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Throwback Thursday

Thursday Throwback

Yours truly, talking at the Coca-Cola Headquarters to folk from South America.

Last week, I was in the office for the first time since January 2020.

I remember, February 2020 I was in Rotterdam. And then was meant to fly out to Madrid. However, Covid-19 had Madrid locked and I rang British Airways. Suggested they push my travel to July, by then it should have all blown over.

Here we are. September 2021. Didn’t make that Madrid trip. However, did complete the project on time and in full.

Whilst we all got used to zoom/MS Teams calls. There’s something about being in person. Having the face to face conversation is something special.

So it was nice to be back in the office last week. Meeting people, talking and getting things answered quicker than on Teams and awaiting a reply.

I also recall when I used to do a number of talks.

Above, the photo – my Thursday Throwback, is of me at the Coca-Cola Headquarters in London. I was asked to talk to a number of visitors. They were from South America if I remember correctly. They were here to learn how we were doing things in the UK. How we were making the best of technology.

A nice informal setting. A lot of questions and answers.

I haven’t done any talks since the pandemic. In fact – haven’t done any talks for a while!

Therefore – it’s great, when a friend of mine has asked me to do a TedX type of talk in Wolverhampton! This will be happening in November this year – as long as this type of normality remains.

Might do a few more regular talks. Invite some friends. Have a few good conversations. Where people can take a few golden nuggets. It’s those golden nuggets that will help, grow and nurture you, your business and/or your organisation.

I’ll share more details to when this will be happening. In the meantime, feel free to reach out to me, if you’d like me to talk at your event – and I’ll share my fee’s.

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Bal and Friends at NTU…

Last week was a crazy week! – Firstly, I was in Barcelona for meetings on Monday morning… (thanks to the lovely taxi driver who got me to the office on time!)

Oh… if you’d like to follow my personal journies including lots of travel & food photos, pop over to my instagram account – @mrbalbansal

So that was Monday. Then I came back, and was at the NTU… with a few friends.

That’s right – my friend Shane Matthews (inventor of the Nerf Gun) was over from Atlanta, GA. He was here to give a talk at the Nottingham Trent University… but first, we went to meet the Sheriff of Nottingham.

In the photo above, we have the Sheriff of Nottingham in the middle, Shane and myself, and the Sheriff’s security. We went to Nottingham Castle, had a little look around, posed for some photo’s, gave an interview to Notts TV and Shane signed a few nerf guns.

The main event was Shane talking at the NTU (Nottingham Trent University)… at their Ignite Innovation conference…

They also, kindly let me say a few words…

We also had my friend Leigh, who worked for CIMAGINE, a startup that was sold to SnapChat for $40m…. he shared his views and thoughts on AR…

And then Shane was up… he was brilliant. The audience in the lecture theatre absolutely loved it!

One thing I loved about his talk was the ‘happiness line’. I’ll have to share it with you in another blog post…

So all in all, great event at the NTU. This university is definitely doing the right things for the local community.

And thank you to the love that was shown by folks in the audience..

Then the remainder of the week I was in London, meetings… and a quick attendance for the London Tech Week.

Well, what a busy week… why am I sharing this, because if you have the opportunity to attend local meetings, conferences where they have some interesting people… do so! You can learn so much.

So many folk at the end, were coming up to Shane, asking all sorts of questions… it was great to see that they were motivated and more importantly, had learnt something that they could use in their business or organisation.