Book Review: Adventures of Bystander by Peter F. Drucker

Adventures of Bystander was not a book I would have selected to be read myself, but when I got the book from my sister's husband when they moved abroad, I decided to read it. Author Peter F. Drucker was somewhat familiar to me, but this book was not.

Peter Drucker is famous management thinker, so I had expectations that this book would have had more about management. It really didn't. It's a book about Mr Drucker's life and interesting people he had known.
And he really had known many important persons from 20th century.

Book tells about interesting people, but also about life during and after World War II. Drucker is originally from Vienna and left Austria bit before nazis conquered the city. He lived in London and New York and worked with many magazines, universities and interesting companies.

Some people introduced in the book are genuinely interesting, others seem to mentioned because them being famous. The interesting people were interesting to read, the famous people not that much.

Book is divided to the stories going Mr Drucker's life through quite chronologically. Of course people are followed through their lifetime, but stories start from Drucker's order of knowing the people.

History is important and quite often interesting. Sometimes it's just plain boring with lots of names and happenings on politics. Time to time I was really keen on reading and sometimes I couldn't cared less to read. That summaries my thinking about the book. Half of it is really good, half quite boring.

It's difficult to recommend this book. If you are fan of Peter Drucker it's a must book to read. If you like history of Europe and US after 1930, this is a good book. If you like biographies, it's a different one and you might like it. For me, it wasn't that good.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Reach For The Sky

Reach for the Sky is a real life story about Douglas Bader, man who lost both of his legs in flying accident and still became one of the greatest pilots in the world. His story is inspiring in so many different ways. His journey through all the difficulties and his time in German prisons would be worth to read even without him losing both of his legs, but that makes it even more important.

Douglas Bader gives important lesson to everyone about the willpower. He knew what he wanted and kept trying long enough to get his answers. Some might say he was stubborn, but I would say he was consistent. He did realize that some of the things became impossible to him, but he had to learn it himself and didn't let anyone to tell him that. That's the lesson we all should learn, we shouldn't let anyone else tell us what we can and what we can't do.

The Author, Paul Brickhill, is a pilot himself. That has given him a skill to describe flying quite comprehensively. Also Brickhill was a prisoner himself in German prisons, so the stories about escapes are really authentic and detailed.

Story is good dive in to the World War II and to the incredible life of Douglas Bader. I haven't read many biographies, but I'm happy I read this one. I really enjoyed the book and I'm happy to recommend this book to everyone. It teaches about history, but also it teaches us about how important willpower and believing to your own skills is.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Facebook - the thing our parents used to do

Will Facebook become "the thing our parents used to do"? Idea that our kids will talk in 15 years from now about Facebook as the thing our parents used to use seems bit amusing, but it might become reality soon.

I think it's quite likely that this will actually happen. I can't actually tell a one thing in media that is the same now that was with our parents. They didn't have mobile, TV barely had colors, not to mention Internet and everything there. So why in earth wouldn't change happen as fast with social media also.

Surely there's a lot value in Facebook currently, but will it really last for 10-15 years? I doubt it.. It's now about eight years old and most of the users have been there less than 3 years. So it's easy to say it's still fresh and new. When it will be 15-20 years old, there will definitely be other viable options to keep in touch with friends.

Facebook surely might be live and kicking in 10-15 years from now for sure, but it's not definitely going to be the cool thing out there the young kids will use. I bet it will become the "thing our parents used to do". And as we all know, kids definitely don't want to be like their parents.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Old type of videotaping makes more memories

We were was just recently visiting my uncle in his cabin. When we got kids to sleep and night got darker, he found from his archives a 26 year old VHS-tape of an old birthday party. On that time (year 1985) videotaping wasn't that regular and taping was done in mentality of let it roll without planning.

Video was really full of memories. It was amazing to watch relatives and people from my childhood, some of them already passed away, having a party and just having fun. Also I was there as a little kid playing around with my cousins. Video was full of real life.

Video was a long one and there was no cutting done for it. I must say it would have been boring for anyone else that for those, who know the people on it. It was video that you can watch once in ten years to really live the memories again, more often it would just be dull.

Nowadays no one seems to be videotaping this way. All the videos I've seen shot are mainly these short ones and edited to be even shorter. Video from the party is minimised to couple of minutes full of action, filled with catchy music to prove the point. All are in this youtube format, 2-5 minutes is long enough.

This is fine now. No one would actually watch hour or two long tapes from a party. We're so used to these short videos that we lose our interest to longer ones after couple of minutes. For a longer term, that's a pity. In twenty, thirty years from now, it would be amazing to be able to really get into life of nowadays. We would laugh on our clothing, dancing, hair styles and the music. That's just how life goes on.

If you are one of those, who videotape on parties and everybody seems to hate it, I encourage you still to keep on doing it. Even most of people thing that it is annoying that someone is videotaping the party, there's going to people in future, who appreciate your actions.


Written by +Henri Hämäläinen