If you want to know your past life,
look into your present condition;
if you want to know your future,
look into your present action.

____________________________________

sites 2c http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/peaceday/poem/4poem.asp#155

foto – tree in Bello. xmas 09.

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/libvers.htm

As cunning as a cow.

http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=557

foto – cows across the road in ulmarra dec 09

__________________________________

sites 2c http://quotations.about.com/od/specialdays/a/newyear1.htm

fotos – retravision grafton dec 09 week before xmas

Five Senses

Now my five senses
gather into a meaning
all acts, all presences;
and as a lily gathers
the elements together,
in me this dark and shining,
that stillness and that moving,
these shapes that spring from nothing,
become a rhythm that dances,
a pure design.

Judith Wright.

_______________________________

sites 2c http://quotations.about.com/od/specialdays/a/newyear2.htm

http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/33279-Judith-Wright-Five-Senses

foto – xmas 09 in bello.

You may already have conducted an inventory of what you had accomplished this year.

Well, if you have not done so, don’t worry. Put a note in your diary or notebook and put it out of your mind for the moment.

The rest of this year is for you to renew yourself for the new year, may be see a good movie or do something that gives you great joy.

If you are religiously inclined, this is the joyful season of Christmas. Go through the spiritual exercise, sing Christmas carols, connect with the God of the Universe.

Early in January, carry out that inventory and list out the things you want to do, and do well, in 2010.

You need to focus on all the important things you want to carry out in order to progress further in your chosen career.

You may want to check the article “11 Ways to Gain Clarity” by Steve Pavlina early next year.

Enjoy your holidays. And here is to your career development success for 2010.

Pascalis Claudius
Strategic-Human-Resource-blog

I tell my colleagues, that we can meet for a coffee in 7 min because I need to finish an email and the elevator needs 2:40 to take me downstairs. I still have 17 min before going to the next meeting. And if the meeting starts at 10:00 I will be there at 9:59 just in case. Of course I will be alone, waiting for everybody else for another 10 min, but well, I have some German prejudices to defend.

One of these prejudices is about precision. Not only with numbers but also with words (which might also be a result of the language) Or the language is the result of the precision, who knows. And for my job this is actually of great help.

As inventory manager for contextual and behavioral targeting I work a lot with keywords. Each day we define, revise, evaluate, create and alter our contextual channels to meet traffic requirements for our clients both in terms of quality and quantity . Each keyword needs to be representative for just one channel, for one target group, but sometimes you get sucked into the channel without noticing it. Working on astrology, you totally forget that prediction as such is not only for clairvoyants. Or that tickets might be valid for flights and theater, which are not necessarily the same target group. And this is precisely what targeting is about: allocating the most precise keyword to a predefined topic as a form of defining this topic.

To define a topic you first need to understand the topic. Of course it is much easier to find keywords for flight tickets than for eye surgery or car tuning (for me at least). So before going out for the keywords you have to prepare: do research, go to websites talking about the topic, spend time to understand how others talk about it, learn as much as possible about the topic and about neighboring (but different) topics to be able to make distinctions.

And suddenly it dawned on me: targeting is not so much about precision. It is actually about listening. Listening to what others have to say and how they say it even though it is not your primary point of interest. And then finding out that it is not as uninteresting as you thought. Or that even though it is the most boring thing in the world, they have a point: it sounds like it is interesting to them.

So next time you float around in the internet looking for interesting stuff, pick a random topic and try to find out as much as possible about it. In the worst case you will have an anecdote to tell on your next coffee meeting (in 7 min), and in any case you will have broadened your horizon just a little bit more.

Any unusual topics you had to research recently and found kind of interesting?

Every now and then I see an article that I know immediately will inspire some grad student to write a paper.  This story is one of them.  It concerns Gap stores in greater Vancouver and a new program called Sprize.  Here is how the company explains the program:

1. shop  Make a purchase at a participating Vancouver area Gap store. Don’t worry, if you forget your card, we can look up your Sprize account using your email address or phone number.
2. relax  After 45 days, if the prices on the items you purchased have dropped, we will automatically credit the difference to your Sprize account. Waiting 45 days helps make sure you get the best price.
3. sprize  Come back and use your SprizeMoney on whatever you want in our stores. We’ll send an email saying your account has been credited with SprizeMoney. SprizeMoney is valid for 1 year to spend at participating Gap stores.

