I’m at the Airport in Amsterdam now. And I’m so bloody tired. Got up at five this morning to go to a meeting but my flights fit terrible with the meeting schedule. I think I have about 5 hours waiting time in the airport today. Was feeling very sorry for myself until I read this piece by a guy named Jac. J. Goderie in one of those Airline magazines that they put in the pocket in front of you on the plane.

Not long ago, I had to fly for business to the other side of the world. Although it was one of those flights that seem to last a very long time, I can’t really complain. The truth is, flying is a perfect excuse to relax, stare into space, and put your brain on hold. You can enjoy the galley’s latest culinary offerings, finally finish the fourth Harry Potter, get the latest news, and most of all, enjoy time. No constant telephone, fax, WAP, or e-mail interruptions. Instead, long, quiet moments for reflection, for eternal questions like: “Why am I doing this? Who – or what – is it for?” Followed perhaps by a pause to enjoy the last dark-chocolate truffle and a joyful inner cry: “For me!”

I don’t know if I would ever describe airplane food as a culinary experience, but I actually finished the fourth Harry Potter not too long ago on a flight from Finland while munching chocolate truffle. And I guess that these moments of ‘putting my brain on hold’ are a luxury that I would miss terribly if I didn’t have them any more. So right on Mr. Goderie.

I had planned on checking my mail here at the airport this morning but my GSM connection keeps failing me. Instead I’ve been chatting with a tourist from Michigan – some young bloke of uncertain European origin. Drinking café latte in a café with Philip Stark chairs and having an altogether pretty neat and relaxing time.

The other day someone I like very much said to me that it is funny how two people can have the exact same experience but not feel the same way about it at all. He told me how his grandmother would cook meals for him and his sister when they were kids and shovel huge amounts of food onto their plates. They were not allowed to leave the table until they had eaten everything. His sister remembers this as something almost cruel while he thinks of it as an act of love.

I guess I’m gonna try to e to make a conscious effort to focus more on the lovely side of things.

I’m having a great time is this airport right now!

18.7.01
15:01
Oh my God - I love the entries in the competition at the Experience Site.

This is this weeks winner. Weheee - I also want a Surfmaran!!!

Actually made a slideshow myself today with some of the pictures from Heidi's bachelor-party last week. What a day that was!

16.7.01
11:38
Sorry I haven’t been posting lately. I guess there is really no point in blogs that are not updated on a regular basis. The problem is that I have been very focused on work-related issues that are highly confidential and on private matters I really would not like to share with the world. (Also been partying quite a bit – probably better not to publish those crazy, happy drunken thoughts)

Anyway – was very fascinated by Hartvig’s blog
today. He wrote:

I'm getting more and more convinced that I want to study architecture. Not only has this been a rapid growing interest of mine the last couple of years, but I also really believe that i could use it a lot. But i wouldn't use it for building houses nor furniture - I would use the methods, ideas and inspiration on digital products. That said the european - and especially the scandinavian - schools of architecture has a bigger focus on the art than the more technically focused american architecture schools.

For me architecture is where art becomes functional. And that's exactly why i need it - because why is it, that digital products (defined as any software that run on a computer either client-, server- or both-side) always are so boring and unsexy. Have you ever chosen a digital product because you found it slick rather than because it was filled with a lot of fancy pancy functions? I guessed not.

Reminds me of when I read ‘A Requiem for Homo Sapiens’ by David Zindell.

What an amazing trilogy that is – I guess it’s my all time favourite. Made me see the true beauty of mathematics. It’s about this order of mathematician pilots who interface directly with the computers of their space ships. The most dangerous thing in outer space is getting caught in infinite decision-trees when dodging black holes etc. The computer provides the ability of doing extreme calculations but the unpredictable spark of the human mind is what pushes mathematics in new directions and thus new wondrous theorems are generated and the brave pilots concur the impossible.

These books are about the search for the meaning of life. What are we and why are we here? It mixes extreme thought about philosophy, religion, technology, science, genealogy and love.

The point of it is that unless you engage yourself totally in all ideas to a point where you can actually say yes to them you will never be able to discard any ideas and move to a new level of understanding.

