Unity and Diversity, EU visit, June 11 (Day 11)

Woke up feeling a bit more tired than the previous day for no obvious reason to me, but I had to get up and get out of bed, else I risked missing breakfast and that was one meal too expensive for me to miss. We had a lecture from a guest speaker from Ireland, Mr Stephen Ryan, who was head of marketing at FOTA wildlife in Cork, Ireland. He talked about how timing and the right message could make an impact in a company’s marketing strategy and success, his company had used simple social media concepts such as building an online community, quick response to customers messages and simple technology tools such as smart phone to propel the company to limelight time and time again, one of their online campaigns even made it to the today show, a feat that would have cost the company $50k for thirty seconds if they ever thought of advertising on the show. The class was really “infotaining” we gained a lot and a had fun we even had a fun quiz and I won a 1000 pieces puzzle, which I loved from the minute he brought it out. After the lecture we all get dressed up to visit the EU office, we got to the EU headquarters and it wasn’t the most impressive office complex, but it sure looked good.

We had another guest speaker talk to us about the EU, how it functions and the composition and election processes of EU member states. His presentation helped us to understand the complexity in making decisions, if it was good the country took the glory, if the decision went bad EU is given a bad name. We left there around 4:00 pm. From the EU office we went to the market square where I saw two sports shops to interview, the coolest part was one of them was a niche sports shop that only sold sports streets ware and accessories, the talk with them was interesting. We left the market to get to the hostel just in time for breakfast.