Learn to share with 'the public'

In the Netherlands, a politician got a reprimand from the prime minister about the fact that he put a photo on Twitter. This photo was taken in a 'closed' meeting room. Although the photo does not display anything that should not be displayed, the prime minister was 'not amused'.
Later that same day, the politician put another photo on Twitter that was taken from his own office (with the remark that he was was not limited in his own office).

The politician that did this (Maxime Verhagen) is using the web to let his 'followers' know what he is doing and gives some insight in his daily work. This is (apparently) very uncommon for (dutch) politicians. With Twitter, he is also communicating with people that he would not speak otherwise. It is very easy to make a reply on a tweet of Maxime Verhagen or ask him a question using Twitter (and he responds most of the time). Imagine that you would otherwise have to write an e-mail (if you would know the e-mail address of course) or letter to make a simple remark (if you would know what the politician is working on) or ask a simple question. That seems to have a larger threshold than just a simple line in Twitter.

Via my Google Reader, I also follow the blog of Barack Obama. I am interested in how he uses the 'modern' ways to communicate with the public. He makes sure that there are regular blogposts, regular video's (placed on YouTube instead of some official government site) and he invites people to give their opinion via the web. His own website or the website of the White House gives a much more dynamic and personal feeling than for example an official site of the government or of the Prime minister in the Netherlands (I have to admit that I was surprised to see the option to an RSS feed!).

I think most politicians can learn something from Barack Obama and Maxime Verhagen about sharing with 'the public'!

Brain training may not be Tell Sell, but it is a bit amazing discovery

In the Intermediair of this week, I read an article about speed reading.

The article tells about someone who (because of his dyslexia) developped new ways of reading / learning more effective.
Apparently a 'normal' person will read between the 200 and 240 words per minute. The record is set to 3850 words per minute (by Sean Adam).

At the end of the first day of the course, most had doubled their reading speed! The second day of the course was spend on excersises for the brain and mindmapping techniques.

I discussed this topic with a few collegues. One of them followed a (kind of) similar course in the past and was rather sceptical about it (he claimed it will work for text that is written in a specific way). Based on the article I read (and the positive feedback of the participants), I again was sceptical about the course that my collegue had followed in the past.

I would be very curious to see if I could raise my reading speed within 1 day!

Anyone else with experience on this topic?

Kabouter Plop

Yesterday, I went to the latest Kabouter Plop show with my children (5 years and almost 3 years old). They really like the Kabouter Plop movies and short films and also like the show in the theater. For the previous shows, we went to the Luxor theater in Rotterdam. This show was (at the time we booked anyway) not shown there unfortunately, so we went to Theater aan de Schie in Schiedam.
Finding the theater was less easy than finding the Luxor theater (you really cannot miss that one). It turned out to be inside some kind of city complex where also a library is situated. You really need to use the directions given on the website of the theater in order to find the theater (and also in order to find the parking garage) if you are not familiar with the surroundings.

But luckily we found a parking place just behind the entrance of the theater (and luckily we parked in a correct space, contrary to some other visitors who had a nice yellow paper behind the wipers of their car).

For the interested ones, here is a small preview:

http://subsites.studio100.be/plop/index2.php