Saturday shorts

‘Three thoughts for starting the weekend, with a plane back to Maastricht early Monday morning.

I visited my immigration consultant for Britain on Friday: I’ve been in the country for a year of my 3-year term on my Tier 1 visa and wanted to check on the ‘what next’ process.

The Conservative government has recently announced it’s intent to tighten rules for Tier 1 folks (knowledge workers), lowering the intake to just 1,000 people (plus those with exceptional talent) for 2012.  A two-year renewal is still available if you meet the income and bank balance rules. 

Permanent visas may be granted if the holder hasn’t been out of the country for more than 180- days in the entire 5-year period.  For most people doing business in Europe, this will be an impossible barrier.

I haven’t had a conversation with my Dutch folks yet, but become eligible for permanent visa status later this year.   Anyone know if the rules are changing?

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I posted some thoughts the other day on spoken and unspoken social cues.  This was sparked by a meeting that left me with the gut sense that it hadn’t gone well even though the conversation was cordial and informative.

A couple of people asked if it wasn’t a case of ‘sour grapes’: shifting responsibility for the outcome onto a busy or disinterested colleague.  I meant the essay as a learning exercise: when your gut and hear are in conflict, it’s always good to listen to intuition.

In this case, there were clear signs out of the list I compiled that we weren’t making the connection.  It’s not a matter of blame, but chemistry.    I am in the habit of taking time to learn, to ask how I might have done better or differently to improve outcomes.  Sometimes, as in pitching to investors, it helps me improve.  In this case, we’ll see (they didn’t accept my LinkedIn request to keep in touch, so that’s probably significant).

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And, following up on yesterday’s post about creating a new web site, I will, indeed, need to create a social network presence for the client.  dedicated Email, Facebook and LinkedIn pages, Twitter or Tumblr linked to a dynamic window on the site are obvious features.  Are there others to recommend?

For that matter, what about traditional media, especially at the community level?  A note on the bulletin board or the local paper for starting a new service not only created short term buzz, but enters into the paper’s archive for future searches.  Business cards and 1-page fliers, a table at a community event, even word of mouth are all likely still effective means of awareness and promotion.

Finally, all this fussing with meta-tags made me aware of the lack of tags on my blog.  Here is a link that helped me, but the recommended “META TAG BUILDER” generated code with incorrect closing brackets on each line.  Be prepared to edit and preview your HTML.