E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Arriving in Charming Budapest

Tags: Budapest, Hungary, IBM, Global Business Services, GBS, Learning and Knowledge, L&K, Travelling, Trip, Wi-Fi, Twitter, Taxi Drivers, Broadband Connections, Hotels, Airports, Beer, Life, Ancient Buildings

As you may recall from last week, this week and till next Monday, I am actually in Budapest, Hungary, attending the University event with the European team from IBM‘s Global Business Services Learning and Knowledge, getting to know face to face a whole bunch of the folks I have been interacting with virtually for a number of months. Yes, I know, an interesting event to say the least as I will be able to place some faces behind the voices, IM conversations and e-mails I have been having for quite some time now.

The event is supposed to get started tomorrow afternoon although registrations are starting in the morning. Then over the next couple of days, it is going to be a pretty packed agenda with very little time for anything else, including some team building activities in the evening, so I am not sure I would be able to create any other weblog entries at least till I am done on Thursday afternoon. Thus I have decided to venture now and share a few thoughts on my first experiences coming to Budapest for the first time and share some of the pictures I have already taken about this incredibly fascinating city. Here it goes:

1. Too much of a long trip!: Yes, indeed, having to take three planes in the same day to get over here is just way too much. My ears are still buzzing and pretty much stuck, despite all my efforts to get over it!!

2. Quite disappointed with Wi-Fi networks at airports in general: As I have been mentioning in my twitterings, I guess the world is way far far away from offering competitive (Not even free options) prices for making use of Wi-Fi networks while waiting on connecting flights. Not a chance that I would pay for two or three hours worth of broadband what I nearly pay on a monthly basis. *That* is just out of the question. Period. So much for making broadband widely available to everyone… Sigh

3. Taxi drivers need to understand that when they are told that the suitcase they try to grab is rather heavy they should be paying attention. We know better. We packed those suitcases, you know!?!?! Now I have got a broken suitcase ! Double sigh

4. Second major disappointment: This time with the hotel broadband services. Not only are they rather expensive (25 Euros for 24 hour connection! Yes, you are reading it right, 25 Euros per day!), but the actual broadband connection is as flaky as I never thought it would be for the price I am paying! I haven’t been able to access most Web sites I normally get to access, Twitter included, GMail, a whole bunch of behind the firewall Web sites through VPN, or even my weblog! (Where there are a whole bunch of comments and trackbacks I need to get to, but can’t! So bear with me while I try to get that sorted out). I hope I am able to post this one entry, but so far I must say that it is far from ideal !

And all this in an era where most knowledge workers are mobile, travelling all over the place, and need to have that pervasiveness to stay in touch with their peers, friends and family than otherwise is going to make things rather difficult. Already got several thousand RSS feeds to catch up just because the broadband connection has been rather unstable all along. Sigh. I guess I was just asking for too much this time around. Yes, indeed, there is nothing like one’s own home wireless connection that you know it just *works*.

5. Lovely beer: Yes, indeed, I just had my first couple of pints and although I do not remember the name of the lager, it surely was nice! I need to pay much better attention next time, but if all beers are just like the one I just had, I think am going to have some good fun from here till next week! heh

6. Sex offerings: After a lovely light dinner with a pint or two of that nice lager, I decided to go for a walk in the surroundings of the hotel, voted as “best view” hotel in Budapest, and while I am walking alongside the river in a rather cold evening the first thing I get offered is just that: sex. Yeah, like you are reading it right there. I got here less than 3 hours ago and I am already being offered some sex… Hummm, no hard feelings to anyone of my friends out there, but that scene reminded me very closely of Amsterdam.

I decided to walk further and continue enjoying the scenery, in case you are wondering. See above for a whole bunch of reasons why

7. First glance of what promises to be a wonderful place to enjoy for the remaining of the week: As I was taking that walk in this cold evening, I got to enjoy some of the different ancient buildings (Still need to learn the names and all as well -Reading some books about them at the moment…) and the spectacular lighting effects that have been put together. They have clearly reminded me that I need to buy a much better digital camera if  I would want to do them justice ! And big time!

You will have to get over here to judge for yourselves, but I have taken the liberty of taking some photos of some of the stunning places I have been checking out thus far so that you can get an idea of what is awaiting you over here, in case you may have never visited Budapest.

