20CENT Mood Thank You Dietmar
Last week was again a busy week for yours truly. I enjoyed discovering Europain, obviously continued my writing and drawing activities, and I followed the developments in our beloved retail landscape.
But there is one news item that caught my eye this week. Dietmar Eiden, previously responsible for the food and food technology segment in his role as Koelnmesse's divisional head of trade fair management, will be leaving Koelnmesse at his request to pursue new professional challenges. As divisional head since 2012, he was responsible for events including Anuga, ISM, Eu’Vend, Anuga FoodTec, veganfach and ProSweets Cologne.
So why is this news part of my weekly 20/CENT Mood note? Well only a few of my closed ones know this, and he himself doesn’t know it, but Mr Eiden played a role for this blogging activity.
When I started this website my intentions were simply to have a website to present my activities and myself in a more dynamic form. Writing helped organise my thoughts and trained my skills and mind. On top of that, the info I gathered could be used in my professional activity as an agent. Then I saw to my own surprise that the number of readers grew and I started seeking more and more stories. Indeed why not continuing more regularly and have a writing schedule and so on, just for myself as a good hobby?
But I had the writing bug and started to be a bit more productive than I anticipated. I started thinking “Could this blog be more?”. Maybe… But then I needed to invest more time and efforts. To figure “How” wasn’t a problem but to figure out the “why” was a different story. There must be a purpose and an added value to turn this blog slash writing slash mind exercise slash hobby into a real professional activity. (There is a lot of slash but I thought not all would understand if I wrote blog/writing/mind exercise/hobby and at the same time it reminds us all of a good guitarist ;-))
Then one event took place that helped me define this “why”. It was at a press event of the Koelnmesse for the upcoming Anuga. After all the presentations, the participants were treated to a lunch. When sitting down, once settled at the table, as it is customary we started to exchange business cards and I happened to sit opposite to M. Eiden. He took my card and instead of just putting it in his pocket he immediately pointed: “You are the one who wrote the article Sial vs Anuga”. We then discussed about the differences stated in my article and even more. It was a very pleasant moment. And at that moment I realised that a division head at Koelnmesse read my article attentively. I became conscious that this blog could be something, a professional activity. The event helped me understand these pages and all side-things I can come up with, have a “why”.
So dear Dietmar,
Surely the Koelnmesse will continue to provide the world with quality trade shows in the future even after you are gone. But more than just reporting the news of your departure with these few lines, I also just wanted to say thank you for that “moment of realisation” that took place in Brussels a few years ago, and made me conscious that my posts on these pages do mean something to others.
Good luck in the future.
For those who want to (re)discover the article Sial vs Anuga : http://20100retail.be/en/articles/32/sial-paris-vs-anuga-cologne-the-battle-of-the-giants
Your comments and questions are welcome via blog@20100retail.be or via the form http://20100retail.be/en/contact
20cent MoodMoodDietmar EidenKoelnmesseCologne