Welcome to my journey!

The first three months are over. What I did so far: I got my AWS certification. I was accepted as a trainer for EFPSA where I will help students of psychology to improve their soft-skills. I am planning to create video tutorials. I will deliver Java sessions relate to OOP for a Java training academy. I am quite happy with my progress so far. If you want to collaborate with me in delivering a training session or something related to technologies, please feel free to reach out.

Many people stop chasing their dreams when they are in a relationship. I see it differently. I am looking for relationships which will enable my dreams.

I start this blog with the idea of being like Seth Godin. He post one blog post every single day, no excuses. So far, I am doing a good job. I wonder where this journey will lead me. Do you think it is worth the effort to post a single blog post daily?

Vacation was nice, but what I really like is to work on meaningful projects. I am happy to be back and ready to take on the rest of my project. It is good to know you contribute to the success of your company and team.

There seems to be something magical when you are in a sunny country. People smile a lot and your mood is good. Now think about if you work in a dark and cold office. Would you have a good mood? Part of the culture building in any corporation is not only look “cool” on the outside but also shift the cubicle narrative and make inside also nice, so your employees come more energetic and creative.

This week I am in Porto, a beautiful city in Portugal. I would highly recommend to anyone to visit this city. But make sure you have a reservation in a restaurant, otherwise you might start arguing with your spouse where to sit, just because the nice places are already been reserved.

The silent killer. I used to think that the world is relatively safe.   But more and more I educate myself. The more I realize how dangerous our surrounding is.   This latest article showed me more issues and treats we will face soon.   Meet the fungal infection.   Fungal infections are estimated to kill at least 1.6 million people a year, according to Global Action for Fungal Infections, a research and fundraising nonprofit.   There are only three classes of antifungal drugs commonly used for severe fungal disease, Dr. Spec said, all of which can cause toxic side effects. Fungi are also developing resistance to these drugs, Dr. Spec said. At least seven Candida auris infections were resistant to available antifungals in 2021, the CDC said, up from four in the years before 2020.   This makes the exotic dream to live on a desert island almost unattainable.   What if you catch such a disease there? How will you survive?   This makes choosing where you live and the easy access to highly t

What if no one reads what I write here? How about if no one cares about your work? Would you still do it? The goal with this blog for me personally is to achieve consistency and mastery. It is a gift for me to me. You can learn new things in your job and become better, or to learn a new skill and move to a company that care. Again, everything is in your own hands.

I love what I do, but I also need a time off to regain my energy. In Europe, we are very blessed with 20+ days of a vacation. Yet, there are countries where the law guarantees them only 10 days. Are those people happier than Europeans? According to the world happiness index, the answer is definitely not. Many countries in the EU rank on the top of that list. The challenge is how we can promote happiness and fulfilment as part of our job criteria.

What if an AI bot had stolen your intellectual property? This discussion is about to happen as many publishers start asking this question: “Was my content being used to train the algorithm?” What do you think? Should AI companies be forced to pay when they use your content? And if yes how will you find out if they use your article or not? More information is below: “Clearly, they are using proprietary content—there should be, obviously, some compensation for that,” Mr. Thomson said. At the heart of the debate is the question of whether AI companies have the legal right to scrape content off the internet and feed it into their training models. A legal provision called “fair use” allows for copyright material to be used without permission in certain circumstances. In an interview, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said “we’ve done a lot with fair use,” when it comes to ChatGPT. The tool was trained on two-year-old data. He also said OpenAI has struck deals for content, when warranted. “We’re willing

I can’t deny my obsession with making the world a better place. But monitoring closely a political campaign and how different parties behave, I think we are a long way of making people and societies stronger and more resilient. The price to pay is the prolong suffering we all need to see or experience.

Yesterday I wrote about unity and I want to see it in politician election speech as well. More positivity and less destructive message. Who can tell me what needs to happen so we can force politicians to shift the narrative?

