I received the email from the SAP on 31st of August (see image below)
In the first part of the email sent by the email address certification.noreply@sap.com it is stated that I only need to pass the Delta Assessment Exam in SAP Learning Hub professional edition. More about the subscription fee for the professional edition of the SAP Learning hub can be found here.
First I did not notice this change and thought I will have to schedule another Delta Certification Exam again with a proctor on the SAP Certification Hub website. No, SAP SF announced during SuccessConnect 2016 that from September 2016 onwards the way to recertify will change. To pass the exam on the Learning Hub is now sufficient.
It was not easy for myself to quickly find the relevant delta course. I went to the Employee Central Learning Room.
I clicked on the menu item certification and then on Launch Q3 2016 Delta Training. This opened up the course which I could then assign to my active courses on the learning content page by clicking on the Assign to Me> button.
After assigning the course I then could open the course from my active courses list on the learning content page.
The course with the code E-Learning THR81D_EN_Col63 (rev.1 16/08/2016) consists of a power point file and the learning hub exam (see below).
The Power Point file has in total 30 pages. Of these 14 pages really contain the content. These are mainly the slides the describe the new feature. Once you have downloaded the PowerPoint file you do need to go back again into the Learning Hub. You can study the material offline.
For these slides I created myself again learning questions before I went to take the Delta Assessment Exam (see picture above).
Hope these questions are helpful to you as well when studying the material.
1) What is important about the advanced features of the enable configurable UI for Position Management V12 Org Chart?
2) What is the workflow ‘Respect Workflow at Copy Positions on Position Org Char’ used for?
3) What does the feature Matrix Relationship Synchronization enable and what is the default setting?
4) What can you see via Manage Workflow Requests and what are the prerequisites?
5) What is Pagination on Pending Workflow Requests?
6) Can the customer restrict import of job information and job relationships based on authorization?
7) What is the benefit of the Locale Picker for File Based Imports feature?
8) How many clicks do you need to get to any information in the improved navigation & discovery information interface?
9) What is highly flexible now in the new Admin interface?
10) What are the performance improvements for the People Profile UI?
Because I am working on a big project I only spent 5 minutes per day studying the material. I guess one can do it easily in 30 minutes or less.
On Friday, September 9th I took the assessment test and passed after my second attempt. It seems you can take the assessment several times in order to reach the 100%.
Well this is so much easier now. Hope you like it.
Happy Learning.
And there is more information about the Delta Exam from Chris Wilpert http://goo.gl/TaypQA
I have passed the employee central delta exam D_THR81_1505 on Wednesday, 9th March 2016. In the following post I will share with you information on the delta exam questions, when I was notified about the exam after my first certification of employee central, how I prepared for it, and what are my conclusions and advice.
The Delta Exam Questions and Notification
The Delta Exam contains 40 questions. You must answer 26 questions (63%) correctly in order to pass it. The questions cover core concepts, MDF Foundation Objects, Position Management, and Time Off. Deadline for this delta exam is June 12, 2016. The Delta exam will include a number of questions per topic. See the SAP Certified Application Associate – SuccessFactors Employee Central Q2/2015 – Delta webpage for more information.
Here is the overview of the topics:
Events and Language Implementation > 12%
Foundation Objects and Generic Objects > 12%
Data Models 8% – 12%
Manage System Security 8% – 12%
Manage Employee Data and Position Management 8% – 12%
Manage Time Off 8% – 12%
Rules and Workflows 8% – 12%
Importing and Exporting Data < 8%
You can expect that no one delta exam will have the same questions. The questions will come from a larger questions bank therefore the ones I had to answer will not be the same that you will see in your delta exam.
There is a lot of debate going on about the quality of the questions and how relevant they are for the practioneer. See Anders Bang Christoffersen blog post and the comment section: http://scn.sap.com/community/erp/hcm/blog/2016/03/06/the-only-easy-day-was-yesterday. Anders just had taken the Employee Central Certification Exam with 80 questions. While he came across some debatable ones in my exam I found all 40 to be very relevant.
After my certification for Employee Central on August,14th 2015 I received my first notification for the delta exam on October,19th 2015 by email.
The deadline for the delta exam was first set for April,12th 2016 and on February,26th it was extended to June,12th 2016.
This time I looked at a number of different resources. First of all, I went to the Learning Room Employee Central on the SAP Learning Hub (https://training.sap.com/shop/learninghub). There is a link in the Menu called Delta Releases.
In there you will find the documents 1502 EC Flipbook.pdf, 1502 EC_Implementation_Handbook and the folder 1505 Content and Excercises.
The 1502 EC Flipbook.pfd contains the content of the elearning course THR81.
I would recommend you to go into the folder 1505 Delta Releases. In there you will find a number of documents. Employee Central Master Implementation Guide.pdf and Module1.pdf to Module8.pdf.
