There are many faiths but also many attitudes and this one hit me right between the eyes. Please take away what you can from this video. I find one or two uncomfortable statements which unfortunately do ring true. OK he does take an absolutist position but I find the lack of waffle very refreshing.

The Weird Connection Between Observer Effect and MASS Manipulation. Here’s another off-beat but profound observation on our relationship with ourselves.

PROTOCOL AT MEETINGS – THE BUSINESS CARD

Anyway, my topic today is business cards. We go along to a business conference or personal development conference or some such. We meet a person and strike up quite a good conversation. Our conversation is interrupted because it is time for the next lecturer and we are corralled into sitting down again so we gulp our coffee down and carry on the day.

We may have said to the person that we were speaking to ‘we must carry on this conversation sometime’ but as there are so many people around that we do not bump into them again and simply forget.

The elephant in the room is this, the lack of a business card.

I say to someone ‘we must keep in touch. Do you have a card?’. They say apologetically, ‘no I don’t have one’ or ‘I’ve given away my last one’ or ‘let me scrabble among my papers to try and find something with my email address on’.

They finally say in desperation, ‘do you have a pen?’

After the conference you discover some scribbled email address which you can hardly read and forget who it was anyway. A potential learning and sharing opportunity comes to nothing.

I cannot understand how in this day and age this sort of thing can happen. If everyone bought business cards with them to a conference the benefits of the occasion could be easily multiplied.

Let’s say you have exchanged cards with say five people. You have wisely written on the back what the topic was, for example ‘quantum entanglement’ or ‘ 5G’. A few days later you call them and say, ‘do you remember me’. To your surprise the other person responds in the affirmative as you then say to them ‘when shall we get together and have a chat’.

It is unlikely that they live down the road so it’s going to be a phone chat or a zoom chat. You can then carry on to your heart’s content.

Does this not make sense? Why do we not do it. You can get 100 cards for say £20 and they will last you a couple of years. Is it not part of being professional

When I speak to people I prefer they use my mobile number and not my rapidly ‘becoming redundant’ landline. The reason is that there is an app on my phone that records by default all conversations, so if someone gives me a telephone number or name of the book I don’t have to reach for a pen and scribble but just play it back after the event. This takes a lot of stress from the conversation.

Finally, a local trader gets first prize for honesty.