The ”About me“ is the most demanding text to write on a website. The outcome should of course be, that I’m a very impressive and nearly super-human personality. But unfortunately the simple sentence “My good looks and exceptional intelligence are perfectly complemented by my humility.” doesn’t do the job anymore. Therefore, I’ll try something slightly different.

Where do I come from?

My name is Boris Bäsler, I hail from Bonn, Germany. Since 2005 I’m living and working in beautiful Switzerland, to be more precise: in and around Bern. But that is as well not exactly what I was aiming for.

At the start of my career as a software engineer and later project manager, I consistently encountered the same situation: I thought, I had a great idea, tried to sell it and … failed. For a high percentage of these ideas, my failing might have been due to them being not nearly as brilliant as I thought.

But there was still that smaller part, the really brilliant ideas, that always paled in comparison to obviously minor ideas, superbly presented by some consultant. Therefore, in the mid of my twenties, I knew, that consultants and their presentation mumbo-jumbo is the Evil.

When I stopped blaming others and started to look at myself, I realized something shocking: Nearly no one ever understood what was so great about my ideas. So it looked like being good at my job (computer stuff) didn’t suffice. I needed to be able to communicate that as well.

So I started “selling” good ideas. I thought about what might be of interest for my superiors. I started solving their problems instead of mine. Since this time, I manage to sell good ideas with a – for me – surprisingly high success rate.

The change in the way, I’m communicating, the improvement in my presentations and most of all the success were noticed by my co-workers and superiors. More and more, they asked me for support when it came to presenting. In working with peers, I was able to relay my experience and – at the same time – learn a lot from them.

Where am I today?

Today, I have far less “brilliant” ideas than in the past – maybe due to my experience. It helps realizing at an early stage, when some of these ideas are just rubbish. But luckily, I’m working with people, who tend to have great ideas. And with a little more effort, we often succeed in conveying that potential.

Through word of mouth propaganda, I gathered a small circle of customers who are willing to pay for me supporting them in the development of important presentations. Some of them even work with me on their communication in general. Both aspects are fun and gratification to me. It’s very rewarding and basically the job of my dreams to work with people on the things that are important to them.

Where do I want to go?

My goal is to be obsolete, not to be needed anymore. I have that dream, in which every oral and slide presentation is inspiring, exciting, thrilling, every communication clear, coherent, empathetic and constructive.

I’d like to reach that goal in about 27 years. Then I can retire and hike in utter satisfaction through the mountains of the Bernese Oberland.