to another one; It’s me;
Luckily (yes, that word again!), there is a book on politeness I’ve read while in high school which clearly states that religion, politics and personal health problems are to be considered taboos, and not tackled in public; Phew! I don’t have to talk about religion in public, the best approach is to go around things;
Now to get from here to putting religion in schools; As said, I can’t tell if God exists. Can others? Ok, let them make religion mandatory; Can others tell that God has nothing to do with schooling? Ok, let them take religion out of schools; I prefer not to have an opinion on this – do whatever you please; A system in which religion is mandatory in schools or a system in which religion is forbidden in schools are all fine to me; I will adhere neither to an NGO that wants religion in schools, nor to another one that wants it out of schools; If forced to have an opinion, I would take religion out of schooling system;
On a personal note, it was at this conference that I found out that in the United States there are no national or even federal laws on religion in schools, each school has a parents committee that establish what should the children learn; This is a solution to which Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI adheres, and if were to chose on the matters, I’d vote for it too; Yes, that’s my vote;

d. To me the conference was spiritually fulfilling; Fun, easy to understand, smart; Did I mention fun? I found out great things.

Oh, and looking backwards, there was really nothing at the conference that affected my belief. It wasn’t a sin at all. Yes.

First of all, I’ll present my experience with these. I have first joined an Internet forum in the spring of 2002, just a few months after I got to have Internet access a few times a week on a regular basis.

I joined a rather large Romanian forum (it still is even today; Large number of persons in there, great flow of messages).

I stayed on that forum until, five years later, I got to 1,000 messages. I don’t know about you, but writing 1,000 messages on an Internet forum, in a time frame of 5 years, is quite a lot. A lot of effort to read what others have said, to comment upon, to be active. You get the picture, lots of activity, and lots of reading.

I also was active on a smaller Internet forum, with only 300 messages from my part, but the reading was quite big in there too.

And some smaller accounts on various forums, some even created by me, but due to lack of activity these matter less.

You can say that I’ve wrote more than 1,500 messages on Internet forums so far (perhaps even 2,000).

What have I learned that I didn’t like that much?
1. At the time when I joined the first large forum, in 2002, Internet was scarce in Romania; Few people had Internet access, mostly due to costs and downsizes (PC, Internet line, hard to get a good connection, you had to be a bit IT-savvy) compared to revenues and advantages (small salaries, few web sites on the Internet to benefit from); What this barrier meant was also a great filtering system: the people that frequented the forum I was on in 2002 were usually either very good with IT or earning lots of money (so good with other things); And most of the time it was a combination of the two; Great people, I can say, lots of things to learn on a personal and professional (mostly IT) level; Time passed, and Internet access became easily available; The old generation slowly left the forum (only a few remained), while the new generation came in a hurry; Well, I can say that the level of expertise on that particular forum greatly decreased and I decided to leave;
2. What I also didn’t like about forums was a spirit of sarcasm; This was right from the beginning; There was a very false and annoying feeling of “I know everything” from the persons on the forum with most messages; You asked a not-that-smart question? Bang! You got an acid reply; You said something that could be interpreted? Here comes a sarcastic reply; This is a bad habit I learned on the forums, and which I try to repair now.

What did I learned that I love?
1. A lust for the fight itself; In the forums there is always an intriguing thought, a dispute, an argument; I learned a lot of things on how to handle a debate by participating in forums; What a lovely thing this is;
2. A pleasure for the smart things; Writing things on forums helped me understand myself better and better structure the information on the world I live in; I am the person I am today partially due to the fact that I’ve participated in forums.

I hope I haven’t scared you with the bad thoughts on forums and I hope that if I get bad feelings on blogging, I’ll write time as they arrive, not wait for years, like I’ve done with the forum postings. Overall, my forum experience is great, but nowadays the generation difference makes it a rather unpleasant experience. But I did have a great time back in 2002+.

I’ve seen quite a few cartoons. Most of the classics, most of the top rated cartoons on IMDb, and even some TV series (while I was younger). I won’t get into too much details, I’ll just say that me and cartoons always got along quite fine.