One way to unite people is by creating a common enemy. People had done it using language against minorities and entire nations. But could we also united in a positive way? Positive message and positive leader are doing far better work, but it takes a lot more time to shift the culture. Therefore, selling negativity as a fast way of uniting people is here to stay.

I am furious about the political process. Should it always be like that or there is a better way? When you listen to the politicians, you know when they lie and they are being honest. You can even fact check them relatively easily. But… seldom people will do that. And even fewer people will ask themselves if a politician lies about those things, how can they trust them? And yet, parties who lie the most and make everyone else look small and incompetent win. What does this situation tells us about the common people who vote and the voting system itself? Maybe it is about time to spend more time during our education to define the values we want from politicians and to begin being intolerant of their bag of lies.

In Bulgaria, there will be the 5th political elections in 2 years time span. What I observe about the politicians is that they don’t care about the people. They reach out to their core members, but what about the people don’t know them or which their needs are not being taken care of by the political party? The reality is simple, only 40% of people vote and the rest don’t trust the process. This is actually an interesting point, because friends from Russia also mentioned the same effect. Also, one of the Bulgarian parties, also called the Bulgarian Socialist Party, got fewer and fewer votes after each election. The main reason is that the leader and the leadership team refuse to take responsibilities for their actions and stay in power, where the rest of the party members want a change. This shows that leaders who only look after themself and lack any other skills might stick to top positions for a while, but they will only drag the political party to its grave.

Be careful with the password storing software. The best way to store passwords is using offline media, like KeePass 2 or to enable 2F Authorisation. Source: https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/warning-dont-let-google-manage-your-passwords  

I see it in many political parties, the leaders in the top positions are neither the smartest nor the most competent one. Political leadership is a very different form of leadership. For once, many people in a high positions might be elected because someone else left the party. This compromise the leaders’ position, because they might not have the right qualities to be there.

One of the most difficult thing to do is to have the right metrics. How do you measure success? In your team, personal projects, relationship and so on. What is being measured, being managed!

Dictionary defines influence as “the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behaviour of someone or something, or the effect itself.” In the past, influencers were rich and powerful people. Those were the nobility first. The kind and its court. As the amount of people grow, there was a bigger chance for non-nobility to influence the opinions of people. Then the influence is distributed to a non rich people. The so called TikTok and Instagram influencers. The issue is as more and more influencers come, the less likely is for people to fact check what everyone is saying and less likely for an accountability when someone is laying. Influencers are usually not rich and they use opportunities they have to earn money ethically and unethically. There are more and more situations where finally the law is catching up and influencers are being held accountable and jailed for false advertisement. So next time you stumble across influencer, first carefully fact check their cl

Writing a journal is an excellent way to capture what is important to you. Life can be very dynamic and people might not always understand our viewpoint. The next best thing to unpack your thoughts other than talking to professional psychologies is to write and analyse your day, week, month and year. Do you journal, and what other tools and activities do you do?

I am a big fan of the game Diablo. It has good gameplay, and an amazing story. The story is a great way to trigger the curiosity and excitement of the people, anticipating to play the game long before its release date. A good story is a way to attract people in your vision and mission. Also, it is significantly easier for people to sell your cause if there is a good story behind your motivation. This is what we can learn from the creators of successful games.

There is an old saying: be careful what you wish for, it might just happen. Is the equality the main issue for women. Many women fear the lack of good education for their children, lack of a good and affordable housing for a big family and so on. If women work long hours just like man, then who will take care of the family and the house? Not that this should be their responsibility. But if a family of two need both people to work hard just to survive, this might mean that people are getting paid less and less and are forced to work more and more. Equality is about perspective and about rethinking what is the most important thing for the family.  

Ask a mother how long are 9 months and she will tell you all about it. Ask a medalist how important is 1milisecond to win a medal and he can tell you all about it. It is all about perspective, direction, and focus. Many people don’t use their time wisely. This is because they lack a perspective in life and the goal to give a meaning to the precious hours and days they have.

It has been a few years since I had led diversity initiatives focused on women and LGBTQ+ topics. Unfortunately, we still talk even today about gender inequality. We still talk about the fact that one gender might get less pay in some profession than another. I hope this topic will become less important in the coming years and we will achieve the desired equality.

