I’ve seen quite a lot of online contests and a lot of them ended up disappointing me. Why? Because blogger contests and other types as well seem to be popularity contests and nothing else. With the exception of some group writing process, the selection of winners is either based on the votes (traffic) they can generate to the contest host, or it is completely random, therefore highly subjective.

Second|Brain on the other hand comes with a new approach. Their team will analyze the content users add to the community and reward those with the most valuable additions. I don’t know exactly what criteria they will have, the concept is nevertheless interesting. I do hope and pray they keep their promise and reward value alone with prizes. Given everyone, including those registering on the very day of the Beta 2.0 release , they have strong chances to stay away from “beauty pageants”.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

Being at the airport at 5 am is not an easy thing to accomplish! Especially if you didn’t finish packing or got enough sleep the night before. But we got there in time, went through the check in, the security check and had another hour to kill before boarding.

The flight to Munich was easy, the next 10 hour flight no Chicago was a different story. I was planning to sleep a lot, so was Silviana, but none of us actually did. What happened? Well we got to our hotel in Rosemont at about 1.30 pm and ended up sleeping until 7 pm. We woke up to no converters at the hotel and had to go buy one at the nearby mall. And so we said goodbye to our sight-seeing plans.

The next night I could get no sleep of course. Thank God I had 2 series and a half from Angel with me So at 8 am we went to have breakfast and head to the Stephenson Convention Center where ISPCON took place. We were sponsors of the Email Center and also had our exhibiting Kiosk. One of the computers in the center was not working, no browser had been redirected to the AXIGEN homepage and we were told to do it ourselves, if we knew how to Wow! So we paid quite a lot to be a sponsor and an ISPCON IT girl at the same time!

The first day was pretty quiet. So I thought it would be great to go visit the Press Lounge! Maybe some had already arrived! Tough luck, it was empty! And this part of the event didn’t change much over the next two days. But there were plenty of visitors, who turned out to be potential clients, partners or investors. But I was right, exhibiting always stands in your way. Being a sponsor gets you almost the same awareness and you are free to meet everyone you want. Then again, Jupiter Media had a weird deal for ISPCON that did not allow a company to be a sponsor without exhibiting.

On the second day, I had lunch with Barbara Rozgonyi of WiredPRworks. It was really great meeting her and she provided great insight about what we should see in Chicago. If you are wondering, she looks 10 times better than her photo and she has an incredibly warm smile. If you’d like a photo of the two of us and a way better story on our meeting, see Barbara’s entry!

Our time visiting downtown Chicago? About 3 hours. But we tried to make the best out of it. Yes, we were real tourists, went to the Navy Pier, got on the huge wheel near the carousel to take better pictures, bought the photo they took of us while going on it and so on.

We then got hungry, of course. And chose a Mexican restaurant where I had Loco Wings. And that they were, spicy enough to make you go loco, but so tasty I could not believe it! To have a complete experience, we drank Bud

And for the grand finale, we walked among the skyscrapers in the twilight, seeing all of them light up and making it all bright.

The ISPCON event was ruled by men. Only a few women, we were a bit overdressed, the evening events didn’t really appeal to us. If I ever want to gamble, I’ll gamble in Las Vegas, not in some Convention Hall in Chicago. The event is not that big as one would expect considering how well promoted it is. From what I heard, HostingCon is a better alternative for some. I think it still was a great start to find out more on the US market, to find out what people want to know and where they’d like to go.

So on the third day of our story we said goodbye to our Launchpad colleagues packed our banners and went to the airport. Next stop, NYC!

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As some of you know, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks in the US and in Canada and I believe it was a quite unique trip, with lots to learn, with amazing people being brought my way, with a lot of sightseeing and photographing. But as much as I loved it, I am so glad to be home!

Funny thing, I felt extremely disconnected. I felt far from my family and friends (offline and online). Yes, although some of my online friends are thousands of miles away, when I am at home with my laptop, blog and social news and bookmarking sites available all the time, I feel connected with everyone. Once you take my means of communications away, or give me 30 minutes away, I feel lost, far and unable to do what I love!

My blog has been a bit abandoned these past couple of weeks. It was not intended. I really thought I’d have the time to post and share all my experiences with you. Well, next time I’ll make sure to take into account how much the jet lag really affects me, how tight a conference or event schedule is, how much there is for me to see and how many new people take all my attention away.

I’ll make sure to tell you all about Chicago, New York, Washington and Toronto this week. What I’ve seen, what I’ve learned, what I plan to do next. For now, I wanted to tell you all I’ve missed you and that sorting my messages, reading your posts and your tweets is really, really great!

Keep in touch!

Popularity: 5% [?]

I’ve been spending quite a lot of time thinking about this. What makes a good team? What helps the members better communicate and work together. What causes the conflicts they might have to sort out in the future? I have not reached all the possible conclusions, but I think what keeps things going is basic common sense.

Most teams are actually collections of smaller teams. And the leaders of each team are highly important. They have to know how to manage their own team, motivate them, try their best to be impartial and fair, and make sure the collaboration model they promote when it comes to other teams is a functional one.

I strongly believe that the team leader’s actions and attitude are subsequently reflected by the actions of the people they manage. For example, if a Sales manager has the bad habit of treating a marketing department as if they were a joke, no good and highly incompetent, it’s most likely the sales people they manage will act the same way.

And now we come to the common sense aspect. I believe companies who know what they want and have a pretty good HR department are not about to go and hire all the incompetents in the world. Therefore, most team members are good at what they are doing. They bring a certain value to the company and in most cases there are nothing close to being crazy or antisocial. So what everyone (from the top down) should do to make things work is pretty simple:

1. Try to be as clear as possible when saying/writing something and make sure everyone understands you.

2. Give everyone the benefit of doubt. If something does not happen as you’ve planned it, don’t go making accusations when you have no idea what the others have been doing.

3. Agree on a means of communications and stick to it. Don’t go asking why you weren’t emailed the details of the project if you’ve agreed it’s better to use an online system to update task progress.

4. If you go crazy one day and publicly make false statements and accusations, apologize publicly. Private apologies will never compensate the damage you have caused.

5. Review all facts carefully and bare in mind you are human and could be missing important details.

6. Give everyone a second chance, including yourself, and try again.

As you see, nothing complicated. You can have all the training you want to make your team better professionals, to get them to be more efficient, to help them improve. But to have a team that gets along, has common goals and stays open minded, all it takes is common sense.

Popularity: 5% [?]