Matthieu Ricard: how to let altruism be your guide

I would like to share with you the powerful insights of this wise man who changed – for some aspects – my vision about life and its purpose on Earth.

Thank you for your time 🙂

Olivier

Dream e-Guide: South Africa (french) is a photography best-seller on Amazon.fr

THANK YOU AND “MERCI” !!

Because of you, our “Dream e-guide: South Africa” (french version) is now on the top of “Photography” sales at Amazon.fr !

You do not know it ? Just take a look here. And Thank you again 🙂

Hey, I am on ello now!

... who wants to join me ? Check out here : https://ello.co/olivierrebiere

team building: The Good, the Bad and the Really Ugly

A few days ago, I came upon a really good article about team building activities…

Indeed, sometimes it is hard to find out what a team building activity could or should be. We all know where the black and white are. But all the “50 shades of grey” do exist, even in the team building philosophy!

It would be risky to consider that everything implying a group and a common, “positive” goal is enough to facilitate or promote a useful workshop. These constitutive elements are certainly necessary, but not sufficient.

You also have to think about the health and integrity of the attendees, about the probable outcome and mostly what they will remember, back at the office, when the event is finished: what was the purpose of all this stuff? What did we learn? Are we at ease with all that happened there?

The definition proposed by David Jacobson is OK, but sometimes you have to define you own ethical principles, the “morality” of your activity as a facilitator, but also the “morality” of the whole event and several workshops or modules you prepare.

We had the same difficulty in Romania when lots of people asked to have a “paintball team building” as it was – and still is – “en vogue” among the human resources world. The employees ask for it, because it is new, it is attractive.

We reflected a lot about the implications when asked to include this “soft violence” into our modules: indeed as a paintball team you have to get the members organized, coordinated in order to successfully reach your goal. You have to be ready for sacrifice, abnegation, courage. That would be OK, say.

But you have to shoot in other people, in colleagues. You mimic war and destruction.

It is not ethical. It is not “team building” for me.

But then the difference can be more subtle: it is the same for “competition”. Is it OK to promote competition during team building activities at all costs? Even if our capitalistic system is mostly based on competition?

OK, but until you reach a limit: if competition overcomes the final purpose of the event you are creating for the attendees, which is – work better together – you have done something wrong, you must stop.

So prefer emulation to competition. Prefer cooperation to conquest.

Anyway, our professional activity as facilitators is slowly, but surely, shifting towards a new concept which some people call “capitalism as a force for good”, where we do not compete at all costs, but collaborate, where we do not retain information which is not vital, but share it in order to make other people grow.

My point is: team building is changing, as the world around us is.

The attendees must feel and believe they become better human beings after an event.

Maybe it is exaggerated, but I think it is a noble goal that will help us choose between several activities that seem to “taste” like team building, but are not.

…more on Facilitation & Création digitale!

Dear Scotland, how about you join Romania?

Inchirieri de idei

My dearest young country,

we hear you’re fed up with England. We understand the pain you’re going through, looking at breakup and separation after all these years. Yet, we couldn’t agree more that it is the sensible thing to do. England did not deserve you.

Not with them drinking your whiskey and laugh behind your back, while you’re doing the dishes. Definitely not.

We also understand that this is a time for sorrow and retreat. A time to think things over and imagine how your future life will be. We know. This is also the time any newly liberated country will say “I’ll stay single from now on. Independence is so much better”.

It looks better for the first two weeks, that’s for sure. It happened to us too, some years ago, when we broke up with the former Eastern Bloc. Yes, it was an arranged marriage, so it was easier. Still…

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Power Blogging Effectively

Some great ideas about powerblogging !

Do you want to publish on your blog daily and even 2 to 3 times a day? Who does not want to generate large numbers of viewers by simply pressing the publish button? It works, trust me. I found bloggers who have done what they call “power blogging,” have a huge following. Yet someone like me creeps up in numbers as I take the time to write, re-write, edit and research before I press the publish button.

Fact: The more you publish on your blog, the more traffic you will gain.

So the question is how can you post more and still maintain quality post on your blog? Unless you’ve been doing this for a while and you’re a nerd at writing with plenty time on your hands, most likely you will not pump out 2-3 quality blogs a week let alone a day.

However, I have to believe that…

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2008 – A year of consolidation @Aventura Parc

2008 was the year when « Aventura Parc » really took off. We confirmed the positive trends of the precedent year. We succeeded in attracting schools, kindergartens, and companies. Tens of parties were held in the facility, most of them team building events. We invested the money buying an above-ground swimming pool, a must-have attraction considering the high temperatures we had back at this time 😉

I have a relationship with Toshiba…

As weird as it may seem, it appeared to me that I must have a “relationship” with Toshiba without even being aware of it. Please do not consider that I have any shares in this Japanese company or something like that. No. I have a French car, a Romanian wife, an American fridge, speak a little german and so on.