My list of favorite movies only includes Le notti di Cabiria, and a few others, about which I’ve only written in Romanian. No cartoons in the list so far, besides WALL·E (2008), Ratatouille (2007), Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001). But why do I still watch cartoons in general, as a movie genre? They give me these following reasons to continue watching them:
1. They’re funny in a nice way; There are a lot of ways to be funny, but I mostly think of crude humor (not that bad, all-in-all, but still rude; mostly done with a surprise), intellectual humor (the a-ha! humor, in which you get an insight), and a kind rumor (this is not about a-ha, it’s about a surprise, like the rude humor, but in a gentle way); I mostly like intellectual humor and the kind humor;
2. I learn things; It may sound stupid, but it’s not the same if two persons say the same thing; It’s not the same if I get an idea from a cartoon, or if I generate it myself;
3. Things are said at an easy-to-comprehend level; I can watch a movie and still don’t get what the director meant; I can see a documentary with a thought that’s provoking, yet not that well easy to perceive; Yet I can go to bed every evening and say: Hey, I got what Walt DISNEY meant to say with that joke! I’m so good!
4. They are beautiful designed; From old cartoons (like Snow White and Pinocchio), to new ones (like Finding Nemo), I get a beautiful experience just by watching a cartoon; None of them is especially beautiful, and they are all in the same time lovely;
5. They bring me heart-breaking memories; It tears me into pieces to think about childhood, and watching a cartoon devastates my thinking.

To sum things up, I mostly watch cartoons because they are a learning experience (mostly of emotions and interactions) and that learning experience is done in a lovely fashion.

