Nisha Pillai

Oxygen surges to the brain via the simple act of standing up. So it follows that the best way to learn new skills is to do so upright, not slumped over a desk. In our last “Getting Your Message Across” workshop, Rob Geraghty and I didn’t go so far as to banish all tables and chairs, but we did use the vertical-learning principle over and over again. Here’s a youtube clip of some amazing feedback from just some of the participants in our session…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n72I6hFl11k&feature=player_embedded.

There were over thirty people in our masterclass at a Gartner Business Intelligence conference – and within minutes we had everyone up on their feet, putting all our ideas straight into practice. So by the time they left our workshop they were brimming with confidence, buzzing with energy and bent on getting their message across! I can’t wait to do it again.

Watching events in the Arab world move with cyclonic speed, I have the weirdest sense of deja vu – back to 1989, when as a young BBC journalist I covered the crumbling of the Iron curtain across Eastern Europe. In the space of just six months the Communist dominoes collapsed – first Poland, then Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and finally, Romania.  Who can forget Nikolai Ceausescu’s Christmas day trial and execution?

So my question is this: how long will it take for the Arab dictators’ dominoes to be swept aside by the forces of history? What will the political landscape of the Middle East look like by the summer of 2011? Answers on a postcard below please!