Oh yeah, I completely forgot to tell you! Not all of you read our office blog of course – shame on me.
I’m working from San Francisco this week, revamping my presentations for the autumn. If you’re around and want to meet up – let me know. And if nothing else maybe we’ll meet here, here (eh, $1695? I think not) or even here?
Since I’ve been travelling quite a lot this year, I’ve been thinking about the way we look upon distance and national limitations. I’m half English, one quarter Norwegian and one quarter Swedish, and I live in a region that is 50/50 Denmark and Sweden. Therefore, national identity is an idea I find hard to relate to. For me, it’s all about getting to where I want to be, meeting the people I want to meet, and working the way that suits me best. Basically, we’re talking about infrastructure – both digital and physical.
An example: a few months ago I went to San Francisco for the weekend. I left Malmö on Thursday morning and was back at the office in time for lunch on Monday. The flight, one way, took approximately 14 hours (8822 km). A long way to go (and god knows the flight home wasn’t pure pleasure, SFO-MIN-AMS-CPH), but completely manageable for anyone. As a comparison, I went to Örebro and back a week or so ago. Getting there and back took me 15 hours (497 x2 km).
Both this map over at City of Sound and Personal World Map illustrates this point admirably. Living near a rail and flight hub, and having wireless broadband access, makes ones physical surroundings considerably less important. The region of Wallonia has been advertising in The Economist delivering this message. Pointing out the vicinity of Paris, Amsterdam and Luxembourg as it’s key advantages certainly gives that impression at least.
If one starts to think in terms of regions like Wallonia, or Øresund where I live, and imagine the scenario of travelling seamlessly both in between the countries within it and using the hubs to travel away – where would it make the most sense to live? And by live I mean the country and city where I’m officially thought to be most often. It would probably be a place where taxes are low and interference in general is at a minimal. If travelling a lot – I would need a private health care plan anyway, and my general involvement in domestic affairs would be at a minimal. Will there evolve states that enables people to outsource their living? Like Monaco for athletes, but on a greater scale?
Even if the above initially sounds a bit neo-liberal for my taste, I think this is the way we are heading. People will find other ways of solidarity that aren’t dictated by national borders. The engagement in NGOs on an international or idea driven level will increase. I think it will be a lot like the old “think global, act local” slogan, only redefining local to be ones surroundings no matter what countries that may include.
Øresund, Scandinavia or even the European Union are all regions aiming to link together rather than hold apart. And with globalisation so obviously integrated in the coming generation of work force, the idea of the national borders suddenly feels very old. We will want to live where we can meet the people we care for and where we can experience the most. No matter where some old kings decided to draw the border lines.
tags technorati : globalisation jetset regions wallonia øresund trend prediction
tags bloggar.se: globalisering, regionalisering, jetset, wallonia, öresund, trend, förutsägelse
Don’t forget – Likemind tomorrow, 9 am at Solde Kaffebar. See you there!
During my holiday I tried to think offline as much possible. My work consists of so much information processing, I thought I needed a month without an active inflow. One quote stuck with me through the summer and still seems to make perfect sense. It’s from Jonathan Schwartz´s blog in June:
Media company CEO’s without a CTO on their staff should prepare to be acquired or broken up – they are fighting the future rather than monetizing it.
Often I feel management wants to stay as far away from technology as possible, instead of embracing it as a way of creating new possibilities and income. This goes for both media companies and other industries. The fear of technology, and the mistake of leaving it to technicians, may be the decisive factor regarding success in the next five years.
tags technorati : cto media technology jonathanschwartz
tags bloggar.se: cto, media, teknik, jonathan schwartz
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When I was in Palo Alto I was interviewed about internet strategy for the largest (subscribed) newspaper in Scandinavia, the Finnish Helsingin Sanomat. Katri Kallionpää that wrote the article was good enough to send me a copy and a PDF. You can find it here, Finnish followers! 🙂
I’m home! Asia was great, and I think I’m starting to understand it ever so slowly. Definitely going back to explore other areas as soon as possible.
But until then: back to work. I’ve got a good feeling about this autumn. I think a lot of good things are going to happen. For one thing, I’ll be working in Stockholm approximately two days a week. So all you guys up there that read this blog – get in touch and let’s have lunch! And that goes for everyone in the rest of the world as well of course 🙂
My plan was to continue writing this blog in the same style as before, but then I thought – why not ask the people that actually read it? What posts do you like the most and the least? Drop a line here below if you have any thoughts, and I’ll try to adjust my posting accordingly.
I thought I’d tell you a little more about a project that we just launched. It’s rather special and deserves a closer look. Also, I’m pretty sure that it is the first real mashup launched by a Swedish newspaper (or any major media company for that matter). You might have already read about it in our office blog.
The site is called Sommar på Näset (Summer at Näset) and is collaboration between our client Sydsvenskan and the school Sundsgymnasiet. It´s a hyperlocal initiative in the south-west part of Sweden and focuses on daily life in this buzzing tourist area (although it would be buzzing considerably more if it wasn’t raining so much).
