Home / Podcasts / Jeff Hall makes websites popular!
Jeff Hall never had a choice but to become an entrepreneur.
At the age of 7, he sold candy because money meant escaping his life of poverty and neglect.
At the age of 13, he acquired a reputation as a computer nerd at school quite by accident and began working on his school's computers.
At 15, he began his company, Overflow Cafe, in order to keep from being evicted from his home, and at 17 was lying about his age to get the commercial lease for his first office.
Remarkably, he is still helping new and small businesses become popular online at Overflow Cafe 23 years later along with another 4 successful startups under his belt.
Ingrid:	Jeff, tell us and our audience, what is your business? What business are you in?
Jeff:	Yeah. I work at Overflow Café, and we do one thing, we make websites popular. It's also called search engine optimization.
Ingrid:	Wow, I like the way you say that, make websites popular. So often when people go, "oh, SEO," people don't know what you're talking about, so I love that. Thank you.
Jeff, when did you start this business?
Jeff:	I actually started it in December 1995. I'm 39 years old now. I was 15 years old when I started the company.
Ingrid:	Wow. Was there websites then?
Jeff:	Yeah. There were. Definitely not as many as there are now, and they were a lot simpler. Typically, it was just very basic pages, basic text, basic images. Yahoo was the number one search engine and Lycos and AOL, those were the runner-ups back then.
Ingrid:	Wow. Why at 15 when websites were just … most people probably didn't even know they existed. Why did you start your business?
Jeff:	Yeah, actually, it was just out of necessity. My family was financially very poor. I was already working probably as far back as I can remember, the age of seven, buying and reselling candy at school, just little entrepreneurial ventures like that, and working, even working traditional jobs.
When I was 15, we needed a very large sum of money to save our home. I was bringing in about $1000 a month just working, and I said, you know what, maybe it's time for me, in order to get this kind of money, I'm going to have to do something a little bit more grand. I was already doing computer related stuff for people, and I went to work. I said, what can I do that I'm really good at, and it was mostly computer related stuff.
I really learned the ins and outs of website design and how to get people to your website, and it worked for him. He recommended me to someone and that person recommended me to someone, and that's how things really started rolling.
Ingrid:	Wow. When I think back to, like, I'm old enough to remember 1995. I don't even think I used a computer. Maybe I did, but I just don't recall it having much … I certainly wouldn't have website SEO'd for anything. If I was looking for a kung fu expert, I'm not sure. I think the phone book is probably where I would've gone.
Jeff:	Oh, yes, absolutely. Actually, that was our main competitor, was the phone book here, I think we called them the yellow pages. It was really all about back then community, which is actually what a lot of it is about today as well, but back then, it was all community. People would gather up in chat rooms, so almost 90% of the internet in my opinion was chat rooms, and you'd go and you'd chat with people and it was so amazing. A lot of it was, "Hey, if you're in this area, check out this kung fu school," and so on and so forth. It was really not something that I would've even thought of myself, it was just this kung fu instructor said … it was really forward thinking.
Ingrid:	Mm-hmm (affirmative). Very much so. The next question is what did you want from your business from day one? You've kind of answered that with why you started your business. It sounds like it was money. Was there anything else you wanted from it?
Jeff:	Yes money, the other thing was freedom. My family was employed, but it was my mother, my younger sister, my grandmother, my aunt. They were all employed, but not necessarily great with money. I wanted freedom. I wanted freedom from financial troubles, which at that stage in life, I had been experiencing collection agencies calling us and utilities getting shut off and furniture getting repossessed and things like that. I really wanted a sense of control, like, oh, I have something that I can build and scale it up if possible and maybe earn an income. It wasn't even necessarily just the money, it was the freedom that money might be able to provide.
Ingrid:	I really like that. So many people talk about freedom, and I'm not sure they really know what's behind that, just this sense of freedom. I think when you say freedom from financial concerns, freedom, the money gives you that freedom. That's so powerful isn't it, to really have that as what's underpinning it.
Jeff:	Yeah, absolutely. I've seen the opposite by the way. I'm sure you've seen it as well, where money has cost people slavery as well. If you manage it the right way, it certainly can offer you tremendous freedom.
Ingrid:	It can. The other thing I believe personally, and I know this is your interview not mine, but it actually allows you to have an impact. You can do stuff with money beyond for yourself. You can take it out into the community or whatever you want to do. It can do things for good. Well, I suppose and evil as well, but you can do good deeds with money.
Ingrid:	In your business, when you get started, and you're 15 and you'd already been selling candy and doing jobs and being entrepreneurial as a young person, but when did this business, when did you actually feel like you had a business? When did it feel real?
Jeff:	There've been several dozen milestones where I've gone, wow, I've really made it.
Ingrid:	What was that first one, or what was one of the big ones?
Jeff:	I was in high school, and what I would do is I'd go to high school, and then at lunch time, I knew that I had work that had to be done, and I couldn't do it all after school because of course homework, right? At lunchtime, while everybody's enjoying their lunch, I'm running home as fast as I can to get work done. I got to the stage where customers were physically lined up at my house. My grandmother would be tending to them.
It was hilarious, it was absolutely hilarious because these were businesspeople, some of them were wearing suits, and here I am, this teenager with pimples all over my face and glasses, and really, I was a nerd, and all this stuff. There were just these random strangers who read about me in, I had placed little free classified ads in the papers and stuff like that, and I was getting recommendations. Just to come home and to see these line up with people, and the neighbours where saying, "Jeff, what's going on?" You know what I mean?
Ingrid:	That would've been such fun. Now you're a real business. The customers knew that they wanted what you were offering because they came and they ask you and Mr. Kung Fu guy recommended somebody else. How did it become a business? How did you then take it beyond that? How do you know now that people are looking for that? What is that that you do that you know people are looking for?
Jeff:	Yeah. That's a conversation that is very, it's almost theoretical. Back then, I didn't have much to lose, and I was a naïve young teenager, now I'm older and I have all kinds of paranoia, what happens if a competitor overtakes us or what happens if the whole industry collapses and all different kinds of things like that. Not everything lasts forever. I do think about these things.
I don't really know if I have a great answer for you, but we, I try to talk at least one customer each day personally. The company's still small, we've got about 45000 clients, and there's 17 of us. I try to talk to one person on the phone or face-to-face every day, or every business day, and to just ask them what are we doing right, what are we doing wrong, and then we know, are they going to need us a year from now, are they going to need us five or 10 years from now, what are we failing at, what are we succeeding at? I think it's something that every business owner has to really think about.
Ingrid:	That's such a terrific answer. I know that the people listening are either in business themselves and looking for ways to make it better, or they're thinking about it. That personal contact, we see so much about automating and making things through funnels and automating emails. That personal one-to-one contact over time is what really builds isn't it, and so you keep in touch with what your customers are looking for.
We said, okay, let's totally revamp that, so we added in live chat, we got rid of outside third-party live chat and it's just our actual team now. We're more reachable by phone. We switched from email to support tickets. Everything is done on a much more personal level in order to … it's this fine balance, because you want to serve a lot of people, you want to remain profitable. You want to make them really happy as well. It's an ongoing thing.
Ingrid:	Well, and I think too, it's interesting you say that, because there was a time when we all looked for that automation, but maybe now because everything is automated, the person who stands out is the one that actually is the personal. Things just cycle around don't they in that way?
Ingrid:	You funded your business by just doing it, and we don't have to actually talk about how much and what you spend, but how did you get to … did you just say 45 000 that's thousand customers?
Ingrid:	How do you go from your one kung fu guy, what are those expansions … where does the money come from to set up something like this?
Jeff:	There was a time when I borrowed a little bit of money from friends and family members, and clients. I said, "We need $500," I was 15 years old, "We need $400 or $500 in order to purchase a computer so that we can do this kind of work," and then we paid it back. There was a time when I borrowed $1000, and then as I got older … By the time I turned 18, I was able to get credit lines and credit cards and loans and stuff. I don't recommend debt by the way.
If you are really savvy with finances and you know for sure, well, this money is going to be used to fulfil actual customer orders, then that makes sense, versus, well, I'm going to … back in the dotcom bubble days, they were spending $1000 on a fancy office chair. Don't do that.
We made sure that we're profitable and we have access to capital from our bank, and a good accountant who keeps track of profit and loss. Just the basic, you know, we're an internet company, but you also need a good banking relationship, we also need a good relationship with an accountant, and a good relationship with a lawyer, just to make sure that everything is sustainable. We've seen other companies come and go, not because they weren't making revenue, they were making 10, 20, 30 million in annual revenue, and they were losing money to the point of bankruptcy.
We funded it the way everybody else funds. We bootstrapped it. There was no big fundraising rounds or going to venture capitals. We have venture capital firms probably several times a year offering us money, and we're like, "You know what? Maybe one day in the future. For right now, we like being a small company, and the team, we're like family. We eat dinner together, we go to the movies together," and stuff like that. I don't really want it to be some out of control corporation.
Ingrid:	Mm-hmm (affirmative). You do what you do really well, and that works well for you, so congratulations, I have to say.
Jeff:	Thank you. Thank you.
Ingrid:	How do you find new customers? Obviously customers, as you said, come and go, they leave for some reason, they move on to someone else. How do you find new customers? How do you know who they are and where they are?
Jeff:	Yeah. What we do, every customer eventually, we reach out to then with a survey link, and it usually goes to a Survey Monkey type website link, and we ask them questions about who they are and their background and so on and so forth.
Then we aggregate that data, and we try to reach out to people who are similar, specifically to the people who were successful with, because we're not able to do great work for everybody that comes to us. We do have a failure rate, just like every company out there. We try to focus on who our successful clients are, and then we scale up on that.
We look for them in traditional channels. We say, "Hey, can you recommend us to anybody? We'll pay you a commission if you recommend us to someone." Of course, we rank well in search engines for different phrases, so we get natural search engine traffic. We get clicks from our little YouTube videos which we want to expand on, our Instagram gives us clicks and things like that. Once in a while, we do pay-per-click campaigns, and we get featured a lot in different articles and blog posts and things like that.
All of those things lead to clicks to our website, and then from the clicks to our website, there's the next biggest balance between art and science, which is trying to convert those visitors into actual paying customers. We do give out free trials frequently. If anybody asks us, we always give out free trials. If people come to us and they say, "Look, we can't even afford to pay for this now or in the future," we'll give out long free trials, put our money where our mouth is. If we think we can help you, we'll try to help you.
We try everything. We try everything. If something doesn't work, we say, okay, we're not doing this anymore. If something works, we say, okay, how can we scale up on this?
Ingrid:	Yeah. You're measuring the results of things along the way.
Ingrid:	Can you say that again? Not that exact part, but things don't work, do they? There are times when things just don't work.
Jeff:	Yeah, absolutely. Just because you've heard someone else did something and they said it worked for them, that doesn't mean that you need to then sell your house and then do what they did. That's not a great strategy. Maybe they did 10 things, and nine of the things failed, and then they found one thing that succeeded. You might have to go through that same process where you try 10 things, but you have to really mitigate your risk.
You have to say, okay, I'm willing to risk $100 on this campaign. I'm willing to risk $1000 in this campaign. Even the biggest companies in the world, they started off small, and they had to say, okay, we can't afford to lose this money, so let's start with a very small amount, and then scale up, scale up, scale up. Let's dominate my city, dominate my city.
Ingrid:	That's so funny because it is true. People come to me for help and I say, "Who's your ideal customer?" "Everyone." If everyone lined up at your front door right now, could you actually help them?
Jeff:	Yeah, you wouldn't be able to, it's just impossible. A lot of people get upset when you give them that reality check, that your customer's not everyone. That's actually good news. It doesn't have to be everyone. You don't have to stress yourself out by trying to please the whole world. You just have to find out who's your ideal customer, where are they?
Okay, maybe yes, you have some customers halfway around the world, and that's fine. Start with where you are physically located, and dominate the area that you live in, and then that's proof that you can then take over the city next door and maybe your entire province or state, and then your entire country, and then your continent, and then you start expanding world-wide.
By the way, that is actually how the largest and most successful corporations do things.
Ingrid:	Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think what tricks us today and maybe from time to time we all feel a bit like this. You think, let's look at Facebook for example. Wow, everyone on the planet is on Facebook. But it didn't start with that. It was 20 people in a college room or however many there were.
I think it's so important to come back to that. I love that, what you just said there about don't stress yourself by trying to please the whole world. Start with your suburb, start with your street, just start with where you are depending on what your business is.
Ingrid:	Talking about how people pay and whether they pay and how much they pay, how did you decide back in the day, Mr. Kung Fu man probably, you and he worked out a deal, and then you worked out a deal with some of the others, and the SEO space is quite competitive, but you clearly do what you do really well. How do you philosophically decide how much to charge?
Jeff:	Yeah. That has been … our team debates and argues about this all the time. From 1995 to now, the pricing has changed. We used to have a setup fee. We used to have different fees for different things, it used to be variable pricing, custom pricing.
Years ago, we settled on a flat monthly fee, and then if they want additional things over and above what we do, then we'll quote them a price over and above that. Most of our clients are on the flat fee model, unless they outgrow that, which is, we hope that they do, but you never know until you know.
We try to fit ourselves into a market that's comfortable for beginners. If you already are a multi-million dollar company, you do not need us. People come to us, they're brand new, or they're … they are inexperienced, and they're not established. They just recently set up a website, they don't have a background in coding or search engine optimization or even eCommerce at all. They just have a great idea, and they want to try it out and see if they can scale it up.
