Bye bye Oslo

New year = new country and new town. I took a decision to move this autumn and over Christmas and New Year I did. It kind of breaks my heart to leave all my wonderful co-workers behind and a really great job. But sometimes you have to take new paths in life even though the first steps might be a bit scary.

My new hometown is small, surrounded by the ocean and somehow it manages to be headwind everywhere. I've given my future career a lot of thinking and ended up writing a list of everything I can see myself do in the future. On this list there are things as;
Pug breeder
Documentary filmmaker
Painter
Children writer
Study Japanese
Horse farm in Iceland<
Work in Tokyo
Event agency
PA for Steve Jobs
Journalist
Be involved in filmmaking
Run my own magazine
Work at Google
Acupuncturist

There might not be a clear link between these jobs. But what they all have in common are new experience, a challenge and a lot of things to learn.

But for right now I see myself continuing to work as a project manager. While looking round for an interesting job, I've started working with an idea me and my boyfriend talked a lot about. It's too good to blog about, but if every piece falls in place I will give you an update.

Helvetica + Icons = <3

My boyfriend just created a beautiful icon set based on Helvetica Bold. That's worth waking myself up from a blog coma. Preview 245 icons on http://helveticons.ch/.

My vacation starts today, I got two great ideas worth blogging about and hope I'll take the time doing it the next three weeks.

Over and out

Walk the talk

Ever since I got my idea about the day and night toothpaste I can’t stop thinking about how it seems as companies don’t want to interact with their clients. Trying to give away an idea is way harder then getting famous on You Tube.

Why don’t companies encourage costumers and users to contribute with new ideas, tips and their point of view? Sometimes the greatest things come from people outside a company.

What if a company totally opened up for input from others? I guess they would end up with a lot of new products, innovative ways to advertise, meaningful feedback and costumers who feel that they aren’t just buyers but also a part of the company. So the question is – how does your company open up in a good way, and when will it?

2 years of education

Today we summoned all the models we have learned during our time at Hyper Island. It turned out to be more then 50 models about group dynamic, feedback, increased self knowledge, ways to communicate better and a lot more. After working side by side with them for a long time they are really a part of my everyday life and in some way the have changed me as a person.

I’m doing my best to work distance with my projects from work during these last days in school while I also am packing all my belongings to live in Norway fulltime. Right now I’m just doing my best to keep my head over water until it will be full of champagne on graduation day.

I feel fine

I've been to an inspiring day filled with lectures. My favorite lecture was Jonathan Harris who talked about peoples stories and how he enjoyed to collect them. I really liked the how he combined simple thing to make something grand. I recomend to take a closer look at his project We Feel Fine. It's sort of an bank of feelings collected from blogs with the phrases "I feel fine" or "I am feeling" written in them.

I feel amazed over how small simple ideas often are the best. And there I finished my phrase that will publish me on We Feel Fine. Jonathan also turned out to be very nice and fun to talk to. Keep up the good work!

Be there or be square

I'm proud to announce that I'm an employed project manager at Apt since two weeks ago. Guess Norway will be my home for a little bit longer that just my internship period. I'm returning to Hyper Island for a two week long wrap up before ending my education with a big party!

9 weeks of internship

My internship at Apt is continuing to be fun, challenging and very educating. I really ended up at the right place and it feels like my head are full of new knowledge. I learn new things all the time and I’m starting to ask myself if it’s room for more information. What I first noticed as new project manager at Apt was my lack of knowledge regarding technology but I’m doing my best to increase by asking thousands of questions. I’m proud to announce that I know more about stuff like CMS, backend, W3C and the process of building a website.

I just started a new project were we are going to make an online advertising film. Just when I began to understand project management of websites and other thing online I get thrown into something totally new for me. This is what I love about my internship!

(For those who validate my site just because I was talking about W3C: Yes, I know there are some errors. But if Apple has 10 of them I guess it’s ok with my three. And who knows, I might just end up fixing them myself some day.)

Help, my brain is turning digital

No, it’s not the grass beginning to grow in the park or the birds returning from wherever they go during cold winter that’s giving me feelings of spring. It’s the automatic background on my Nintendo DS R4 Revolution card. During the past months it’s been a snowy background but now it has changed to a green leaf, which I discovered this morning. For me this was the first sign of spring. Seems as my R4 card is thinking for me.

Work is a four letter word

I know the secret behind living a well balanced life. I also know it’s almost impossible to achieve it. It sounds very simple. Divide your day into three. You get eight hours sleep, eight hours to work and eight hours for free time.

Great! Except that it is a lot of boring things to do that is eating time from your eight hours of leisure. Transport between home and work, buy food, cleaning and doing other chores. Those things might are not be your hobbies but still they are stealing time from your eight hours of fun.

So could the person who invented this key to happiness please explain how it’s suppose to work? Or does anyone have a better idea?

Playing around with Google Analytics

I spent my last days teaching myself Google Analytics. Once you get started it’s really fun to discover how visitors get to your site, what they do, how long time they spend and so on. I just keep discovering more and more ways to find new information. It’s a useful tool to understand what visitors do on your site.

Since I just finished my first project I made an experiment by tracking the banners by unique URLs. That way I can see exactly which banner, divided into size and ad place that brings most visits.

I’m not going to spend time on explaining how to use Analytics, instead I’m just sharing the links that I used to get started. Have fun!

