http://www.23hq.com/STAGIS/photo/1518559

Thanks for a great year everyone! A lot of things has happened but most of all I think that 2006 prepared a lot of great things to happen in the new year. We're off from december 22 until monday january 8. We look forward to seeing you full of joy. Or just full. Happy holidays and happy New Year!

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" ;-)

A few days a go I got to play “Santa” for my colleagues. I was to plan the yearly Christmas lunch in pleasant company with my partner in crime, Lasse.

I had so much fun planning it that I simply forgot that I my self had to participate in the “challenges”.

Well well well - or should I say Ho ho ho - here we went again on the yearly Christmas lunch with the colleagues. And once again we managed to survive - and this time literally speaking.

We met early to a shooting session. Real shooting with real guns and scores (I will not mention who actually won the battle and who didn't. It's simply not relevant for my story). We were under the expert supervision of Finn, Stanley & Erling the serious ‘Gunsters’ from DGI so we all survived the shooting ....only to try and kill ourselves with a 'Finish-sauna-theme' in DGI byens kurbad afterwards. “What is that?”, you might ask yourself, “Finish-sauna theme?!”

Well well well…(or ho ho ho): First you stand awful close to a lot of people wearing short bathrobes. Then you remove your own bathrobe and expose your winter-body wrapped in totally-out-of-date-swimwear and unfortunately the guy standing next to you is a “speedo-kind-of-guy”.

Then you crawl (the exact same and unpleasant way the guy’s speedoes crawl up his…) together in a 97 degrees sauna while a medicine-woman (probably born and raised in Rødovre) tells you “how to breathe and stay grounded”. Completely “cooked” you crawl out only to continue “cooking” in the steam bath a cross the floor. Here you receive nice smelling oil to rub on to your cellulites area (“keep it coming”, you smile to the medicine-woman, and she kindly gives you more of the wonder oil).

Finally you get to hit (or spank?) your colleagues with leaves (from Finland of course) and then you’ll be offered salty fish to swallow. I politely but firmly refused (my colleagues weren’t exactly singing “Catjes yeah yeah” while swallowing the little devils).

What a jolly way to be together! What a fun thing to do! Ho ho ho!

But we had great fun! It maybe was a bit humiliating and embarrassing but when the medicine-woman declared that….”please remember - before you continue your night out - that after being in this sauna treatment one beer will hit you like four!” we all seemed to replace the embarrassment with sweet dreams of the wine and beers we were soon to enjoy at Bibendum.

About one o’clock I felt the three bottles of red wine – times four – hit me like a train and hat to take off. Next day my head almost exploded in pain. That was the first punishment for forcing the others into finish-sauna theme. The second punishment came today when I saw the pictures.

If I was Santa that evening there is no doubt that Santa can be a monster: Look at that scary, scary person….uhh!

Six months ago I was asked by OKI in Scandinavia to help out selling their smallest colourprinter. The OKI C3400n. Its pretty bulky, it prints 16 colourpages a minute and 20 blackn'whites. You can print to it through your network. Its good quality. Japanese. For good reason OKI wanted them sold. Lots of them. Oh, I almost forgot. This product costs a bit more than other printers with the same specs.

Not an easy case. Actually Birgitte and I (and everyone else in the office for a few weeks) stared at it for quite some time. Printer. Laser. Expensive. Japanese. Big. Grey.

The funny thing is that according to our client this was a design-object. This was their nicest looking product. And I have to give the guys in R&D back in Japan they did make it more simple and nicer than most other printers in its class. But still... design? So we thought about it for a while and discussed how this could change. And how could one small product change the corporate image of OKI - according to substantial research a few years back number seven on the list of preference in most segments ever considering to buy a printer.

If you've ever bought a colourprinter you'll know there isn't that much to consider. Basically there's a bunch of tech-specs (like speed, resolution, ink versus laser, network etc.) and price. And since most of the products in this market are alike the price seems to become consideration number one.

So we wrote a new brief for the challenge: How can the C3400n become the product that will help change the perception of OKIs corporate brand?

Cut to five months later: Next week we're introducing the redesigned colourprinter. The first of it's kind. Cool, fun, personal, design. It's got colour inside - and now on the outside as well. In other words here's a printer for everyone that loves colour. We even wrote a few words to follow the newborn: "Loose grey. Love colour". And yesterday Mikkel and I shot another photo that shows the idea:

The picture's not quite done. Will be in a few days... But you get the idea. Nomatter what colour you have in your home or office it fits right in. There are 36 to choose from!

