Last Saturday I attended the BMT or Berlin Motorrad Tage. It’s an annual motorcycle event where the latest models are presented, as well as some other motorcycle related activities/vendors.
I always wanted to go (since I’ve known it even exists) but never managed to do so because I had no one to go with. This year, as part of my personal OKA (Objective Key Actions – see end of article), I had to.
So Saturday morning after dropping Loki off in the middle of Berlin I made my way to Gleisdreieck where the events was taking place. As soon as I arrived I could hear the engines roaring and see the sidewalks full of parked motorcycles. #exciting
Entry was 15eur for a one day ticket (it would have been cheaper if I had gone on Friday) and in retrospective I think it was a bit much given the “quality” of the event. No new models were presented (new models usually are presented at the end of previous riding season, around October) and most vendors stands felt cheap, which huge “grab boxes” and massive neon ‘discount’ stickers on equipment items.
I started my tour by talking to the Bundespolizei (German police) about theft of motorcycles and more precisely I wanted to know if the chances of getting my bike stolen were increased by having the sidecar. At first the officer’s answer was “no, the opposite” but through I don’t know which magic trick it became a “yes, and you should consider getting XXX to secure it”. If even the police is lobbying for companies, where are we headed.
My next stop (as in”I talked to people”) was at the Bundeswehr (the army) which had two motorcycles exposed, the first was a BMW 1200GT used for official motorcades (escorts of very important people) and the second one was a 700 (or 800 GS, not sure) used in escorts for troops being dispatched.
I would love to become motorcycle Feldjäger, but unfortunately the age limit to enroll is 30 (I asked). I also asked the Bundespolizei what their age limit was and while it’s officially 39, the guy told me that by the time I would have finished the training I would be too old to be a motorcycle police officer. #thanks
Apart from that, not much happened, I saw a few promising product that I want to check out, like this device you put at the back of your helmet and it turns the helmet into a speaker (some vibration magic I assume).
I talked to a few more people, but mostly boring stuff, like the “Zweiradmechaniker-Innung”, which if I understood correctly is the “guild” of engineers specialised in two-wheelers. I wanted to get some info on where I could learn more about how to fix my own bike, but that doesn’t seem to be it. And I also bought a guide with motorcycle routes and hotels across Germany – for 1eur!!! #budgetruined
All in all a pretty mediocre event in my humble opinion and the only “wow” bike was a custom built of the new BMW R18.
But anyway, I did the thing, I went there, on my own and I survived (even after talking to people).
OKA are my version of OKR, which stands for Objective Key Result – it’s a goal setting system used in many companies, especially start-ups. You can google it to know more if you want to. But in short, it’s about setting an Objective you are trying to achieve, and then defining some Key Results (or Actions as I prefer) that you decide to do in order to reach that objective, and KPI to measure your progress towards the Objective.
This blog is not about what I do for a living, so I won’t expand too much on it. However, in short, as much as I don’t like the full OKR framework which I find to be too much overhead, I think that it can help teams align on the company’s objective(s) and force everyone to challenge this objective while thinking about what they can do on their level to help achieve said objective(s).
