A while ago I was blogging about communicating the STAGIS way. I was working on a Direct Mail for STAGIS at the time. It's now finished and yesterday I went to the postoffice carrying 5 huge bags containing no less than 500 copies, which as I write hopefully is being distributed to 500 institutions of education (højskoler, efterskoler, lærerseminarier, pædagogseminarier, produktionsskoler etc.).

It's bright orange and very cool. On one side we describe the STAGIS way of solving challenges for our customers. Turn it around. And wupti you have a cool poster, which can decorate the walls of your office or even the refrigerator (if you have one of those big american ones with icecubemaker and everything).

A bunch of bloggers who created BlogForum has initiated a blog-survey to know more about who is blogging in Denmark. Right now there are about 4.200 people who've answered the questionnaire. There are questions about age, gender, blog-habits etc. Check it out and let us know more about you: Gå til spørgeskema.

Every day for the past few weeks I've gotten phone calls from lots of friendly people inquiring about the open position as Project Manager at STAGIS which has deadline today. We received about 50 applications that we will go through over the next few days and ask a few to come to interviews to get to know me and us and hear about the clients etc. At this time I just want to say thanks, everyone! Several of my manager-colleagues have been complaining how they only receive few applications compared to several hundred just a year or two ago. So I feel lucky that so many are interested in this job and us. What's really great is the quality of the people who've applied. There are a lot of interesting, knowing and experienced people in the list so I'm looking forward to getting to know some of them.

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;-)

You tube! My space! You name it. The use of video on websites has in general increased substantially. And with good reason - video makes the website more dynamic. Tjeck out Kastanievej Efterskoles website. STAGIS has recently produced 6 short films about some of the activities you can participate in when attending the school. Tjeck out the film about the subject music! And we are to say the least proud of the result. What do you think of them? And what is your opinion of video on websites in general?

Sometimes hardcore bloggers discuss which blogs are right and which are wrong. And wether blogs are supposed to be used only internally in an organization or if they should blur the borders between "inside" and "outside" of the organization (some would argue that there is no such thing but that is another story). We've often discussed blogs as a technology that has a managerial or organizational purpose but for once let me point you to a real marketing or advertising blog. It's norwegian and it's certainly full-hearted. Meet the sheep Blogg Ulf!

I'm talking at Professor Roy Langers seminar at RUC next week and looking very much forward to it. We're going to be discussing the possible paradigmatical shift in organizations using blogs, about authenticity in organizational identity and branding. All fun stuff. And I always had good experiences meeting the graduate students at Kommunikation in Roskilde so that makes it fun too! Just got this from the course-website:

NEWS +++ NEWS +++ NEWS +++ NEWS +++ NEWS
Nikolaj Stagis, CEO of design, organizational identity and communication agency STAGIS, has kindly agreed on sharing his thoughts about blogging as a paradigmatical shift in our way of thinking and understanding management, organizational identity and corporate communication. Check out: www.stagis.com.

The course is happening from this week through mid-april.

I was just looking over at Jaffee Juice and found this snippet of thrill about Eepybirds fun experiment with quite a few Diet Cokes and an extensive number of Mentos (yes, the freshmaker).

Go watch the Experiment #214. It's good for you.

Right now I'm workning on a direct mail with the main purpose of communicating the STAGIS way of solving challenges for our clients. My question is this: How can I simplify the process without loosing the complexity? Communication is more than just simplication! Ok, I get that. But somestimes the reality seems so complex, that simplication is necessary in order to get the message across. In communicating the STAGIS way my dilemma is that our problem-solving-strategy is not a step-by-step process (it never is), which can easily be fitted into neat little boxes. It’s a dialogic process that involves both the company’s culture, dreams, potential, authenticity, the users/target group and so much more. As you (hopefully) understand the process is not easily communicated on a step-by-step basis. But in order to communicate the STAGIS way to future clients, it would be nice to be able to communicate just exactly what it is we do differently from others, in a way so people outside STAGIS fully get the picture. So far I have decided on the following steps:
- Challenge
- Research
- Authentic forces
- Development of scenarios
- Structural changes and implementation
- Identity design
- Communication
- Effect and evaluation
Does this make any sense for someone outside our tiny STAGIS world? Maybe not but now you know what I'm struggling with this late Friday afternoon.

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!