We actually do have statistics that this is what people are able to pay, and so that's exactly where we wanted to price ourselves. Now, we do have clients that say, "You're not charging enough." That's great news for us, but we're trying to balance things out in a way where we can automate as much as we can while still doing that very personal customer service, make money, and be cheap enough that it's a no-brainer for somebody who's brand new to the industry.
Ingrid:	Could I ask you a technical question there please?
Ingrid:	Someone who has an idea and who has a website, has set up a website, is this someone who built the website themselves, or have they had somebody build the website for them?
Jeff:	Yeah. Most of our clients, and when I say most, I mean more than 50%, probably more than 60%, they built their website themselves.
Ingrid:	Can you go back and retrofit SEO to that website?
Jeff:	Yeah, absolutely. The biggest challenge is if the business owner is just uncooperative, and we have that small, everybody has that small percentage of clients who are just uncooperative, and they just will not listen, they won't do anything, they won't let us do anything.
For the most part, our clients are fantastic and cooperative and we are able to work with almost any platform. Let me put it this way, Ingrid. The platform is usually not the problem, it's usually the person, usually the person.
Ingrid:	Okay. I'm just curious, because really, it's an area that I am not, I don't have a grasp of it, and I always had this idea that once you had your website, that it was much harder to retrofit SEO. Better to have the conversation about SEO as you're building and getting started.
Jeff:	We really kept that in mind. The way that we built our service and the workflow for our service bears in mind that the person has already built something and we will have to now go back in and figure out how to mix mistakes and so on. We've really itemised it and automated much of that. It's not a big problem for us. Probably one out of every 100 people we will actually say, "Oh, no, the way you've built this is so impossible that we can't do anything unless," you know, you have to redo the whole site. It's very rare, but it happens.
Ingrid:	That's fantastic. Okay. I've learned something about it, and hopefully our listeners have learned. I think it is a big mysterious world, this SEO world, isn't it?
Jeff:	It is. You have to think about it this way. A website is something easy to fix. If we were talking about a physical building, that's a lot more complex, but a website for the most part, that's something that overall, if you know what you're doing or you can get somebody who knows what they're doing, they can very quickly go in and make the modifications necessary.
Ingrid:	Fantastic. Thanks, Jeff. If anybody needs help with that, particularly if they're in that early stage, it's Overflow Café. What's the best way to contact you?
Jeff:	Yeah. OverflowCafe.com. We have all the social media links in the footer of the website, and if you're a member, it is ridiculously easy to live chat with any of our team members, to email us, or to call us directly.
Ingrid:	Fantastic. Well, if anybody's listening and they need some help with that, Jeff's your man, and his team.
Ingrid:	Jeff, back to our business questions. It didn't sound like it from something you said earlier, but do you have an exit strategy? Have you thought about where this goes? You don't have to tell us what the answer is, but have you thought about it?
Jeff:	I have. It's something that recently I've started to really think about. Over the years, I have took in 15 foster children, and I adopted one, and she's going to be off to college in less than two years. Now I'm thinking, well, I've been doing this for a million years, I've had all my foster children involved in one way or another to learn computers and software and coding and SEO and so on. Now I'm thinking about what my retirement might look like or selling the business, merging it with another business and so on. I don't have a bottom line answer, but I am thinking about it.
Ingrid:	It's on the radar for now.
Ingrid:	Okay. Let's have some reflective questions. I guess it's so long ago now, but maybe I can ask you this question a little bit different. I usually say to somebody, "What is something you wish you'd done differently at the beginning," because often the person I'm speaking to has been in business a few years or maybe up to about 10. If you look back, is there something you wish you'd done differently?
Jeff:	There's so many things, so many things. We've been around for a long time.
Ingrid:	Yes. You've had lots of opportunities.
Jeff:	Yeah. I can tell you things that are just very shallow things, like oh I wish I didn't buy that certain phone system for the office, because we wasted thousands of dollars, to, oh, I wish we didn't waste money, fortunes on certain advertising campaigns, to more things that have more depth, like, I wish that I didn't partner up with certain people that I partnered up with along the way.
You have to choose the people that you work with very carefully. You don't want to work with people who, you know, that really, you have to think, am I going to regret working with this person later on?
When we were starting out, we took on every client. We don't do that anymore. If there's a client that we think, this person, whether they have a good business or not, this person's going to be a nightmare to work with, we say no, but 20 years ago, we said yes. I would definitely go back in time and change that for sure.
Ingrid:	I think that's really powerful, who do you work with? That's pervasive across your business, suppliers, customers, like you say, partners, people you get into a relationship with in terms of building the business.
Where along the journey, what changed for that? How do you know who those people are now?
Jeff:	Yeah. I mean, now we have, I'm a real data nerd, so I'm always looking at raw numbers, and I'm able to form statistics and conclusions with them, not that I'm always right. I'm able to go to our team and say look … I mean, I can be very, would you like me to be specific? I'll give you one or two specifics.
We know that if a customer doesn't spell their name correctly, they're going to be a bad customer.
Ingrid:	They don't spell their own name?
Jeff:	I'm not kidding. We have customers who, on our sign up form, they're not able to spell their name properly. They'll do a typo, they'll capitalise maybe an internal letter or the last letter or something that is not appropriate, or they won't capitalise the first letter of their name. We used to have an auto correct feature on the sign up form that took care of this, but we wanted to see the data of who's not able to properly type in their name. We're actually able to trace the failure rate of those clients.
We have clients who are unable to spell their domain name properly. This is probably the biggest thing. They will either miscapitalize, or they'll put a space in their domain name, there's no such thing. It's .com, but they'll put .co, so they're not careful with their typos, or it'll be .net and they'll put . com. They don't even know.
We're able to see that and trace, okay, that person goes out of business typically within two months.
Ingrid:	Because of their lack of attention to detail.
Jeff:	Yeah. They have no attention to detail. We do have data points where if they email us for example, we'll email them and we'll say, we need you to correct this mistake on your website, and it's a very common address mistake that people put where they abbreviate either their province or state name on their website instead of spelling it out. Our software will check a month later to see if they've actually done it, and if they have done it, we know that that buys them at least two more years of lifespan. If they don't do it, they typically go out of business within six months.
Jeff:	Yeah. We have data that shows their ability to give us the … Oh, another thing, another huge thing. When you sign up with us, we ask a question, and the question is, what are we helping you sell? There are people who don't know how to respond to that. Some people are very specific, golf clubs, or fishing charters, or website design, or social media measurement.
Other people, they have no idea what to put, so they'll put high rankings in Google, but they sell cell phone cases. We wonder, why didn't you put cell phone cases since that's what you sell? Why didn't you put cell phone cases in that box? Why did you put this random thing that … you know?
We're able to say, okay, they'll last for 30 days or less, and then their website will go under typically within 6 months. You'll notice that the entire site is down, and it's just the under construction page, and then they don't even renew the domain a year later. We have the data points to really look at that.
Ingrid:	There are people who would be interested in your data. Data is so incredibly powerful. I love data too. Everyone listening ought to be interested in data, because data is what actually drives your business. There's a reason my business is called Healthy Numbers, is because numbers have to be healthy, and data is about numbers.
This is another reflective question that's a little bit different. What do you wish you'd known? Are there things you wish you'd known? It's a little bit different to the previous question.
Jeff:	It's a broad topic. There's so many things that I wish I knew, and I'm one of those people that I'm very reflective. I like to take trips down memory lane and say, "Wow, imagine if I could go back to 1997 and do this differently, if I could've gone back to 2002 and done this differently." I don't know. I have a list. I don't really know where to start, but there are plenty of things that I wish I knew about.
One thing right now is taxation, since we're heading into the end of the year. I wish I knew all about tax minimization strategies. As our company grows bigger and bigger and our net profit margins grow bigger and bigger, tax minimization is something that I wish I started working on 10 or even 15 years ago, because we've paid, in my opinion, too much money in tax, and I wish that I would've spent a year just really learning how we could've moved money around and minimised and kept more of the money that we earned.
Ingrid:	Because some people do that really well. If the system allows that, then having the right people to help you is what helps you do that.
Ingrid:	It sounds like you've got a great team. Who apart from yourself has been the greatest assistance to you? Mr. Kung Fu man was great, because he introduced you to it.
Jeff:	Oh my goodness. Who apart from me? I really appreciate my team. I really appreciate my team, I appreciate the feedback, I appreciate our customers who give us both positive and negative feedback, because we use it all to correct mistakes and to avoid making those mistakes in the future. Our competitors who do better than us, I'm always saying, look what they do better than what we do. How can we then introduce some healthy competition to them and overtake them in a certain area?
I really am trying my best to always improve and to learn from everybody, no matter what level they're at.
Ingrid:	I like that about the company, getting the feedback from the competition in terms of what they're doing and being able to benchmark yourself against that and then go further. Are you quite competitive, Jeff? It sounds like you are.
Jeff:	In one sense, yes. I'm not trying, again, I'm not competitive in the sense that I'm trying to be the biggest SEO company in the world. I think the biggest one has like three million paying clients. They're tremendously geometrically bigger than we are. We're not trying to be like that. I want to be just a small, family run business that does really great work for as many people as possible. I'm trying to be the best we can be, as opposed to being the biggest. I'm not competitive in that sense.
Ingrid:	Okay. You're sitting in a café having a coffee or tea with a friend or someone you know, or you're at the sports field or picking somebody up from school, and they say, "I'm thinking about starting my own business," what would you say to them?
Jeff:	I would say learn every single possible thing you can about that industry. Don't do it. Don't start that business until you know all the numbers, all the statistics, how much money are your competitors making, and are they really making money? A lot of times, people will model their business after a competitor who maybe earns revenue but is losing money and quickly heading towards bankruptcy. You don't want to model your business on them. Know everything that there is to know.
I mean, one of my kids was saying, "Well, I want to drop out of college and go into modelling." I'm like, hmm, you need to really learn that industry and learn about what you have to do in that industry and what you can really make and what they're going to expect from you and so on and so forth.
This potential client actually hung up the phone on me and called me a racist because they thought that I was being purposefully unhelpful, and I was trying to help them to say, no, you don't know what you're doing. 2018 is the wrong time to jump into even starting one print magazine, let alone 21 all at the same time, and this person had no capital, and magazines take a lot of capital.
Jeff:	I just tell people, learn as much as you can, because you can't just go in there with a pie in the sky dream just because somebody else did it 50 years ago.
Ingrid:	Yeah. I think also too, people look at the person running a café and they think they're going to be drinking cappuccinos all day, and they look at a flower shop and oh, flowers are beautiful, and yes they are, man, there's hard work underpinning both of those industries. Every business, there's the grind, there's the underpinning.
Anyway, thank you for saying that, Jeff. Back to you, Three characteristics that you think you have that makes you successful in business?
Jeff:	You know, I thought about this question for a while, and I was hoping that Ingrid would let me just say one thing.
Ingrid:	Say one. Okay, one. That's fine.
Jeff:	You actually said the word just a minute ago, and the word is grind. The word is grind. I watch this TV show called Shark Tank, I don't know if you know it?
Ingrid:	We have our own version. We don't have your version, but we have our own.
Jeff:	Okay. What do you have there, then?
Ingrid:	It's called Shark Tank but we have Australian people and Australian businesses.
Jeff:	Okay. I'm going to check that out.
Jeff:	Here they have this entrepreneur named Mark Cuban, and he asks the entrepreneurs often, "What is your grind? What is your grind?" If they can't answer him, he says, "I'm out." You really have to know what your grind is, and you have to grind. You really have to be diligent.
Grinding, it means so many different things, it means more than three things, but you really have to be so diligent and smart and hardworking and sincere in your business and just day to day to day, working, working, working to make your customers happy, and to solving problems and avoiding problems and making sure that you never make the same mistake twice. Just focus on really gaining those customers and increasing your revenues and lowering your expenses.
There's so many characteristics that you really need to be successful in business. I've seen people who, they earn $40 000 a year, American money, and they're extremely happy. In fact, they're happier than the person who's earning $60 000 a year. It's not just about who makes the most money and all that stuff. It's about so many other things.
You can even take it down to personal characteristics, like, are you a content person? Are you a humble person? Are you a greedy person, you know, and things along those lines. If you fix a lot of those internal struggles, you can actually be happy with a lot less, and then you don't have to always be aiming for more money, more money, more profit, more profit. It can be about a lot of other things.
Ingrid:	Yeah, yeah. Actually, I think he's coming to Australia soon. I saw something about him. He is known here as well. I think he's running some workshops in Australia.
Are those the characteristics? Because the next question is about what's essential for a startup, and it sounds like those are the characteristics that someone thinking about starting a business could be working on for themselves.
Ingrid:	Jeff, thank you so much for your time. I think you and I can continue talking for quite some time, but I guess we better let our listeners get on to whatever they do next. Before you go, firstly I'd like to just say thank you so much for your generosity. I just love some of the things that you said in terms of some of your answers to the questions. Is there anything else you'd like to add before you go?
Jeff:	Yeah. First of all, I wish all of your listeners tremendous success, and thank you so much for having me on the show.
I would like to say this, get an expert to help you in any area that you need help with. Don't try to be an expert at web design, because web designers spend years mastering their trade. Don't try to be an expert in search engine optimization, we've spent years mastering our trade. Don't try to be an expert in accounting, because your accountant spends years mastering their trade. If you surround yourself with experts, most likely, you will reach your goals a lot faster, and you'll succeed in business.
Ingrid:	Yeah. That's fantastic. Terrific, terrific advice. Surround yourself with the experts. Thank you so much, Jeff.