I’ll give in this blog post some tips on event organizing (mostly for conferences and such):
1. The very first tip I’d give is picking speakers the audience doesn’t know that well; Pick some strangers to speak for your conference; I know, that’s a tricky part (how can you trust them? why would the audience pay to see some strangers), but I personally would much rather see a surprising new face, rather than see the same circle of people, again and again, at all the conferences I go; You can only do something wrong if you don’t try;
2. The next tip is making sure the participants at the conference speak about a subject that’s a matter of interest to the audience; This is part of your task; Hard to do, but do make sure that the speaker’s presentation will focus little on what is kindly called “case study” and what it is in most cases self-advertising; You can approach the subject up front, you can set a rigid presentation theme, you can ask for the PowerPoint to be sent prior to the conference for a check-up; Rarely have I seen a self-advertising presentation that is even remotely interesting; Make sure that this doesn’t happen to your event, or you might have some unhappy clients;
3. A nice presentation tip would be involving the audience; A simple raise of hands would wake a lot of people; Go for some resource-giving questions (What would you say are the best ideas for doing X?) and you get some more people to be attentive; Finally, provoke them do a hard-talk dialogue and you might conquer the world of presentations; You can have the audience put a lot of questions to the speakers (have a rather long time of time allowed to questions); You can also have moderators of panel discussions put questions to the speakers; But all-in-all, you should make sure that the trainers at a conference really do involve the audience;
4. How to pick a speaker? I think a good speaker has some qualities like:
a. Good structure of information (he should know things for himself);
b. Provides you with insights (not only does he say stuff, this stuff make my mind go right);
c. Makes you feel good (even laugh; great way to learn things; beautiful state of mind);
d. Involves you (I’m not here to sleep, I’m here to dance!);
e. Provokes you (makes you blush);
f. Say new things (I want to hear something I don’t already know; give me new stuff, I can read old stuff in books);
g. Take you out of the comfort zone (by first going there himself; you shouldn’t feel all that comforting at a conference);
It’s not an easy-to-find kind of speaker, but these are some basic criteria; Find a trainer with as many qualities out of these as you can;
5. Prior to getting a speaker to a conference, I think it’s best to:
a. See him doing another presentation, live or via electronic means;
b. See him live, have a friendly chat with him (while you observe his personal skills);
c. Hearing him doing a presentation on the phone (on the Internet, via a web cam, would be better);
d. Get outside review (ask others, search the Internet, get peer review);
Some of the things above are harder to implement, some of these are easier; But I’d really avoid having a speaker at a conference and knowing little to nothing on him;
6. Be there for the participants; Rarely this thing doesn’t happen, but you have to make sure that at any moment at a conference there is a person from the organizers watching things over; Just a tip to make sure you remember this rule;
7. Regarding food: Solve frustrations with fast-consuming foods by replacing food as soon as it gets hard to find (so rather than having a long lists of foods, and some get eaten very fast, I think it’s better to have a smaller list of foods, that are easy to replace with new foods of the same type; this is not an universal law, but it might be frustrating to talk to someone only to find that there are only some not-that-great-looking sandwiches left);
8. Regarding promoting of the event:
a. Have a web site of the event; Do Search Engine Optimization to that web site;
b. Promote your event via press releases; Press loves this kind of thing!
c. Have a promotion in the social networks of your participants (these are highly dependable on the types of audience you have; but all-in-all, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Xing – Germany mostly, Cirip – Romania mostly, might be good ideas for your promotion; You can see a list of social networks on Wikipedia)
d. Promote your conference into relevant mailing lists; Visit Google Groups and Yahoo! Groups homepages and search for keywords related to your event target group; Promote your conference in there, with care with the general atmosphere in the group (if it’s discussion-only, you might be unwelcomed with a purely informative message; Adjust your speech to the specific audience of a group; Read 10-20 recent messages on the group to have a glimpse on what’s it about);
e. Ask for help; Bloggers, business partners, press – all can provide you with help on promoting the event; Ask for help! They can do anything from writing about you, placing a banner to your web site, send information to friends to participating themselves;
f. Have a fresh thinking! A lot of people would like to see a YouTube video with your event, see a virtual map of the address of the conference, see videos with the speakers, see a list with people that participate to the event, receive a participation diploma from the event, receive a gift at the event; Learn to attract people, to motivate them;
9. Do Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) – This might involve giving some invitations to the event or donating part of the money obtained on the event; You can offer scholarships to participate to your event; You can sponsor some persons to accommodate at a hotel; Think creative! And you can promote your ability to do CSR; It’s the right thing to do;
10. Thank the speakers for holding speeches at your event; You might even offer them gifts, flowers or at least offer transportation; Also thank the participants to the conference by sending them a postcard or two with a great picture at the event; This should be memorable;
11. If your conference is an all-day event, it might be a good idea to offer your participants information on other events that take part in the same day, prior to leaving your event; So, let’s say your conference ends at 18:30 and there’s another event at 19, an event on 20, another one at 21; Be a kind host and give alternatives to your guests for the evening; You can also give information on where to accommodate for the night prior and after the event;
12. Pick the right day for the conference: Monday is great, Friday is less-than-great; Think of a day and period of time in which it would be easy to get a day off (if there’s a day celebrating women in March, it might be a good idea to organize a conference in a period of time that is close to that event); Friday may be bad due to the closeness to week-end (and at the end of the week there’s always something to do); On the other hand, very few people plan for the next Monday to do something;
13. In order to keep a tight schedule, you can set a time for registration: so registration to begin at 9:30 AM, while the conference to start at 10 AM; And keep the schedule; Rarely does a conference announced to start at 10 AM really starts at 10 AM sharp;
14. How to get great speakers? Ask for recommendations; Ask the participants to give you hints on who should participate at the next event;
15. I think it would be alright if the speakers had a training themselves: how to operate the microphone, how to get to the next slide, how to use the pointer to show something on the screen; Even some soft skills training might be good (involve the audience); Talk to your speakers and give them a few hints;
16. The most important thing at a training are the trainers themselves: the hotel, location, food, materials, organizers – I personally can live with lesser quality of any of these; A great speaker, who should give me both emotions (make me laugh, annoy me, make me happy) and also provide me with insights (not just learn things, discover them myself) would be great; And at the end of the day, I should take some good memories with me (on emotional and practical part);
17. Try to pick a location that is accessible via more than one way (not only by car, but also by Metro or bus or tram; Think of multiple audience of your conference); Prior to the event, when sending an invitation, also send a map with the great locations near your event; It might impress people in a good way;
18. Make sure that there’s not another great event in that very day with yours; I would hate to have to pick between two great conferences;
19. Ask for volunteers to come and help organize the event in a great way; There are a lot of people who want to get involved and you only need a lot help in the days prior to the event itself and in that very day;
20. What happens when all things are set? I think an evaluation should exist on the following levels:
a. Training contents and structure;
b. Level of “I was touched” (laughed, annoyed, intrigued);
c. Level of “I got an insight” (I learned this and that, I discovered new things);
d. Level of “I applied what I learned” afterwards;
e. Level of “I could keep my attention focused on the things the trainer said and I understood his message right”;
f. How well did the trainer go as a body language?
g. How much did I trust the trainer came in the room to help me?
h. How much did the trainer involve me?
i. How was the event organized;
j. Was it worth coming to the event? (both on time, money and things applied)
Evaluation should be done, in my opinion, after a longer period of time: 6 months, 9 months; Do this and you’ll get some participants the next year.

