{"id":1988,"date":"2017-10-09T07:50:43","date_gmt":"2017-10-09T06:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=1988"},"modified":"2017-10-09T08:27:18","modified_gmt":"2017-10-09T07:27:18","slug":"week-39-work-work-work","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=1988","title":{"rendered":"Week 39: work, work, work"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was one of the most intense weeks of the year at the office. We hosted a 2-day meeting of all the stakeholders of the EU Observatory on Infringements of IP Rights, followed by a conference on the role of free trade zones that we organised together with the OECD. Fortunately, we organise dinners in connection with such events, so there are pictures of people enjoying themselves too, and not just working.<\/p>\n

39_1<\/strong>
\nBut I start with a few pictures from Sunday’s bicycle ride. I went south, first to Elche, where I stopped to photograph the road and the pomegranate field:
\n\"R002671\"<\/p>\n

39_2<\/strong>
\nThe fruit, ready to be harvested:
\n\"R002670\"<\/p>\n

39_3<\/strong>
\nI then turned south-east and hit the coast in La Marina, about 40 km from home. I then cycled north towards Santa Pola, crossing the salt flats:
\n\"R002678\"<\/p>\n

39_4<\/strong>
\nAfter crossing Santa Pola, I stopped at a beach north of the city to have a snack and a drink and to enjoy the view for a few minutes:
\n\"R002680\"<\/p>\n

39_5<\/strong>
\n\"R002683\"<\/p>\n

39_6<\/strong>
\n\"R002682\"<\/p>\n

39_7<\/strong>
\nThen the working week started. This is how I spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday:
\n\"R002685\"<\/p>\n

39_8<\/strong>
\nTamara, Stephanie and Carmen pose for me in the meeting room during one of the coffee breaks:
\n\"R002687\"<\/p>\n

39_9<\/strong>
\nThe work continued Wednesday evening with a dinner at a restaurant called Lo De Die. All set up for us:
\n\"R002688\"<\/p>\n

39_10<\/strong>
\nThe dinner was preceded by a cocktail hour with structed networking around certain themes, such as small and medium-sized enterprises. The lady in the centre is my colleague Bente, also Danish, and even from the same town as me, Aarhus:
\n\"DSF9695\"<\/p>\n

39_11<\/strong>
\nCarolina speaking with various stakeholders, while Barbara from the Danish Patent and Trademark Office has caught me in the act:
\n\"DSF9698\"<\/p>\n

39_12<\/strong>
\nTwo Italian enforcers. On the left, my colleague Valerio who used to investigate the mafia in Italy before a 10-year stint at Europol and now with us; and on the right is Marco from UNICRI, the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute:
\n\"DSF9708\"<\/p>\n

39_13<\/strong>
\nClaire interviews one of the guests, Pierre does the video:
\n\"DSF9701\"<\/p>\n

39_14<\/strong>
\nThe three people who organised it all:
\n\"DSF9710\"<\/p>\n

39_15<\/strong>
\nDarkness has fallen and we are now busy eating:
\n\"R002691\"<\/p>\n

39_16<\/strong>
\nClaire comes to my table for a chat with my Dutch, English and French table companions:
\n\"R002694\"<\/p>\n

39_17<\/strong>
\nThe meeting continued the next day, and afterwards, a surprise drink was arranged for my colleague Vincent who is about to retire. He has been here since the inception of the office in 1994, and has many friends among our stakeholders, so it was decided to take advantage of their presence here to have a small informal celebration. Here he is in the distance, listening to a brief speech by our boss Paul:
\n\"R002695\"<\/p>\n

39_18<\/strong>
\nVincent receives his gift:
\n\"R002702\"<\/p>\n

39_19<\/strong>
\nThe framed front page of our local newspaper, Diario Informaci\u00c3\u00b3n, with a photo showing the receipt of the very first EU trademark application on 1 April 1996, something to which Vincent contributed in many ways:
\n\"R002704\"<\/p>\n

39_20<\/strong>
\nThursday night, another working dinner, this time a small affair of around 10 people, hosting visitors from the OECD. No pictures from the dinner, but beforehand, I walked a bit in the harbour area:
\n\"DSF9717\"<\/p>\n

39_21<\/strong>
\nThis strip of bars and restaurants on the waterfront is very popular among visitors. Some (like the one we went to) are good, others are decidedly touristy and overpriced:
\n\"DSF9716\"<\/p>\n

39_22<\/strong>
\nIt is now Friday morning, and I am back in the meeting room at the office, but now discussing the role of Free Trade Zones in counterfeit goods trade. This was an event we co-organised with the OECD. We are engaged in a multi-year cooperation project with them on studying various aspects of international trade in fakes, which to date has resulted in two joint reports, the most recent published in June<\/a>:
\n\"R002708\"<\/p>\n

39_23<\/strong>
\nTwo important guys sharing a hearty laugh at the margins of the meeting. On the left is Rolf Alter, OECD’s Director of Governance and Territorial Development who is enjoying his last working day at the organisation, as he was retiring the next day; and on the right, David Luna, formerly of the US State Deparment and in that role chairman of OECD’s Task Force on Countering Illicit Trade. He has now left the US government for reasons that most readers can probably guess and has started his own consultancy:
\n\"R002709\"<\/p>\n

39_24<\/strong>
\nFinally, it is Friday afternoon, the meetings are over, and I am enjoying a Polish beer with Piotr, senior economist at the OECD and the main author of our joint reports. The beer is Warka, one Piotr told me was a staple food during his student days in Warsaw (I buy it at an Eastern European grocery in downtown Alicante). Since I was 11 when we emigrated from Poland to Denmark, I have no such early experience with Polish beer; my staple food at university was Tuborg and it ilk:
\n\"R002713\"<\/p>\n

39_25<\/strong>
\nAfterwards, we moved on to a beer at O’Hara on the main esplanade in the centre:
\n\"DSF9718\"<\/p>\n

39_26<\/strong>
\nAt the neighbouring table, a lady was apparently waiting for a date. The rendez-vous did materialise in the end:
\n\"DSF9719\"<\/p>\n

And this was the end of a busy and tiring week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was one of the most intense weeks of the year at the office. We hosted a 2-day meeting of all the stakeholders of the EU Observatory on Infringements of IP Rights, followed by a conference on the role of free trade zones that we organised together with the OECD. Fortunately, we organise dinners in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1779,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1988"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1988"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1992,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1988\/revisions\/1992"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}