Instead of trying to build everything ourselves, MSM-style, we’ve used the sites that we think are the best at what they do. These are the systems running together:
* Presence from Jaiku
* Photos from Flickr
* Maps from Google
* Blog from WordPress
* Content from Sydsvenskans CMS Escenic
* Calendar from Dygnet Runt
And it’s mainly updated with Nokia E65s! And that includes the water temperature in three places around Näset. SMHI could only deliver one figure for the whole region, so we built an updater through SMS instead.
On top of that it is also open for collaboration. Anyone in the area can take part by adding photos or Jaikus. And yes – it’s a beta. Our developer Hugo has been working miracles as it is just to get things up and running. There are a few rough edges here and there, but we’ll be working on them ahead.
I think the whole site is a good example of how we think media should be evolving. And it’s a good case of what of can be done with a limited budget and time frame, simply working and thinking slightly different. It’s a very brave move of Sydsvenskan to do a project like this, and I think many newspapers in Sweden will follow within the next few months.
On another note – I’ll be leaving for South East Asia tonight! That means I won’t be blogging here for a while. I will be checking email now and then so drop me a line if you want to get in touch, or follow my steps at Doppler and hook up!
tags technorati : hyperlocal sydsvenskan citizenjournalism jaiku googlemaps flickr mashup wordpress escenic nokiae65
tags bloggar.se: hyperlocal, medborgarjournalistik, mashup, sydsvenskan, wordpress, jaiku, google maps, flickr, nokia e65, escenic
I spoke to Fredrik Wass the other day about the importance of chunkability. It struck me that the mistakes being made by mainstream media (MSM) regarding news has a lot of similarities with what went wrong with the classified ads.
Classified ads used to be a major source of income for newspapers. It still is in some sense, but it’s considerably less today at least. Being the market leaders, their main focus was keeping the status quo. The same offer was presented in each paper, more or less. Things were good.
Then the internet came along and turned everything upside down. Craigslist in the Bay Area, and Blocket in Sweden. A better offer – cheaper, or free. Suddenly the market shrinks. The figure I read was that Craigslist made $6 million dollars, but $60 million dollars was removed from the market.
As I see it, the problem was that the MSM misjudged the market to come. They saw that the market for classifieds in the internet was considerably less profitable than the one in print. Following that argument, it would make sense to stick with what they had. Why cannibalize a profitable business?
The problem was that the comparison was wrong. MSM were hoping to keep their current business when that wasn’t an option. Wide usage of the internet and a superior offer had to lead to a shrinking of the market. Therefore the correct question that they should have asked themselves was “do we want any part of the classifieds market at all?”. If the answer was yes, the internet was they way to go. Keeping status quo simply wasn’t an option.
The same thing is happening right now, only this time it’s about news. MSM seems to think that supplying one paper, or any other channel providing the same variation of content, will still be the prolific way of consuming media. And as any reader of this blog will know – it’s not.
The days of having one newspaper are over. The days of getting one stream of information from one place are over. The future will be put together by hundreds or thousands of streams, filtered and aggregated by different people and companies before they finally are presented to the end consumer.
An example: Average Joe won’t just go to DN.se and read all the news there. They will read the editorial at DN, the sports at Aftonbladet, local news about Lund in Sydsvenskan, daily news at SvD and then perhaps 30 niche blogs. As a media company, you should be happy being just one of these streams. You can’t have it they way it was, the same way you can’t have the old market for classifieds back.
Remember – it’s either that, or not being read by anyone at all.
tags technorati : newspapers classifieds media microchunking media2.0
tags bloggar.se: dagstidningar, media, eftertext, microchunking, media 2.0
1 – Mobile is the first personal mass media (even the internet is only semi-personal).
2 – It is the first always carried media.
3 – It is the first always on mass media.
4 – Mobile is the first mass media with a built-in payment channel.
5 – It is the first media device available at the point of inspiration. And 6 – mobile is the first mass media with near-perfect audience information.
I think I’ve blogged about this before, and if not – I should have. This blog entry explains more, and you should be reading the whole blog regularly.
I met Kristina Dryza the first time in January last year, as a part of a Breaking Trends project that she was working with. Ever since, I’ve been waiting to see what she would be doing once she started running her own projects, Skinny Corp-style. The first one, KR LT Studio, is now out, and the concept is really interesting.
KR LT Studio starts out with the notion of personal space, which in itself is an interesting concept. Being able to create your own time and space within situations which might otherwise be deemed as the ordinary. For instance, being at home is more than just not being anywhere else – it is an opportunity to cherish these moments. Totally anti-stress and all about experiences. I think this is something that will catch on fast, in many different shapes and forms. I wrote about a similar idea over at David Report a while back.
For these occasions, the studio has produced special robes intended to be worn at home by women wanting to explore their own personal space. The collection called Inner Space consists of seven different robes, handmade in Lithuania by artists who have been in the trade for generations. Needless to say, this is about as far from Juicy Couture as you can get. There is a story and a feeling here. Go check it out yourself.
tags technorati : krltstudio futureluxury luxury robes kristinadryza fashion
tags bloggar.se: KR LT Studio, lyx, ny lyx, mode, dräkt, Kristina Dryza
