This morning we participated in a lecture on the topic of Entrepreneurship. This lecture had me more engaged than the other two, but not my mind as much as my emotions. I sincerely enjoyed hearing about Brad's story, especially the transparency he showed by letting us hear not only about his success but his failure. It showed me that it takes passion, talent, and a bit of luck for a new endeavor to succeed. However, the part of the lecture that I disagree with is the idea that anyone can be an entrepreneur. It's funny really. They spent the entire lecture telling us how hard it is, how motivated you have to be, how much selling you have to do, the long hours etc., but then they turn around and say anyone can do it? Hardly. Most people cannot be entrepreneurs. Most people don't want to work 14 hours a day, take on risk, and give up a secure paycheck and predictable schedule. Most people don't have the charisma it takes to sell your butt off all day and still be able to lead a team. Telling people who aren't capable to start their own company is huge disservice to them and an insult to those entrepreneurs that actually have what it takes. The reason I am so opinionated on the matter is that I lived it and observed first hand just how hard being an entrepreneur is. I know, from experience, that most people aren't cut out for it. That's ok, I'm not putting entrepreneurs on some weird pedestal it just requires a specific kind of skill set, personality and luck to pull it off.
The rest of the day on the 23rd we traveled by train to Paris, which was great.
5/24
Today we visited UNESCO's location in Paris. I really enjoyed this visit. The individuals we interacted with were intelligent, professional and intelligent. They also gave off this feeling of warmth and passion. It was clear how much they cared about the work they were doing. During our visit we were shown a clip of the Daily Show. The clip explained that the USA had cut funding of UNESCO programs. It was funny but informative. Clearly the clip was only telling one side of the story and intentionally painting a specific picture. I need to do some reading to better understand the other side of this story.
This afternoon I worked on one our street projects. It was nice to have some unstructured time to just mingle with the locals and strike up conversation. Our topic was to explore how French people might be utilizing cell phone technology differently than we are. It was a bit difficult to just launch into the conversation, but most of the people we talked to use technology the same exact ways we do. Some differences do exist on how cell phone companies work due to the frequency and ease at which cell phone users travel within other European countries. One gentleman I spoke with did mention the frustation of dealing with his cell provider regarding travel policies. Overall, the project was fun, but we didn't really have the time to think the best approach to engage in the conversations we were having.
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