I found the Module1.pdf to Module8.pdf the most helpful in the preparation. These are the participant’s handbook for the course THR81. What makes them so valuable are the practical guided exercises in the handbook. In case if you have not had the opportunity in your daily practice to configure certain features like the management for time off or position management, etc., then I would recommend you to do these exercises. I used the SAP Live Access to Employee Central to repeat some of the configurations examples in these handbooks. Additionally, you will find multiple choice questions at the end of the documents. I would start with those first as they will guide how well you still know the subject. The handbooks will also include most of the content from the THR81 elearning course. Therefore, looking through the 1502 EC flipbook.pdf will not add a lot of value.
I also read through the document 1508 Delta Documentation for 1505 Certification.pdf. But in hindsight these were not relevant for the delta exam itself. They were only useful for my current work. You find these documents in the folder Delta Releases: Content / Delta Release Updates..
Further I read the book SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central – The Comprehensive Guide by Luke Marson, Murali Mazhavanchery, and Rebecca Murray from cover to cover. It is an excellent book with lots of good advice and best practices. However, to pass the delta exam you won’t need to read. I would rather see as a good start to get into Employee Central before you take any courses. Yet the most value is for the practioneer. The book is a great companion while you work in the EC projects. It goes beyond the content that will be tested in the exam but can be vital in your work, such as Advances, Global Assignments, and Employee Central Payroll.
I also read through the document 1508 Delta Documentation for 1505 Certification.pdf. But in hindsight these were not relevant for the delta exam itself. They were only useful for my current work. You find these documents in the folder Delta Releases: Content / Delta Release Updates..
Further I read the book SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central – The Comprehensive Guide by Luke Marson, Murali Mazhavanchery, and Rebecca Murray from cover to cover. It is an excellent book with lots of good advice and best practices. However, to pass the delta exam you won’t need to read. I would rather see as a good start to get into Employee Central before you take any courses. Yet the most value is for the practioneer. The book is a great companion while you work in the EC projects. It goes beyond the content that will be tested in the exam but can be vital in your work, such as Advances, Global Assignments, and Employee Central Payroll.
My Conclusions & Advice
First of all, do not take this delta exam lightly. Being tested and having to recall the content by memory is different to practical hands-on experience where you have the Successfactors system in front of you. The exam needs almost the same amount of preparation as the main certification even though only 40 questions are asked.
You need to have a clear mental picture of the key tools in Employee Central because you need to recall them by heart in the exam.
You need to really know which key fields are in which HRIS element and in which data model.
You also need to be aware of when to use the MDF and when you need to configure the XML files.
You also need to recall in which category you set permissions for a field in the Role Based Permission Tool.
My vision is to build a truly integrated HR in the cloud. A truly integrated HR is the key enabler for organizations to maximize their business outcomes.
My interview with the CEO Nicole Le Maire of NewtoHR on education hacking versus corporate learning?
If you would have asked me about Education Hacking a year ago, I would have probably called your HR Manager and informed the internal security department to have your user account locked. By that time I had seen headlines like: “Teen Used Smartphone, Hacked Department of Education And School To Change Grades” or “Obama to Call for Laws Covering Data Hacking and Student Privacy”.
My perspective totally changed when I attended the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) “Learning How to Learn” https://www.coursera.org/ucsd. The course leader Dr. Barbara Oakley from the University of California introduced two so-called education hackers.
The first, Scott H. Young, was able to complete a 4 years degree program in Computer Sciences at MIT in just 12 months. Scott used the open education resources (OER) from MIT to achieve this amazing result while spending only 2000 USD overall. http://www.scotthyoung.com
The other, Benny Lewis, learned with the help of the internet to become fluent in a new language in just 3 months and was able to do this at a much lower cost compared to the traditional language acquisition programs. http://www.fluentin3months.com.
In this context the term Education Hacking stands for the self-directed search for a smarter and faster way to education, for personal but also for professional skills.
I was intrigued by these astonishing results and set out to use these freely available resources and tools myself. To my surprise after only 2 months and less than 32 hours of net learning time I was able to read my first book in Chinese. After 7 months I knew more than 2000 Chinese characters and was reading my first newspaper article in Chinese. http://bit.ly/1AaFfk5
When I talked with colleagues and employees about my amazing findings I was quite surprised to hear that most of them were already using all these freely available high quality education resources for their own professional development.
As a large number of academic institutions around the globe, as well as large corporations and startups provide more and more of such educational resources the number of employees who turn into independent learners continuously increases.
What does this new trend in employee education mean for the corporate learning & development organization and for professionals working in this area?
Before I go deeper into this topic let`s start by looking at how it all began.
(Title Picture: Creative Commons License Mozilla in Europe Hack-a-Thon http://bit.ly/1UxYZ0L)
1.Open Education Resources (OER) – a global movement
One of the main initiators of this OER movement and also one of the forerunners in the academic area was the MIT in Boston with its OpenCourseware project started in 2002. Even though it got a lot of media attention and by 2006 more than 61% of non-US users were accessing it, there was no noticeable attraction for employees. Two things happening from 2004 onwards gave this whole movement a new push.
