Why doesn't Oracle let me unsubscribe?

A few years ago, I did some work on an Oracle database. Due to this, I was 'known' in the mailing list of Oracle (both hardcopy mailings and e-mail).

Since already a while, I do not work on anything of Oracle. However, I still receive e-mails with newsletters or invitations. So how can I get out of the mailing list of Oracle?

At the bottom of each e-mail, there is a sentence that you can unsubscribe to these e-mails. By clicking on this, a new e-mail is generated with a prefilled e-mail address of Oracle. Too bad that the link will not pre-fill the subject. You have to make sure yourself that the correct subject is filled (UNSUBSCRIBE ).

I think I have send this 'unsubscribe-e-mail' already about 20 times. And I still am getting the same e-mails...... Even sending an e-mail to Oracle with the question why this doesn't work did not get any reaction.

Although the action to unsubscribe seems quite easy, it apparently isn't. To me, this has a double negative effect for Oracle: besides the fact that I am now very annoyed when I get yet another newsletter from Oracle, I will think twice before subscribing again to something.

This morning, I learned that a colleague of mine is having the same problem, but with a different company (ICIParisXL). She is also trying to get of their mailing list. So apparently, there are more companies that are kind of refusing to take people of their mailing-lists!

We agreed that a company like ICIParisXL should also handle an unsubscription correctly, but especially a company like Oracle should handle this in a correct matter.

Hopefully, we will succeed someday in unsubscribing!

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

Some things, you never forget

In the last 2 weeks, everyone in the Netherlands was focussed on ice skating.
For me, unfortunetely, I was not able to try it untill yesterday (due to sick husband and children).

So in the afternoon, I went with my daughter (and slee) on the ice. I was a bit worried since (apart from 10 minutes skating a year ago) it was about 10 years ago since I stood on my ice skates. To my big surprise, I put them on and skated on the ice without a problem!!

So ice skating is really like riding a bike: once you have learned it, you never forget how to do it!

That made me wonder why you do not forget how to ride a bike or ice skate (compared to the maths I learned at university and cannot reproduce now). Is it pure the physical excersise or the age that I learned how to do that? Or is it perhaps the intensity of it (I used to ride a bike every day and ice skate every year). A lot of 'knowledge' learned at school (like physics) however is learned within a certain (short) timeframe and (in my case) not used that much afterwards (except again within a short timeframe).

Any ideas about this?

Don't assume

In my work, I am online a lot. I use Twitter, read interesting or just funny articles that people I follow suggest and visit a variety of Blogs and communities. The people I work with almost all are familiar with the same social media. When you are constantly working in such an atmosphere, you tend to think that also 'all' other people are familiar with it.

However, when talking to several people in my organization (for example during our X-mas party), you see that this is not the case (except perhaps a site like LinkedIn which does not require that much interaction yet). A lot of people in their daily live do not use these social media (yet). Of course the 'younger' generation is growing up with being online, having a personal profile in one or more communities and are willing to try new sites / communities, but the 'older' generation (and that is perhaps from the age of 30 and up) is not that familiar with it and need to see the benefits of it. As mentioned in 'You can't stop it anyway' once people experience the interaction and the benefits, they will be more active themselves and probably advise it to their peers also to become more active.

But they first need to be convinced that they can benefit from it, encouraged to spend time on it and not just be a passive visitor.

So don't assume that everyone knows what you're talking about when you talk about cloud computing, twitter and other social media.

It's a small world

Yesterday, I went to a birthday dinner party of a friend at de Waaghals in Amsterdam. There were 14 women from all kind of disciplines. The funny thing was that people that did not know each other (as a friend) did have 'connections' to other people at the party. Just by talking to each other, you find similar interests, similar journeys, similar employers, similar people you know.
What also was remarkable (or perhaps not ;-) because there were 14 women) was that almost everyone knew about the topics that were discussed (tv programms, scientific research, day-to-day practice).
Also some quotes passed here are two favorites.

First one: Don't panic, nothing is under control.

Second one: Do what you think is best, not what is expected of you.