So I spent today in that special place called project management as I am responsible for openBC product development and I must say having reviewed several dozen strategies for creating prioritizing feature development I am no closer to finding a good solution so roll on Oktoberfest where I am anticipating drowning my development worries temporarily in large quantities of excellent beer and failing that I might instead drown one or two of the sales people of project management tools that do not make their products multi lingual or cost effective.

I am looking for a good solution for on line priority management if anyone out there knows of one :-)

One of the things that I have always enjoyed is finding diverse cultural things in either unexpected places of in unexpected amounts.

For instance I remember being delighted by finding an Indian restaurant in Tokyo where the staff all spoke fluent Japanese with a delightful Indian accent.

Lats night we had a great time enjoying Dim Sum at Man Wah restaurant on the Reeper Bahn in Hamburg with Mahesh from India, Xinyu from China, Anju from Switzerland and Maria from Australia.

There is a kind of power in diversity in taking the time to explore new combinations of the worlds rich heritage of people and experiences which keeps me wanting to grow openBC globally.

A simple diner with friends is enhanced by the crossing and mixing of distinct cultures and becomes the basis for a new understanding.

They say that moving office is up there with divorce and death as far as stressful events are concerned.

It is a testament to our team and our business model that we moved today without incident or undue stress.

Wireless LAN technology external web hosting and modular office design are all a boon to modern businesses!

Just came back from sunny Majorca where we held our first openBC networking University for our country managers and select super connectors.

The key thing that came through for me is both the fact and the importance of diversity in our network to the way we move forward in different regions.

Peoples values are very different from nation to nation and the strategies for building functioning communities are consequently varied.

There are both cultural and behavioral differences that show up, for instance I just read in New Scientist an article that says that, when faced with an image with a focal object on a varied  back ground, Asian people tend to focus more on the background and European people on the object.

I have know for years that I am more sensitive to context than to content and I suspect this is related to the above and I know it also means that I am more sensitive to how people contact and try to connect  me on the network. I am very leery of people who offer to connect and do not give a unique reason for making that connection.

More pictures are available on Flickr; just check out the tag "openbcmallorca0905"

I stumbled across this interesting research report conducted by Wildbit, a web solutions company. It is refreshing to read a balanced view about a number of diverse social networks, including openBC. I found the references to openBC interesting, especially the parts about how you can control who you connect to and the degrees of separation tool, showing how far a person is away from you. This research has some noteworthy insights and I am always on the look out for feedback and new research in this field.

So I am now a denizen of the Fair city of Hamburg and I have to say I am very inpressed by the level of art and culture here and am looking forward to spending more time in this little metropolis.

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a play "The man without a past" "Der Mann ohne Vergangenheit" the level of innovation and the quality of the performances were superb.

I have to say that without our site I wouldn't have been able to so quickly find people to accompany  me  as though I have  been in Hamburg before I  have not really spent any time  on my own  recogniscense  and  it was great to be able to  reach out  to people here thorugh my network so easily.

I also had a great meal at Vapiano and discovere that the Maitre'd is also an openBC member.

It just shows me that the world is getting smaller.

At 6.30pm last night we all left the office and took a 10 minute walk to the chic Hamburg restaurant Lilienthal. The openBC team was invited by Lars to an evening of fine food and wine.  It was a divine summers evening and the atmosphere was bubbling with chatter and laughter. 4 delicious courses were served, with an option of veal or wolf fish as a tantalising main course. Speeches were done by Lars and Bill and the evening carried on well into the night. You could say the 4 courses turned into 5/6 courses if coffees and nightcaps were counted! Thank you Lars for a magnificent evening!