Björn Jeffery

There’s a been a lot of media and not so much trend in this Good Old Trend blog so far. I’ll try to balance the two a bit more ahead. Lately in life there’s been a lot of work as well, but I guess that’s another story.

Springwise have addressed the issue of workplaces for working men and women on the move. It’s an interesting development and one that I’ve been thinking about myself for a while. Often when I travel I have the need for a calm workplace in order to get a few things done in peace and quiet. Coffeeshops are nice, but calm they are not. There’s a time and a place for both.

The Swedish innovative twins Teo and Fredrik Härén came up with the concept The Business Lounge in 2004, a simliar idea to the ones that Springwise wrote about. They seem to have been ahead of their time some what as I can’t find any reference to the project any more, but I’m fairly convinced that they were on the right track.

Why don’t all airports, train stations or just inner city locations have executive lounges, but without the executives? No fancy cards or 100 000 EuroBonus points to come in or anything like that. Just nicely designed workspaces with good coffee and free Wifi. In days when mobility is more important and prioritised as ever, I’m convinced there is a market for this sort of concept.

tags bloggar.se: mobilitet, trender

My colleague Hugo just wrote an interesting post about a new project that we are planning:

On the subject of contribution, and I think that there is something missing in the way people contribute code. As I was planning to package all the interesting Good Old-code as a dojo library, I realized that there is no such thing as a dojo library: people are expected to contribute directly to the dojo toolkit.

I think that the Dojo community needs another way to contribute code. What is needed is a central repository for dojo libraries, a dojo sourceforge.

If you want to be a part of this in any way, head on over and drop him a line.

I’ve been thinking a lot about intertextuality and connectivity lately. It connects both with Netocracy that I’m reading (although not with great haste I might add) and media strategies for a few clients that I have in mind. Eric Wahlforss went to see the Snakes on a Plane, and wrote an interesting passage about backchannels:

We see a world that is becoming increasingly hypermediated. The idea of immediacy often attributed to the conversation seems to be fading. The notion of sequentiality is being replaced by a sort of multi-modal parallelity. In other words, the backchannel is going mainstream. Soon it will be everywhere, in all conversational contexts imaginable.

This is indeed true, and an interesting development in regards to the old media trying to find their place on the internet. Traditionally newspapers have always written articles in a way that everyone can understand them – no matter what knowledge you have before starting to read. This means compromising on almost everything that excludes people from understanding what’s written. Or anything that has an edge, if you want to take that approach. Understandable in a product that reaches a wide range of people, but not applicable on the internet. Writing with refereces to backchannels – other than in an article about just that – would be more or less impossible.

This is, in my opinion, one of the largest challenges that all newspapers have to face. Okay, it’s difficult making old print journalists to record radio and photograph a fire with their mobile phone. But changing the way you choose, write and prioritise your stories? That’s a challenge. I’ll be returning to this subject several times in this blog.

Parallel with my work I run an mp3-blog called Discobelle.net. It is very niched in its content – and the whole idea is to be the opposite of mainstream music coverage. Take this article as an example – a leaked track sparked a t-shirt that got the internet goin’ nuts (geddit?) Read the story here if you’re not familiar with it.

We write about artists that you should know about in order to fully appreciate them, or at least trust us enough to be the curator for new tracks. And we use references that you either understand, or you understand that you don’t. It doesn’t just pass you by. Look this title or this article to get a feel for it.

The difference between Discobelle.net and newspapers is like night and day. And it’s obvious which one was started with the internet as their primary medium, and which one that just tried to catch on.

tags bloggar.se: intertextualitet, backchannels, dagstidningar, tidningar, strategi

Ping intressant.se

Quick note to point you towards PSFK that has an interview with me today. Check it out!

A lot of Bonnier in this blog to start off with, but being the size they are it’s difficult to avoid (or I’m just sucking up to them as this Bonnier-owned magazine implied :).

Bonnier Newspapers have invested in HemOnline, a project that lets home-owners sell their house or apartment cheaper than using regular estate agents. The catch is that they have to take care of the viewings themselves.

Johan Larsson at Internetworld implies that this might not be the smartest idea as it the estate agents spend a lot of money on advertising in Bonniers newspapers. He also adds that it on the other hand might be better to be a part of the evolution instead of just fighting it. I agree with the second part.

Certain streams of revenue just won’t be there in the future – deal with it. Look at Craigslist – they made $6 million and $60 million disappeared from the market. It’s always better to try to get a share of what the future market is worth rather than to deny that it will change – and stick with what works at the moment. Of course you can do both at the same time, which is the obvious move to make for all media companies losing advertising by the day.

tags bloggar.se: hemonline, bonnier, media, dagstidningar, annonsering

I’m re-reading Netocracy by Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist, a Swedish book that was slightly before its time when it was first released in 2000 (English in 2002). I will probably be referring to this book quite a lot in the next few posts as I think it’s more relevant now than ever. It’s not news in any way, but I aim to use this blog as some sort of mental notebook in order to build up a thesis, rather than to just document the thesis that I already have. I’ll use the category “Quickfix” for these posts, in case you want to skip them.