8. I am tired: I guess that is a no brainer since I have been up this morning since 4am GMT and it is pass midnight, local time, so instead of sharing with you some further details, I am actually going to leave it over here and share with you below some of those, above mentioned, pictures I mentioned of some of the stuff I have seen tonight. Hopefully, there would be a couple more weblog posts about my experiences over here, but there is a good chance that I may just be able to share some of my twitterings all along, specially if the broadband connection is good. We shall see.

Have a good one everyone! And hope to be able to weblog some more soon! (If you do not see me weblogging away, not to worry, you know where I will be. Yeah, not there actually either! You bad bad bad folks!! )

(More to be uploaded over here)

I Taller de Podcasting de Canarias

Tags: Podcasts, Podcasting, Taller de Podcasting, Podcasting Workshop, Cronicas de Esperantia, Mangas Verdes, Linotipo, Atarecos, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canarias, Canarias Bruta

Sí, ya sé que llego un poco tarde a este pedazo de evento que se va a celebrar mañana en Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, durante la tarde / noche, pero más vale tarde que nunca, supongo . Probablemente, algunos de vosotros ya lo habréis leído en Crónicas de Esperantia, en Mangas Verdes, en Linotipo (Bienvenido de vuelta, Víctor!), en Atarecos, entre otros.

Efectivamente, mañana, a partir de las 4pm GMT empezará el I Taller de Podcasting de Canarias! ¡Fantástica noticia! Todos los detalles del programa los podréis leer de mano de Fran en Crónicas de Esperantia. Lo cierto es que, al leerlo, uno no puede nada más que comentar lo espectacular que va a ser el evento. Único, más bien, diría yo.

Aquí tenéis un fragmento para poneros un poco los dientes largos:

"Los podcasters canarios vamos a celebrar el próximo día 17 en la Galería de Arte Luroa a partir de las 16:00 horas el I Taller de Podcasting de Canarias con el que vamos a intentar acercar el maravilloso mundo del podcasting, sus posibilidades en todos los ámbitos y su funcionamiento a todas aquellas personas que quieran conocer algo más de una palabra que ya está sonando muy fuerte en los medios y que se le vaticina un futuro prometedor como herramienta de comunicación."

Por supuesto, que me voy a dejar caer por allí. Ya llevo algún tiempo involucrado en el mundo de los podcasts habiendo participado en unas cuantos episodios y la verdad es que me apetece mucho el poder ver un poco más del mundillo que los podcasts en cuanto a producción,  edición, herramientas y demás tema logístico.

Y encima de todo ello habrá algo que me parece de lo más interesante e intrigante:

"Durante el transcurso del taller estableceremos conexiones con podcasters de todo el mundo que participarán activamente en el taller a través del audio y de las herramientas gratuitas que usamos para interconectarnos."

¡Fantástico! Pues con poco más que añadir os invito a los que estéis por aquí que os dejéis caer por la Galería de Arte Luroa mañana a partir de eso de las 4pm GMT y allí nos veremos. ¡Por supuesto!

Y, por último, desde aquí simplemente dar las eternas gracias tanto a Fran como a Canarias Bruta por haber conseguido un programa espectacular y tan atractivo. ¡Seguro que se nos hará corto, como mínimo! ¡Allí nos vemos!

(For those of you who may not understand Spanish, the above text is a weblog entry that mentions the upcoming podcasting workshop that will be hosted, for the first time, tomorrow afternoon in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. If you are reading this and are in the area and want to know some more about the fascinating world of podcasting come and join us! We would be more than happy to have you with us!)

A Healthy Moment before Hitting the Weekend!

Tags: Laughs, Laughter, Life, Humour, Health, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Knowledge Management, KM, Metablogging, Bloggers

After yesterday’s rather lengthy weblog post about Twitter and its several various reasons to help improve your already existing social networks, I thought I would share something else with you today that, if anything, I am sure it would do you good. And lots of it! I bet that you have all heard all over the place how a good laugh is perhaps one of the healthiest things you can go through at any given point in time, right? Well, nearly 4 million have experienced that already and I guess that, if you haven’t seen it, it is probably your turn now. Check out this YouTube video and get ready to start off the weekend with a good laugh! And, if not, judge for yourselves:

Oh, and if you didn’t have enough with that one, have about this one:

Who said that messing about in the kitchen while doing some cooking was not fun, eh?

(Thanks, Mike!)

Oh, ok, now, if you would want something more educational around the subject of social networks and weblogging and how crucial they are becoming to the business world, have a look at this other video (Specially the last couple of minutes):

Have a good one, everyone!