With great sadness we have said goodbye to two family members over the past few weeks.

The first farewell was to to my Auntie Rita, who passed away after a long but brave battle with cancer. She is actually my Mum’s Auntie, but always felt like a Grandmother to me. A beautiful woman that everyone loved from the moment they met her.

My first memory of Rita is when, as kids, we visited her family in Wellington. She made us “Spiders”, a messy mix of Coke and Vanilla ice cream … and instantly became my hero.

My last memory of Rita is of a woman, her body failing her, surrounded by a family loving and adoring her. Not alone for even a minute, because that’s not how you send off someone you love. We all struggle at these moments, but somehow these times bring out stories forgotten and families come together in one unit of strength and compassion.

My enduring memory will be of a woman who dedicated herself to her family. She had a huge heart and always made you feel like the center of her universe. A wicked sense of humor made every visit a joy.

At her funeral I grinned quietly to myself, imagining her in heaven having a cup of tea with Nana and Grandad. At some point in the conversation Nana would ask her, “Did Stephen have the talk with you?” … “Of course,” she would say. :-)

Over my life I’ve had the honor of being with a lot of people in their final hours. What I have observed is that it’s so hard for families to let go. I believe it causes stress for the person leaving.

My message to them is simple. “You go when you’re ready … we love you and don’t want to say goodbye … but don’t worry, we’ll be ok … and of course we’ll see you again soon.”

The other family member we said goodbye to was our cat Millie, she left us yesterday. Now I know some people think to describe a pet as a family member is odd, maybe even offensive, but we have loved her for almost 19 years. She is family to me.

She has been there for almost half my life, through thick and thin … God, I swear sometimes she got in the way of Sonya and I separating as we couldn’t get past ‘who got the cat’.

Like Rita’s passing, Millie’s end brought back so many memories …

Like the time Sonya thought it would be funny to pick me up from work with Millie, then a kitten, sitting on the seat next to her. I thought it was lovely too - until she vomited … Sonya thought it was hilarious but I was covered from head to toe. Millie never traveled well.

She was the “hot cat!” Time and again people would get lulled into a false sense of security when patting her. We always suggested they stop … violence was just around the corner … Nine times out of ten they would continue with a smile and a flippant reply of, ”Don’t worry … I’m a cat person”.

She must have hated that comment because you could guarantee that moments later, the said cat person would be rushing around the room trying to shake the hot, savage cat from their arm. Funny how people have to learn for themselves … lots of people had her love etched into their arms.

Despite being our hot cat she was also one of the most affectionate animals I have ever known. Every time you came home, there she would be waiting for you on the driveway. I loved that. My kids I had to track down, but not Millie, she was my beautiful girl. I will miss that, I will miss her.

Goodbye Rita, Goodbye Millie … we love you both and will miss you until we next see you. Of course you live on in our memories which I hope you understand is the ultimate demonstration of our love for you … xxx

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Hi Everyone.

I have been away for a while, so am sorry for the absence of blog entries and thanks to those who wrote to see if everything is ok.

Basically it was so busy through Europe that attending to email from home took priority and work has been silly busy since our return.

The amazing thing is so much has been going on so hopefully I can catch up and share some of the stories soon.

Stay well and look after yourself

Stephen

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Danny and I are in Germany at present, Cologne (Köln) to be specific, visiting the Photokina trade fair. It’s been a whirlwind tour through Europe getting here. In 5 days we travelled through Las Angeles, London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne. What an incredible week of contrasts. The cities, especially Paris and Amsterdam, were incredible, so romantic with their old world charm and architecture, but with unfortunate modern contrasts. If Mc Donalds down the road from Notre Dame wasn’t enough, how about the accommodation we have in Cologne?

This is a table in the restaurant. The place is a haze of stale cigarette smoke and cooking oil, shelves adorned with stuffed toys and English country music. I’d never stay here again if it wasn’t for the wonderful people and good food. No one here speaks a lick of English but somehow we manage because they’re so nice. I guess that’s why the restaurant was full of ’suits’, people you would only see at the Stamford Plaza at home.

I laughed when I went to the restaurant bathroom however, as it was so modern I thought I must have entered a neighboring building.

Being someone that loves books, however, the greatest contrast was between the books I found at Notre Dame and the Louvre and the horrible, cheap, mass produced books being flogged by the truckload at Photokina.

Amongst precious items like the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo the books were equally precious artefacts contain our history, our stories, our culture.

You won’t find cover designs like these on a Queensberry album, but you’ll certainly see the same pride, sense of purpose and craftsmanship. At the end of the day it is the sharing and honouring of stories that is the goal.

I won’t include a photo of the “Photokina” books. Suffice to say most (not all) are tacky, cheap and don’t respect any level of craftsmanship or longevity. In fact so little craftsmanship is involved, we sat today stunned as a demonstrator haphazardly assembled a book with one hand as he held his mobile phone in the other.

I feel some excitement about these new books, as people are finally able to move their digital files off their hard drives onto paper so they can be appreciated. But important stories need to be honoured, treated with respect and enhanced through beautiful and timeless presentation, not jammed into the cheapest book available.

An amazing week none the less, fascinating and inspiring. I love life’s contrasts, it’s a wonderful reminder that we are all different.

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Earlier this week I was looking for space on my Laptop, and came across a very bloated Photobooth folder. When I reviewed the images contained I realized it’s not safe to leave your laptop unattended. My daughters forever the techno geek actors left my laptop full of images and movies like these …

LOL they made me laugh out loud. Thanks Girls

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Imagine if there was something that, if you did it consistently, would improve all relationships completely. Wouldn’t that be amazing? I don’t want to overstate it, but I think the concept of the “Umbrella of Rapport”, might just be that powerful, so please enjoy.