What do you think about my message?

Some pictures at the event:

What insights did this event brought me?
1. God defines Himself: “I am who I am”; You can learn something out of this and say a similar thing: “I behave in the way in which I choose to behave”;
2. Life deserves to be lived;
3. A way in which to discover things about meanings of life:
a. Ask yourself “What would be the greatest choice right now?”
b. Ask “Do I follow my own path in life?”
c. Pose yourself this question: “Do I know what helps me?” (in this area there are multiple answers on three levels – to exist, to do, to have);
d. Ask “Do I recognize the signs of my path?”;
4. Out of any thing that goes into your life you can learn something, and that thing brings up new opportunities;
5. There are four levels in which you can perceive the world:
a. You; (blame others)
b. I; (it’s all me)
c. We; (it’s all us)
d. ”I am who I am” (spiritual level);
The farther away from “You”, the better;
6. Meditation on your workplace? Think about it!

What did you learn out of this?

These are the things that make me the happiest person in the world and you, my reader, a person I’ve shared this with.

1. I need quite a few money if I ever decide to go to Navodari
This may seem like a no-brainer, but for me it was not obvious that I needed quite a few money to go to Navodari (I now live in Bucharest, for almost 8 years). What will the money bring? Safety, a net which can catch me if I fall.

The alternative is simple: be so good as a professional, that I can’t possibly fail in anything I do in the online area from Navodari.

Both requirements are quite tricky. What’s important to know is that I need either a financial stability for a few years or be a great professional;

What are my actions for this?
a. Try to earn more money; This should be simple; All I have to do is continue doing what I do now that brings me money and, hopefully, to be able to save more money; No dead-line imposed, but a general objective;
b. Try to improve myself; This includes (and is not limited to) write better in English (the purpose of this blog), be a better professional at Search Engine Optimization (the purpose of GetSeoIdeas.com blog), be more productive (the goal at work); Having a portfolio of clients and improving my online networking skills should also help; I should be physically fit;

2. Focus on the positive things in life
I was talking to my friend (old mate, used to live in the same room, along with two other guys while a student in 2002-2003) about our common past. What I’ve noticed about the past:
a. Oh, those time were great; Lovely times, beautiful life, great friendships; (It’s also a sign that people tend to remember only good memories in the past – see this article: “We Don’t Remember the Bad Stuff So Well”);
b. During that time, I focused on a few bad things;
c. Focusing on those bad things didn’t bring any obvious advantage.

Come to think about it, I’ve had a great life, but I focused on some bad things (and this focus didn’t bring me value).

Now I looked at today’s life. There are two aspects:
a. Life;
b. Work.

I think I have a great life, and a wonderful work. Sure, there are things to improve, but the bottom line is that my life and job are very close to being perfect.

What will I win if I focus on the negative thing? Aside frustration, not too many things can be changed easily.

What will I win by focusing on the positive things? “Oh, what a beautiful life! Oh, what a beautiful job!”

There are some things to keep a close eye on (I seem a little brain-dead), but, all-in-all, it’s a pretty neat way of thinking.

What will my actions be on this?
a. Try to emphasis positive things in life;
b. Capture the moment; Smile, laugh if you have to, but, oh!, be so happy;
c. Only focus on negative things if you can make your life better.

PS: I’ll look at this blog post years from now and I’ll probably thank myself for good ideas. But why not start thanking myself right now?

Still, these are the things I noted as important:
1. (a very well arrived reminder) In getting business solutions, you should first know how to listen to the other party;
2. How to make someone change its actions (whatever that may mean):

a. Why doens’t that person change? (ask)
b. How can you involve that person to wish, for herself to change?