So this seems — from the customer’s point of view — a fairly simple program.  You can buy with some confidence that you will get the Gap’s best price and you have to do nothing more than show a card to register the purchase.  In particular, you don’t have to watch sales prices and schlepp back in with your receipt.  As pointed out on Fast Company (Beige Rage: Gap Sale Tool Justifies Crazy Khaki Cravings, Dec 18), Orbitz does something similar with airfare and hotel reservations (although the refund from Orbitz does not have to be spent with Orbitz) and argues such programs allow The Gap or Orbitz to attract bargain hunting consumers.  Fast Company then goes on to link the program to behavioral economics:

And the real genius stuff lies just a layer below. The Gap is encouraging impulse buying, by eliminating one of the chief downsides–the possibility of paying too much. And, since your Sprize money can only be spent at The Gap, they’re making it more likely that you’ll spend it on a small, high-margin, non-sale item. (As Polaine points out, Sprize credits feel like free money, so you’re probably less careful with it.)

Finally, the program encourages repeat customers, who have always been the golden geese of retail. What retailers used to do with in-store credit cards with built-in discounts, The Gap is now doing with a clever hack of consumer behavior. …

How soon until we seen behavioral economists trucked into retail chains, to work on incentive programs and purchasing patterns? Or have we seen the first fingerprints already?

Behavioral economics is the flavor of the month in economics which is why Fast Company brings it up.  However, it is not what interests me about the article.  Over in Operations Management the flavor of the month is “strategic customers.” This line of work takes an established OM problem (such as managing inventory, pricing, and discounting of a fashion item) and looks at what happens when customers can anticipate the firm’s actions.  Thus while a traditional model would assume a random number of customers just shows up and buys at full price.  Contemporary models assume that customers weigh buying now (and being certain of getting the good) with waiting and hoping to get it at a discount.  The Sprize mechanism eliminates this choice.  A customer should buy the good now because she is assured of getting the discount should the price be cut.  Of course, if everyone buys at full price, there should be little or no stock left over and hence little reason to discount.

This is where the comparison with Orbitz’s program falls apart.  Orbitz doesn’t set airfare or hotel rates.  That’s up to American Airlines and Marriott.  But The Gap controls the decision to discount. The question here is how the Sprize program affects initial inventory and pricing decisions as well discounting decisions.  Note that if the program gets more people to buy at full price, there is a reason to order more upfront.  Also, suppose that at the start of the season The Gap has 100 units of some sweater.  At the end of the season, suppose that 99 have been sold to Sprize participants and one remains.  Should it discount the last sweater?  The item has been popular and a modest discount will clear out the last one. However, that discount must now also be applied to all 99 earlier sales.  It is much better to let that last item rot in the back room of the store.  Ignoring any benefit of inducing return visits to the store (which I admit could be significant), the Sprize program should limit how many items get discounted at The Gap.  Indeed, a Sprize member should expect that she will only get a refund on items that most Gap shoppers thought were just too ugly to buy.

WOW is all I could say when I saw this grey cardigan @ INVENTORY. Very basic, simple but eligant cardigan one of the best looking cardigans that I’ve seen.

In the words of INVENTORY blogger Owen Parrott:

The darker melange grey lambswool is a pretty basic colour, but the perfectly sized orange leather buttons make it something more. A tab collar isn’t something that you see on a sweater very often and while it looks a bit off buttoned up here, once you’ve got it on and have it undone the brown leather combined with the shawl collar it wouldn’t look out of place at all. The slightly tapered ribbed cuffs and waist mean the sweater is going to keep its shape nicely.

This issue covers some of visvim’s 10 spring/summer collection, Apolis Activisim and Rapha, Gitman Bros.

INVENTORY

“Interesting stuff, I encourage everyone to read it.”

A pause in the night,
while he sleeps,
perhaps to dream our lives refreshed,
and we wait for his eyes to open,
we wait for him to rise reborn–
alert to all events,
his lover sings quietly her lullaby.

Great singularity does his thing,
as shining jewels align,
and i go inward,
taking inventory,
gathering all together–
to watch for signs,
as my love sings softly in the night.

On through the dark we go,
on through the holding time,
held in quiet kindness,
for this period is solemn,
an occasion to rest–
i pay attention how i can,
absorbed in love’s easy melody.

