Bokmässan pågår

Hade varit kul att vara där, men istället följer jag den hos tidningen Svensk Bokhandel, SvB.

There is also an English edition of the journal of the Swedish publishers and bookstores.

More Cosmopolitans

I am beginning to rethink on the well educated cosmopolitan elite. The taxi driver that took me to my apartment in Stockholm originally comes from Turkey but share his time between driving taxi in Stockholm (Sweden) and working in a casino in San Diego (California, USA). While driving he taught me a lesson of bargaining in Tunisia... cool.

Scarce Resource

Power, electricity, is a resource that is more scarce than we usually think of in the part of the world where I spend most of my time. The laptops in the program One laptop per child are equipped with a crank. And the parents were really happy when the kids used the laptops at home at night, because they got some light in the house. Kurt Westh Nielsen wrote this Danish
article.

China

China was frequently mentioned in presentations and discussions, mainly as a threat and not as a potential market. It is considered as a larger threat to Europe than India much because of its severe system regulating family size and growth of population. That is also the reason why China's economy will take off much faster than the one of India: it's easier to obtain a high GDP/capita if you can hold back the number of capitas...

Being Bold - Maybe Tomorrow...

This morning, Lester Thurow was talking about the necessity of being bold in different aspects. One of them was being bold in the gender aspect. There is no reason that men should rule the world, he said, we really need to turn to the women as well, it's vital. However, looking at the agenda, the 15 presentations yesterday were all made by men and also today the stage has belonged to the men. For someone interested in gender studies it would have been fun to know if the discussion on networks (brief) and competitiveness (extensive) had turned out differently with some female voices in the choir.

Excellence and Competitiveness

There are many wise words being said here, but today's most impressive presentation was the one of Luc Soete on Activating knowledge. He also took part in the lunch discussion we just finished, together with Jeremy Rifkin and Lester Thurow. Taking off fram the competitiveness of Europe, we came to talk a lot about China. Lester argued that the chinese discrimination of rural people needs to come to an end. For my part, I see the discrimination of rurals, or rater uneducated, increasing as a result of globalisation. He agreed on that, but still meant that we should think it over, be careful about it. Mr Soete mentioned that we in Europe need to change our models of social welfare, which are to a high degree founded on a base of labour rather than knowledge work - being a knowledge worker you have not the same reasons to retire at 58 as has a physical worker. Still, a high number of European knowledge workers enjoy this welfare system.

Being Mobile

We had a lab on Future of wireless at lunch time. Nicholas (who is among all other things also on the Board of Motorola) stressed the fact that mobility is the act of working away from your primary workplace. It still needs to be said out loud. So many times mobility is exemplified with cellphones and nothing else. Too much attention on the devices and not on the functions, if you ask me. Being mobile is a matter of accessing data wherever you are. Identification and security issues can cause problems. But once your corporate data is mobilized, then you can change processes. Last week I got an impressive presentation on the Danish use of mobile solutions in Care. Back to our lunch-discussion: besides security matters, the ease of management and the scalability are crucial. Upon 3G Negroponte concluded that it is a sad story, a false path that should have been abandoned long ago - it was too little, too early.

From the conference

This is a busy schedule. From 8.30 am to 4.10 pm we just had 30 minutes break but listened to 15 presentations and 2 panel discussions...it's time for some reflections on what to bring back home. (No, we don't call it a day yet.) By the way, there is an IDC blog, too.

Wiki....what!?

So, I find myself at the IDC European IT Forum in Paris together with numerous business leaders, IT professionals etc. We just enjoyed the first session, and listening to among other speakers Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT Labs and one of the founders of Wired Magazine. He addressed Europe and it's competiveness in creativity and innovation. Talking about the power in free and open source he mentioned wikipedia and asked the audience to raise their hands if ever used Wikipedia. Approximately 15 % did...and I was astonished of being part of such a minority in such a crowd...

Paris: European IT Forum 2005

Monday-Tuesday I will be at IDC European IT Forum 2005 in Paris.

French

From Ludovic Copéré I got the link to Wired and this article on French blogging. When I blogged in French I just did it because I consider it as my second language, I have always felt close to the French esprit, spent a lot of time in France and studied at the Sorbonne. However, it wasn't until now that I learnt that French is the second blog-language after English. But it only feels natural. Interesting article, always nice to have gut-feelings confirmed. And soon I'll be in Paris again!

Google Blog Search

I just tried the beta version of Google Blog Search for the first time and was happy to find my blog! There is certainly no reason for my friend Torstensson to complain about the fact that I didn't send him the link...

Ubiquitous

Last week I was at a conference in Salzburg (Austria) on eGovernment. One of the presentations that inspired me the most was on ubiquitous government. I cannot really explain why. At least since 1999 I have heard that technology is becoming a part of everyday life. I've heard about the intelligent refridgerator more times than I can count. And I have seen presentations on u-gov before. Suddenly it was just more clear to me, what it means to access services anywhere and at anytime. Maybe because I have been much preoccupied with channel strategies and value networks lately. And started to use wireless networks. I'll probably get back to this.

Future Lab

Yesterday we started off a scenario planning with a work shop at work. We're using the TAIDA-method taught at Kairos Future . It's been a long time since I worked with them and I enjoyed the future lab, although impatiently waiting for the analysis and outcome. However, it was good to look back and sum up the developments of the past 5-10 years - incredible how technology has changed our behaviors!

The Booker Prize shortlist

Still haven't read Ian McEwan's September but yet I think it's a pity that he was cut from the list. Ishiguro is still in the game, as is Zadie Smith

Busy busy bee

Oh, I am afraid the old cliché "time flies" is right on the spot... at the moment I am quite focused at my work and as I decided not to blog about my work, well, it's silent here. In a few weeks I will go to the IDC European IT Forum 2005. Nicholas Negroponte is one of the big names and that's how I found this old interview from Wired 1995...