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Tag: modern architecture
Henry Klumb: Two Buildings, One Idea
January 10, 2019 January 17, 2020 jlorenzotorresLeave a comment
The seed for this post was originally a discussion on the architecture of Henry Klumb* sponsored by the Preservation Committee of Puerto Rico's Architects and Landscape Architects Association (CAAPPR) and docomomo_puerto Rico, the local chapter of the International Organization for the Documentation and Conservation of Modern Movement, that I proudly presided at the time.
As expected, I have slightly edited the text.
On March 29 (2015) opened the exhibition Latin America in Construction: Architecture (from) 1955 (to) 1980 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It celebrated the 60th anniversary of the exhibition that MoMA organized in 1955 about Latin American architecture built by 1945. At that time, the architectural production of a decade was presented and in representation of modern architecture in Puerto Rico, two works were exhibited: the Caribe Hilton Hotel by Toro y Ferrer Arquitectos and the Sanctuary of San Martín de Porres by Henry Klumb.
In the later exhibition, although it included architecture produced in a span of a quarter of a century, only one work from Puerto Rico was selected; Henry Klumb's intervention of a traditional nineteenth-century hacienda in Río Piedras.**
In the assembly of a large-scale exhibition like this one, omissions are understandable, especially since including a whole sampling of works and figures from multiple countries is most certainly not an easy task. The problem — or rather what bothers me to this day — which is what somehow happened with the works chosen to represent Puerto Rican modern architecture 60 years ago — is that MoMA seems to perpetuate the promotion of IMAGES before IDEAS.
To reduce the architectural production of a quarter of a century in Puerto Rico to one surrounded by exuberant nature, or open to natural ventilation is to limit architectural ideas to mere tropical iconography. Whether or not intentional, it is somewhat offensive that peers do not acknowledge architectural sophistication in the Antillean Region.***
In the 1955 exhibition, its curator, Henry Russell Hitchcock, chose to describe the Sanctuary of San Martín de Porres — when comparing it to the ecclesiastical work of Oscar Niemeyer — as lacking dramatic spatial effects, just for the simple fact that its scale is not as monumental as the work of the Brazilian architect.
Referring to the diagonally arranged piers employed by Klumb at San Martín as light deflectors — dazzled perhaps by the fact that the chapel is open to natural ventilation — Hitchcock wasted the opportunity to recognize the spatial idea behind the structural elements.
With the piers, as designed and built, Klumb recognized the religious commitment of the Order of Preachers, also known as the Dominican Order, to amplify and promote the spread of the gospel.
If the first Dominican churches in the New World resorted to monumentality to carry over the word of God, at San Martín, Klumb used the angled walls to dramatize the diffusion of the Dominican ecclesiastical message.
More importantly, it surprises that despite the fact that the 2015 exhibition had the support of the Architecture and Construction Archive of the School of Architecture of the University of Puerto Rico (AACUPR in Spanish), curators wasted the opportunity to include a more representative work. Henry Klumb's Dominican Friars Convent built in 1958 in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, would have proved a better example. A work in which the late architect, 10 years after having conceived San Martín de Porres, had enough time to rethink and mature the spatial ideas and architectural details he would rehearse in Cataño.
The following analytical drawings further illustrate the point.
Abstract axonometric animation on the evolution of the spatial ideas at play at the Sanctuary to San Martín de Porres the Dominican Convent.
The photographs and sketches above illustrate how the diagonally arranged piers provide a dual spatial experience. On both buildings, while attending mass (looking at the altar) the angled piers become a solid plane that frames our attention towards the liturgical event. In contrast, looking away from the altar the piers become a transparent plane that allows the interior space to extend beyond its built boundaries.
In contrast to the tight suburban lot where Klumb had to erect the sanctuary, the site at the convent was larger. Therefore, the spatial quality achieved at San Martín, aided by the hanging plants and low concrete walls, was further expanded at the Dominican residence, not only at the church space, but throughout the complex.
At the time of the lecture on this subject (in 2015) many of those present at the event did not know the Dominican Seminary. And that should have made us think, that while we recognized the omissions of the exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art, we also needed to reconsider ours locally. MoMA's omissions are justified because any exhibition constitutes an act of summarizing. And anyone that summarizes, at the same time undoes and, as result, remakes history.
* Henry Klumb, was a German architect born in 1905. He emigrated in 1927 to the United States to become an apprentice at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin North in Wisconsin. After five years, he left Taliesin and worked briefly with Louis I. Kahn and Louis Metzinger, forming the Cooperative Planners firm in Philadelphia during the period of the Great Depression. In 1944 he was invited by Rexford Tugwell (Governor of Puerto Rico at the time) to work as design consultant at the Public Works Design Committee. A few years later, he established the Office of Henry Klumb in San Juan from where he designed all types of private and public projects all over the Island.
** The exhibition catalog included a black and white photograph (right image at the second illustration above) of La Parroquia Nuestra Señora del Carmen in Cataño, Puerto Rico designed by Henry Klumb in 1959. For an earlier post on Casa Klumb, please refer to: https://wp.me/p1hCI1-a2
*** Despite the myopia with which MoMA decided to carry out the exhibition, Dr. Enrique Vivoni (former director and founder of the Architecture and Construction Archive of the School of Architecture at University of Puerto Rico; entity that preserves the historical documents of myriad architectural firms of the Island) clarified in the commented bibliography section that he was asked to produce for the exhibition catalog, the existence of an analytical/critical tradition of architecture in Puerto Rico.
Our critique of MoMA's short sightedness has also been diagnosed by others. For example, on the introduction of Aalto and America, Stanford Anderson calls-out MoMA's myopia when they organized the Finnish architect's Cenntenial Exhibition and "…gave spare attention to Aalto's relationship with America, which is all the more surprising for the fact that New York, and indeed the Museum itself, figured largely in Aalto's experience of America."
Posted in anonymousTagged architecture, Architecture in Puerto Rico, great spaces, henry klumb, modern architecture, MoMA, spatial ideas
December 19, 2018 December 31, 2018 jlorenzotorres1 Comment
The campus of the San Francisco Art Institute in Russian Hill was designed in the 1920s by Bakewell and Brown, architects of the City Hall and the Coit Tower.
Later in 1969 Paffard Keatinge-Clay, who had worked in Le Corbusier's atelier in 1948, designed the school's addition. The program consists of additional art studios, classrooms, faculty and administrative offices, an auditorium; gallery spaces, and a cafeteria, among other programs. Except for the roof terrace (where the auditorium, cafe and gallery spaces are located) the addition sits below the existing complex's main level due to the abrupt change in topography.
The structure resembles the Swiss-French master's Carpenter Center at Harvard were béton brut, ramps, light canons, and brise soleils are integral elements of the composition.
However, in comparison to its East Coast precedent, one could argue that there are far less poetic licenses being present at the Institute. For example, at the Carpenter, the ramp is employed for the sole purpose of producing an architectural promenade. In other words [granting that the ramp at the Carpenter is, in fact, one of the main architectural elements offering unobstructed views of the building's interior spaces; art galleries and studios] the ramp seems quite a gratuitous way to provide a shortcut through the structure and give access to a secondary entrance and ancillary programs.
Nevertheless, the secondary nature of the entrance, almost to justify the need for the ramp, stresses its excessiveness. In contrast, the ramp at the Art Institute not only stitches the interior spaces of the addition with the existing structure but also serves as a bridge that safeguards the abrupt change in topography.
Furthermore, at the Carpenter, the roof terrace or fifth façade is enjoyed solely by a private apartment for visiting faculty/artists. At Keatinge-Clay's addition, the toit-jardín is –in contrast — the protagonist space. In true emulation of Le Corbusier's ideas, the roof terrace at the Art Institute becomes a public square, a gathering space where multiple activities take place.
The main space of the terrace (represented on the last sketch and axonometric above) is enclosed on three sides by the main auditorium; an indoor and outdoor gallery space; and the cafeteria. In contrast to the enclosed nature of the existing courtyard, the roof terrace of the additional frame panoramic views of the city as it becomes the hierarchical space of the project.
Also, the roofs over the external gallery, cafe, and auditorium become accessible terraces and not only provide additional vantage points of the city but also allow for a diverse array of activities to occur simultaneously.
Posted in anonymousTagged anonymous, architecture, great spaces, modern architecture, san francisco, sketches, traveling, watercolors
places i've drawn, but have not yet visited series: erik bryggman's chapel of resurrection
October 28, 2018 jlorenzotorresLeave a comment
This is a set of drawings I often made when I taught a course on History of Modern Architecture at Polytechnic University in Puerto Rico.
Posted in anonymous, architecture, great buildings, great spaces, watercolor and inkTagged erik bryggman, finland, modern architecture
Le Corbusier's Le Poeme de l'Angle Droit
February 11, 2014 February 12, 2014 jlorenzotorresLeave a comment
This sketch is based on the mural of Le Corbusier's Swiss Pavilion at the Paris University Campus that I visited for the first time this past summer.
C.5. The image of a woman's body with a unicorn's head.
The vessel drifts on
with voices singing on board
as all becomes strange
and is transposed
carried up
and is reflected on
the level of elation
Posted in anonymous, architecture, sketchesTagged art, le corbusier, modern architecture
officer's club
October 27, 2011 October 28, 2011 jlorenzotorresLeave a comment
Obra del arquitecto Jesús Eduardo Amaral el club de oficiales es uno de nuestros mejores ejemplos de arquitectura moderna en Puerto Rico. Base Ramey, Aguadilla.
James L Blilie Photos from 1955-58, Stationed at Eglin AFB, Florida
posted from: http://www.berettaconsulting.com
Posted in architecture, great buildings, not anonymous, sketches, watercolor and inkTagged modern architecture, sketches, watercolors