Traditionally speaking, inventory is the product available for sale at any given moment. In the online marketing industry, the product for sale is the advertisement space, hence for distinction it is called ad inventory. The ad glossary website offers the following definition for ad inventory: “The number of ad spaces available for sale on a we site during a certain time frame. Determined buy taking into consideration the number of advertisement on a page, the number of pages with advertisements and the number of page views during a specific time frame.” However, as the online marketing industry evolves, the definition needs to be broadened a bit to embrace more spaces than just the advertisement on a page. While traditionally the ad space is linked to a banner or text/URL placement on a page, a slide ad attached to a page, or other embedded content.

Today, more than ever, advertisement and offers are also displayed through other means. Email marketing and twitter marketing are examples, where the offer is not directly linked to one fixed space on a website any more. Other examples are toolbars and other softwares which offer advertisement in form of splash pages upon opening the software or banners on the software interface (the number of views depends very much on the software usage), toolbars which offer an additional service (e.g. cash back services informing about new coupons), or offers displayed independently. All these new forms of advertisement spaces are part of the online inventory which can be used and should be optimized taking into account the needs of the advertiser (most accurate placement to ensure highest possible ROI) and the needs of the end user (no spamming, no irrelevant messages, respect for user privacy).

For those solutions which are not bound to one specific website, the inventory is not static, but it depends on the website that the user is visiting (usually in the form of contextual targeting) or on the websites she visited in the past (as in the case of behavioral targeting, or interest-based advertising). Theoretical this means that the entire internet is part of the ad inventory. In fact, this potential inventory is restricted both through strategic decisions as well as through technological constraints.

Technological constraints

If the ad inventory is based on categorizing the content of websites, then it needs to be able to read those websites. This is not always possible. Usually only text content can be understand by different softwares. So flash based websites are not part of the inventory, just as they are not understood (and thus, not ranked) by google. The same goes for any other picture-dense setup with little or no text which can give a clue about what the website is about. The other main technological reason is not purely technological, though related. It is important to respect the user’s privacy at all times! This will often mean that the technology used to ensure the broadest ad inventory possible needs to have built-in checks and balances to ensure that no sensitive data is stored or shared. As inventory manager and analyst of course I would love to have more data available, but from a user point of view it is utterly important to work with a minimum of information and abstract even that minimum to a level where you can’t reconstruct the history of one particular person.

Strategic constraints

The remaining websites are potential inventory, however not all of them are interesting in terms of targeting. Some websites simply do not show a sufficient relevant content for advertisers (e.g. newspapers, religious institutions, political discussion forums – this depends on the needs of the advertisers and their ultimate target group). Other websites might be excluded, because using them would interrupt the user experience and ultimately have a more negative effect than necessary (e.g. showing offers while users are on facebook, checking their emails, etc). So at best these sites are also excluded from the ad inventory to ensure that users do not get annoyed unnecessarily.

Characteristics

The inventory described above is thus directly dependent on the categories that the advertiser chooses to use. Using contextual or behavioral targeting outside the site-bound advertisement space forces you to decide whom you want to talk to. Whom, not in the sense of what person, but in the sense of “person that is interested in x”. If you want to sell flight tickets, you might want to talk to people that have recently surfe on travel related websites. If you have a stop smoking campaign, other websites are important for you. This derives into three different characteristics of the independent inventory:

• Independent ad inventory is flexible in its size: by creating new categories, new advertisement place can easily be created. Similarly the space can be reduced by inactivating categories and thus excluding related sites from the traffic generation (e.g. you might want to use the category ski holiday only during certain month during the year).
• Independent ad inventory can be refined and broadened as needed. Whenever offers are very specific and do not convert well enough in a broader category, a specific smaller category can be created to be sure to target the correct audience. Of course this reduces the number of impressions received by the offer, but as long as this entails higher overall revenue, the increased quality is appreciated by advertisers (higher conversion rate) and users (less unnecessary offers) alike.
• Independent ad inventory can be shifted if necessary. If thematically close categories perform very different, it is possible to shift part of the traffic from the lower performing category to the more successful one. This ensures a higher rentability of the entire inventory. For example, Flights has an ecpm of 10.00, while Hotels only has an ecpm of 2.00. In this case it is possible to adjust the traffic as to broaden the audience for flights at the expenses of hotels. This has the result of lowering the ecpm of Flights, as now the target is not as narrow any more. But as the imps increase more than the ecpm lowers, the goal of higher total revenue can still be achieved.