The first was Salman Khan who published short lessons on K12 mathematic topics on YouTube for his nephews to use in 2005. These short videos attracted more and more viewers over time because parents and children were looking for easy to understand learning resources. Soon the number of viewers surpassed the 100 Million mark. Khan then decided to establish the Khan Academy in 2012.
Khan also influenced Sebastian Thrun at Stanford University to open up the class on Artificial Intelligence to everyone with access to the web. In 2012 Thrun used a similar technology and offered the same instruction online as to his class students. Thrun was surprised and overwhelmed by an online audience of more than 160 000 students worldwide who had signed up. The new term MOOC* for Massive Open Online Course was coined.
This overwhelming success took all the leading universities by surprise and let to a change in mindset. They now fully embraced the idea of open free education resources and started to offer more and more MOOCs. By 2015 there were over 4000 courses available. Additionally this movement was supported by venture capital financing Udacity led by Sebastian Thrun, Coursera and others. These startups provide services for creating MOOCs to universities. In addition aggregators are now providing platforms for an efficient search and easy access to these OER.
Besides MOOCs a lot of investments were made in the area of foreign language acquisition in the recent years. There are several language exchange platforms for people free to use. All they need is internet access and Skype. Online spaced repetition tools help to memorize vocabularies more effectively. And other platforms allow people to correct each other’s written sentences in a foreign language. Last but not least there are now a number of mobile apps available. Almost all of these tools are free and support a specific area of language acquisition, either in the domain of speaking, listening, writing, reading or understanding. What makes them now so attractive to users is the application of the latest research in gamification, social learning and neurosciences.
Clearly this movement has staying power and it will rather increase than decrease over the next years to come.
* Additional Remark: Depending on the view the first MOOCs were actually created and offered by Stephen Downes and George Siemens in 2008 or by Alison in 2007.
1.1.The Impact on Learners
The biggest impact on learners is the democratization of education and the free access to high quality resources. A large part of the offers in the beginning was oriented on personal skills, school topics or academic fields. But the variety of topics in the curricula of MOOC providers is growing. Innovative new content is available faster and large MOOC platforms and OER aggregators make the search and access quite easy. Further new courses target now education of people working in jobs. To give you an example the aggregator class central lists at least 6 MOOCs in the top 10 most popular MOOCs in 2014 that are also relevant for professional development:
1.2.The Impact on Corporate Learning & Development
After having a sound education base like a degree or a vocational training certificate employees turn to these new education resources for closing skill gaps or acquiring more knowledge and skills. Often they do it without consulting with their supervisors or HR departments. This can have many reasons. Maybe the internet use policy of the firm allows the use of the internet also for private matters, or because it is generally free and no approval is required or the employees just think that their supervisor or HR departments lack the understanding.
Will thus corporate learning & development departments have to face competition from the internet now?
The answer is yes, but it depends on the view of the corporate learning & development department. Do they see OER as another opportunity to embrace or do they see it as a threat in becoming less important to the development of their workforce?
Let’s look at the benefits first.
Benefits
One clear benefit that I see is the effectiveness of these tools. People can learn faster and at a much lower cost. They have access to topics that corporate learning & development could not provide on demand and in such a variety. The topics range from soft skills to business acumen to language acquisition. Here lies an opportunity even during periods of economic downturn to engage the workforce by allowing them the freedom to use free available resources on the internet for their development.
Coursera and Udacity are targeting now continuous education for people already at work. They offer so-called Nanodegrees. While attending their online courses is still free, people have to pay for the degree. This is their business model. Facebook and Google honor these nanodegrees. You can say their corporate learning & development organizations have truly embraced this new opportunity.
As it is still early days there are issues to face. For some of them there is a resolution already emerging.
Issues
A basic issue is the required internet access. There is a substantial number of companies where users have no or very limited internet access at the workplace.
The misuse of working time for private development with no direct benefit to the company can also become a challenge.
Another key problem of OER is the assurance of their suitability and quality.
Here a resolution is emerging. Renowned providers, quality labels and acknowledged certificates that can be earned are providing a first rating. In addition the social component like openly available user feedbacks and ratings can help.
The recognition of the competencies acquired by people using OER is also something to resolve. Tracking and documentation of OER is not as easy as progress and completions are only tracked within a provider’s platform and no official standard for documentation exists. Public cross-provider LRS (Learning Record Stores) are an answer for this – the first solutions are emerging in the US and more will follow in the near future, also in Europe.
And last but not least the sustainability and ongoing availability of an OER can be a risk. A substantial number of OER come from academic or non-profit organization where funding is not always assured and is a critical topic.
Opportunities
As OER are often focusing on more generic topics in employee development the need to offer these topics by corporate learning & development will surely decrease in the near future. This is an opportunity for corporate training departments to increasingly focus their efforts on strategic, regulatory and other corporate specific topics.
If education becomes more self-driven the people working in corporate learning & development currently handling more generic topics can be freed up in the near future. I will see a shift in responsibilities of the corporate learning function. Their role will include aspects like coaching employees to find the right learning strategy for their employees and evaluating or curating content with users to identify and get access to suitable OER for their development.