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Home Issue 136 Guardian Angels Coming to Stapleton
Guardian Angels Coming to Stapleton
admin October 6, 2016 October 6, 2016 Issue 136
After a rash of recent incidents in Stapleton, the Stapleton Principal HOA along with help from SUN and the Denver Police Department has convinced the Guardian Angels their presence is needed here. "The Denver Police Department simply isn't big enough to patrol our neighborhood as consistently as it needs to be patrolled," said Stapleton Principal HOA President Paul Harris. "We have an epidemic. And we need to put an end to it. We contacted the vigilante group the Guardian Angels. Luckily, they had nothing going on, so they have agreed to begin patrolling our streets and alleys." According to Wikipedia, the Guardian Angels are, "a non-profit international volunteer organization of unarmed crime-prevention patrollers." The group focuses on staving off violent crime, which is just what Stapleton needs. "I think it is great that they are coming to Stapleton," said resident Mariel Young. "We need whatever support we can get, even if it is some extra eyes around." Nick Davis agrees. "This is definitely a great thing for Stapleton," said Davis. "There is always going to be issues, but if their presence can cut that down even 20% it's a win for us." The group plans to begin its presence by mid-October. "We plan to have a presence in Stapleton soon, and for sure will be around during their crazy Halloween time," said Guardian Angels spokesperson Mike Chase. "We want to do whatever we can do to make that great neighborhood feel safe again." Not all Stapleton residents are looking forward to the Guardian Angels coming, however. "I think they're kind of cheesy," said resident Luke Glynn. "I think they're supposed to be tough guys, but they never look that tough to me. I say we just have those crossfit chicks do the job, and do it right." Jenn Knight also is opposed to the Guardian Angel presence. "A lot of them seem more creepy than the actual criminals," said Knight. "They're the ones wearing the berets, right? Just kind of weird." The Guardian Angels have agreed to let all Stapleton organizations know when they will be patrolling Stapleton simply so they aren't reported as suspicious activity on the Stapleton sites. Sweet dreams, Stapletonians. Our angels are coming. ]]>
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La divinazione è la presunta capacità di ottenere informazioni, ritenute inaccessibili, da fonti soprannaturali; tale pratica si esprime spesso attraverso un rituale, solitamente in un contesto religioso, e può basarsi sull'interpretazione di segni, eventi, simboli o presagi oppure manifestarsi attraverso una rivelazione. Ci sono sia pratiche di predizione del futuro di una persona, più quotidiane e a titolo individuale, sia pratiche con caratteristiche formali e sociali.

