End of course, end of academical year

Today, we have the last day of the last 2007 PANS-OPS course. Once more, 10 new procedure designers will leave the ANI facility in Fukuoka/Japan (picture). For me, that will also be the beginning of a holiday :-) So I actually look forward but I am also a little sad to say goodbye to another good group of students. However, that's it for the year 2007, quite a year I have to say. It was the year when we finalized 5 new manuals in the ICAO IFPP: The PBN manual, the RNP AR manual and the Quality Assurance Manual for procedure design vol. I, II and III. Volume 2 is the Training Manual, which I believe is a nice piece of work. The last Fukuoka course was adopted to fully comply with this new manual and I must say, I am very happy with the results.
Furthermore, 2007 was the year of the first ever certified online trained procedure designer, Evan Colpitts. So, when I look back, the year brought a lot of upsides. The downside was obvioulsy my constant struggle for health, which some of you guys out there are aware of or witnessed. However, I look forward to some quiet days in the snow and an I will be pumped up to face new challeges in 2008. In the mean time, I wish all readers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. May the time not be too hectic for you :-)

Cheers,
Beat

Some happy faces

The ARINC 424 course in Langen/Germany given by our database coding guru Christian Freiesleben created some happy faces. Or are you saying they do not look happy? ;-)

"e" in e-mail means: electronic

This week I followed the elections of the Swiss Federal Council with interest. The fact I could do that is already quite an amazing fact, as I am working in Japan as always at that time of the year. Electronic media make it possible to even watch some TV coverage live. But that's not my point. Neither is the political aspect of the elections. But I saw a documentary about the newly elected woman (all six other members were confirmed for another 4 years) and they were filming at her former workplace, the financial department in Chur. "How were the last 24 hours for you" they asked a secretary. She said " oh, quite busy, a lot of phonecalls etc. congratulations from a lot of people". Then she points to a pile of A4 paper: "Over a thousand e-mails, but that's not all yet here." Excuse me??? You PRINT over a thousand emails with congratulation messages?? Actually, you PRINT emails at all?? Why on earth would somebody ever do that? Human beings seem to resist eveolution wherever possible. It's a little bit like some years ago, when I started travelling with electronic tickets. At some airport I was asked for the ticket to enter the check-in zone. I said "I have no ticket, it's electronic". The lady: "Don't you have a printout of it?" No, I bloody don't, because the purpose of electronic documents is that they are what the name implies: E-LEC-TRO-NIC. And the reason you would have such a ticket is because you don't want to travel with all this paperwork...