Additionally people still need guidance on how to effectively learn and how to best use the internet for learning. Here the corporate learning & development department could offer guidance and workshops for their employees.
Further they could organize an online community on continuous learning on their intranets or if available in their internal social networking platforms for their employees.
Last but not least they should revisit their learning & development policies. What is the acceptable use for the company of these OER resources? Do people need approval from their line manager or their team? What is the freedom of choice? What will they officially support, which degrees will they honor and from whom they expect to use this new type of learning?
Some companies might go as far as giving employee’s unlimited time at work to learn under the condition that they still deliver on their tasks. This is similar to what some silicon companies like Netflix or Virgin offer their employees in the area of time off. They give unlimited paid vacation time to their employees under the condition that they still deliver on their tasks and have an agreement with their team members and supervisor for cover.
To enable the use of OER in the organization the corporate learning & development departments will of course have to familiarize themselves with the specifics of OER and their application. You will find a list of links at the bottom of this post. A good start e.g. is the MOOC on Learning How To Learn. https://class.coursera.org/learning-003/
There is a huge shift from in-house training to the internet and from guided learning to more self-directed learning by our employees. Something that will not go unnoticed by the corporate learning & development departments even though it is early days and even though there are still a number of issues to be tackled.
Education Hackers have shown to an highly interested mass audience that you can accelerate your learning and professional development with the help of OERs. More and more employees are turning to these resources in order to take the initiative of their own development in their own hands.
If people in corporate learning & development see OER as a threat and deny employees the use of these resources for their development, they will in the near future lose the trust of line management and employees.
At least it is now the time for people in corporate learning to familiarize themselves with these new available opportunities.
Have you recently used a YouTube video to learn a specific technique?
Have you searched for MOCCs or other open educational resources lately?
Have you enrolled in a MOOC with a topic relevant to your personal skills in the last weeks?
If you answer one or two of these questions with yes you are on the way to become an education hacker yourself and a trusted source for your employees.
2.1.Steps forward
For those not yet familiar with OER and / or MOOCs the best way forward is to try it yourself. There are OER on a variety of topics related to the jobs of learning professionals and HR or training departments.
Additionally a two days pilot workshop on Education Hacking is planned. It will address how to be a more effective learner and how to best use OER and other tools in a corporate environment. With this knowledge you will be able to coach your employees or provide a similar workshop in-house or online to your employees. If you want to get more information or participate in it please click here https://ppalme.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/the-education-hacking-workshop/
The final step could be to search for OER to recommend to learners in your organization or even to integrate in your internal offers. Please find some selected links below.
At this point I’d like to thank Leopold Kause from DidacDesign http://didacdesign.com for his expertise provided on OER, his other valuable contributions and the review of the article.
About me: My vision is to build a truly integrated HR in the cloud and leverage the cloud for learning.
I will give a keynote speech at on 17.09.2015 at the HR exhibition Zukunft Personal in Cologne on Education Hacking vs. Corporate Learning.
100 Frequently Most Used Chinese Radicals related to Human Subcategory
For any novice learner of Chinese Characters the first time he or she will see a page of Chinese Characters this will be overwhelming. It looks nice but for the brain it is pure chaos. At this stage we do not know what patterns to look for in these characters. It is the same for a child who sees a page of text before they know any type of letter. What do children usually do in these cases ? They will look at the pictures instead if there are any.
Our brains are made to recognize pictures and our brains are geniuses when it comes to store images. Our visiual memory is the fastest and the biggest storage system we have. With the help of the mnemonic system below you will be able to tap into this powerful learning system.
This way you will accelerate your learning and also retain the memorized characters much longer.
The best way to start is with the most important patterns called radicals. These radicals will also help you to identify the characters in the chinese dictionary.
There are 214 radicals. Yet it would be best to first learn the 100 most frequently radicals first and not learn the more exotic radicals that will hardly come across you when you start to read your first chinese texts. See Kickstart your character learning with the 100 most common radicals by Olle Line.
I have categorized these 100 radicals into subgroups. With the help of the subgroups you will be able to build the memory palace that will hold all these images that will remind you of the characters in the future.
There are the following sub categories that you can choose a sub locations for: (The full list of these characters and sub categories is here) 1. Related to human 2. Related to human activity 3. Related to human appearance and situations 4. Related to house or household 5. Related to space/area/nature etc 6. Plants 7. Related to animals 8. Related to numbers 9. Related to colours
The Method I have chosen a three step approach:
First step is to find a vivid image for each of the characters connected to the meaning in English.
In the second step you will associate for each of the syllables a memorable person (celebrity or people that you remember well)
In the third step you remember the tone of the syllable by association of the connected memorable person performing a task which is related to the meaning of the word and the tone.
I give you an example for remembering the syllable and the tone:
The word sickness has the chinese syllable ni4. Ni I have associated with Nikita Chruschtschow.