Un sinonimo di divinazione è mantica, che però si riferisce perlopiù alle pratiche con le quali si giunge alla divinazione; inoltre nonostante in origine mantica () sia collegata alla religione e al soprannaturale, la moderna teoria occultistica delle mantiche non implica necessariamente che siano coinvolte entità divine.

Chi pratica la divinazione è chiamato generalmente indovino o vate, ma va tenuto presente che ogni arte divinatoria ha il suo termine particolare per indicare la persona che interpreta i segni o riceve la rivelazione. Chi si rivolge a un indovino generalmente è chiamato consultante, specialmente quando lo fa a scopo personale.

Come fenomeno culturale, la divinazione è stata osservata dagli antropologi in molte religioni e culture, in tutte le epoche fino ai giorni nostri. Ogni cultura e religione ha sviluppato i propri metodi di divinazione. Il Cristianesimo e l'Islam le escludono totalmente. L'Induismo ammette diverse forme di divinazione, che sono codificate nei Vedānta.

Lo scientismo distingue le predizioni divinatorie dalle previsioni scientifiche per via dell'assenza di un legame o una causalità dimostrabile tra il segno interpretato e il risultato previsto. Per questo motivo la divinazione, in varie epoche e culture, è stata talvolta considerata una forma di superstizione e oggi la comunità scientifica la annovera tra le pseudoscienze. Al contrario, i sostenitori delle tradizioni magico-religiose ritengono che il legame tra il segno che preconizza un evento e la manifestazione dell'evento stesso sia di natura mistico (intuitivo-religioso). Su un altro versante, i sostenitori della parapsicologia si affidano all'idea che la divinazione sia resa possibile grazie a particolari capacità del cervello umano; capacità che sono considerate assolutamente slegate dalle facoltà razionali e non necessariamente connesse alla dimensione mistica.

Dinamiche sociali
La divinazione risponde a una delle esigenze umane più antiche: dissipare l'incertezza del futuro e conoscere l'ignoto;
la funzione sociale della divinazione (che non necessariamente dovrebbe essere religiosa) si basa su due presupposti: il primo: è che si necessita di sensibilità empatica che permette la ricezione dell'informazione. (medium, cartomante, aruspice, indovino, ecc.) cercata sia a disposizione di qualche entità o forza soprannaturale e che questa informazione possa essere trasferita nel mondo naturale.

Un individuo, un gruppo o una comunità si rivolge a un indovino in un momento di crisi allo scopo di ottenere, in modo soprannaturale, delle indicazioni ritenute adatte a superarla. La crisi può essere un evento fortuito (una malattia, un disastro, una guerra...), l'inizio di un'attività (una battuta di caccia, la fondazione di una città...), un periodo considerato sensibile (l'inizio dell'anno, una ricorrenza particolare...) e così via. Talvolta le occasioni di consultazione sono regolate o stabilite da norme religiose; la ritualità di alcune forme di divinazione, presente in molte culture, serve per conoscere i mezzi che garantiscano, secondo le credenze religiose locali, un appoggio soprannaturale nel portare a termine un'impresa.

Presso alcune culture, il responso (talvolta chiamato oracolo, altre volte con termini più precisi) può assumere il valore di norma religiosa, in particolare quelli ottenuti in occasioni istituzionali o quelli relativi a personalità di grande rilevanza come per esempio il monarca. Laddove vi sia una religione di Stato il responso può assumere risvolti importanti anche nella vita sociale.
Quando la consultazione è di carattere individuale, spesso la norma religiosa prevede, oltre alla consegna del responso, anche la prescrizione di un rito che il consultante deve compiere per poter risolvere la crisi; questo rito serve per prendere contatto con Intelligenze Preterumane che, a seconda delle credenze religiose e della cultura sociale esse interagiscono per mezzo del tramite terreno. Questi consentono all'indovino di offrire al consultante i mezzi necessari  per superare il senso di impotenza e di isolamento e quindi reintegrarsi nella comunità.

Nell'approccio alla divinazione non si pone il problema della causalità tra segno e responso; la necessità di avere risposte o di compiere qualche azione è spesso preponderante rispetto alla correttezza della risposta o alla funzionalità dell'atto. Ciò può essere vero sia a livello individuale sotto una spinta emotiva, sia a livello sociale, per esempio sotto la pressione di un superiore o di un gruppo verso una persona insignita di un ruolo.

Nelle culture primitive spesso si richiede che l'indovino sia isolato dal culto e dalla vita comunitaria, questo per garantirne l'autonomia nella produzione del responso. A seconda del ruolo che la divinazione svolge per una particolare cultura, la figura dell'indovino può confondersi con quella del guaritore, dello stregone o dello sciamano,
soprattutto nelle religioni primitive, oppure esserne chiaramente distinta in quelle più avanzate.

Storia
La divinazione è nata a seguito del pensiero mitico della preistoria. Nei tempi antichi ha rappresentato un'evoluzione di conoscenza in un momento in cui scienza e magia non erano distinguibili; solo in tempi recenti, dopo uno sviluppo di quasi tre millenni, vengono viste come completamente antitetiche. La stessa scienza agli albori o nei primi momenti di indagine non negava l'affinità ad una forma di magia: nel XVI secolo si chiamavano "magia naturale" alcune discipline che poi sarebbero diventate "scientifiche".

Prima dell'avvento del metodo scientifico qualunque tipo di previsione ricadeva nell'ambito della divinazione; con lo sviluppo delle scienze è stato possibile prevedere alcuni eventi in modo più o meno preciso, ad esempio le eclissi, il clima e le eruzioni vulcaniche. Oggi questa non è più considerata divinazione in quanto queste previsioni si basano su osservazioni empiriche e sono spiegate da teorie che fanno riferimento esclusivamente a fenomeni naturali, mentre la divinazione presume l'influenza del destino o di forze soprannaturali. Così, come definizione operativa, la divinazione può comprendere tutti i metodi di pronostico che non si possono dimostrare efficaci usando la ricerca scientifica. Tuttavia anche la divinazione prevede un approccio razionale fondato sull'analisi dei segni o dei presagi.

Civiltà occidentale

Le origini: Mesopotamia ed Egitto
Dai primi momenti della storia delle civiltà mesopotamiche, dalle tavolette di argilla, emergono numerosissimi esempi di uso e pratiche di divinazione, che costituiscono le più vivide rappresentazioni della vita di tutti i giorni in quei tempi antichi. La divinazione scaturiva da una profonda convinzione che le cose del mondo fossero associate e si muovessero contemporaneamente; il detto "così in cielo come in terra" non era una recitazione cadenzata ma la constatazione evidente di una associazione universale:

Sumeri, Accadi e Babilonesi raccolsero, nell'arco di dieci o forse quindici secoli, decine di migliaia di presagi e li trascrissero accuratamente in manuali dettagliati, ognuno accanto all'evento che lo seguì e che, secondo la loro credenza, ne fu la conseguenza. Questi manuali raccoglievano osservazioni di qualunque tipo: nascite prodigiose o mostruose, comportamenti animali o umani, forme di pietre o di piante, fenomeni atmosferici e meteorologici, posizioni degli astri e dei pianeti, sogni, ecc. La raccolta più completa che sia stata rinvenuta consta di 107 tavolette di argilla con circa 10.000 presagi ed è chiamata summa alu dalle prime due parole della frase (in accadico) "se una città è posta su un'altura" con cui questa raccolta inizia.

L'astrologia e l'astronomia sono nate come una medesima disciplina tra i Babilonesi, in quanto lo studio dei movimenti astrali era considerato sussidiario allo scopo divinatorio. A partire dal regno di Nabonassar (VIII secolo a.C.), i Babilonesi registrarono sistematicamente eventi politici e astronomici in tavolette oggi conservate al British Museum e raccolte sotto i titoli Diari astronomici e Cronache babilonesi. Oggi questo sforzo mirato a verificare la validità o meno dell'astrologia viene considerato dagli storici della scienza il primo caso di progetto di ricerca scientifica.

In Mesopotamia, come anche nell'antico Egitto e in altre culture, gli oracoli sul re assumevano importanza nella vita sociale.