The book describes the shift between feudalism to capitalism and now the ongoing shift to informationalism. Bard and Söderkvist describe how the value of property in feudal times changed over night as the capitalistic view on valuing property differed radically. Estates were previously valued by the distance from the royal residence (and weren’t for sale, obviously). In capitalism, the estate was suddenly valued on other standards – size, style etc – and now had a price tag. The feudal way of valuing estates was rendered useless and not accepted, and in time it disappeared completely. Enough background.

Let’s move over to the web instead. Music and film also have a price tag in our capitalistic society. But as it happens, some people don’t acknowledge the monetary value of these products anymore. They downloaded it for free instead. Because they are cheap and don’t want to pay? In a capitalistic point of view: yes. But seen in an informationalistic perspective they simply don’t accept the value that these products traditionally have been given. It does not mean they don’t value it at all, but the framework and meme in which they use is one not shared by the creators.

tags bloggar.se: informationalism, nedladdning, piratkopiering

I’m trying to catch up on some reading and found an interesting post by Ross Mayfield:

The problem is there are too many companies being created that have no aspirations to be companies. Most survey the feature portfolio of tier 1 and tier 2 acquirers and are precision guided towards flipping within 18 months. Many make no attempt at generating revenue and most that do generate revenue from the advertising of other startups, let alone demonstrating a business model.

A dirty little secret for those actually building these things into businesses is that generating community value takes time.

I’ve been thinking about this a while considering that it is part of my job to see through startups without a working business model (or actually, it is my colleague Fredriks job – soon to be read in our new blog Good Old Business). Obviously these sites have interesting aspects to study aside from the potential revenue streams, but this matter can not be put aside. At least not for me as that is the first question my clients will ask me.

Working in a European market where Bay Area-sized investments are considerably more rare, the business model is crucial to even see the light of day. I would have thought that this was the obvious line for any VC, but after reading this I can see a little clearer what’s going on. Meta-money and marketing through Techcrunch – no wonder this could happen.

He continues:

Today’s successful ventures are twice as old as the 18 month window. They were born when it was a shitty time to create a company, were largely either hacks cast out openly to serve an immediate itch and community (e.g. Blogger, Six Apart, Technorati, Newsgator, del.icio.us) or almost accidental creations that caused a business model iteration (Flickr).

Read the post – it’s well worth it, and a bit of an eye-opener for me actually.

After hearing JP Rangaswami talk at Reboot in June I knew straight away that I had to start reading his blog regularly. Although mentally exhausting at times (in a good way that is!) I keep coming back and I keep being fascinated by the clarity that he manages to pass on to the reader. And this even though the level of abstraction is high. I strongly recommend anyone interested in the way the internet is changing society to pay him a visit. In a post yesterday he wrote the following:

I don’t read blogs to find out things faster than anyone else; I don’t read blogs to find things to link to and comment on before anyone else; I don’t read blogs because I can’t find any books to read.

I read blogs because they’re participative, they are accessible, they help me learn. I write blogs because I want to participate. In a community.

Spot on.

Andra bloggar om: JP Rangaswami, social media, blogg

I’m trying to create a few new habits for myself regarding health and learning. One of them is taking a morning walk before work and listening to a few interesting podcasts while I do it. I started off with the two latest TEDTalks, Jimmy Wales from Wikipedia and Richard Baraniuk from Rice University.

Of the two, the latter was the most interesting. Baraniuk described his knowledge sharing project Connexions which is an interesting idea in itself. But the most interesting part of it was the fact that projects with free content – community produced and licensed under CC or similar – kills the middle man completely. In the new chain of production it goes from author to printer to distribution. No external handling, marketing or editing. Not necessarily at least.

There will be a new market evolving just supplying the means for people to do everything themselves. A network for distribution of small editions books for example. Like Logoworks if you will – enabling a low cost professional framework to use for small scale businesses or projects.

(if you know of good podcasts for my morning walks please leave a comment!)

Andra bloggar om: community, richard baraniuk, jimmy wales, wikipedia, connexions, podcast

After some turbulence within Bonnier concerning CEOs and chairmen of the board, the Swedish tabloid Expressen today announced Thorbjörn Larssons successor. Jonas Bonnier, most known from his years at Bonnier Magazines, will take over the chairmanship.

As news in itself it’s not up to much. But it is a clear signal that the inevitable power shift within Bonnier is about to happen. Bengt Braun out, Jonas Bonnier in. About time too.

One of the key points that made Jonas Bonnier successful at Bonnier Magazine Group (BMG) was the fact that he let magazines within BMG compete with each other. A classic face off – if an editor wanted to launch a cooking magazine and they already had one – so be it! May the best magazine win. Bold, and successful.

Applied to the world of daily newspapers this is unusual, at least in Sweden. Bonnier Newspapers said no to the idea of Metro because it would hurt DN and Expressen. So along came MTG and scooped it up instead. The rest is history.

If Jonas Bonnier is willing to make the same sort of strategic moves within the newspaper sector this could prove to be a very interesting time ahead. I think he will, and he would be the perfect person to take over in these times of free newspapers bubbling from all around.

Andra bloggar om: bonnier, media, tidningar, tidskrifter, jonas bonnier