Heymans.org » Inspiration

And now for something completely different

Bert — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 22:38:02 +0000

This is one of my “stuff I got from the internet” type of posts, so if you want to know more about my QR Code marketing mashup research or project management advice feel free to skip this one. If you’re in to online marketing you could stick around because that’s something the Raz*War brand does very well in my honest opinion, and they’ve got their current success to speak for that.

edit: and there’s the coupon code at the bottom of the article if you’re interested

I’m a pretty big fan of the Raz*War brand razors and got a chance to test their latest product, the Raz*War Black, before it hits the store.

I actually won one of them with this tweet.

RT @razwar First 5 RT will get the chance to test our new product in beta for free http://t.co/fFz2k3x #shave #rzwr #black24 Mar via web Favorite Retweet ReplyBert Heymans
bertheymans

I tried the Raz*War Black this morning and this is my review:

first thing I noticed, the handle is great, big enough and it has a really good grip
glides very smoothly across the skin, comparable with the Gillette I used to shave with but in all fairness the Raz*War Black has a better feeling on the skin
the razor is really easy to rinse
the spring mechanism that pushed the blades toward the skin is a bit (too) light, you won’t cut yourself easily, that’s for sure
it’s a lot prettier than their other 5 blade model

In the past I’ve had other razors break down at the handle connection and I’m wondering how long that part of the Raz*War black will last, by the looks of the build it should withstand quite a lot.

As it’s still in beta there’s no way to tell what the price of the refills will be, but I presume Raz*War will continue its trend of really cheap re-fills.

The result of my shave looks like this, as I hope you can tell *cough* I’m learning about product photography (don’t worry, I won’t give up my day job yet):

As you may notice, I don’t shave my throat area with a razor.

Before this test I was using the Raz*War El Ché model and I’m considering changing to Black when it comes out of beta.

I’m not affiliated with Raz*War or anything similar. I like what they are doing, wanted to share this with you and give them some publicity on the blog here.

edit: Yay! In the meantime, the people from Raz*War contacted me and gave me a coupon code to share with you. Use RWFORBERT in your check-out. With this code you can get a 15% reduction at razwar.com valid for orders starting at 7.50€ and the coupon code is valid until April 22, 2011.

Brilliant use of a QR Code on a Resume

Bert — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:00:23 +0000

Check out this content-rich resume by French student Victor Petit. First I was thinking, “why does he indicate a different scanning direction like that with the iPhone outline? that’s not right”, but the surprise blew me away.

I’d probably hire him instantly after getting that resume on my desk. A trick such as this makes your curriculum vitae really stick out; being original can work wonders for your career.

Inspirational stuff!

I Got Free Stuff from the Internet!

Bert — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 19:58:15 +0000

Last week was fun, I got 3 packages delivered to my house from the internet; now I’m going to brag about them here because I want to thank the people who sent them to me. One of the gifts was for winning a Twitter contest from Dutch Cowboys sponsored by Cisco, the Friday Free Gift Lucky Bastard Show. I won a Flip MinoHD First time I win anything with these kind of things, so I was pretty psyched.

And there was the Barcamp Genk T-Shirt from fellow project manager Claudio Capo that I got on the same day, I definitely count that as “from the internet” too. Yay!

Last but not least I was charmed by a really cool online campaign for … get this … glass containers. Yes, someone actually created a cool publicity concept around glass containers and a part of the campaign was giving away glass bottles and jars filled with, nothing. Got that one delivered last week as well. Glass is good for the environment because you can recycle it, cowabunga!

Thank you everyone!

Audiobook and Podcast Treasures for Project Managers

Bert — Wed, 05 May 2010 23:19:14 +0000

The average car owner sits behind the wheel 500-1000 hours each year driving from place to place. Let’s turn driving time into learning time.

There’s a good list of project management podcasts over at PMcrunch which is interesting to check out. I would have listed the same here.

I’d recommend: The Project Management Podcast by Cornelius Fichtner I especially enjoy, you can find Cornelius on Twitter for a good PM quote too.

Audio programs on motivation and business like the ones you can buy at Nightingale Conant are also often very inspirational and easy to lay down and pick up again, very practical in the car.

I’d recommend: The New Psycho Cybernetics audio program, it’s a very good listen. The weird title put me off at first, but it’s genuine stuff. I guarantee you you’ll get some good ideas out of it. I got interested after reading this post at Freestylemind.com.

