This will be my last entry on this blog for now. The reason being I´m leaving Stagis becuase I´m moving abroad to Ireland. After one and a half year of good times in the company it is going to be very strange leaving the office tomorrow knowing that I will not be coming back (except for visits of course!). I´m leaving for Ireland without having a job waiting for me up there...A little bit daunting being a new graduate and all...Still, I´m very optimistic, because I feel that the experience I have gained here the last few years have given me so much knowledge about "real life business" - more than I could have ever read in any text book. Working here has also taught me to aim for the top - in anything you do - therefore the first thing I will do is aim high and put some pressure on myself by applying for a communications/marketing job at Google, Dublin.
You heard it here first;-)

Okay - the news is out (again): Danish people are fat! On Anita Bay Bundegaard´s blog she writes about the facts about the state of the 350.000 Danes that potentially could die from health issues related to being overweight! In the article there is a few ideas of to how we can change this unhappy situation. Some blame the supermarkets for lurring us in to buying candy while standing in the queue, because thats where the candy is conveniently placed. (The politicians (still) talk about changing VAT (moms) so that fruit and greens are cheaper and candy more expensive). I personally don't think that hiding (!) the candy from us in the store will work. If im low on sugar at 6.p.m. - I will find the candy! The reason why its difficult buying healthy food in Danish supermarkets is because the "easy to grab" food is more or less non existing (and no Irmas sloopy pasta salads doesnt count). We could learn something from French and English supermarkets such as Tesco´s. They have unlimited rows of healthy quick eats which are of a really great quality. So it does actually happen in Europe - other countries can make good food available. So instead of blaming everyone else - why don't we blame ourselves for not demanding better food?

I had to come at some point I guess - A gathering of people (B Samfundet) that consider themselves B-People (aka: dont like getting up before 10, dont function before 12 and peak in energy level in the afternoon and evening). A - people would called them lazy...but think about it for a bit - if you arn´t lucky enough to decide when during your day you want to work and have the usual 9-5 job, how much energy is your boss missing out on. The society of B-people have only existed 14 days and already they have about 4-500 members. And after having appeared on breakfast TV today the number is bound to rise. They work towards lobbying for institutional changes to our lives: workplaces, schools, kindergartens and the likes that will support the B-people by being open at alternative hours. We dont live in the industrial era anymore, so the founder is wondering when our jobs today heavily rely on our brain to come up with clever thoughts and ideas why arn't we working when the brain wants to work? Good question - and good luck to them. I really hope they succeed in changing the work-life balance in our little duck pond. We all know how much we Danes like renewal and everything thats different and exotic...!

PS. Im not yet a member - because I dont know if they will accept a B-person who, peaks at two o' clock and doesnt really like working in the evening;-)

On this blog we have often touch on the issue of to what extend co-creation in business will come to. With a good warm up in 2006, 2007 seems top be the year where user generated content will boom in business, whether it be in the fields of journalism, photography or the marketing of clothes. Trendwatching.com has made a Springspotting Network were you can submit new entrepreneurial ideas that you spot in your local area. For doing this you will earn points and possibly receive gifts for your convenience. I don´t think gifts and money is the thing that will make people help out these companies though, but it will peoples claim to fame in being the one that might discover that next big thing and lets the rest of the world know! So lets go spot! Find out new trends and ideas for 2007 - and discuss them between us. Its fun. Sometimes we will agree sometimes disagree - and we can even bet on different thrends for the next year - and see which ones catches on and which ones flop - because lets not forget that for every great idea we hear about chances are that 9/10 will never see the light of day;-)

This is the prediction of Jeremy Wright. He doesn't mean that they will suddenly disappear like ghosts - but will become such an integrated part of company websites that they will soon be forgotten as buzzwords. He also strongly believe that blogs as a communication medium will never die - because it is a medium and most communication mediums that go mainstream takes a long time, even decades, to die. Look at things like fax, letters and phones. I dont know when and if blogs goes mainstream. It really varies from the different conversations I have, how much people know about blogs. The other day I was worried that the subject of my thesis "corporate blogging" had gone mainstream but then I watched TV2's breakfast show (TV2 provides opportunities for creating a blog from their website) where they talked about private blogs as "the new and hip" thing on the Internet. That calmed me down a bit - but I took it as a sign from above that I should finish my thesis in the next few weeks before its "old news" ;-)

Now its not only enough to have courses in university regarding game theory and the likes. As read on the Sprinwise site, Indiana University is now offering a course to their students in reality tv that covers areas such as legal, historical, ethical, psychological, sociological and economic perspectives. I´m not sure yet - but if there is a title called Mater of Reality - I´m going to start over my current studies in communication and go to Indiana. In case (sur real) reality is to much for you there is always the option to join a "Second Life" which is a new 3D online digital world which is "imagined, created and owned by its residents" as it is officially explained on the web site. Current number of residents today: 1,678,096. Have we really created such a nasty world with boring identities that people want to go and live a parallel 3D world or Im I just not getting it because I have never been addicted to playing Counter Strike and the likes?! What ever happen to - not the sur real or 3D - but "normal" reality?!