Già nel XIX secolo a.C. in Egitto esisteva l'oracolo di Amon, che avrebbe conservato la sua funzione anche nelle epoche successive.

Età classica greca, etrusca e romana
La parola "mantica" deriva dall'aggettivo greco " (mantikḗ)" che a sua volta deriva dal sostantivo " (mántis)" ossia indovino; questo va messo in relazione con la radice indoeuropea "ma-" che può significare sia "mente", "pensiero" sia "mania", "follia", "furore"; in quest'ultimo senso, si deve tener presente che gli antichi Greci ritenevano che la saggezza, l'ispirazione e la follia avessero origine dal furore divino.

La parola "divinazione" deriva dal verbo latino "divinare" che a sua volta deriva dall'aggettivo "divinus" che significa "divino", "proprio della divinità".

Entrambi i termini lasciano trasparire la natura religiosa della divinazione per la cultura classica.

Il termine "mantica" fu utilizzato anche da Platone, che considerava la divinazione come una capacità superiore alla stessa ragione. Anche gli Stoici ritenevano possibile divinare il futuro interpretando i segni del presente, in quanto consideravano il mondo retto da una ragione universale (Logos).

Nella Grecia antica la divinazione era regolata dalla religione e si esprimeva nella consultazione degli oracoli;
i responsi dell'oracolo di Delfi erano tenuti in elevata considerazione, al punto da costituire norme religiose; queste norme, raccolte dai sacerdoti di Apollo, sono considerate la base della comune cultura greca e non solo dal punto di vista etico o religioso.

Nella Roma antica era molto popolare recarsi ogni anno al santuario della Fortuna Primigenia per una consultazione.
Di diversa natura erano i Libri sibillini, trascrizione di responsi oracolari che erano consultati da appositi sacerdoti (detti viri sacris faciundis) in occasione di certe decisioni pubbliche di carattere religioso.

Nell'arte divinatoria fondamentali furono gli auspici degli auguri e l'aruspicinia degli aruspici.

Il presagio, evento particolare e straordinario, era detto in latino prodigium oppure: ostentum, portentum, monstrum, miraculum, omen. Nella mentalità dei Latini il prodigio era il segno terrificante della collera degli dei e suscitava nell'uomo un senso di horror.

Dal Cristianesimo all'età contemporanea

Con l'avvento del Cristianesimo le pratiche divinatorie pagane e i templi oracolari furono progressivamente abbandonati. I principi e i re cristiani continuarono ad affidarsi ad astrologi di corte, anche a fini politici, poiché l'astrologia era la "Regina delle Scienze", ma la distinzione tra l'astrologia matematica (dalla quale poi derivò l'astronomia) e l'astrologia divinatrice non era ancora rigorosamente definita. Certo è che in epoca medievale gli indovini, al pari degli stregoni, venivano giudicati eretici e scomunicati in quanto si supponeva che le loro fossero arti diaboliche. La repressione sempre più intensa nei confronti della stregoneria, avviata negli ultimi decenni del Quattrocento, portò all'elaborazione di manuali per gli inquisitori contro ogni forma di arte magica  nei casi più gravi prevedeva la pena di morte sul rogo.

Civiltà indiana

La cultura indiana aveva già sviluppato autonomamente una propria semplice forma di divinazione, basata soprattutto sull'astrologia, il cui scopo principale era rituale ossia scoprire i giorni ritenuti fausti o infausti per intraprendere determinate attività; quando entrò in contatto con l'ellenismo, influenzata in particolare dagli studi approfonditi della civiltà babilonese, la tradizione astrologica e divinatoria indiana si arricchì e venne codificata nel Jyotish, una delle sei discipline dei Vedāṅga della tradizione Induista.

L'influenza del rito divinatorio per la cultura indiana è ancora attuale; in tempi recenti ha addirittura determinato il giorno dell'indipendenza dell'India: inizialmente era prevista per il 14 agosto 1947, ma essendo considerato giorno infausto l'indipendenza slittò al giorno successivo.

Civiltà cinese

Le prime documentazioni scritte della cultura cinese si riscontrano sugli ossi oracolari ritrovati ad Anyang, come dire che la storia della divinazione in Cina è antica almeno quanto la scrittura.

In seguito nella cultura cinese la divinazione divenne più rituale, allo scopo di scoprire i giorni fausti o infausti per intraprendere determinate attività.

Nella cultura cinese (come in quella messicana e in quella dell'antica Roma, per citarne altre) si riscontrano le raccolte oracolari, ossia trascrizioni di presagi o interpretazioni a cui non si dà un seguito immediato, ma sono lasciate per un momento successivo.

Civiltà tibetana

Durante il periodo della teocrazia in Tibet esisteva un oracolo di Stato,, mentre i lama e i ghesce sono tuttora preparati a praticare rituali di divinazione chiamati Mo.

Civiltà araba e persiana

Durante il Medioevo la civiltà araba ha avuto il merito di continuare la cultura classica conservandone gli scritti; tra questi, ha conservato anche gran parte della memoria delle pratiche divinatorie, arrivando addirittura ad approfondire quelle che avevano un approccio di tipo induttivo e che erano ancora indistinguibili da quelle che oggi chiameremmo scienze come, per esempio, l'astrologia.

Mentre l'espansione araba in Occidente riportava in auge la divinazione in Europa, l'avvento dell'Islam la proibì nel mondo musulmano in quanto, secondo questa religione, la conoscenza dell'ignoto appartiene solo a Dio.

Critiche
Le critiche alla divinazione sono molto antiche; per esempio  Cicerone nel suo De divinatione, un'opera in due libri facente parte dei testi filosofici che completano il De natura deorum (opera maggiore in tre libri), parla della divinazione come un'arte inaffidabile e fallace. Secondo l'oratore latino non sarebbe possibile prevedere il futuro interpretando i segni; tuttavia, in quanto strumento politico, la divinazione rappresenta un utile mezzo per mantenere il controllo dello Stato e l'equilibrio delle istituzioni (De Divinatione, libro II, 148-150).
Nel II secolo d.C., Luciano di Samosata dedicò un arguto saggio alla carriera di un ciarlatano, Alessandro il falso profeta, addestrato da "uno di quelli che pubblicizzano incantesimi, miracoli, amuleti per gli affari di cuore, catastrofi per i vostri nemici, scoperte di tesori sepolti...", anche se molti romani credevano nei sogni e negli incantesimi.

Oggi i sostenitori della divinazione dicono che esistono abbondanti prove aneddotiche dell'efficacia della divinazione, ma finora non è stata trovata alcuna prova sperimentale in condizioni di controllo scientifico e lo scetticismo scientifico la scarta da sempre come una mera superstizione.

Oltre alle semplici spiegazioni di prove aneddotiche, ci sono alcune teorie pseudoscientifiche su come la divinazione possa funzionare. Una di tali teorie si basa sulla natura della mente inconscia, e sostiene di avere alcune basi scientifiche empiriche. Basandosi su questa teoria, la divinazione sarebbe il processo con cui vengono decodificati i messaggi della mente inconscia. Il credo in agenti soprannaturali o in forze occulte come fonte di questi messaggi è ciò che distingue tali teorie da una spiegazione scientifica, insieme all'assenza di prove sperimentali a sostegno.

Nella Bibbia la maggior parte delle forme di divinazione sono state rigorosamente vietate da Dio; tuttavia i sacerdoti ebraici usavano strumenti particolari come i teraphim, e inoltre è famoso l'episodio di Saul che si reca a consultare una necromante: la strega di Endor (1Samuele 28,3-25).

Secondo il Cristianesimo, la rivelazione è compiuta nella Bibbia e dunque la divinazione (il cui scopo è quello di rivelare le cose nascoste) perde di significato. Alcune forme di divinazione come la bibliomanzia (divinazione attraverso la lettura di un versetto estratto a sorte dalla Bibbia, arte mantica mutuata dall'Ebraismo) si riscontrano nel Protestantesimo.
Nel Cattolicesimo solamente Dio può conoscere le cose nascoste; la divinazione, attribuendo ad altri questa capacità, è considerata idolatria ispirata dal diavolo.

Metodi

Classificazioni
Una prima classificazione delle arti mantiche, di origine classica, raggruppa le pratiche in due gruppi:
 divinazione induttiva: si basa sull'interpretazione di segni o eventi oggettivi e presuppone la conoscenza di un'arte (che anticamente era considerata e chiamata scienza) da parte dell'indovino;
 divinazione intuitiva: si basa sulla rivelazione da parte di un'entità soprannaturale e presuppone una particolare predisposizione da parte dell'indovino.
Nella divinazione induttiva gli strumenti possono essere svariati:
 per mezzo di procedimenti più o meno complessi si producono i segni da interpretare su determinati oggetti, dedicati allo scopo o di uso comune; in questo caso, l'arte dell'indovino non consiste solo nell'interpretazione del segno ma anche nella produzione del segno stesso;
 può trattarsi di una collezione di simboli oppure di oggetti simbolici o diversamente marcati dalla quale sono estratti o disposti a sorte gli elementi da interpretare;
 possono essere ricercati nell'ambiente circostante, anche sul corpo del consultante, e può trattarsi di oggetti o, più spesso, di eventi, presagi o anche sogni.
Nella divinazione intuitiva lo strumento è l'indovino stesso; si tratta generalmente di una persona in grado di indursi in stato di trance, spontaneamente o mediante danze estatiche o attraverso l'uso di psichedelici, talvolta è uno sciamano.