To remember the fourth tone of ni I see Nickita Chruschtschow falling down on the floor because he suddenly became utterly sick.
The Art of Memory – Giordano Bruno Mnemonic
First Step – Create Images and a Place in Your Memory Palace:
Let’s build our memory palace and images for all the 100 most used Chinese Radicals together.
We start with the subcategory 1. related to humans.
It includes the following characters:
人 or 亻human 女 woman 子 child 口 mouse 心 or 忄heart (Radical 61) 手 or 扌hand (Radical 64) 又 right hand 目 eye 足 foot 尸 corpse 寸 thumb or inch 儿 human legs 舌 tongue 皮 skin 耳 ear
In total these are 18 Characters. Just to put those in memory without mnemonics would take quite a number of repeats. Usually we can hold maximum 7 plus or minus two items in our short time memory at once. With mnemonics you will overcome this barrier.
I have created the following images and path to store these characters one by one.
My memory palace is a house in China, yet it is build in an European Style. I live under the roof in the second floor.
One day I was sleeping on my huge silk white bed with my legs open 人. (I see myself as a human.)
I wake up and stand straight up in my bed. Unfortunately it is just under the roof so I hit my head against the roof and this hurts a lot.
I see myself as a human with the roof above 亻.
I need to sit down in my bed straigth with my legs stretched in front of me, when I realize that I have eaten a baby cradle and I now look
like a woman 女.
When I stand up from the bed I suddenly feel enourmous pressure in my stomach because the child feels squashed by the cradle I have swolled and it stretches out his arms while having to pull in his head because of the cradle. 子.
I am shocked and just before I fall I get hold of my bookshelf opposite of my bed. The pain is so big that I open my mouth to scream. My mouth has been replaced by a artifical square roboter like mouth piece. 口.
Terrified I jump a way into the middle of the room. This is when I realize that my heart starts to pump heaviliy out of all three venes and spill blood all over me.心 . Some of the blood springles into my mouth so I have that sweet tast of blood on my tongue.
I feel panic and I want to go downstairs to get dressed. When I reach out with my hand to hold on to the wall I see that it was turned in an artifical antenna with three lines. 手.
No I think, I cannot go downstairs with this type of hand, so I screw off my right hand and put it in a nice chest 又 that stands on this two nicely shaped feet just before the stairs.
I walk down to the toilet. When I enter the toilet I see my eye in the mirror was also turned into an articficial triangle with rectangular lids around it. 目. When I want to take a leak into the toilet I suddenly realise that I can hardly sit down because I am totally wobbly on my feet. They are mounted on a large woman stilleto with a spring. 足.
It is a nice idea to be able to take very large steps like with the seven miles boots and thus be much faster than walking in normal shoes, but it is not a good idea for going to the toilet and trying to sit down. Only after many fruitless tries and holding to the bathroom tub I finally manage to sit down. But to my dismay my corpse falls over because it is more heavier above and very thin below. 尸.
I had enough. I wash my left hand. While washing it I realize that my thumb was also turned into antenna which is one inch wide and when I do a finger print of it it will only leave a dot on the paper. 寸.
Damm I think I need to have a bath to relax from all this stress. Once I come out of the bath tub my legs become strangely flexible. I had forgetten that they also very now artificial. So they look like this 儿.
I walk over to the mirror and put my tongue out which I regret badly. The tongue that comes out of my square mouth also has an antenna on it with two lines 舌 and it has a bitter taste.
I am very annoyed and hungry and go downstairs into the kitchen. Unfortunately when I entered the kitchen I fall and a needle sticks through my skin in my stomach and scratches the baby cradle. 皮. This is so painful.
I leave the kitchen and go to the living room to make an emergency telephone call. When I put the phone to my ear I realize that it was also exchanged with a rectangular antenna objects with two inside stripes and two longer ones on the outside. 耳.
What a strange day to start with.
The mnemonic stories work the best when you create your own images and memory palace. Instead of using a house it could be any place that you are very familiar with. It could be your way to work, or if you walk through your favourite zoo, museeum, etc. The key is to have one image that is very memorable and preferrably animated and it has a unique place for storage.
Second Step Associate Memorable People to the Syllables:
I make the following associations. The number indicate the tones. In Brackets the intuitive English Pronounciation. For all Pinyin Syllables look here. cun4 Carl Gustav Jung (tswnn) er2 Erdogan President of Turkey (urr) er3 Erdogan President of Turkey (urr) kou3 Cowboy John Wayne (koh) mu4 Muhammed Ali (moo) nv3 Oliver Neuville (former German Soccer Player) (nyoo) pi2 Pia Zadorra (pee) ren2 Rene Descartes (rnn) she2 Sheela Indian Film Actress (sher) shi1 Shia LaBoeuf (shrr) shou3 Schubert the composer (shoh) xin1 Xindi are peole from the planet Xindus in Start Treck (sshin) you4 Neil Young (yoh) zi3 Zig Ziglar (dzrr) zu2 Peter Zumtobel Swiss Architect (dzoo)
Again the same as above choose the association of people for each of the syllables that work best for you.
