Making it personal

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Mumbai – Goa, 9^th October 2014

The next few days I am in India (again). This morning I had a meeting with a new potential client, one of the biggest and most respected property developers in India. As the company is growing and their projects becoming more prestigious they feel that they need to assure themselves of a pool of international and experienced professional design consultants, lighting designers included. Hence my time spent in Mumbai this morning to introduce our company in a face to face meeting. We had communicated by mail till now but I felt that the personal meeting was important as in the future our cooperation if successful will very much depend on the direct personal support and relationship. This cannot be built from a distance behind a desk. The same will be the case should we be selected for one of their projects, we will need to proactively communicate and support the client and the project team.

Meanwhile I have arrived in Goa for a 3 day site visit, coordination with landscape and architect/interior design and review of the mock up room together with the hotel operator. We checked into a reasonable countryside hotel outside Panjim not to far from the project site. The rooms are spacious, but electricity and internet are intermittent with power dropping out once in a while…typical for this type of locations. Not even sure if I can upload my blog later as the internet is really slow (at least there is internet), but I will at least write the blog…see later. Meetings starts tomorrow but because of the limited flight options we decided to come in the day before so we are now relaxing and catching up on our emails, etc., perhaps a dip in the hotel pool later. This trip to Goa is also personal. We are here to meet the rest of the team. While we have been coordinating and communicating intensively over the last few months to progress the project as good as possible, the personal meeting is crucial to move this to the next level. Nothing beats the direct personal interaction.

Light Watch 5-170: Meanwhile I was reminded to the direct simplicity of light switching. This hotel does not have anything like upscale dimming panels. Just straight forward switches and manual rotator wall dimmers. The switch panel in the lobby is a piece of art…you dont see that so often anymore. But Led has made it here as well, with wall sconces converted into small LED spots for artwork and original E14 picture lights converted in to LED upgrades…somehow I find it refreshing…