So, summarizing, inventory managent is the creation and optimization of the categories needed to generate the appropriate traffic. While traffic managers usually optimize the performance of individual campaigns, the inventory department analyzes and optimizes the total amount of traffic, the ecpm, and the traffic sources in order to increase the overall revenue of the company.

Here’s the full December issue in PDF format for easy download. I’ll have the graphs and updates for you here daily as well.

There’s no doubt she was out with one of them and went further than she meant, but if you make your bed you must lie on it.

1921 A. P. Herbert House by River

foto – bilambil cottage dec 2008

Why do you also have an insurance policy for your business? Your answer may vary on this issue because, because it is a necessity. Irrespective of where along this spectrum is the fact that a unifying, if you have the right to be paid for all that it says, and you want it to hurry forward the resolution. Just as we want to achieve? To this end, willing, you have an inventory of all your office building.

The IndependentInsurance Agents and Brokers of America offers this checklist
Article, in your inventory:

Buildings and other structures owned or leased
Furniture, equipment and accessories
Leased assets
Inventory
Money and securities
Records of claims
Improvements and changes to local
Machinery
Boilers
Data processing equipment and media, including computer
Valuable documents, books and documents
Movable property such as cars,Truck and Heavy Equipment
Dishes
Signs, fences and other property outside a building not
Intangible assets (goodwill, trademarks, etc.)

Use this checklist as a guideline to sit, but in reality, and plan what and how
Go in your inventory. Some of the tools you need, "ll, is a camera and / or
Camera and a pen and paper. I remember that you will be by then if
you stock up "ll want to write the serial number,Model number and make
Information model for objects, such as electronics, machinery, equipment, etc. Take care
inventory, the costs for all items and their replacement costs. This
will help the insurance adjuster to do if your complaint.

Gather all the documents you have, receipts, contracts, warranties and manuals, as these products not only contribute to lost property, but also
help establish ownership. Avaible when scanning these items, ifno copy of it.
Also, ideally, you could put this information into a database for quick and easy
acess. Finally, when you have finished copies (regardless of the means of your final
Report (except on video tape and written notes or on a CD) and save the crop
Information away from your office. Will not help you with this
Information, if you lose, if you lose your office. With everything you do
should have rest and againto do what you do with the success
Knowing that you and your ofice are prepared for the unexpected, says success!

The Vegetable Air

CATHY SONG

Like the cockroach, the displaced

have crawled through the cracks

and selected for themselves

an agreeable niche.

A place to start from scratch.

They thrive in the vegetable air.

You wonder how you’ll survive,

unfit, unable to work.

Lacking the predatory skills,

you’ve stayed in the trees,

a dreamer, all your life,

even now wanting to believe

a change of scenery

will get you back on your feet.

A brief hiatus in the vegetable air.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=172140

foto – vegie garden in bilambil december 2008

In a job landscape where employers are likely to Google you before an interview, creating a search friendly career profile is important. You are a brand.  Like a brand, you must not only perfect your product but market it.

The economic recovery is moving at a slower pace than anyone expected and every job is a potential pot of gold. For every one position open there are potentially 20-100 applicants. What is a job seeker to do?

Below are few ideas on getting out there where employers can find you.

Submit articles to publications in your field. Professional magazines and journals are always a good place to showcase your writing and talent. Ensure that your topics are well researched and of current interest. Give yourself the freedom to explore topics from a unique prospective and be prepared to explain how your article will be different from previous authors. Writing for these organizations adds an extra sense of expertise to your portfolio. As well, you may tap into a network that may have been closed off to you before.

Volunteer for a Local Charity or Professional Group Volunteering is a great way to fill in time gaps on your resume. Seek volunteer positions that are relevant to the type of work you want to pursue. If you have a particular skill ask about being able to offer free workshops or seminars. This provides you with an opportunity to keep your skills fresh while helping others. Volunteer organizations also provide leadership opportunities. One day you could be a volunteer, the next treasurer or board member.

Develope a Searchable Online Portfolio

Attend Professional Events This should be a no-brainer. However, most job seekers rarely attend the meaningful events in their community. Events sponsored by local Chambers of Commerce, Rotary Clubs, and other professional societies are the prime place to rub elbows with the HIRERS. Attending these events lets employers know that you have your finger on the pulse of your industry and that you are able to handle yourself around other industry professionals.

Public Speaking Offering yourself as a free motivational speaker can do wonders for your professional profile. Start by speaking at local school career days and other community events. As your reputation spreads, begin to offer your speaking services to more industry specific organizations. Who knows you may be asked to join a Speakers Bureau.

