May I Wish You a Good Day?

Bonjour,

For French speakers, at least in France and south of Belgium, greetings are a very usual practice. A first contact during the day starts like that:

- Bonjour, ça va ?
- Bonjour, ça va bien. Et vous?
- ça va. Merci!

Not a big deal, but this definitively isn't a "hi!" ... "hi!". When you already know the person, have a good relationship or see that person very often, then the greeting is simplified to a simple "salut!" ... "salut!", a French version of "hi". Not a big deal too, right?

Here, to say "bonjour" to a friend could sound too formal. A friend accepts better a simple "salut". Hey, but I want to wish you a good day. May I? Salut is not enough for me. I want to say "bonjour!" to everybody and I want to listen to the same in return, but some people here don't even look at you when you wish a good day for them. I simply cannot understand that. It may be something personal. Hum, I don't know.

I spent 28 years saying "bom dia!!" in Brazil. There, it really sounds like a wish. It comes out with an additional smile, full of energy, followed by a strong shake of hands, sometimes choreographic shake of hands. ;)

Well, never mind! I will wish you a good day anyway. If you forget to wish the same, no problem for me. So, bonjour, have a wonderfull Day!

A Humble Advice for PhD Students of Engineering

This week I presented my thesis in an European doctoral consortium, talking about the current state of my research, which is in a beginning stage but already with a valuable content. The purpose of this consortium is to give some industrial audience for PhD Students, which presented their works with a more realistic approach.

I appreciated the purpose of this conference, the organization as a whole, my own session, and some speakers there, but I was really disappointed with the invited speaker, who gave an inappropriate advice for all those PhD students there. He has a PhD degree and was hired by a Belgian industry when he finished his research in the university. He had worked for other industries until he stabilized this career in his current company. Well, indeed a very well managed career, which started 10 years ago when the world was very different. Is his real story still valid for students who don't have yet a clear vision about their future?

He concluded his speech saying that there is a big probability that most PhD students nowadays get jobs in the industry because of their needs for constant innovation. A co-chair of the conference added that 70% of new PhDs get a job in the industry, giving some credibility to the speaker's arguments. I should agree that there is some logic on what they are trying to say. Actually they explained the standard logic of the market today. Of course PhD students will find an excellent work environment in the industry, of course they will find funds to make more research, of course they will get good salaries, of course the 70% above is realistic, but they should also know that the industry is migrating from Europe to other countries because of pressure for competitiveness.

I couldn't resist to open a discussion about global tendencies. I mentioned about a fact very present on newspapers, books, magazines, saying that the industry in Europe, the USA, Japan and other rich nations is in decline because they are migrating to countries with more human resources and lower operation costs. These countries compose the famous acronym "BRIC": Brazil, Russia, India and China. The answer of the speaker scared me: "This is what the international press is creating. The reality is different." - Oh My God! I don't know what it is. Blindness? Lack of reading? Over confidence? Fear? He complemented saying that what is produced there has lower quality and they should not threaten the European industry for a long time. Now, I think I know what it is: Blindness!

You and I know about the low quality of products coming from the BRIC. They sell a lot, but they still offer not so good products. About this I agree with the speaker, but he forgot that the current generation of people there are poor, offering their services by a shaming salary. The consequence is, of course, production of low quality products. However, their children will grow-up healthy and educated because, now, they have better conditions than ever. The second generation will place the BRIC economies in a higher competitive position, with an important differential: scale - exactly what the USA, Europe and Japan is losing now, aggravated by the current economic crisis.

So, is it fair to hide this facts from students? I don't think so. Get that 70% and check previous years. Is this index growing or decreasing? My position is that the predominant model in Europe will be service providing. Europe should take its high educated people to innovate in high scale and offer these innovations for one or more industries spread around the world instead of creating their own industries. This is only possible if universities and colleges redesign their programs emphasizing entrepreneurship. PhD students should be highly motivated to transform their thesis in real products, opening spin offs to develop ideas until their economical viability.

I'm very proud to study in an university where this process already started and with great results. The Université catholique de Louvain is really committed to transform research in real business. My lab in particular - TELE - already pushed many spin-offs to the market and many others are born in the offices of that building.

My adviser, Benoit Macq, is a great enthusiast of entrepreneurship. He pushes everybody here to make the difference, to develop something really useful, unique and, why not, salable. One month ago, he saw me tired, not so motivated and I got one of his special massages to keep my motivation higher. Thanks Boss!



Little tip: Always keep your camera with you. Singular moments can unexpectedly happen with you or around you.