3. The best example leadership on Earth: building the pyramids;
4. In a time of crisis, HR should take care of:

a. Reducing costs (including salaries);
b. Reducing personnel;

in a responsible manner;
5. It’s still not too late to take proactive measures regarding the crisis;
6. Profit is King, cash is King-Kong;
7. You can have the qualities of a leader, but still not have leadership (no followers);
8. Rather than bluntly reducing one specific thing with X percent, you should optimize a process, you can get better results in such a way (analyze procedures, and work on them; the price cuts may have no relation with the current performance of a process; look carefully at the process and work on that);
9. If you have a bad working person in an organization, it’s better both for your company (for obvious reasons – reduce losses) and for him to leave the company earlier; Why is it better for him? Simple: if he will leave 6 months later, in a full-manifesting crisis, he will be unprepared, and it will be hugely difficult for him to get a job at that time; Until then, he can prepare; Help him get a better job in a not-so-bad time by firing him earlier;
10. HR people should be 25% of their time on the field, talking to people;
11. Think at any task in three areas: from a tactic => to a strategy => to a context; e.g.: I can do a training (that’s a tactic), which will make the team reach it’s objectives better (that’s a strategy), which in turn will help the company and industry perform better (context);
12. In five years’ time, 80% of what HR people do today will no longer be doing; Learn to adapt.

Some of the speakers saying these were the following:

• Dr. Lisbeth CLAUS, Ph.D., SPHR, GPHR, Professor of Global HR, Willamette University, USA;
• Anca Georgescu ALADGEM, Chief Human Resources Officer, Romtelecom;
• Brent W. MATTSON, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Learning & Development Executive, Enterprise Learning & Talent Management, Bank of America;
• Dave ULRICH, Partner and co-founder The RBL Group and Professor of Business – Ross School of Business, University of Michigan;
• Radu PANAIT, HR Vice-President, Ursus Breweries Romania.

I was late at the very first session and I had trouble identifying who said what, and also I may have poorly understood things, so I won’t associate a thing being said with a speaker.

How was the message for you? Did it help you understand HR a bit better? You can leave a comment below.

Contents
1. 1991-1997 period
2. 1997-2001 time frame
3. 2001-2005 period
4. 2005-2008 period
5. Conclusions

1. 1991-1997 period. I’ve had my first computing unit (they called it Home Computer, but looking backwards it didn’t seem as too much of a computer) in 1991, when I was only 9 years old. I’ve manually typewritten lots and lots of “games” (very very rudimentary) on the HC91 (you had to type a program in order to make it work; so instead of running Microsoft Word, you had to program it each time you wanted to run it; for a lot of time I couldn’t save a game or program I’ve just written, and when I was finally able to, saving on cassette recorder was slow). 6 years later (1997, I was 15) I was writing my first advanced game, based on a game seen on a real-life PC. I didn’t got to end writing the game. The same year when my family sells the HC and I’m one of the first on my street to own a PC (it had 4 MB of RAM and a hard drive of about 100 MB). The switch from Basic programming, even if it was to Windows 3.11 and Norton Commander, seemed a huge step. I was like WOW. The next year, 1998, I upgrade my PC and switch to Windows 95 (again, I was stunned to see what it was capable of). What’s a characteristic of this period is the fact that I’ve spent a lot of time in front of a computing unit and I was very fond of it. Even now, when I think of Windows, I still use a lot of skills learned in Windows 95. I still know MS-Dos command lines very well.

2. 1997-2001 time frame. My first career decision comes in the middle of 1997. I had a personal model in life in a Romanian writer (my first life model, and the only one I’ve given up to; I won’t mention it here, because it’s a negative reference). Anyhow, when he was about my age he went to a social sciences high-school, and it seemed obvious for me: if I want to follow its steps exactly, I’d had to take a social sciences high school myself. Bizarre or not, I didn’t care about what I wanted to do, I just wanted to do the right thing in life. My parents strongly opposed a social high-school in a large city nearby, and I decided it’s best to follow their advice and go to an Informatics class in my small town (the Informatics class in almost all classes gathered most of the best pupils; they were the elite classes; this does not imply that the high school itself was an elite too). Did I love the Informatics class? Oh, yes: beautiful times. I learned a lot of things on programming, I was programming myself at home, writing small programs (like the size of this blog post), and loved what one could do with software. By 2001 software and computers were my most important hobby. In the first three years of the high school my career path was simple: I’ll do programming. Looking back on the first career decision (picking a high-school), it was better to follow what I liked best (and this was also what my parents noticed), and don’t just imitate the decisions of a writer at the end of the XIX century (anyhow, I doubt that there was an Informatics class in 1890).