Video editing tools

A week ago I told you about my temporary difficulties in organizing my projects: it was not procrastination, but only a kind of conjectural “mismanagement”.

Well, sometimes in life you have to count on your friends or spouse to help – we are all human beings and sometimes we feel bad – so it is not by any way a sign of weakness to ASK FOR HELP.

I asked and got help!

Burning out like an idiot, initiating too many projects…

The man you see every morning in the mirror can be your best friend… or your fiercest enemy. It seems that the last is trying to suck the best out of me during the last couple of weeks.

I am not giving up the project of becoming a “YouTubeur”, but it has to wait, as I am obviously prisoner of my own “creative loop”, biting my own tail like a crazy dog.

On my way to becoming a “YouTubeur”

This blog is about constantly (re)inventing yourself in order to live a happier life, just in case I forgot it 🙂 I am so lucky to have a kind of rollercoaster existence, but anything has its price.

And so for a couple of weeks until now I was rather sad, depressed, trying to figure out what to create furthermore, as I am a kind of “jobless” in Martinique right now. I worked a little bit as a tourist guide for cruises, and then thought about writing novels and e-books.

Being without any regular job does not mean that I am without any professional activity, as I am learning a large amount of new things and growing my “employability”. I am constantly trying new concepts and tools, sometimes without purpose: this is my personal “research & development” effort. It helped me greatly to build our home, to found “Aventura Parc” with my wife, to create websites, and so on. Internet is full of open information about anything, and practically you do not have an excuse not to learn by yourself, haven’t you?

I was wandering in many directions, procrastinating and not finishing anything – except publishing my wife’s e-books on Amazon. But for a few days, all things seem to converge towards one point: becoming a “YouTubeur”. I made this mistake with purpose because I would like to express myself on YouTube, speaking in French, my native language.

So why write about that in an English blog?

Well, I commit myself to writing in English because it is my way of thanking all the people who freely put their knowledge at disposal on internet ; and it is mostly in english language. Furthermore, I try to improve my “english” skills.

For more than ten years I used to organize and facilitate team building events – mostly in Romania, in Romanian –  and I think it is my turn now to explain on short movies how to facilitate such events. I would like to reach francophone people as it is easier for me to explain myself in front of a camera in my mother tongue, and also because there is a need to explain all this stuff: most of professional in this area try to complicate things, and I would like to make it simple.

So the idea is: “Team Building Facile”, and I will try to transform this idea into something real and, maybe, use it to reinvent myself and create a new job for me, here, or anywhere in the world… That would be my next dream!

As an important tool for my future activity as a “YouTubeur”, I decided – after carefully reviewing and trying many options – to use the free version of the “Lightworks” software, in order to edit my videos and I would like to share with you a great tutorial in order to insert a graphic (a “png” file) into your clip. Look at that:

I also managed to create a kind of brand throughout my social networks accounts and I will keep you posted.

Wish me good luck and see you soon on YouTube!

I have to leave now since I am cooking for my son 🙂

We self-published an e-guide on Martinique!

I am excited to announce that, after months of visiting and photographing awesome locations, going on trails, writing and editing, Cristina and I finally self-published an innovative, extensive and responsive tourist e-guide about Martinique.

So, if you do not know where to spend the next holidays, why not pay a visit for a few days to this beautiful Caribbean island? All its treasures are waiting for you!

– Doctor, I think I’ve lost my goal in life…

– OK, well. When and where did you lose it?
– I do not exactly remember that, Doctor. Sorry. I think I lost it somewhere among other things while I was busy surviving in my new environment.
– Hmm… Well, it is not so common to lose one’s goal in life… Maybe we could find another for you. So, what was it anyway?

some humans in New York…

A couple of weeks ago we had the chance to go to NYC for a few days. Well, everything has already been written about the “big apple” and frankly we were impressed as all tourists coming by are when they see all the skyscrapers, museums and the “melting pot” of all colors and cultures present in the streets and avenues.

I love my wife!

LOVE ANNIVERSARY – When I turned on my computer today, I was wondering what to write about on this blog… I knew it is a special day for my wife and I but, as usual, I wanted to keep it “quiet” and discreet on our 21st wedding day anniversary: go together to a restaurant, eat something good, mostly just looking in each other’s eyes and contemplating “solid” and true love…

Thich Nhat Hanh… my zen master…

SPIRITUALITY – I like to think I tend to be a “Man” described by Rudyard Kipling in his famous poem “If…”. So to be brief I try to be flexible, to adapt, and make my own opinion about things and people.

But some of them really influenced my thinking and well-being as a human. First I discovered Buddhism reading the drama of a French actress called Véronique Jannot. Her autobiography, called “Trouver le chemin” in French (“Find the path” in english) was striking and turned me upside down as I learned all the difficulties and ordeals she had in her life, finding in the end the power to be happy and truthful thanks to Tibetan Buddhism.