This weekend we (Nanna, Nikolaj and I) went to Reputation Institutes 11th international conference in Oslo. The theme of the conference was innovation as a reputation platform, and consisted of three days with speeches from professors and practitioners from around the world. And what a great experience! Not only attending the different plenary sessions and discussions, but also being part of a gathering of so many qualified people, that have an interest in the same field as I do.

And obviously, this was a great opportunity to network. As I am still quite new in this business, I am not an experienced networker. But - there I was - with a bunch of new business cards ready to be handed out. And handed out they were; I met a lot of interesting people who I plan to keep contact with.
This experience made me think about networking as a "discipline". Because networking is important. Apparently very important. But to be honest, I think there's something about networking that has a negative or unauthentic dimension to it. It's almost like it has become such a hyped buzzword, that it looks more and more like a strategic discipline - some people "network" in such an aggressive way, that I can't help wondering what the benefits really are. Others seem to find it the most natural thing in the world to hand out their business card the moment they introduce themselves.

I guess different strategies work for different people, but I think that if networking should bring value to you personally or to your business, its essential to network with maybe fewer, but more relevant people (as in having a shared interest), and then actually keep contact - rather than networking only for the sake of networking! After this weekend, I prefer to think about networking as a talk between people with a shared interest. In this sense I can much better approach people and "network" in a natural way.

Second life. What can I say? I am seduced and frightened at the same time because of this 3D virtual world. The numbers on the list to the left speak for themselves - the community has many members, who spend and earn a lot of money in Second Life. Even though this is a very virtual world, the the cash flow and the attention it gets is very real.
To be honest I don't know a lot about this world. But I've recently learned some interesting details about Second Life. For example, that Second Life has its's own currency (Linden$), and that you actually pay commission fee, when you make currency transactions. And that's just one detail... you can do everything in this world. It's a new platform for doing business - to present and test new products and ideas before introducng them to the real world. And it's a place to let people (or their avatars) from around the world participate in virtual meetings.
I went to a seminar at Deloitte friday morning, where Dennis Knowles and Stephan Martinussen from Saxo Bank among others spoke about Second Life and their experiences and thoughts about it. In general, their focus was tax issues arising with the growth of Second Life. It seems that there are many questions still to be answered about which products and services in Second Life that are taxable. And when they are taxable. And in which countries - is it where the supplier is or where the consumer is?
I think the interesting thing is the mere fact, that we start to discuss tax-issues and business opportunities in Second Life. This agenda is a sign that Second Life is here to stay. And what goes on in the real world is gonna continue in Second Life. I think. The question is, how the future looks? Because rules and regulations are apparently not easily transferable into this parallel world. For one, because everybody is anonymous in this world. On the other hand, maybe it's not all that different, than when the internet became a reality?

Check out the discussions on Second Lifes blog.

Vi jgkrsljgkrs. jklskrgjg,. klæslfkll kkkkkkk fndjksgirut ærkwæg

jeg vil linke direkte til noget...

I just read a short article about the weblog awards 2006, which introduced me to several cool blogs. Some more serious than others:

Check out the full list - I think the large number of categories shows the extent of areas where blogging can really make sence!

Last week Nikolaj gave a lecture at Roskilde Universitetscenter. He was the 'guest star' in Roy Langers seminar Buzzwords in current organizational communication introducing severel interesting cases from "real life" outside university. Cases that I think puts depth into the theory of the course. The students seemed quite interested in Nikolajs practical experiences, but one subject, that kept popping up was ethics.

It seems like this is an area, where the worlds inside and outside the university differ a lot. I think Nikolaj went as far as to call the discussion about ethics a pseudo-discussion, because it doesn't have a very big place in his everyday work. This - I think, and correct me if I'm wrong - came as a surprise to many of the students.
The interesting thing to discuss then, is if the whole perspective of ethics is superfluous at university (especially if it never has any effect outside the institution). Or maybe the issue is rather if we need to think more ethically in our everyday work?

Even though I am beginning to understand the conventions about blogging I sometimes still find it a bit tricky to post texts on a blog. Why? Because some days, you just don’t tumble across the most interesting stories or issues that you’ve got strong opinions about. So it becomes a challenge to make seemingly irrelevant stories relevant for the blog.
On the other hand, one of the values of organizational blogging is showing a true picture of the people in the organization. So, I decided to write about a more personal interest and dilemma, which has taken up my attention the last few days: Dave Matthews Band.

Yes – I admit it – I am a crazy fan of Dave. I went to an acoustic concert yesterday with Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds at Vega. And to make the story even better (or worse), that was only two days after seeing the same two guys playing Monday night in Columbiahalle in Berlin.