The last year of high school comes and my father makes this affirmation: you’re good on PCs and you’re good with English (the latter was not necessarily true), but in order to be a manager, it’s best that you know some Economics and do an Economics faculty. The reasoning is rather faulty: in order to be a manager it’s best that you do an MBA, no matter what a faculty you do. And doing an Economics faculty is not-that-much of a good preparation for the tasks of a manager. But at that time Economics was a wonder field to me, and little did I know about it. So I enter the final year of the high school with a dilemma: should I follow my passion and do IT, or should I do what I thought was right and do Economics? Due to the way the school-leaving examination was made and the way University exams were made, preparing for both IT and Economics was natural. Thus, I could and actually did postpone the decision with no damage. Another decision was in which county to study. I trusted the opinions of two Informatics teachers in my high-school when they said “The capital of Romania is best: largest city, best opportunities, not-as-bad education”. So I favored Bucharest due to their advice. Two weeks before the exams on the Universities, after my school-leaving examination was done, I am faced with this observation (which was in my head long before this): PC monitors affect eyesight due to intense concentration and due to the fact that at that time most monitors were CRT (see Health concerns on CRT on Wikipedia web site). I put health before everything and say: I won’t do IT due to the fact that I already have some eye problems and working all day on the PC would damage my eyesight. Economics was a better alternative and after 4 years of Informatics forgetting it all and going from scratch didn’t look bad. I never actually thought: what I like, what I’m best at, what I should do. The logic was: in order to make money, you should better be a manager (actually careers can go into being a specialist with no human management tasks also). In order to be a manager, one should know IT (and I was good at it, at least for the requirements of a managerial position), English (pretty OK), and Economics (now I think one manager should know Economics almost just as much as it should know other fields in the company directly involved with his activity, like marketing, human resources, law). More than this, Economics is not as necessary for a manager as a MBA, which can be taken after any faculty. Finally, since my only obvious lack of knowledge was in the field of Economics, I thought I should do an Economics faculty (this was actually an OK motive). Looking at a list of faculties in the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest (just at the list, nothing on curriculum), I liked International Business and Economics most: not only I will study Economics, but also English. Unfortunately, foreign languages in the Academy of Economic Studies were studied from a business perspective, so I could only improve my business vocabulary, not the general language level. Also, I missed the fact that International Economics means that you won’t generally study the economy of country, or the management of a company, or do accounting, or trade. Instead, most of the courses have been on International Economy (so between institutions in different countries or between different countries). It’s that simple, but at that time it didn’t seem so obvious. So picking the faculty was faulty even for study Economics. Four years later, I could say that from the faculties in the Academy of Economic Studies it was the best option for me, so two wrongs (learn English & learn economics – both bad) can make it a right. After I picked a field, I applied only for International Business and Economics faculties in three regions of Romania and I was lucky enough to be admitted to all. I could pick a faculty where I was already given a scholarship (in Constanta, a city nearby my small town residence), or I could go to Bucharest, where the competition would be fierce (no scholarship in there). Iasi had no scholarship for me, also no real competition, but it was just at the other side of world. I followed my previous Informatics’ teachers advice and went for Bucharest.

3. 2001-2005 period. Four years in the Faculty fly fast when you’re in an NGO (after 5 failed admission interviews to other NGOs), go to every imaginable event for a lot of time (conferences, seminars, fairs, theatrical plays), and basically you leave the hostel in the morning and get home each day after 21 (this was not the typical daily routine of a unemployed student). All the four years I was hungry to learn: read on psychology, talk whenever possible, improve communication skills, all-in-all understand the world. Now we’re in 2005. In the forth year of the Faculty, one month before the graduation exam, I get a job at a consultancy company (with a clear picture in my head that even if I don’t like numbers, at least I’ll know what it’s like). After the graduation exam, I stay with them for two more months and I convince myself that whatever my preparation in Economics was, I will avoid numbers and especially accounting or finance.

During the last months of the Faculty I have to take a decision: which should my career path be? A small parenthesis. After reading things on psychology, I liked what I’ve read on ADHD. According to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder page on NINDS web site, these are some simptoms of ADHD that felt really close to my behaviour:
1. “Impulsive children seem unable to curb their immediate reactions or think before they act. They will often blurt out inappropriate comments, display their emotions without restraint, and act without regard for the later consequences of their conduct.” [ You will really not believe the things I can say out loud ]
2. “Children who are inattentive have a hard time keeping their minds on any one thing and may get bored with a task after only a few minutes. If they are doing something they really enjoy, they have no trouble paying attention. But focusing deliberate, conscious attention to organizing and completing a task or learning something new is difficult.” [ Felling asleep at theatrical plays, unable to remember anything from most faculty class where I was just present, unable to follow up with someone's speech, unable to read a book, any book - these were all common to me ]
3. “Homework is particularly hard for these children. They will forget to write down an assignment, or leave it at school. They will forget to bring a book home, or bring the wrong one. The homework, if finally finished, is full of errors and erasures. Homework is often accompanied by frustration for both parent and child.” [ This has accompanied me all of my life, I have even seen all of these errors in a winter school in February 2008; but most of them were drastically reduced; I mean, having an email address just to help me be aware that I forget things - deneuitat - clearly helped me avoid this problem ]