Start a Blog, Online Newsletter, or Publication This has the easiest way to get noticed online. Online publications are easy for employers to search for online. They also provide a better look at you as a person and potential employee. Ensure that your online publication is well written, proofread, and of current industry interest. No employer wants to read about your daily eating habits or what is grinding your gears. Monitor your online presence to ensure that there is nothing there that would turn off a potential employer

In case you are wondering what to get for that special someone and suddenly have an epiphany to call us for the perfect gift, be sure to do it soon!

As of December the 17th we will be on holidays hours. Our modified hours are as follows:

Dec 17th   -   Closed (For Inventory)
Dec 18th   -   Closed (For Inventory)

Dec 21st   -   Open (8:30 – 5:30)
Dec 22nd -   Open (8:30 – 5:30)
Dec 23rd  -   Open (8:30 – 5:30)
Dec 24rd to Jan 4th  -   Closed

And if we don’t see you, have a happy holiday season, and all the best to you and your family for the coming year!

~The CinequipWhite Family

http://www.teachingperspectives.com/

The Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) was developed by Dan Pratt and John Collins, both of whom are associated with the Department of Educational Studies at UBC. The website provides a 45-question survey that allows you to analyze the strenghts of your beliefs, intentions and actions in each of five teaching perspectives: Transmission, Apprenticeship, Developmental, Nurturing, Social Reform. Most teachers find that they have one dominant and one recessive perspective. The presentation of results from your completed survey also assist you in identifying disconnects between the strengths of your beliefs, intentions and actions within each perspective.

It is important to note that Pratt and Collins don’t favour one perspective over another. They recognize that each perspective is valid and can work well, given the right context and the teacher’s understanding of her/his own strengths.

Many small business owners have a gross misconception about what a bank will do with you when you are in default on a loan.

Once you are put into the workout department, which has a variety of different names to describe their liquidation process. “Special assets” is the one I like the best… you are going to be liquidated, it is merely a question of how and when and what the yield will be.

The great misconception I see and the enormous frustration which comes out of this misconception, is the belief in the heart of the small business owner that his new plan will turn his business around, and if only the bank will give him more time he will succeed and then be able to pay back the bank.

The banks position on this issue is the longer they let the defaulting client stay in business, the more erosion of inventory, accounts receivable and other meaningful collateral, so time is the banks enemy once the borrower is in default.

The bank is not interested or willing to hear about one more plan for success. They are not motivated by the empty promise that if given more time they will be able to succeed and pay back the loan. They do not believe it and it is not in their best interest, once the decision has been made, to take their loss and liquidate the collateral as rapidly as possible.

Additional guaranties work, additional collateral works, a self liquidation plan works, a sale of assets work, a foreclosure auction works, keeping you in business longer does not work at all.

Yet I see all too often that this is the gist of the survival plan small business owners present to the bank with great expectations that it will be received well and supported by the bank. They will not.

It will not work.

There are better strategies that enhance the opportunity for a small business to successfully navigate a defaulting situation, knowing the bank is intending to liquidate you for their benefit.

Call us to discuss your situation, we have a better plan.

Call Norm at 413-584-2581 he will arrange a no obligation teleconference for us to review your situation and discuss your options.

December 16, 2009 – Davison, Mi.- HankGraffDavison.com, one of the nation’s top sellers of new Chevrolets and used vehicles, today announced the launch of it’s newest domain, UsedCarsLapeer.com. The domain will allow used car buyers in the Lapeer area access to one of the largest and most diverse used vehicle inventories in Michigan. HankGraffDavison.com’s website does not need to be navigated to access the inventory. When someone searches- “used cars Lapeer” and lands at usedcarslapeer.com, they will find they are one click away from accessing the vast Davison used inventory. Matt Ferguson, one of Hank Graff Davison’s used car managers comments that “ … as the number of dealerships is reduced, more time is being spent in online searching to eliminate drive time to remaining inventories. Recognizing the need for our customers to quickly find our inventory and bypass navigating complicated websites is our goal in developing a network of specialized, target sites”. HankGraffDavison.com is the premiere home base website for Hank Graff Chevrolet of Davison, Michigan.