Tone 1 means to have a steady straight pronounciation when you speak the syllable. In Tone 2 you go up with your voice when you say the syllable. For tone 3 you are up and go down and up again when you pronounce the syllable. And tone 4 means you start high and go down when you speak the syllable.
For the next step I have associated the tones with actions such as for tone 1 the action performed by the memorable person will be a straight line. Example would be laying me on the back on the floor. For tone 2 it has an action that puts me somehow up. Tone 3 is represented by any action that is somehow connected to up and down and up movments and for tone 4 it is something that will put me down. It will become clearer when you read the following story.
Third Step – bring it all together into one final story: One day I was sleeping on my huge white silk bed when Rene Descardes came and lifted up my two legs and spread them across my bed because he wanted to examine how people sleep when their legs are laid out in a perfect triangle 人 ren2. I see myself as a human.
I wake up and I am pritty annoyed with Rene Descartes. Instead of leaving me alone Rene Descartes put me straight up in my bed . Unfortunately my bed is just under the roof so I hit my head against the roof and this hurts a lot. I am now very angry with Rene Descartes.
I see myself as a human with the roof above 亻ren2.
Oliver Neuville comes to my rescue and takes me in his arms and shakes me like a baby to calm me then helps me to sit down in my bed straigth with my legs stretched in front of me, when I realize that I have eaten a baby cradle and I now look
like a woman 女 nv3.
I start to cry. Zig Ziglar hears it and tries to lift me up and down to get me overthrow in the hope that the cradle comes. I feel an enourmouse pressure in my stomach because the child feels squashed by the cradle I have swolled and it stretches out his arms while
having to pull in his head because of the cradle. 子. zi3. I am shocked and just before I fall I get hold of my bookshelf opposite of my bed. Suddenly I hear Cowboy John Wayne approaching with his horse. He jumps right behind me and starts pushing my stomach in and out. The pain is so big that I open my mouth to scream. My mouth has been replaced by a artifical square roboter like mouth piece. 口 kou3.
I let you finish the story by yourself.
Mnemonics works best if you find the associations that work best for you.
There is a great guideline on creating memorable images for mnemonics on the Hacking Chinese Blog: Memory aids and mnemonic to enhance learning by Olle Linge.
Once you are able to walk through the 16 Characters forward and backwards I would recommend you the first exercise. Read a Chinese Text printed out on paper and mark each of the learned radicals in the characters.
Here an example text based on the the first 100 most frequently used Chinese Characters and Words in Film Subtitles:
And this is the result of the above text analysis based on the 16 Radicals you have mastered by now:
Quite a number of characters that will include one of the radicals you have just learned.
You will notice there are already a few characters that are only made up of the radicals you know by now.
Example: 好, 如,从
And if you have mastered all the 100 Radicals this would be the result:
100 Most Frequently Used Words in Film Subtitles containing Elements of the 100 Most Used Radicals
Planned updates:
I will add further exercises and examples
More on learning the most used words and characters in Chinese
Thanks to great people on the internet I was able to learn very quickly how to turn any twitter tweets into an RSS Feed. And this RSS Feed can be used anywhere! and it can be even displayed within a blog post!
With the new Twitter API v. 1.1 this became a more complex operation than it used to be.
Luckily there are fantastic teachers out there who share their great work-arounds for free.
My great learning journey started with Amit Agarwal and his blog post and video on How to Create RSS Feeds for Twitter – Video Tutorial.
If you follow carefully his steps you will end up with an url that will be the first step towards the RSS Feed to be used anywhere. (If you want to turn your own twitter tweets into RSS see advice at the end of my blog post).
Once you created this url it will only work in Feedly or in Feedbin. Most other RSS Readers will not accept at this point. This was advised by the web-geek Mona Sorcelli.
I will look into these alternatives over the next months.
Click on the link of his published pipe on Yahoo and enter the URL you created with the help of Amit Agarwal and you will get to an RSS Feed that can be used anywhere. (If you want to customize the feed your way – see further down in my blog post).
To get the final RSS feed to use in any RSS Reader or website click on the button “Get as RSS” that will appear once you run the Yahoo Pipe of Manuel Meurer. Copy the RSS Feed URL from the browser into any RSS Reader.
Display RSS in Blogpost or Website with Javascript Or use the tool on the website Feed2Js (Alan Levine) to create a javascript code to place in your website or blog post. See my example: Gotthard Tunnel RSS News and Traffic News. Feed2Js will update the feed every 60 minutes.
Manipulate the Output of the RSS feed
If you want to customize the output of the RSS feed that you get out the Yahoo Pipe created by Manuel Meurer please visit my clone of his Yahoo Pipe. I had to add the user input element “URL input” at the beginning of the pipe to make the clone work.
Automatic Twitter Updates triggered by the RSS feed
And thanks to Manuel Meurer advice you can use Twitterfeed to create automatic retweets.
Twitterfeed will usually only update every 30 Minutes.