Så har jeg haft min første blogging lektion med Catrine og Mette, der er elever på Askov Højskole - på journalistlinien. De kom og besøgte mig i København uden nogensinde at have blogget før og efter et par timer var de officielt en del af blogosfæren og havde skrevet deres første indlæg på højskolens nyoprettede blog hvor de er de første skribenter. I kraft af at de går på journalistlinien, der forbereder dem på at søge ind på fx. journalisthøjskolen eller SDU - var de jo nogle kyndige elever i forhold til at kunne skrive (meget;-) på kort tid og helt uden problemer. Alligevel stødte vi hurtigt på et klassisk problem omkring hvilken genre en blog er. Som nogle der studerer journalistik var pigerne naturligt nok måske endnu mere obs på hvilken tekst de skriver end vi andre er - men i løbet af 5 minutter fandt de alligevel et udgangspunkt for deres egen naturlige stil og de er nu klar til at udnytte mediet optimalt. Jeg glæder mig til at følge deres blog og hvis og når vi støder på opstartsproblemer i forhold til at være skribenter på en ny blog vil vi dele og diskutere dem med Jer her.    

They other day I was in a meeting talking to a client about the benefits of corporate blogging and other social media. A long way in to the conversation we could agree that it would have some really positive effects on the companies communication with their customers. There was one time in the conversation though were I couldn't give my client a straight answer. The question of: how can I measure the effect of social media on the companies' bottom line? The client works in communication and he knew that for him to ask his bosses to use money on something that can't be directly measured on the bottom line was going to be difficult. I wish I could have referred to an analysis that showed this calculation but I couldn't. I could talk to him for hours about how his customers might be positively affected by the companies use of social media and therefore becoming more loyal to their brand and therefore buy more products....but somehow that is not enough to convince the financial director! Therefore Im on a quest to build a convincing argument that will make me able to convince even the hardest number crunchers. So I´m hoping to get help from you guys. Does anyone have any knowledge of any research being done to find out how to measure social media, in particular blogging? I will leave you with an example of the type of argument that I was putting forward in my meeting, here made by Jeremy Wright: One of the main schools thought relative to where blogs are going is that they may eventually completely replace most typical corporate websites. Instead of having an "About Us" page that stays the same, companies will have an "About Us" category on their blog that gets updated at least once of month with new company-related information. Instead of having an "About the CEO" page, the CEO will have his or her own blog. At their core, blogs are simply websites that empower communication. Why wouldn't a company want to empower communication across its entire website?   

We all know that this summer hasn’t been great for CPH airport. The queue in security has been awful and usually the airport has blamed the security because thy have been on strikes and so forth. Having spent (to much) time in CPH airport lately, I find myself puzzled by the fact that it isnt a problem with the people at security as such. The problem why I’m always half an hour to an hour late when I take of is because I sit on the plane waiting for people who hasn’t come through security. Is it because we have a tight security and we all have to take our shoes of one at the time and cant bring fluids on board in our hand luggage (Like in the UK)? Is it because these people checked-in to late? No, its because there are two places to go through security in CPH Airport. These to places are in each end of the airport and one entrance has 3000 people waiting in line and the other about 30! Obviously not everyone knows that there is an entrance with only 30 people waiting in line for security - but you would think that the staff in the airport and maybe the communication department would know about it and think that it would be a good idea to tell people? But who are these people - do the even exist. Is there any communication department in the airport? I don’t know...I have never seen (or heard) them. Last time I decided to change queue (because I had a flash back of the short line in the other end of the airport) I thought that someone surely would have tried to let us (the merry 3000) know that there was no queue in the other end...When i to my surprise saw that there was only 30 people waiting in line I asked the guy in the security why there was no one informing people that this was the case, so that people wouldn’t be late for their flights - i thought he might have blamed the infamous communication department. But guess who’s fault it was...the passengers standing in the long line. Because, as he explained to me its because when people have chosen a queue the are reluctant to move from that specific queue?! Its practically impossible to move them. He also mentioned that they did have people on site walking around telling people that there was a better chance of getting through security (maybe that day!) in the other end of the airport. Hm... again I most admit my eyes couldn’t see them. Maybe communication in CPH airport takes place in a parallel universe?

The airport seem pretty confident though....I found this wonderful site I can visit to write about my best experience in CPH airport - so maybe I will do that;-)

During my two months in Stagis, I´ve participated in several business meetings. Some have been interesting, some have been educating and yet some have actually been fun. But what these meetings all have in common, is the presence of what I call The Ego Game.

The Ego Game is a game of lies and deception, of selfishness and opportunism! A bit dramatical, agreed, but these feelings and expressions can be found in every formal meeting, especially in business meetings and director´s board meetings. In this world of finances and economics, it is accepted and expected that everyone acts for their own benefit at all times, as many economists have stressed during the years. This understanding of human behaviour is deeply founded in the western form of society.
In Denmark we have a long history of bureaucracy, especially in the public sector, which of course inflicts on our meeting culture. Our meetings tend to be very formal with a clear "chain of command". We have to follow the speaking order, and I think, that this is damaging to the both the productivity of the meeting, the outspread of knowledge and the creation of creative solutions.

The traditional form of a meeting is very well suited for a certain kind of people - the daring, outgoing employee, executive og member of the board. These peoble have a personality which allows them to function in the tradicional meeting culture - in short, they can play the Ego Game to perfection! But what about the rest? What about the more quit ones, that don´t play the Ego Game so well?
The fact, that our meetings generally favours the outgoing persons, is a risk of losing valuable knowledge. Of course the ideas and creativity of a more withdrawn person isn´t of lower value than others. The challenge is to get these ideas out in the open. This will dramatically reduce the effects of the Ego Game, and that way increase the productivity of the meeting and the value for the companies involved.
But how can we do this? Is it possible to design a meeting culture, that makes it possible for everyone to participate equally in the discussions? And what would this meeting be like?

I´m looking forward to hear your thoughts on this subject! Meanwhile I´ll try to work out a suggestion of my own...