     Well, when my wife said that she wanted to move to North Carolina cuz she wanted to get away from the cold winters, I thought it will be a great time for me to focus on writing and performing comedy.  However, as I’m trying to get my foot in the door here in NC, it’s not paying the bills.  So I’ve applied for several jobs.  Jobs that I’m very qualified for, and jobs I’ve never had any experience in.  I’ve applied for jobs ranging from Manager jobs, to cashier at a retail store.  And the job I finally got a call back on is taking inventory at various stores in the area.  Not exactly my first choice, but I think I can count stuff.  Something I learned by watching the Count on Sesame Street when I was a kid!  “One!  Ah, Ah, Ah, One small paycheck!  Ah,Ah, Ah!”  I’m actually looking forward to my new job though, cuz applying for jobs every day is exhausting!  Plus, with this job, it gives me an opportunity to work up the ladder rather quickly.  It’s not a full time job, so I can still focus a lot of time on comedy, which I’m sure is going to take off for me within this next year.  So, tomorrow I start.  And if I don’t see you before, Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  I’ll be counting underwear and stuff! 

This blog was brought to you today by the number 8 and the letter P.

http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/sky-12-tf/

There is a land where treasures shine
Deep in the dark unfathomed mine

Caroline Carleton

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/song-for-australia/

foto – ulmarra december 09

I work in an online marketing company leading the team responsible for our online advertisement inventory. That means we segment our audience into different channels and try to deliver the best offer to each person. We work both with contextual and behavioral segmentation, which means we analyze what people look at (like google does with the sponsored ads) or what they were most interested in in the past. We try to figure out what a person is interested in at this very moment. This means of course, that the segmentation is not static. A person that yesterday was interested in cheap flights to Rome, today might be interested in books. And this is something our partners (and even our own traffic managers) sometimes like to forget. We are segmenting audiences, which means people. The traffic generated within a specific channels is entirely dependent on the interest of real people. People who search for things, surf on the topic and thus generate the traffic. So it is not computers that do the traffic, nor is it something that can be incremented indefinitely. For each segment there is a natural limit: the maximum amount of people interested in the topic.

What we do now in inventory management is to define those segments, analyze where there are possible synergies and shifting traffic from one channel to another to optimize the revenue. But we do not change the interest of our users. We figure that somebody buying a flight might be interested in also renting a car, so we can expand the segments “car rental” a little into the segment “flights” if needed. But we cannot make more people interested in “car rental” just for the sake of it. There always needs to be a connection to what we actually want.

Believe it or not, I have learned something from this for my daily life. Because some way or the others we all do inventory management when building relationships, talking to people, making connections. And we all can shift the inventory if needed, addressing different topics with different people, but we cannot expand the inventory indefinitely. Because not everybody is interested in everything, and sometimes a niche segment with a limited amount of interested people is just more profitable for ourselves (in terms of conversation, contact, sharing time, hobby,…) than when we expand it. So here are my personal highlights I learned through my job as inventory expert.

1. Try to understand what the other person is interested in (behavioral) or what s/he wants to talk about at this moment (contextual). Once you understand where the other person stands, it will be easier for you to respond. Important: this does not mean you have to respond exactly the way the other person expects you to do, but you will be able to judge way better the reaction you get and how you could phrase your own experiences/perceptions/wishes.
2. There are some topics, where the audience is broader than for others. If you are on the company party of your spouse, you might want to talk generically about your work in online marketing. On your own company party you can get into depths about the specific targeting technology you are working on. If you find out that your spouses colleagues have the same background as you, you can still retarget your conversation to a more segmented level.
3. Remembering people can give you the chance to go more specific the next time you meet them. Write on their business card what most impressed you about the conversation. Try to associate their name with the topic you talked about (or any other mental trick you can use to remember). You will be able to get to the interesting parts much quicker the next time you meet. If you remember the shared background, the chance is high that your counterpart will remember quickly as well.
4. There are some segments that just don’t work well abroad. The channel pet insurance works well in Germany, because it is mandatory to have one. Hence people are interested. In Spain this channel sucks, because nobody would ever ensure a cat or a dog. Likewise there are topics that run well in one country and might not run well in others. You can’t know in advance, but once you find out, keep the knowledge.
5. Just because you are part of one segment, it doesn’t mean that your counterpart is interested in the same things. This does not mean s/he is boring. Just different. Move on, or try to get into her/his shoes to find some synergy.

After all, we all segment and target the whole day. But it is good to think about how we do it, so we can do it better in the future. Another goal to go for.

PS: Rereading my post, probably any training on how to talk to people delivers the same conclusions. But hey, that is just not my channel