Today I came across some notes from an internal presentation that I did for our sales people last year on how they might improve their relationships, in this case with our clients. Part of it included this powerful idea. I don’t take credit for it, I first heard it from Tony Robbins, but I have added my own thoughts below.

In my opinion the price of entry in business today, includes a number of things without which you won’t even be considered.

These are:

- Being professional
- Being trustworthy and reliable
- Being educated
- Working hard
- Having a plan for success

To stand out you need to do even more, which is where rapport comes in.

SO WHAT IS THE UMBRELLA OF RAPPORT?

Essentially it’s the idea that you must base all your interactions around the idea of building and maintaining rapport … If you do, life is good, if you don’t you get wet.

Imagine for a moment that you aren’t in a negotiation, but you are the gentleman above walking with his partner. For both of you to share this umbrella he must assume the responsibility of keeping both of them dry, not just himself. Life is generally the same, in that we must all take responsibility for the rapport we have with others, and not take it for granted, because as soon as it’s broken relationships become strained.

So let’s look at this example from a few different perspectives. What if …

- One is party is small and the other big? Suddenly we have different needs, these needs must be honored.

- One person is walking fast while other wants to go slow or stop all the time. We all know that this can be really frustrating, but if it’s a fact we must allow for it: otherwise this is a guaranteed way for one of you to be wet and pissed off.

- Whose responsibility is it to maintain rapport, who is in control? The person holding the umbrella (running the negotiation) or the other person. The truth is we both need to take care.

- What if you must break rapport? Maybe the man decides he must run for the car. Maybe in life everyone’s needs can’t be met, or a difficult message needs to be delivered. Is breaking rapport justified and how might it be recovered?

- Who sets direction?

- Who must be the most careful?

Image how your marriage might be if your first goal was to love and honor that person, to build and maintain rapport before trying to meet your own needs. You would suddenly see that we travel at different speeds, have different needs, and both must work at communication.

Image if you “loved” your customers, or should I say treated them with love, making rapport the central goal first, before the sale? What would those relationships be like, what would being at work be like?

Sadly I think most of us are fairly careless when it comes to the rapport we have with others, myself included at times. We are successful often due to good luck rather than good management, and that’s what makes this concept so powerful.

If you dare to be different, if you dare to throw your heart into your relationships first, you stand out as a shinning light in comparison to everyone who’s just going through the motions.

Further Reading
Rapport in education
Rapport in sales
In dating … Please forgive me for this example :-)
Rapport with your coffee

I hope you enjoyed this, I’d love to hear your own stories and what you think, how about sharing below?

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Following on the theme of film making, here is a short film released at the Cannes 2008 Film Festival. A beautiful story of a blind man and his sign.

Sometimes, someone just has to help us to see …

Hat tip to The Pirate’s Dilemma

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I’m very proud tonight of my daughter Alex and her friend Elisha who have just finished a short film for a school project. Alex is 11, and they have made the whole movie below themselves. The challenge was to do an “Olympic Bid” on behalf of their chosen city Japan, and as part of that they did a news item.

Unfortunately this movie doesn’t do them justice. They were working with a poor green screen (for a start it was blue), poor lighting, and of course all the iterations of change to file format from opiginal capture with Videocue Pro, to iMovie and then moving to youtube means they have lost a lot of the original quality. LOL the scary part is I am sure the girls aspire to have a setup like that at www.geekbrief.tv

They did the whole thing from research, story writing, video capture, image selection, acting, editing etc themselves* .

Anyway, they may have a long way to go, but they have made an excellent effort. They love playing with the technology, are really comfortable in front of the camera and I think one day they want to be just like Happyslip Productions

Here is this weeks effort

One from last year

And one they did when Flat Stanley came to visit.

* They get me to hold the camera from time to time and act as the camera man for a little while, basically pushing the start and stop button on the software but on the whole this is them :-)

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It’s Sunday so I am having a day off with the family. By the time you read this we are probably enjoying Brunch with Mum, Dad and my sister Adrienne.

So please enjoy these images and the video below. Click on the images to go to there original websites.

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Well after less than a month with iPower I have moved web hosts due to their unreliability. I am sure this isn’t the way they are permanently but over the last week my site was down on a number of occasions for hours, and I have lost my confidence.

I am very sorry for the inconvenience caused … grrr.

One of the interesting observations is that they weren’t prepared to go into detail of what the technical issue was, just each time that “it was a router and it’s now fixed”. I guess companies do this due to being scared of looking bad, but left with no convincing information I was forced to move and protect myself. I wish them luck, but at least now I have some confidence that things will be even better than before.

Maybe they could have shown me that they care and there should have been a strategy to not made the situation worse.

Hopefully I have done my homework a little better this time, and have moved to Host Gator. I’ve read lots of positive reviews, they consistently rate high on “Best ISP” lists, and I love that they have an environment policy and plan.

I also really love how they present themselves giving a sense of size, combined with the promise of support from the owner … You can even chose for your support ticket to go to CEO Brent Oxley if you’re not satisfied with the help you’re getting. Anyway setup was easy, registration and getting started took less than 20 minutes, just like it should be.

Once again, thank you for your support of me, and I trust that all will be good now and in fact the site even feels a little faster.

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Ok … Truth is, I’m not really sure what this is about. But I love the artistry in this sort of work … powerful images and music, strangely moving in an odd sort of way.

Hat tip to EpicGirl

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