Greetings from Shanghai.. one of my favorite cities in the world.. I wish I were awake enough to enjoy it. 🙂
One cool thing to share from the day. My cousin Leslie was going through her Mom Carol’s stuff last weekend. Carol died last week after a long and interesting life.. IN here stuff Leslie foudn a copy of the birth announcment that my dad drew and set out when I was born…
Just finishing the last of my late-night meetings after a really good day here in Herzogenaurach. I had a couple of really good experiences today and one major insight.
Let me start with the second experience first. As I promised I went back to this wonderful Greek restaurant Syrtaki again tonight. It was pretty cool… I go in for a late run and manage to get there just at 9 PM. As I walked up to the restaurant my now Friend Saki was walking out into the street to see if I might be around. It was pretty funny. We had the best time he and his brother evangelos fed me four persons worth of the best Greek food I have ever eaten… Seriously. We talked for over an hour and a half… It was so cool connecting over good food, retsina and Ouzo. It was just the conversation I needed to have at this moment in our life… And I think at this moment in his life…about connecting with people, Life plans, values and garlic! I really do hope I get a chance to come back here and visit these guys again
The second good experience actually happened in the earlier part of the day. I had some really good meetings with some very smart people at a clients factory… I gave a talk there and got to hear from many speakers describing some of their interesting technical issues. I absolutely love understanding a technical problem from somebody else’s perspective
My big insight there was kind of interesting. I give a talk to A couple of hundred technical folks… and immediately after I had to run for a meeting. I didn’t get a chance to sit around and talk to the people after I gave my presentation. The insight I had was that I love’s speaking and telling stories but I love it much more when I can get feedback from people about what they liked and didn’t like about my talk. I find that when I don’t get that chance to talk to people afterwards I don’t get that “rush” that I love from public speaking.
This is kind of interesting because I was just having this conversation with my good friend Lorenzo… He’s reading a book on introverts and extroverts. The fact that I need that closure from the audience afterwards means that I’m an extrovert… I guess I shouldn’t be surprised with that.