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Monday, July 2, 2012

Space station trio gets back down to Earth

After half a year living on the International Space Station, three astronauts safely returned to Earth on Sunday aboard a Russian-built space capsule.

The Soyuz spacecraft landed in the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan at 4:14 a.m. ET, returning NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers to their home planet.

"Everything is good, we feel great," Kononenko radioed Russia's Mission Control Center just before landing.

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2. Month in Space: Earth to the heavens
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4. Space station science at critical point

The spacefliers undocked from the space station several hours earlier in their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft to begin the journey home. They landed upright under a blue sky dotted with some white clouds in Kazakhstan, where the local time was Sunday afternoon. Live video tracked the Soyuz's descent at the end of its parachute, right down to the ground.

Veterans return from frontier
Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers arrived at the orbiting outpost in December 2011. All three had flown previous missions to the space station, making them a crew of veteran spacefliers.

In a blog post describing his final day in space, Pettit reflected on the impact of his months-long mission, and encouraged humanity to keep pushing the boundaries of space exploration.

"On Earth, the frontiers opened slowly," Pettit wrote. "The technology of sailing was known and advanced for over a thousand years before the Earth was circumnavigated. Such bold acts require the technology, the will, and the audacity to explore. Sometimes you have one, but not the others. I only hope that my small efforts here, perhaps adding one grain of sand to the beach of knowledge, will help enable a generation of people in the future to call space 'home.'" [Landing Photos: Soyuz Capsule Returns 3 Astronauts Home]

Throughout their mission, Pettit and Kuipers shared stunning photos of Earth from space with the public through Twitter and the Flickr photo-sharing site. Pettit also regularly updated his blog with accounts of his experiences on the space station, including several poems in tribute to life in space.

Pettit kept a journal as a fun way to document his scientific activities on the orbiting outpost. For instance, Pettit wrote blog updates using the persona of a zucchini plant when he experimented with growing different kinds of plants in microgravity.

On Friday, Pettit wrote a poem called "Last Day in Space," touching upon his memories of the mission, the experiences that moved him, and his anticipation over seeing his wife and children again soon.

Milestone mission
Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers made up half of the station's Expedition 31 crew. During their stay at the orbiting laboratory, the spacefliers rolled out the welcome mat for the first commercial spacecraft to visit the station.

SpaceX's unmanned Dragon capsule was launched to the International Space Station on a test flight to demonstrate the spacecraft's ability to carry cargo to and from low-Earth orbit. As Dragon approached the station, Pettit and Kuipers used the outpost's robotic arm to pluck it from space and manually park it to the complex.

The successful test flight lays the groundwork for NASA to use commercial spaceships to ferry cargo ? and one day, astronauts ? to the space station. SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion contract with the agency for 12 unmanned cargo delivery flights.

Kononenko served as commander of Expedition 31 during his stay, but passed the torch to fellow Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka during a change-of-command ceremony Saturday.

The departure of Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers leaves only three residents occupying the space station until three new crewmembers launch to the complex on July 14. Padalka, NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Revin will remain aboard the orbiting outpost until September.

Russian space station flight controllers radioed Padalka and his Expedition 32 crew after Sunday's landing to let the spacefliers know their comrades were back on Earth and in good health.

"Good to hear," Padalka radioed back. "Another mission completed."

This report was supplemented by msnbc.com. Follow Denise Chow on Twitter? @denisechow, or Space.com? @Spacedotcom. We're also on? Facebook and? Google+.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48030438/ns/technology_and_science-space/

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Ten Tips for Effective Whiteboard Sales Engagement | Business 2 ...

Whiteboarding is emerging as a mainstream enablement tool in B2B technology companies that actually contributes real value during the sales cycle.

Having trained several thousand sales and support people in the Whiteboardselling methodology over the past 18 months, my observations on the most valuable aspects of whiteboarding as an enablement methodology are:-

Creating clarity in your value proposition and building it into a story that everyone can tell is an excellent initial win. Most companies confess that their messaging is somewhere between 2-3/5 for clarity when we start the process.
Message Ownership ? in 1/2 a day Whiteboardselling training Symposium salespeople either see or do the whiteboard up to 9 times using an active learning method and on the very next day they can give the whiteboard, ? they know it.
Consistency and confidence in telling the story are the knock-on benefits for individuals and this is important in creating differentiation in the mind of the buyer ? when the competition are saying the same things you are.

What is under appreciated about whiteboarding is that sales-people will find it very difficult get up and whiteboard on an ad-hoc basis?.unless they have already decided what they want to say and practiced what they are going to draw.

A pre-requisite for salespeople to whiteboard effectively is a visual story that centers around what the buyer is trying to achieve, that salespeople can use to engage the buyer in conversation.

A Simple Visual Confection ? the Whiteboardselling method

visual confection

My observations in riding shotgun on many sales-calls as a sales trainer are that salespeople can often get a meeting, but when they are face-face with senior executives, often don?t know how to engage in a business discussion and thus revert to where they are more comfortable ? discussing their products, and the meeting terminates shortly thereafter.

A whiteboard session is a conversation aid to help you engage the buyer, ? not a presentation?.if you feel yourself going into presentation mode, stop, ask a question and get the buyer talking.
Learn the script and practice the opening, if it is well constructed, it will use a challenging opening and positioning statements to engage the buyer immediately.
No ?marketing-speak? or gobbledybook?when you whiteboard. For example, instead of the word ?redefine? use ?change?; instead of ?revolutionary use ?different? ?people don?t feel like they are being sold when you use plain English.
The goal of the whiteboarding session is to engage the buyer in conversation and have your capabilities unfold naturally in conversation ? not to demonstrate your prowess as an artist or orator.
Learn to whiteboard story and practice it in private and when you are ready, practice with your peers and your managers until you own it, ask them for feedback to improve technique.
Get the buyer?s issues out in red on the whiteboard and drill down on them, quantify them and figure out together if they are worth solving and how to solve them.
You don?t have to start the whiteboard at the start, you don?t have to strictly adhere to the build sequence and you don?t have to finish the whiteboard. You only need to engage the buyer around one or two issues to get a commitment to advance the sale to next steps.
Carry a BIC 4 colour pen and your own set of whiteboard
markers?with?you, so that you can tell your story on any surface or in case the markers in the meeting room are dry or missing.
Carry a?visual confection?(your completed whiteboard story) printed on high quality A-3 paper into the meeting, folded in half in your note book. Use it in the following situations;
- there is no whiteboard or it?s full of writing already with ?do not erase? written on it,
- your meeting is cut short and you need to get key concepts across in a couple of minutes,
- you are at lunch and there is no writing surface,
Follow up by sending a meeting summary that embeds the completed whiteboard visual confection in the letter outlining their issues and how your capabilities can solve their problems ? and agreed next steps.

If you would like to know more about whiteboarding, you can download the free best practices guide.

Source: http://www.business2community.com/strategy/ten-tips-for-effective-whiteboard-sales-engagement-0202558

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Polls Show Obama Gets Boost from Supreme Court Ruling

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