I use IFTTT (If This Than That) which is usually faster than Twitterfeed.
Choose Feed as your trigger channel and insert the url to your rss feed.
Realtime Updates with Pubsubhubbub
There is also a faster way if you reprogram the google script from Amit Agarwal to include pubsubhubbub. Pubsubhubbub provides realtime notifications. It was developed by Brad Fitzpatrick and Brett Slatkin of Google and Martin Atkins of Six Apart.
The XML created with the google script from Amit Agarwal would need the following addition:
Below find the existing locations for Bitcoin ATM Machines.
Please note: there are lot’s of announcements on planned installation of Bitcoin ATM Machines around the Globe.
London is expected to recieve the shipment of the first ATM Machine by March, however in most countries there is no legal framework and therefore Bitcoin ATM Machines might not be allowed to be installed.
Example: In New York there are still discussing.
USA Albuquerque, New Mexico (since February,18,2014)
Location: Bar Imbibe, Nob Hill More Info
USD notes to Bitcoin
Boston (since February,19,2014)
Location 1: Boston South Station More Info
Location 2: Harvard Square, Clover Food Lab, Holyoke St More Info
Austin, Texas (since February,20,2014)
Location: Handlebar, backroom, East Fifth Street More Info
Austin, Texas (since March, 03, 2014)
Location: Central Texas Gun Works off Ben White Boulevard More Info
New York
Location: To be defined yet
Planned to open soon
Canada Vancouver: World’s First Bitcoin Machine (since November,1,2013)
Location: Waves Coffee House More Info
Vancouver: (since February,1,2014)
Location: QuadrigaCX, Downtown Vancouver, 332 Water Street, corner of West Cardover and Water Street More Info
Ottawa (since January,16,2014)
Location: Byward Market Pub More Info
Toronto (since Januray,16,2014)
Location: King Street West and Spadina Avenue at Bitcoin Decentral More Info
Montreal
Location: Bitcoin Embassy, 3485 Boul. St-Laurent More Info
Winnipeg (since February,15,2014)
Location: Santa Lucia Pizza, St. Mary’s Road More Info
Edmonton (since February,27,2014)
Location: Rose and Crown Pub More Info
Brazil SãoPaolo Location: 27th January to 2nd February
Campus Party 2014 More Info
Location in future : Financial District
Planned to open soon
EUROPE:
Finland Helsinki (since December, 16th,2013)
Location: Helsinki Railway Station, Levykauppa Äx Record Store More Info
Slowakia Bratislawa (since December,10th,2013)
Location: Entrance Restaurant The Pub More Info includes map
Sweden
Stockholm (since December, 9th, 2013)
Location: Hilton Slussen More Info
Switzerland Zurich
Location: Im Viadukt Markthalle More Info
Euro notes to Bitcoin only
Geneva (since February, 13, 2014)
Location: Crêperie des Pâquis More Info
UK London (since February,05, 2014)
Location: Old Shoreditch Station, Kingsland Road More Info
Germany Berlin (since February,08, 2014)
Location: room77 More Info
Euro notes to Bitcoin only
Spain Barcelona (since February,22,2014)
Location: Diagonal Mar Shopping Center More Info
Ireland Dublin (since March,13,2014)
Location: GSM Solution, Upper Abbery Street More Info
ASIA:
China – Hong Kong Hong Kong (since March,14,2014)
Location: Stanley, Mr. Bing Cafe, 83 Wellington Street More Info
Korea Seoul (since March,07, 2104)
Location: COEX Mall southeastern Seoul More Info
Singapore
since February,28,2014
Location: City Link Mall More Info
Bitcoins are frobidden in:
China (Mainland)
Indonesia
Russia
Denmark
When I worked with just a few of these tools with one person the results were more than astonishing. In one year this person reached three of his major life goals while we had together estimated five. Why shouldn’t you achieve the same ?
After you have read through this article you will be twice as likely to reach your dreams, visons or goals. Given what we know today once you apply these tools I believe you will have a 95% chance to achieve your major goals in life.
It was a few years ago when the person came into my office. He was almost certain that he would quit his job because he had enough of sales. It was not his dream job. He felt tired and he had lost his passion. His intention was to join a business school fulltime, spend all his savings to major in marketing so that he could start a career in the marketing function. I listened intensively without judgement and asked questions when I needed to better understand the points he made. We sat together for 50 minutes and almost at the end of the meeting I said,” well, it seems that you have made up your mind, but is this the only option you have ? Is this the only way and what is the likelyhood of success ? Would you like to take the time to explore more options that will give you a much higher chance of success ?”. This was the moment he realized he came to have the meeting with me to just seek confirmation of his decision and not help. This was the moment when he suddenly started to listen. First I explained him the risk of his only option and then I asked him if working in marketing is his final dream in life or if it was an enabler for something bigger ?
I proposed him to find a better way to get him to the place where he really wanted to be in life if he would spend just a few hours over the next months together with me. We applied a few of the tools which helped him to become very clear what he wanted from life. It was not only a career in marketing, he also had the wish to work abroad, stay with the current employer and get married.