Today a girl named Nanna paid me a visit in the office to talk about working for us in the spring. As she was explaining why she preferred STAGIS over so many other companies she described us as creative and "playful". Not that I oppose the idea but I was wondering what brought her to the notion. Most of the projects we do are 90% structured effort and not that playful at all. And actually I think some of the most creative stuff STAGIS did over the past 9 years came from pretty straight-forward processes solving real problems that needed extrodinary solutions. At the end it might look as if someone turned everything upside down but in reality we're just trying to keep a balance between being true to the heritage and culture of our clients on one hand and helping them evolve and change on the other.

As Sex and the City is flickering by Carrie and her friends walked through the lobby of The Standard where I lived for a week a few years back. It's just a hotel but one of the more hip spots of LA at the time. They really carried out a sense of turning things upside down. But only to a degree that worked out. Good service, design or business is not just a matter of turning things upside down but turning one important factor up and all together dumping another.

Over the past few days we've been looking for a hotel lobby in Denmark that has a good design. It doesn't exist. The lobby at The Standard doesn't stand out. Except for one thing. Every night there's someone inside a glass cage behind the counter. Surreal. Other than that it's just a fun nice place. But you don't forget it right away. It's just one detail but it's a really creative one. And playful. To remember it I still have their red logo sticker sitting on the frame of my 23 inch screen in the office.

I agree to Nannas definition of STAGIS. At least I'd like the company to live up to that description. We're creative and playful. It's The Standard.

In september the new headmaster at Askov Højskole had just arrived. And one of the first things he did was write us an email. It was brief. Hans needed help bringing the school back to a state that it hasn't seen for a while. With a whopping number of 300 beds the school is ready for lots of students but they're not being used. At least not a lot of them.

So we dug in trying to figure out what this school is all about. Being one of the oldest folk high schools in Denmark it has a long proud heritage of helping the young generation of Denmark becoming a bit more skilled on politics. On philosophy. On all the things that we'd want people to live their life knowing. But first of all the school has shown a unique ability of helping the next generation tell their story in professional matters as well as the story of their own life. So we wound up helping Askov Højskole formulate a focused strategy that could be summed up by this:

"Askov Højskole - hvad er din historie?"

(Askov Højskole, whats your story?)

The strategy is to focus on journalism, filmmaking and drama. We've been helping the school hire new guest-lecturers (you can meet really cool guys like actress Dina Al-Erhayem, film director Nikolaj Arcel, actor Jens Jørn Spottag, journalists Reimer Bo Christensen, Clement Kjersgaard and Mette Vibe Utzon just to name a few). So in just a few weeks the new program is running. With a new focus, new guest teachers, new ideas. But the same basic ideology and history behind it all. If you're not bussy take a few months off - go try the life at Askov!

Check out the new website www.askovhojskole.dk and meet two girls, Catrine and Mette, who are blogging about their life at Askov on www.askovblog.dk

Today is a very special day for danish TV2 - or even danish television in general. Not only can the program "MorgenTV" celebrate it´s 10th anniversary, but what´s more important, TV2 is launching a new TV-station. TV2 News, it´s called. And in fact, we are witnessing the beginning of a new era in the history of danish television. From now on, we can update on news 24-7!
But this makes we wonder - I allready have acces to near real-time news on the internet, so what legitamizes TV2 News in the danish media world? I mean, what is the purpose of this new news channel?

I hope that TV2´s latest offspring can provide news profesionally served by experienced journalists. That would make the channel an alternative to both the internet and foreign news stations like CNN and BBC World.
I think that TV2 has made a good bet on hiring known faces from the danish world of TV news like Mette Vibe Utzon and Poul Erik Skammelsen. These high profile journalists gives TV2 News the credability and recognizability, that can diffentiate the station from CCN, BBC and especially the internet.

TV2´s potential problem is getting the consumers aka. viewers to accept, that news on TV is available around the clock. For endless times the daily dose of news has been served along with the evening coffee by "TV-Avisen" at nine o´clock at DR or by "Nyhederne" at TV2. And we - the consumers - have been happy with this arrangement.
So my essential question is: Why change it if it ain´t broke?
Do we need 24-7 access to television news in danish?
For my part I guess, I´ll take a peek at TV2 News, just to see what all the fuzz is about. And if the quality is satisfying, I´ll probably stay tuned in. We´ll all just have to wait and see.