What I liked most on ADHD was reading something like this:
“There is no “cure” for ADHD. Children with the disorder seldom outgrow it; however, some may find adaptive ways to accommodate the ADHD as they mature.” (from the NINDS Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder Information Page). Adaptive behavior. Things can change with behavior. So beautiful put. (I didn’t like the solution of going into medication at all)

Please note that I may have been wrong with my analysis on whether I have ADHD or not. I could also have the “Medical students’ disease” (see the Wikipedia entry on Medical students’ disease). So everything could just be in my imagination. I found out about ADHD sometime in 2002/2003. Back then it was the WOW factor. “It must be true! Everything fits so nicely.” When I look now at the symptoms, most of them don’t fit the description. I can now read a book, I can follow almost anybody’s speech if I really want to, I don’t move all the time when sitting down, and all-in-all I have much lower resemblance to the patterns in there. But the ADHD helped me a lot in identifying some weak points in my behavior and working on them.

So, what would a perfect job and career be then for me (a thought-to-be ADHD)? Something that I wouldn’t get bored doing, something that would really get me involved (due to ADHD symptoms). I looked at all the skills I’ve had, and I reasoned like this: I love doing IT, I have some knowledge on Economics-related field, and I’m very low on human skills. I took the non-boring, totally paradoxical, and WOW-factor solution of going into a job on human skills: communication and public relations. Exactly what my weakest point was. More than this, I’ve chosen a career path that would definitely provoke me: I thought back then that I could learn how to control what I say and be a good diplomat. Alternatively put, doing public relations was my way of doing an almost impossible thing like climbing mountains: my poorest skills were in communication (although I have already tried working on that), and my life philosophy was nothing on saying good things in the good way (and I tought I could change this: I will still say bad things, but in a good way; back then I thought that PR was on the way you say something, not on what you say; and I would later found out that method of saying something very nicely was mostly advertising).

4. 2005-2008 period. So, for the next two and a half years I did a Masters’ in Communication and Public Relations, I had two jobs in Customer Service (three months each), and one in both Internet Marketing and Public Relations (for one year). Time flew slower when having to work repetitive tasks, but two and a half years passed. In February 2008 I graduate my Masters’. Now it’s time for a new evaluation.