We met three times over the next month for only 60 minutes each.
One year later he got married, the current employer send him to Asia to work in marketing and paid for the tuition at a well known business school for his degree in marketing.
In essence good reflection takes only little time but gets you much further than we tend to believe.
I have seen these successes over and over again in my many years long career in talent management & people development and as a coach (www.linkedin.com/in/peterpalme) . Each time I am still astonished. It is magic. The method and tools are amazing. I let the person decide on the timing when to meet again and never will I judge or take the lead in the journey. It only works if the true person comes out and the true person goes through his own reflection. In my many years of experience I learned to become the sparring partner on the right level, that keeps the ball in the game. Seeing someone win, seeing someone reach his vision and goals is personally my biggest joy and fulfillment.
I didn’t have the book “Finding Your Element” by Sir Ken Robinson then. It is a great source and therefore I listed some of the resources below. I have also used additonal tools which I will go to introduce over the next couple of weeks in this blog post. My starting point is always the situation, the context the person is in and get a full understanding of it. Often this is the first time people talk to someone who is non-judgemental about it. Only then when everything is understood will I ask the person to take a helicopter view of his life. Afterwards there are a number of tools to become more specific who the person is and how he wants to go about the journey.
As we haven’t met personally I have made the following assumption about you as the reader:
– you feel like you are underutilizing your capacity and have not turned it fully to your advantage
– you are critical of yourself and you deserve to be admired more
– at certain times you have serious doubts if you have taken the right direction in life
– you feel insecure and you see your personal weaknessess which you like to hide
– you can become dissastified by restrictions and limitations
– you would like to change and add more variety to your life
– you are an independent thinker and you only accept statements with satisfactory proof
– you have great aspirations which you find pretty unrealistic and you need to provide security to yourself and others
If you agree or disagree with my assumptions you can reach out me at petepalme@gmail.com or leave a comment below.
Would you like to invest a few minutes of your precious life and turn it into something that you value much more ?
Being in your element, feeling engaged, having a purpose, …
In the following you find a number of tools:
You can use them on your own or with somebody you trust.
How many books have you read with exercises, but honestly how many of these exercises did you do on your own?
It seems most people like to do exercises with someone else because they are more engaged, get more inspired and creative.
This is still my scrabble blog post, it will envolve over time:
Accept the situation you are in. Become mindful and understand your judgement.
InformationWeek An unlocked phone is one not tied down to a specific carrier network. If you want to use an unlocked phone, what are the practical implications? Who sells unlocked phones? What carriers let you unlock theirs and activate others? BYTE…
Once you are through the beggage claim and customs look for a WHSmith Bookstore.
I bought my sim card in the WHSmith Bookstore at London City Airport. The same bookstore you will find at London Heathrow Airport (see below for more details) or other London or UK Airports.
This time I bought a Virgin media sim card, which uses the Orange Network in the UK. It will not have any money on the sim card so I also asked immediately for a top up for 10 Pounds. I did not have to show any ID-card. The Pay As You Go sim card itself costs 1.90 Pounds.
I had to go to Settings > Wireless & networks > Mobile networks > Networkoperators. This will initiate a search for available telephone networks. I selected the Orange PCS Ltd 3G network to get access.
Once you have access to the network you need to call 789111.
Here you will be guided through until you can enter the 16 digit number on your top up voucher (from WHSmith for 10 Pounds). Switch off your phone.
For your account to be activated might take a few hours. Once you switch on your phone again you will receive a message from Virgin media which will ask if you would like to have the internet access configured. Just click OK. No need to do any setup yourself. The internet access should work and look like this belwo:
APN – Settings for virgin media (Virgin Media uses the T-Mobile Orange Network in the UK):
general.t-mobile.uk
Name:T-Mobile Internet
APN:general.t-mobile.uk
Proxy:Not set
Port:Not set
Username:t-mobile
Password:**
Server:Not set
MMSC: Not set
MMS proxy:Not set
MMS port:Not set
MCC: 234
MNC: 30
Authentication type: PAP
APN type: default,supl
London Heathrow Airport
There is a WHSmith Bookstore for example at the departure floor before going into the security check.
I bought a Pay As You Go PAYG prepaid sim card from Vodafone at London Heathrow Airport at Terminal 5. The PAYG sim card costs 1.99 Pounds with zero balance on it. I also purchased a top up for 10 Pounds.
Once you started your mobile phone with the sim card you need to get the new telephone number by placing a call to *#100# You need the telephone number as soon as you want to contact the help line of vodafone.
These are the APN Settings for the Vodafone PAYG sim card:
Name: Vodafone PAYG
APN: pp.vodafone.co.uk
Proxy: 212.183.137.012
Port: 8799
Username: wap
Password: wap
MMSC: http://mms.vodafone.co.uk/servlets/mms
MMS Proxy: 212.183.137.012
MMS Port: 8799
Continuous Learning & Development 