Some very cool audiobooks I enjoyed are:

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time, goes good with the book
, has great insights on networking.
How to Win Friends and Influence People: Unabridged, even if you read the book, it’s worth it.
First Things First which is the audio version of the book I got as a reading assignment on my PM training at Xios, also very good.

I moved to the other side of the country, my commute got a bit longer. About 2 hours a day longer to be precise. It’s been like this for several months now and I’ve found listening to podcasts and audiobooks to be a very rich experience, certainly with the many traffic yams around Brussels.

Hope you like the list, if you have any other audio programs or cool podcasts you’d like to recommend, I’d love to hear from you.

Edit (10/06/2010): I found some inspiration on Bil Gates’ blog, he recommends lectures from the Teaching Company. I’m listening to The Art of Critical Decision Making at the moment, it’s great!

A Meeting Checklist

Bert — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:03:20 +0000

Before you go to an off-site meeting, make sure you do your homework and have this information:

Full adress of the location (and name of the meeting room)
Telephone and/or mobile number of your main contact
The number of the reception desk of the company you’re visiting
A full written down list of names of the people attending
If you’re not sure if a name on your list a man or a woman, check Google Images, try Gulnihal for instance, it’s a common Turkish girl’s name but you probably wouldn’t know that if you’re not from Turkey

Why? Should you ever get lost or stuck in traffic you should call the people you’re meeting. When you arrive, and it’s a big site, hopefully you can find the right building and the meeting room. You often need a full name of the person you’re meeting at the reception desk or you won’t get in. Now you’re in the room with all the new people, time to say hello to everyone.

Imagine saying something like this to CIO just-forgot-his-name …

Hi mister .. euhm … sir! Isn’t mister Gulnihal attending?

… you get the point.

I got rescued in the nick of time once by a lady bringing in coffee, before I heard her say a few names I was dying inside, hence the checklist.

During the meeting do the following:

take notes, even if someone else is taking care of the minutes
keep focussed on the purpose of the meeting
assume rapport if there is no clear reason not to
when things get hard to explain, get out of your chair and/or make drawings
keep an eye on the body language of the people around you
mind your own body language (check out “The Definitive Book of Body Language” it’s a good book)

Whatever happens, a meeting should always result in a set of actions for the participants.

Have your business cards ready for everyone at the end. good luck!

Don’t Compromise on the Good Part

Bert — Sat, 09 May 2009 19:46:07 +0000

There are 3 parameters everybody wants in any project.
The project has to be:

Cheap
Fast
Good

The golden rule is you can only have 2.

A fast & cheap project is rarely gonna be good.
A fast & good project isn’t cheap.
And a cheap good project won’t be fast.

So please choose whether you want it cheap, or fast.
Don’t compromise on the good part.

a Hoss Gifford quote – via Claudio Capodifoglia

4 Classic Planning Proverbs

Bert — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:42:45 +0000

“The more you plan the luckier you get.”

“The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.”

“If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong.”

“Murphy, O’Malley, Sod and Parkinson are alive and well – and working on your project.”

Project Management Inspiration on Twitter

Bert — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:48:01 +0000

I like Twitter you can follow me if you want, it’s a place where I micro-blog about just about anything that’s on my mind and I announce my new posts there as well.

There’s a site called Twittgroups that parses all the tweets for group tokens, words that start with a hash (#) character. One of the groups I like is “Project Managers on Twitter” (#pmot) for instance.

Here are a few tweeters I follow, check ‘em out, they are a cool bunch

Project Management related (at times Agile, PMI or PMP):

Some of my personal PM friends (mostly Dutch):

Inspirational tweeters:

Don’t forget Twitter search, it’s great if you want to keep up-to-date about what people are tweeting about a specific subject, the service creates RSS feeds of a search so you don’t have to come back to the site. I heartily recommend it.

By the way, please comment should I’ve missed you in the lists!

Get Your PM Inspiration on the Web

Bert — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:05:39 +0000

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs on project management, in the sidebar on this site you can find them under links. The ones I absolutely like best and love to read are:

The Struggling Manager has some really cool articles about efficient communication and I bet Rob Redmont – the author – writes just like he talks to people. Good advice, over and over.

PM Hut makes up for it’s ugly design (it’s true) with a high posting rate and a lot of very good authors who probably also have their own blogs somewhere.

My head of project office told me about Project Smart when we where talking about PMI training. It’s a great training resource and the post frequency is just right.

I use Google Reader to keep up to date with the latest and greatest, if you haven’t tried it yet you should, it saves you time and for that it totally rocks.