Non tutte le diverse forme di divinazione possono essere riscontrate all'interno della stessa cultura. Piuttosto, è stata notata in generale la predilezione di ciascuna cultura verso una sola di queste tipologie:
 cleromanzia o divinazione per sorteggio, prediletta dalle religioni africane e riscontrabile come forma popolare nella religione dell'antica Roma, ma formalmente vietata ai personaggi pubblici;
 divinazione ispirata, dove l'arte dell'indovino si esprime nella ricerca del segno o nel ricevere la rivelazione, prediletta dalle religioni americane e unica forma di divinazione accettata ufficialmente nell'antica Roma.

Julian Jaynes categorizzò la divinazione secondo le seguenti tipologie:
 Presagi e loro scrittura. "Il metodo più goffo e primitivo, ma duraturo... è la semplice registrazione di sequenze di eventi insoliti o importanti." (1976:236) La storia cinese offre occorrenze scrupolosamente documentate di nascite strane, di fenomeni naturali e di altri dati. La pianificazione governativa cinese si affidava a questi metodi di previsione per le strategie a lungo termine. Non è irragionevole assumere che le moderne indagini scientifiche inizino da questo tipo di divinazione; il lavoro di Joseph Needham prese in considerazione proprio questa idea.
 Sortilegio. Questo consiste nell'estrarre a sorte con rametti, pietre, ossa, fagioli, o altri oggetti. I moderni giochi di carte e da tavolo si sono sviluppati da questo tipo di divinazione.
 Auguri. Divinazione che valuta una serie di possibilità date. Può essere qualitativa (valuta forme, prossimità, ecc.). La radioestesia (una forma di rabdomanzia) si sviluppò da questo tipo di divinazione. I romani dell'epoca classica usarono i metodi etruschi di augurio, come l'epatoscopia. Gli aruspici esaminavano i fegati degli animali sacrificati.
 Spontanea. Una forma non vincolata di divinazione, libera da un particolare mezzo, è in realtà una generalizzazione di tutti i tipi di divinazione. La risposta arriva da qualsiasi cosa il divinatore veda o ascolti. Alcuni cristiani e membri di altre religioni usano una forma di bibliomanzia: essi pongono una domanda, scorrono le pagine dei loro testi sacri e prendono come risposta il primo passaggio che cade sotto i loro occhi. Altre forme di divinazione spontanea comprendono la lettura dell'aura e i metodi New Age del Feng shui.

Un'altra possibile classificazione è la seguente:
 divinazione artificiale, basata sull'analisi di simboli costruiti dall'indovino;
 divinazione naturale, basata sull'osservazione di segni naturali ricercati dall'indovino;
 divinazione occasionale, consistente nell'interpretazione di fatti accidentali.

Lista di arti mantiche
 Aeromanzia o Aerimanzia (divinazione delle condizioni atmosferiche)
 Ailuromanzia (divinazione del comportamento dei gatti)
 Alettriomanzia (divinazione dei galli)
 Aleuromanzia (divinazione della farina, comprende i biscotti della fortuna): (Nota: La divinazione dei biscotti della fortuna è anche una forma di sticomanzia)
 Alfitomanzia (divinazione dell'orzo)
 Alomanzia (divinazione del sale)
 Anemoscopia (divinazione del vento)
 Antropomanzia (divinazione dei sacrifici umani)
 Apantomanzia (divinazione dell'avvistamento di animali)
 Aritmomanzia o Aritmanzia (divinazione attraverso numeri e lettere)
 Aruspicina (divinazione complessa basata su diverse analisi delle vittime dei sacrifici)
 Assinomanzia (divinazione delle asce)
 Astragalomanzia (divinazione dei dadi)
 Astrologia (divinazione dei corpi celesti)
 Austromanzia (divinazione di vento e nubi)
 Belomanzia (divinazione delle frecce)
 Bibliomanzia o Sticomanzia (divinazione dei libri, in particolare la Bibbia)
 Bioritmi (divinazione dei bioritmi)
 Botanomanzia (divinazione delle piante bruciate)
 Brontoscopia (divinazione dei tuoni)
 Caffeomanzia (divinazione dei fondi di caffè; si veda anche Tasseomanzia: Divinazione delle foglie del tè)
 Caomanzia (divinazione delle visioni aeree)
 Capnomanzia (divinazione del fumo)
 Cartomanzia (divinazione delle carte)
 Catottromanzia o Catoptromanzia (divinazione degli specchi o di altri oggetti riflettenti)
 Causimomanzia (divinazione delle bruciature)
 Cefalomanzia (divinazione delle teste)
 Ceraunoscopia o Ceraunomanzia (divinazione dei fulmini)
 Ceromanzia (Ceroscopia; divinazione della cera fusa versata in acqua fredda)
 Chiromanzia, Chirognomia, Chirologia o Chiroscopia (divinazione dei palmi delle mani)
 Ciclomanzia (divinazione delle ruote)
 Cledonomanzia o Cledonismanzia (divinazione delle parole ascoltate)
 Cleidomanzia (divinazione delle chiavi)
 Cleromanzia (divinazione delle estrazioni a sorte)
 Cometomanzia (divinazione delle code delle comete)
 Coscinomanzia (divinazione dei setacci pendenti)
 Cristallomanzia (divinazione dei cristalli)
 Crommiomanzia (divinazione dei germogli di cipolla)
 Cybermanzia (divinazione con oracoli elettronici)
 Dafnomanzia (divinazione di corone di alloro bruciate)
 Demonomanzia (divinazione dei demoni)
 Domino (divinazione con le tessere del domino)
 Empiromanzia (divinazione della fiamma sacrificale)
 Enomanzia (divinazione del vino)
 Epatoscopia o Epatomanzia (divinazione del fegato di animali)
 Eromanzia (divinazione con i movimenti dell'aria)
 Estispicina, Extispicina, Ieromanzia, Ieroscopia, Geromanzia o Geroscopia (divinazione delle interiora di animali sacrificati)
 Fisiomanzia o Fisionomanzia (divinazione della fisionomia di una persona)
 Gastromanzia, o engastrimanzia (interpretazione dei suoni provenienti dal ventre dell'indovino o di una persona ispirata)
 Geloscopia (divinazione delle risa)
 Geomanzia (divinazione della Terra), comprende il Feng shui
 Geranomanzia (divinazione del volo delle gru)
 Giromanzia (divinazione delle vertigini)
 Grafomanzia o Chirogrammatomanzia (divinazione della calligrafia)
Iatromanzia (guarigione attraverso il sogno)
 I Ching (divinazione per mezzo dell'omonimo libro sacro taoista)
 Idromanzia (divinazione dell'acqua)
 Ippomanzia (divinazione dei cavalli)
 Ittiomanzia (divinazione dei pesci)
 Lampadomanzia (divinazione della luce)
 Libanomanzia o Lebanomanzia (divinazione dell'incenso)
 Lecanomanzia (divinazione dei bacini d'acqua)
 Litomanzia (divinazione delle pietre preziose)
 Mah Jongg (divinazione con le tessere del Mah Jongg)
 Margaritomanzia (divinazione dei rimbalzi delle perle)
 Meteoromanzia (divinazione dei fenomeni meteorologici)
 Metoposcopia (divinazione della fronte)
 Miomanzia (divinazione dei topi)
 Mirmomanzia (divinazione delle formiche)
 Moleosofia (divinazione delle imperfezioni)
 Myomanzia (divinazione dei roditori)
 Negromanzia, Necromanzia, Nigromanzia, Psicomanzia o Sciamanzia (divinazione attraverso l'invocazione dei morti)
 Nefomanzia o nefelomanzia (divinazione delle nuvole)
 Numerologia (divinazione dei numeri)
 Oculomanzia (divinazione degli occhi)
 Odontomanzia (divinazione dei denti)
 Ofiomanzia (divinazione dei serpenti)
 Oinomanzia (divinazione del vino)
 Onfalomanzia, Omfalomanzia (divinazione del cordone ombelicale)
 Onomanzia o Onomatomanzia (divinazione dei nomi)
 Onicomanzia (divinazione delle unghie)
 Oniromanzia, Oneiromanzia (divinazione dei sogni)
 Ornitoscopia o Ornitomanzia (divinazione del volo degli uccelli)
 Ouija (divinazione usando le tavole Ouija)
 Ovomanzia (o Ovoscopia, divinazione delle uova)
 Pegomanzia (divinazione delle acque di sorgente)
 Piromanzia o Piroscopia (divinazione del fuoco)
 Plastromanzia (divinazione delle crepe provocate dal calore sul guscio delle tartarughe)
 Podomanzia (divinazione dei piedi)
 Rabdomanzia (divinazione dei bastoni)
 Radioestesia o Radiomanzia (divinazione col pendolino o altri strumenti)
 Resmanzia (divinazione con oggetti appartenuti ad una persona)
 Scapulomanzia (divinazione delle scapole di bovini e caprini)
Scaramanzia (divinazione degli oggetti scaramantici)
 Scatomanzia  (divinazione delle feci, solitamente animali)
 Sciomanzia (divinazione degli spiriti)
 Sideromanzia (divinazione della paglia bruciata)
 Spodomanzia o Tefromanzia (divinazione delle ceneri)
 Sticomanzia (divinazione della poesia)
 Stolisomanzia (divinazione dei vestiti)
 Taromanzia (divinazione di carte speciali, i Tarocchi; si veda anche Cartomanzia)
 Tasseomanzia o Tasseografia (divinazione delle foglie del tè)
 Tiromanzia (divinazione del formaggio)
 Uroscopia (divinazione dell'urina a scopo diagnostico)
 Xilomanzia (divinazione del legno bruciato)