Company needs to adjust to the market conditions. But many don’t and thus fail. Who’s the fault? The management who didn’t see the threat or to the employees who were not innovative enough? The fault is infinitely on the management side. This shows the risk of having the wrong culture in place. And the bigger the company is, the harder to change the culture it is. But if the management doesn’t change the culture, there is no way to get new opportunities and save the company.

Digital security is a huge topic in 2023. However, it is hard to be explained to the end user. Think about the devices you own. How many of those are actually up to date? We own more and more smart devices and with the agile culture, companies introduce and discontinue products at a very fast pace. This is hard to be explained to the end user. When you buy a smart TV, in a few years it might become a huge security backdoor. And the TVs have microphones and some of them even cameras. We need to be educated and plan accordingly the defence of our homes and privacy. Only then we will achieve a good level of digital security.  

How important is for you this question? Do you live in a city or a village? How big is the place you live in? We design our place, by many factors. What we can afford, or what we are willing to invest. I know people who enjoy living in a tiny place, but then they like to be single and I know people who live in a bigger place with the mindset they are in a relationship. When I moved to my current place, I design it with the mindset that two people will live there and it happened 7 months later. So the mindset and the attitude are important. Questions such as where do you live and how do you live really show a lot about the person. Ask yourself, Is the place and how you live reflect my current life goals?

Who owns the media owns the narrative! That is the number one rule of social media. Don’t try to change people, it is hard. And is it really worth it? Many people use the social media to create a fortress of their own beliefs and don’t accept any feedback. Trying to change them takes way too much time and you must really know the price you pay. Mainly your time and the fact that someone might ridicule your point of view. Next time, when something on the social media provokes you to comment or respond, just ask yourself: What do I really want? Maybe you don’t want to waste your time with this. Just maybe you want to skip it and focus on the important things in life. Don’t try change their narrative, but try to create your own, and maybe, just maybe, you will influence them enough so they will also change their own.

One fundamental question your organization needs to answer honestly is if their employees are part of the culture? If they are part of the culture, their feedback will change the way the culture and the company behave. The so-called bottom up approach. If the employees are not part of the culture, then they follow what the top managers decide. This will mean that even if the managers pretend they value employees’ feedback, they won’t take their input into account. In business, people are not stupid and it is far better to be honest with the rules from the beginning, instead of losing precious time, trying to pretend you are something you are actually not. Once the business decides what company they are, they can effectively ask for a feedback only on the right topics. Constantly asking feedback for things that you don’t plan to change only decreases your employee morale. The first rule of successful companies is to not lose focus on the important things. You don’t want to have false pr

I tried the process, and it failed. I ask the support for …. support and I received the answer it is impossible to be done and your phone is not supported. So I did it another way, and it worked. What do I mean by that? Concrete case. My bank has an application that they are proud of and they provided few interesting features. One of them was to import your card to Google play, by using the add card button. This is very convenient for a “digitally first” person like myself. I follow the process and I received an error, and this was the end of my enthusiasm to have my card in the Google Pay. There was a generic error, and it didn’t help me a lot. Such a pity, because using Google Pay is such a convenience. I decided to use the process and call the support of my bank. After all, they are the experts. After 10 minutes on the call, the final resolution was crushing, my phone doesn’t support this kind of cards. I was devastating, because I am a “digitally first person”, but we can all agree

The EU proposal for a new digital driving license is extremely interesting. Europe is moving at a different speed for a while and there are countries moving faster towards digitalization and countries moving slower. One risk I see with having a digital driving licence is forcing your users to be locked to a platform. With the plastic driving licence, you don’t need a smartphone or battery. This new approach might be an opportunity to introduce a separate digital driving device a user like grandma can use instead of a smartphone. Or this could be a conversation on how to make the smartphones less intrusive on our privacy and limit the amount of data being collected on its users. What do you think, do you like the idea of using a digital driving licence instead of the traditional approach?