Measure online advertising with Google Analytics
Google Analytics Goals
Ad Tracking with Google Analytics

A small step for mankind, one giant leap for me

I did my first gif animation today, 24 years old and soon to be 25. I always thought it was hard but after finishing my first one today I felt so good about it. I thought myself by reading a guide that I found on Google. It is fun to learn new things!

There are always new things to learn but not always as easy to find them. To see what you can learn you have to ask yourself what you don’t understand yet. About things in you daily life, technique, hobbies or what ever comes you way. I bet you will find a lot of new thing to learn that you didn’t knew about. Basically, find out what is left to learn to fully understand something.

Go horsie, go!

Working long vs. Working hard

Ever since I read Seth Godin’s book “Small Is the New Big” I’ve been thinking a lot of the difference between working long and working hard. For me working long is just a way to get your pay check. Working hard means you accomplish new things, make brave decisions and take steps forward instead of standing on the same spot. Every day I keep thinking of this and try to work hard as much as possible. I tend to valuate my day on the way home to find out what’s been long work and what’s been hard work.

Is this an obsession?

This is not a blog

I may not write as often as a blogger should, but I do not see myself as a blogger either. This is more like a glimpse of my thoughts, opinions and ideas. I write when something cross my mind, I see or hear something that gets me thinking or when it has been far too long since my last post here.

I don’t want to earn money by this blog. I don’t feel like reading another “10 ways to get more readers to your blog” post. I don’t always feel like be on top of myself and spend hours of writing posts and thinking of new ones. Apparently this thinking stuff doesn’t happen to me as often as other bloggers who blogs three times a day?

Sometimes what you think about and what you write isn’t as important as what you do.

Oh shit, this is a blog? Isn’t it?

A fan is a fan

I haven’t bought a record for years. Many of my friends don’t own a CD player. When I listen to music it’s on my iPod or my iTunes. Young people today are growing up with downloading music from day one. And we see it as our right to download music. It is going to be tough for the music industry to change our point of view and what has become a part of our life. Today record companies are an analog fossil in I digital world.

Since music can be downloaded from anonymous users it doesn’t feels like steeling directly from the artist. It’s more like spreading music. And the music is going to spread even if the artist doesn’t want to. Musicians should take advantage of this instead. A good example is Radiohead who released their album on their website for free downloading and if you liked it you could donate money. Today they made good money this way and I read that the average price each downloader paid was 6 $. Thom Yorke says:
In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that’s nuts. It’s partly due to the fact that EMI wasn’t giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff.

So why pick a fight with your fans and listeners? Why just don’t see them as consumers who want music in a new way? And an unsatisfied costumer will please their needs elsewhere if you can’t please them. A fan is a fan no matter how they get the music.

Payment today isn’t just money, it is also attention.

First day of my internship

I packed all my things and moved to Oslo two days ago. A little bit nervous and very excited I walked along Oslo’s pedestrian street this morning. I got a very warm welcome from my new workplace and now I have 17 weeks of adventure ahead of me. My first day was all about trying to understand as much as possible about the company, their routines and introduce myself to my new co-workers. But I also managed to do some research and tag along on a brief about a digital agency competition. I can’t wait for tomorrow, that must be a good sign?

One of those days

It has been a very lazy day. It’s the first day of my Christmas holiday and even though I have plenty of things to do I choose to do nothing. I took a long walk and then spent rest the day in front of my computer watching videos, reading blogs and just doing nothing important. During my walk I watched stones and mountains shaped from the ice age and suddenly I felt an urge to watch a documentary about this era. And by documentary I don’t mean the animated movie Ice Age. I putted this on top of my to-do-list, above practicing excel and read a book about project management. At least I will enter my internship in January full of knowledge about the ice age.

I miss Japan

I can’t believe it has been over one month since I left Japan. Going straight from Tokyo to Oslo and then to my hometown is a bit strange and the differences become clear. I spend my days working hard with my final project and now and then I take a look at my phone that I blinged out in Japanese style during my trip and dream away. I spend my nights watching Heroes and trying to understand Hiro speaking Japanese. That’s a good measure on how much I miss Japan.

Leaving Oslo

I’m heading home today to wrap up our final project, be a part of the class exhibition and hold a presentation about our concept. But I’m coming back to Oslo soon since I decided to do my internship at Apt. It will be both challenging and fun! Finally some practice of what I have learned during school and a lot of new knowledge as well.

There isn't just one right answer

Why are people so focused on finding the right answers? I believe there are many. In school the right answer is the answer that a teacher expects. In real life I believe there is many right answers, we just don’t look for them. There isn’t just one right way to do things, look at commercials, products, building, and shoes for an example. They show us that things can be done in a lot of ways. We find more right answers when we don’t satisfy with the first answer that comes up in our mind.

A leader once had a sign on his wall that said “Think for yourself”, and he always pointed to this sign when an employee came in to his office. Beside that sign were another one with the message “Think again”, which he reminded himself to do everyday. Think for yourself and think again could be two keys for finding more rights.

You can change you career in one day

You just have to make a decision. I’m going to hold another lecture tomorrow, and this one is going to be focused on goals in life and how you can reach them. By teaching some of the methods I have learned at Hyper Island and by reading, I’m going to try to make the students learn how to coach themselves. This is going to be a fun challenge!

Our final project here in Oslo is going as planned. We did some minor changes of our concept. We try to work as effective as possible by having some meeteing focused on follow up the group process now and then. I constantly remind myself of all the things I have learned at school. It is fun to practise what I have learned.