Note

Bibliografia
Accademica

 Auguste Bouché-Leclercq, Histoire de la divination dans l'antiquité, (4 volumi), 1879-1882 volume 1 volume 2 volume 3 volume 4
Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande, Oxford University Press (1937) 1976
Toufic Fahd, La divination arabe; études religieuses, sociologiques et folkloriques sur le milieu natif d'Islam, Leiden, Brill, 1966
Michael Loewe, Carmen Blacke (eds.), Oracles and divination, Shambhala/Random House 1981 ISBN 0877732140
Dario Sabbatucci, Divinazione e cosmologia, Milano, Il Saggiatore 1988 (rist. Roma, Bulzoni 2000)
J. P. Vernant (ed.), Divination et rationalité, Parigi, Editions du Seuil, 1974 (ed. it. Divinazione e razionalità. I procedimenti mentali e gli influssi della scienza divinatoria, Torino, Einaudi 1982)
 1ª ed. originale:

Popolare
 Robert Todd Carroll (2003). The Skeptic's Dictionary. Wiley.
 The Diagram Group (1999). The Little Giant Encyclopedia of Fortune Telling. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
 Georges Minois (2007). "Storia dell'avvenire. Dai profeti alla futurologia", trad. it. di M. Carbone, Bari.
 Clifford A. Pickover (2001). Dreaming the Future: The Fantastic Story of Prediction. Prometheus.
 Eva Shaw (1995). Divining the Future.

 Frater Achad, Il Cristallo come opportunità verso la Chiara Visione, Psiche2, trad. it. di Cosimo Salvatorelli, Torino 2020.

Voci correlate
 Antropologia delle religioni
 Effetto Forer
 Esoterismo
 Futurologia
 Libro dei Mutamenti
 Ifá
 Inferno e paradiso (origami)
 New Age
 Occulto
 Omina
 Oracolo
 Tarocchi

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni

 , risorse sulla divinazione greco-romana e mesopotamica
  di Tim Maroney, esplora differenti possibili meccanismi

Parapsicologia

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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text:
Edited transcript of an after-dinner address given at the 50th Anniversary Meeting of the Bone and Tooth Society, 10 July 2000, Churchill College Cambridge.
by Dr Maureen Owen (Oxford)
I have been asked to tell you something of the early history of the Bone and Tooth Society, and not to go on too long, so I will do my best to comply on both accounts.
50 years ago, a small group of scientists and clinicians at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Great Portland Street, London, used to meet from time to time to discuss a common interest in bones and teeth. It was at one of these meetings, on March 24th 1950, that, over a glass of sherry, the idea of a Bone and Tooth Society was born. The Professor of Orthopaedics, RJ Seddon, was in the Chair at that meeting. Enquiries on the grapevine had suggested that there were about 50 potential members.
So, a committee of six for the new Society, representing different areas of the subject, was elected there and then: JJ Pritchard (Anatomy), CH Lack (Clinical Studies), HA Sissons (Histology), HJ Rogers (Biochemistry), I Kramer (Dental Studies) and TF Dixon (Secretary).
Some ad hoc rules for the Society were drawn up, which are still in effect today. Membership was to include all those who had a genuine interest in fundamental studies on bones and teeth; members of the Society could be from any country in the world, and the interests of the Society were to be directed mainly to those on the laboratory side. It was decided that meetings should be held every quarter, mainly in London, though, hopefully, sometimes in the provinces.
The first scientific meeting was held on 6 June 1950 at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Great Portland Street. Even at the outset there appeared to be a slight question mark over the name chosen for the Society by its founders. Professor Newcomb was in the Chair. He started by saying: 'In spite of its name, this Society has sprung from a serious desire of those Interested in fundamental studies on bones and teeth to have a meeting ground for discussions on their problems'.
The prime speaker on this first occasion was Honor Bridget Fell, whose incomparable work on tissue culture of bone was done here in Cambridge. There were four other speakers on various subjects: HA Sissons on 'Bone Histopathology', JJ Pritchard on 'The Osteoblast', TF Dixon on 'Inorganic Salts of Bone' and HJ Rogers on 'Organic Substances of Bone'. The meeting lasted for two hours, 5pm to 7pm, and was followed by the inevitable sherry.
In the 1950s and early '60s, many of the meetings were held in London, the attendance ranging from about 30 to 60. The presentations covered a wide range of subjects, most of which are still a challenge to our understanding. To mention only a few: 'Skeletogenesis Studied in Culture (1950), Hormones and Bone (1951 and '52), Enamel and Tooth Germ Structure (1953), Vitamin C and Bone (1953), Chondrodystrophy, Genetics and Bone Disease (1954), Rickets (1954), Renal Osteodystrophy (1959), Calcification (1959), Bone Tumours (1959), Radioactive Materials and the Skeleton (held at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1960), Osteoporosis (1962), Thyrocalcitonin (1966) and because it is a subject in which I was greatly interested, I remember a talk on 'The use of tritiated thymidine in the study of bone' by Norman Kember, describing the very first application of these techniques in the study of bone.
By 1960 there were 177 members of the Society and by 1966 this had increased to nearly 300. 1966, I note, was a vintage year for new members; among those who joined in that year were Olav Bijvoet, Gideon Rodan and Jack Martin. Meetings of the Society began to be held outside London from the late 1950s; for example, at The National Institute for Research on Dairying, in Reading (1957), at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford (1960), at the Dunn School, Cambridge (1964), at Leeds (1965), and in Liverpool (1966).
Also, at this time, a number of distinguished visitors from overseas addressed the Bone and Tooth Society; usually they were in London, or passing through for some purpose, because we could certainly not afford to bring them. One forgets that in those days there was very little travel across the Atlantic, and I remember well what a thrill it was, when in April 1961, the great bone physiologist Franklin C MacLean from Chicago gave a talk on 'Parathyroids and Vitamin D in Calcium Homeostasis'. Other highlights in that era were Paul Goldhaber from Harvard, a presentation by David A Cameron from Australia in 1965 on 'Electron Microscopy of Bone' (a very new subject then), and by CA Bassett from New York in 1966, on 'Electrical Factors Regulating Bone Structure'. Of course there were many, many distinguished speakers from this country - and from Europe, we had Lacroix, Gaillard, Milhaud, Fleisch - and too many others to mention here.
The Society first got a Constitution after 10 years, at the AGM in 1961, where it was decided that there would be a Chairman (now known as President). The Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer were to hold office for 5 years, and four Committee members would each serve for 3 years. Minor amendments have been made to this format in later years.
Professor HA Sissons was elected Chairman or President in 1961 and held this post until 1966. Dame Janet Vaughan was President from 1966 until 1971, and since then, we have continued with a long line of distinguished Presidents, Secretaries, Treasurers and Committee members who have given great service to the society. I wish I could acknowledge all of them by name but there are too many; you wouldn't want me to read out such a long list, I think.
There were two matters much discussed at Committee meetings in the 1960s. The first was a desire to have closer contact with European colleagues, many of whom attended our meetings. Thus, the possibility of having a European Bone and Tooth Symposium was raised, at the Bone and Tooth Society Committee Meeting in March 1962, and the outcome of this was The first European Bone and Tooth Symposium, organised by, and held under the auspices of our Society (ie BATS), in Oxford in April 1963. It was extremely successful and led to the suggestion that regular meetings be held in other European cities; these meetings became the series known as the European Symposia on Calcified Tissues, the 27th of which took place in Tampere, Finland earlier this year.
The second matter, much talked about at Committee meetings, and by other members of the Society was that of the possibility of establishing a journal for publication of relevant papers from workers in the field. So, in January 1966, a 'Publications Meeting' comprising eleven members of the Bone and Tooth Society took place to discuss this matter. They were Blackwood, Nordin, Pautard, Sissons and Vaughan (who was in the chair) from the UK, Bassett and Irving from the USA, and Fleisch, Milhaud, Gaillard and Richelle from Switzerland, France, Netherlands and Belgium, respectively.
Preliminary enquiries amongst members of the Bone and Tooth Society and European and American colleagues suggested that there was a considerable amount of support for establishment of a Journal for the field. After some discussion, and I quote: 'The meeting was then informed by Dr Nordin and Dr Pautard of a proposed Journal, Calcified Tissue Research, to be published, on an international basis by Springer-Verlag, and that publication of the first issue would be in the following January, 1967. Official support, either from any societies or particular groups was not sought by the proponents of the new journal; nor did the other members of the 'Publications Meeting' who were present think it appropriate that such support should be offered'. When the new journal appeared in 1967, many members of the Bone and Tooth Society were disappointed (and some I knew were even rather livid) that the journal had not been sponsored by the Society. In 1979, Calcified Tissue Research was renamed Calcified Tissue International , and from January 1999, it has acquired the additional title of 'The Official Journal of the European Calcified Tissue Society', which seems to me a somewhat satisfactory ending to this little saga, since the Bone and Tooth Society had been instrumental in establishing the European Calcified Tissue Society, 30 years previously.
It has been a great privilege to belong to Bone and Tooth over all these years. I salute the scientists who first had the brilliant idea of forming the Society. Thank you.
39th Annual Meeting of the European Bone and Joint Infection Society
7-9 October 2021, Ljubljana, Slovenia
BRS Clinical training course: Osteoporosis and Other Metabolic Bone Diseases 2021
22 March 2021, Virtual Sessions Update
Human Osteoclast confocal