Taste, Discover Yourself and Love

After years reading technical books and scientific papers I finally stopped to read a novel (non-fiction) during this last three weeks. It was a hard decision to tell you about this reading through this blog, first because it is a totally different subject that I never discussed about before. Second, and the shaming one, this is a book written by a woman for the women public :O Ok, ok... it sounds like a man reading (and enjoying) the Marie Claire magazine, but, you know? It's very useful to learn a little bit more about them in order to better take care of my own.

So, the book's title is "Eat, Pray and Love - One Woman's Search for Everything", a New York Times best-seller written by Elizabeth Gilbert. It tells the real story of the writer, Elizabeth herself, a woman who had a family crisis, which collapsed in deep losses. She desperately tried to find out her recovery travelling through three different places in the world, which are, at the same time, totally different from each other and complementary in terms of human experience. Those places were Italy, where she found pleasure learning Italian and eating pasta; India , where she tested herself in an arduous and remote location for westerns using meditation as an instrument of strength; and Indonesia, where she finally found balance between pleasure and meditation.



It's amazing when a book really proves to you that you were right in some situations and completely blind in others. It sounds like a self-help book, but this is not the real intention of the author. Actually, you turn it into a self-help book because it helps you to think about your own life when you read her self-discovering process.

I will not enter in more details about what I learned from this book because each person interprets it differently and I don't want to influence your own interpretation. I just would like to say that, besides its psychological perspective, it is also very entertaining. You will laugh a lot and have fun with Liz until the last pages, where she finally finds the new, recovering, and definitive love of her life.

Watch an interview of Elizabeth below:

DEA Defense Live from Belgium

It has been so long since we left Brazil to study in Belgium. The experience here has been so grateful, plenty of achievements, good moments, new friends from all over the world, new emotions and self-discovering, in a maturity process two times faster than in Brazil, where everything was under control.

However, a striking experience comes out when we stop to think about our journey until now. Our undergraduate course at University of Fortaleza (Unifor) was where everything we have today started.

Unifor was responsible for our high education, giving us all the instruments to be well recognized in the industry and academy. There, we had the biggest amount of friends ever, with whom we learned to work as a team and have fun as much as we could. We are still good friends with most of our teachers, frequently interacting with them about research and good memories.

Thanks to the great relationship we have with people at Unifor, we could count on them to evaluate our progress here, since they know us very well to precisely advice us to go further on our researches. Dr. Vasco Furtado, on the field of Artificial Inteligence, and Dra. Elizabeth Furtado, on the field of Human-computer Interaction, were members of the jury of my and Kênia's DEA dissertations, respectively. We have been working with them since 2002, when I received a scholarship to work with research and Kênia got the same opportunity months later.

This collaborations was so valuable and Unifor knew how to make it special and unforgettable, being so kind to record a report about this experience through TV Unifor, an internal tv channel focused on news about the campus. You can watch it below. The video is in Portuguese, but we added subtitles, since most of my visitors don't speak Portuguese.



If I don't become a recognized researcher I will be, at least, famous in my city ;)

A New Year and a New Blog's Soul

A new year means change. Change is not only what Barack Obama promised to American people. Change actually comes from inside out and it's always time to start it, better if we do that on January 1st (easier to control). So, I decided to start the year with some important changes in my life (as every year ;)) and this blog is actually the visible and public part of them.

If this is your first time here, never mind. Nothing is different for you and you can go further and read my previous interesting post below. But if you are one of those 25% of people that come back at least once, then you will notice some differences in the essence of this blog.

First of all, from now on it will be easier to find me out on the web. I've created a new short, beautiful and obvious address: hildeberto.com. Type it on your browser and reach me in seconds. The previous address was ridiculous (planexstrategy.blogspot.com). First because nobody knew what the hell is "Planexstrategy", since I never posted anything about it. Actually, I started the blog thinking about writing a lot about "Planexstrategy", but it never came out. And it isn't now that I will write about it, thus I will keep it misunderstood ;).

Second, I changed my top picture. Yeah, it is more Gothic than the previous one, but I think this time I'm more relaxed. I put it because of the stairs. If you see it carefully, I'm right on the top of the stairs, which means that "I put my dreams on the top of the stairs and I finally achieved the top, where I'm getting some rest after a long and hard journey to achieve them".

Last, but not least, I changed my slogan too. "Giving a chance to my words" represents better my new phase and this phase will be reflected through this blog in 2009. This is the year that I will spend more time writing than coding, which is a pity because the majority of my visitors come here because of my technical posts. I will keep writing them, but in a minor frequency and I didn't forget the previous slogan, because I still think that "sharing knowledge is the best way to add value to it". Therefore, you are always welcome to ask me your challenging questions at any time.

To finish, I wish you a happy new year plenty of achievements! Everybody deserves that and you are not an exception. ;) Cheers!!!