I suppose that shows my interest – now to the dilemma of this story: My colleges asked me to bring some of this music to work, to listen to in the office. And off course that’s nice. The dilemma came suddenly as a feeling of giving away too many personal stories, when deciding which songs to introduce them to.
The thing is, that this music is connected to so many personal ups and downs in my life. It's one of those bands that stays with you. This means that the stories go way back to my early teenage years, first love, second love - stuff like that. But also other more serious stuff - like missing my brother when he was away for a while. And I could go on. So, by introducing this music to fx my colleges feels like giving them a mirror to my soul (I know, very dramatic!), but there - I've said it!

Well – now as I decided to go official about this small dilemma, I think it’s time to push the play button...

And to sum up on my thoughts about blog-rules I hope I haven’t crossed the line between being personal and private.

This week we've been discussing the conventions of blogging. Over and over again. Especially the conventions for organisational blogging. Because there seem to exist many different opinions about what function a blog has - about the bennefits and possible dangers.
From my point of view, the most important functions of an organisations blog is
1. to show the surrounding world a true or authentic picture of the organisations values and the people outliving those values. 2, to keep an open dialouge with everybody who's got an interest in the organisation. And 3, that the blog provides a frame to share knowledge.

I am a quite new blogger, and what I've found most surprising about the bloggosphere is how loyal bloggers seem to be. By loyal I meen that bloggers seem to respect eachothers opinions, no matter how different they might be. They keep their texts and comments within the relevant theme and mostly in a relevant language.
Furthermore, bloggers seem loyal to what I call "the unwritten rules" of blogging. These rules, I think, are bread in a paradigm of opennes and are not yet fully understood or accepted by many organisations. These rules contains the expectations of what a blog has do tecnically (it has to contain rss-feeds, links, commentboxes, some kind of categories to navigate in and some information about who and when the text is from), and also - more importantly - the expectations about the people behind the blog. We expect that the opinions of the bloggers are infact the real opinions of the real author. We expect some kind of feedback from our comments. And we expect that the issues discussed on the blog represents the work of (or issues discussed within) the organisation.

This kind of loyalty is seen through the judgement (or punishment) of blogs that are 'cheating'. Fx Walmarts blog shows a good example of how wrong it goes, when a blog looses its reliability.
Cases like this might help to convince ceo's about not only the bennefits of blogging the "right way", but also the concequenses of blogging the "wrong way".

This is my understanding of the bloggosphere so forth. And if it's not far from the truth, organisations do not have worry about opening a dialouge with the sorrounding world, as long as they follow the rules...

And it's easyer to start moblogging than blogging. Or is it? We startet this discission yesterday with the people behind 23, who wanted our opinion on the subject and on the future of moblogging.
First of all, it's interesting to find out why most people (including myself) find it difficult to start blogging. Somehow there is a barrier to be broken before feeling comfortable about posting text and pictures on the internet. And there's a is a fine line between what's relevant, though personal, information, and what's too private to be posted. Second of all, it's not very logical that it (in my opinion) is more challenging to post text than pictures, seeing that pictures often are very personal and in a second can set us in a state of mind or bring forth a message which would take hours for an ordinary text to do. Furthermore, I think pictures are more open to individual interpretations than written material - maybe because we've got more or less the same conventions on how to understand a letter, a book or any other written material.
That's my opinion - let me know what you think!

I got a new phone today. A nokia with a 2 megapixel camera. Now I will be able to upload pictures on our moblog, which makes everybody else able to follow our STAGIS life. But that's not all the value a phone adds! I came across MILab (Mobile Content Lab), which is a very interesting project. It's a co-orporation between the corporate sector and academic institutions, which develops concepts concerning contents for mobile phones. And WOW! If these project will become reality, there are no limits on what we will be able to do through or mobile network.
Not only has our phones become a tool for expressing our identity, but it's become a means through which we live our social life and experience different conflicts. At least it will be. In the near future! If MILabs project will become reality anyway. These concerns everything from going through a trial in court, playing live-games being an assassin, going through a scavenger hunt or doing lectures in political science. I find that these are very interesting possibilities, but I can't help thinking, that it's a dangerous development as well. It can't be healthy to base your development on experiences from a virtual reality. Or can it? Is it just as valuable to argue and succeed in this "parrallel"-life? I guess this is basically the same concern parents have when they try to control their children's time spent in front of a computer...

Yes - I am the new fish... and a dangerous kind! More specificly I'm a mean Barracuda - known from 1. base on Barracudas Softball Team. This is my very first BLOG-experience - but don't worry, there are more to come. I will be blogging on this site for the next five month together with the rest of the STAGIS team.