1. First, the graduation itself: I had to create a 60 pages (I did 90) graduation thesis and then present it to a commission. My supervising teacher told me that she insisted to the commission that I should get a maximum grade for the quality of writing (so not the page numbers). Now an interesting aspect: the commission also insisted that my presentation skills were not-as-good as my thesis itself. Then I think: hey, you enter a Masters’ in Communication and at the end you can’t communicate. Sure, you speak nicely about it, you can give reasons in a talk, you like the philosophy of speaking but still: after studying communication two years, exactly your real-life communications skills drag you down. What’s the use of a Masters’ to you?
2. I organize (and that’s a good PR skill) a meeting like this: an event organizer and a head hunter gave me a virtual interview. In the room there are students interested in HR field. Also present is a HR specialist (with experience in multinational companies). I present my CV, I go to the fake interview, everybody gives me feedback on my behavior and way of reacting to the questions. The positive opinions on my performance were: whenever questioned, I presented the situation in such a way that although I spoke a lot, I don’t answer the question directly (it was mentioned as a negative performance, but this is actually a PR skill, or so I think) and also a positive opinion was the fact that I’ve organized the very interview (although this was not mentioned). But most of the other feed-back was negative, and it focused on: soft skills, and technical skills (understanding the way I should organize an event). I didn’t care about the technical skills (it’s easy to learn how to organize an event), but the soft skills worried me (learn how to move your hands according to what I say; I went like: HUH?). Now if this feed-back came back in the summer of 2005, I would have said: OK, I can improve this, I know there are many things to work on. But now we’re in February 2008, and in the meantime I’ve played a lot of theatre, I’ve done sports, and I’ve had a lot of trouble thinking on ways to improve my communication skills and acting on those ways. Surely, these skills can still be improved, but it’s a question mark the fact that in two and a half years of self-improvement for soft skills I basically suck at communication. Coming back to the fake interviewed, I focused on the HR specialist’s opinion, and since he wouldn’t tell me if PR is right for me or not after just a small interview, I asked for things to improve upon, and he gives a reply via email with things that I was already doing (so for years I’ve been doing it right, but the results were still small);
3. A winter school in February 2008 puts me in a team of 5 and we work on projects. With time for me to think and analyze things, I see a conflict between this thinking: “One should focus on the positive things, and although it should say all truth, it should not say everything, but just some good stuff” (basic rule of PR, or so I think), and my life principles, which, adapted to PR, would sound something like: “Don’t focus on your own (or company’s) interests, focus on the customer’s interests. If these interests make you recommend to your clients the product of the competition, then you should do that. If these interests say in public that your company’s core business is not as good or efficient for the client as an alternative business, then you should also say it”. This was much more than learning how to control the way to say things (which I thought in the summer of 2005 was one weak point of mine). PR is saying just some things, in a good way. And mostly focus on what’s cool and nice and OK. I found out in the winter school that this is just not like me. The problem was with personal values, not with the way one makes a thing look better or worse. Getting back to the winter school. After a conflict in the final days of the camp, which didn’t have an obvious cause to me, I decide to ask for feed-back on my behavior from some colleague participants. I received mostly negative feed-back. Some focused on soft skills, some on ethics, but I already knew most of that (the feed-back itself was, nevertheless, valuable). What I found most striking on the winter camp was a personal negative feeling to a general harmony in the social communication. A peaceful, happy, joyful atmosphere is just not for me. This discovery took into account a lot of past examples, not only on the camp itself. What’s PR? It’s exactly on creating a peaceful atmosphere between humans. Most of the time PR is just that: there’s a conflict, make it go peacefully. My way of acting is exactly the opposite: create a conflict to solve a problem. Surely, there are arguments and conflicts in PR, but most of the time you just have to keep a peaceful relation. As said, that’s in conflict with my conviction that conflict leads to improvement. So two discoveries in the winter camp: I do not view public relations’ way of saying mostly positive things in a totally positive way as a good thing for my self-expression and peaceful talks and me don’t mix;
4. In March 2008 I talk to quite a few persons in PR and I confront them 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 a reasoning 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.

So, my third switch comes around February 24, 2008, and I’m back to the one field I love: IT. What happened to the
eye-problem issue? Well, according to a study focusing on things is actually good for some eye conditions. More than this, TFT displays are now common-place. I could have chosen IT back in the 2005, but it was just not challenging enough.

You should expect that after doing an Informatics high-school, worked in an IT company for more than a year, and basically be very good Internet, I would clearly know what I want to do in IT. Unfortunately, since 2001 I’ve constantly blocked any thought of “How would it be if I worked in this field of IT?” I just didn’t let it in: “This is a no-no”. So right now I have to short-circuit all these thoughts and make a decision. But I’m in no hurry. I can identify what I like most (and Internet obviously pops-up), and I can work on that. Right now there’s no urgent reason to make a decisive decision. I also have to think on way to get a more formal education than a high-school in IT. Time for that too. Romain Gary (with pseudonim of Émile Ajar)’s novel “La vie devant soi” was translated into Romanian something like “You have all your life ahead of you”. That’s my feeling in March 2008. Plenty of time for IT.

5. Conclusions:
1. Put your values above everything. My 2001 conflict was due to a change on priorities via health issues. My 2008 conflict was a conflict with PR on values again. I couldn’t do anything when faced with values problems;
2. Doing something you are not good at may be challenging, but it may also be unwise. Almost everything can be improved, but you may find it something just not worth the time and effort;
3. Investing in deciding a career path may be a good target by itself (there are counselors who will advise you on picking a right career);
4. Put a lot of questions to authoritative persons. An authority may be working in HR, may be a specialist in your field, or may just know the situation well (to know whether to study in Bucharest or not, for example);
5. (I don’t follow this) Create a written plan for improvement;
6. Anything you do, love it.

Any comment on my personal case study? Post it below, please.