PWI Magazine - Q4 2014




President's Editorial

President's welcome

Dear PWI members and readers,
As you may all know, 2015 is the year of changes for PWI. Our new volunteer's team is nicely settling. Alessandra (secretary-general) and I are in our last semester for our current positions on the board.  Long promised, a new website is cooking...
All those internal changes did influence this year PWI's workshop series' theme: Shoot for the stars!  Be the best version of yourself to advance in your career, 
To start, we learned how to define our goals and how to make them happen thanks ...[more]

 Q4  2014





Topic of the Edition - Labour market and +50s


      
"NOW I KNOW I CAN!"

“Now I know I can!”, this is what 35 people over 50 years old have said after 6 months collaborating together to create their own professional future. How was this possible? What was it all about?
“I was at a networking event with a friend of mine, Evelyn Gessler from Deciders, when a man, 53 years old, told us about his situation. He had already been made redundant at his work, a couple of weeks ago, but had not yet had the courage to tell his family. It was the end for him.” 
We were shocked! How could that be? Something had to be done. How could we help   ... [more]            
Q4 2014





Management




Equal Opportunities: a man’s perspective
I’m not sure whether the short story I’m going to tell is a consequence of the economic crisis of the last years or of the gender equal opportunities domain, it probably can be considered part of both.
I was born and grew up in a traditional Latin family, where males were invited to keep their distance from the kitchen during cooking times. 2007 was (age 37), the first time I entered the kitchen because I was hungry and I saw that there wasn’t any food waiting for me - I realized that it was the beginning of a new life.
Free-lance since 2004, and separated father of a five-years-old boy, in 2007 after years of marriage a..... [more]
Q4 2014




Women & Technology


Gamification in Education

Ian, you are the spiritual father of the digital story and educational tool 'Inanimate Alice'(1), could you first introduce Alice to us?
From time to time Inanimate Alice is referred to as a game. My first task, then, is to clarify that it is not a game but a story about games and the people who make them, conveyed in such a way that the resulting production – an interactive, audio-visually illustrated, narrative - has the look and feel of a game-like world.
Our protagonist, Alice, grows up dreaming of one day becoming a videogame designer.....[more]
 Q4 2014



 

Women & Career


 Intelligence and heart together are the drive to success
Can you tell us how your involvement in hotels started?
I got involved in the hotel sector through my husband; who owned a hotel (only as an investment); before renting it out again – he had the idea to ask me whether I was interested in managing it. I was about 24 years old and had no experience in hotels but I decide to make the leap.
Then I understood I wanted to go further, beyond my hotel management competencies background to learn the leadership mechanisms and enter in the “button room (control room)”. So I gained
...[more]
 Q4 2014




Professions

How I finally took the leap

When and how did you start learning folk dancing? What inspired you and who taught you?
I started folk dancing in the summer of 2006 during a family holiday in France. I was already very fond of Viennese and Cuban dances and Argentinian tango, and this seemed yet a totally different approach to dancing; especially the group dances where you change partner every so many bars. As soon as I returned to Brussels that year, I signed up for dance classes with Frisse Folk, which is the folk dancing school I now work for.
Since then, my teachers and sources of inspiration have been numerous. There is Koen Dhondt of course, 
 ...[more]
 Q4 2014



Profession: undercover agent 

What are the main differences between the life of a secret agent and the stereotypes proposed in movies?
“Adrenaline” is the real difference factor between playing the role of secret agent in the highly popular spy movies or fiction, and being an undercover agent.
Real secret agents must play their role without a script, but acting according to the situation they are facing, they need to rapidly figure out what to do or what to say even in situations they do not know, or when they know only the elements collected through phone tapping.
...[more]
 Q4 2014

Miscellaneous


We, men, are not like muses
Bernard, you have dedicated most of your life to experimenting with new languages and finding new ways of playing with words.  In 2009, you decided to quit France and go and live in Syria. Since then you have devoted yourself to reading and writing poetry. I’ve read your poetry and I find that there is a lot of irony in it. Your way of playing with words is intriguing. You are referring to typical French expressions as well as to onomatopoeic words  invented by yourself.
Can we say that you are creating a new poetry style and inventing new forms of storytelling?
I wouldn’t talk about irony, but rather about humour. Many years ago, I started writing poems in which I ...[more]
 Q4 2014



  

If you’d like to comment on it, or contribute to the next issue, please get in touch by emailing Alessandra Zocca at editor@pwi.be

 

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