Kon - Tiki

First day at film festival, first bang. Kon-tiki, story of Thor Heyerdahl and his crew passing the ocean managed to stop me on my tracks. Heyerdahl had a belief and he set out to prove people from south america came to populate the west indies fifteen hundred years ago. And he does that on a raft made with wood and ropes in a journey that takes him across the Pacific from Peru to Tahiti for more than hundred days.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1613750/

There are two parts to the story I cherished deeply. First part is the journey itself; this sect of people like myself who cant stop their insatiable need to explore and see and ask questions in the oddest parts of the world until there is no mountain left to be hiked; no city to be explored; no land or geography to be experienced; no climate to battle with. Those of us who have the desire to persevere the why and the when and the who got to create the cultural spatial mixes tucked between pieces of earth; a soup of archaeology, anthropology, history, geology, immigration, genetics, earth sciences and simply the rocks or the sand dunes. Thor the Norwegian gets on the raft and sails away to the mountain height waves and the whales and sharks of the Pacific.

Teknolojinin Evliya Çelebi'si

Milliyet Gazetesi'nden Menderes Özel ile çok keyifli bir röportaj gerçekleştirdik.

Röportajın tamamını buradan okuyabilirsiniz.

And the board meets at Legoland!

 Lego headquarters is in Billund, Denmark. A real cold, cold piece of land on the mainland of Denmark, I actually think it is close to Arctic but I was warned by my European colleagues that it was only close to the north sea. Out of our two days business meetings we actually had few hours to combine the amazing innovative Lego approach to the discussions we had and  actually had FUN.

Focus'a konuk oldum

Bloomberg HT kanalında yayınlanan Merva Ulusoy'un Focus Programı'na konuk oldum. Programı buradan izleyebilirsiniz.

Little Paris Things

              

TUSIAD Innovation Seminar

Turkish Industry and Business Association (TUSIAD) organized a seminar on innovation on March 14th in Istanbul, and the objective of the seminar is to encourage the university students to think differently and innovatively.

Ziya Boyacıgiller - Endeavour Advisory Board Member, Haluk Zontul – General Manager of Teknoloji Yatırım and Samir Deliormanlı – IP Licence Manager of Koç Conglomerate, from both academia and business world, attended the event. I am as a TUSIAD Technology and Innovation Working Group  President and Intel Middle East, Turkey and Africa Regional Director mostly talked about corporate innovations especially and to some extent individual innovations in her session. My ultimate message, to be remembered by the young people there, was that ‘Whatever you are doing right now, always think about how you can do it differently. That’s the only way you can add value to your life.’

Click here for the details.

Short blog on a reunion

We cramped half of lives in half hour hastily; and everything difficult popped out in no time. ‘I lost the blue painting, ‘out in cold in Toronto’’. He said ‘I will paint you another one.’ Then both of us queried ‘did you ever get to doing good?’ Long pauses of mumblings, half there. Then he asked ‘Where is the book?’; and soul got pinned to the bricks behind me.

Thought this is like Marquez’s hundred years of solitude coming in full circle. Too long to explain why.

Celebrating our women

  

To our wonderful strong women in Middle East, Turkey and Africa. You folks are one of the biggest inspiration and reasons why I come to work every day and strive to make this company even a better place to work. I see that you folks evolve and grow stronger every year and your careers flourish and I want to reaffirm that we are here right behind you to support your growth in whatever you wish to achieve in the future too. I am reading Mary Robinson’s 'Everybody Matters' these days; former President of Ireland who I got to meet. She had an amazing spark that came from her courage and armed with a mission to change the world for women and every other person who didn’t have a voice. When I met with Sally Ride who was the first woman in space and Hellen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand, I saw the similar relentless strive to carry on to do good.

We women can do and can be.

Happy women’s day to all of you from your very proud woman colleague:)

Ayse  

“Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have.”

Margaret Mead (1902-1978), Cultural Anthropologist