The quote on the top of this page is from this book.

“Before you are wise. After you are wise. In between you are otherwise.” – Old Fravashi saying.

1.7.01
18:34
Haven't been posting much lately as this is a very busy and very confusing time. Have been working a lot but not quite as much as I usually do I guess - but have also spent a lot of time doing nice things.

Actually played golf today. Never ever thought I would be the type of person who would enjoy something like that - but seems my parents know me better than I do. Turned 28 on wednesday and to celebrate - today they got me a bunch og clubs and a membership in their golf club.

Turned out golf is great - loved it.

26.6.01
16:24
Got a mail from Daniel yesterday with some really good feedback on the Sony Experience site. Am still testing and hope to change more things. (Used Pictures from Lotte's birthday party testing today. What a super nice day that was.)

If any one have ideas as too what could be better at the Experience Site please mail me.

24.6.01
13:01
Yesterday was my best friends bithday. What a day. Sun, champagn and lovely people.

Lotte's birthday song! quicktime movie, 3.3 mb's

23.6.01
10:35
”Why do I - why does anybody - do this kind of thing? Why has there been such an explosion of personal weblogs, so much so that www.blogger.com is
constantly in need of new servers to keep up with demand?” - asks Brian.

Love his answer.

22.6.01
22:17
Been looking through Dave’s list of Danish blogs tonight.

Actually found another woman on the list – Lisbeth Klastrup – a ph.d. scholar at the IT University of Copenhagen. Call's her blog Klastrups’s Cataclysms. Was struck by what she wrote on the 18th:

"My intention with this blogg has all the time been to keep a log of my professionel life - since this page is also part of my academic homepage at ITU. However, there are times in your life, when events in your private life cast so long shadows as to make every aspect of your life somewhat darker. This weekend, the man I have been living with for several months now, told me that he no longer sees me as the one he wants to share his life with. He will be leaving for his home country by the end of this week. So dear reader, he didn't marry me, and I'll need some time to cope with that..."

Would I ever poste something this personal?

Also found a link there to a pretty cool (danish) article about reboot written by a guy named Sune Børsen, who writes that he contrary to many journalists chose not to criticize the program or the speakers at reboot4.0 but to focus on what was actually said during the conference. Very Nice.

13:51
When I got the Sony gig – one of the things that scared me the most was the prospect of a bus-train-bus ride to far away Taastrup every day. But I actually Ikind of like the trip – especially in the morning.

I usually chat with Marcus the whole way and If I go by myself I get hot coffee and a magazine at the train station – get on the train, put on my headphones and relax. Mmmmm…. nice.

Got this months Wired yesterday and read the Andy Grove story.

”I was behind the market, then I was even with it, then I fell behind again in terms of my sense of the Internet’s potential. Now, I’m probably more optimistic than the market is.”

Even during the most extreme shake-out days Grove persistently claimed that that the Internet will change the world as much or more in the next five years as it has in the past five.

Someone else who believes that The revolution continues …eh Mygdal?

Also looked in on the guys at Littledevice yesterday. They do such nice things. Found out that Hartvig has some hardware problems. Happy that’s the reason bagstiv.dk is not running. Thought he got chicken.

21.6.01
14:30
Last night our SACD Dijgingo event at the State Museum of Art in Copenhagen and Modern Museum of Art in Stockholm won a Golden Lion in Cannes.

Congratulations to my favourite colleague Marcus who managed the project, OMD who came up with the idea and Agenda who produced it.

Marcus my dear - get ready to swallow – it’s champagne time!

20.6.01
09:55
Gadget-girl’s got a new toy

Ups – love my new movie making hobby but ran out of space on my hard disc yesterday. What is a girl to do? Went down to the cubicle of geek numero uno and worked on the dimples and lash-batting.

Geek-man as usual didn’t seem to respond. Instead he stormed of to the server room and started pulling boxes down from the shelves. Finally he seemed to find what he was looking for. From the bottom of a huge box he proudly produced the cutest little Pocket HD.

Fire-wire-whoooom………

Geek-man seemed happy that someone finally wanted to play with his toy and I will definitely sponsor more web-servers for IT in the future.

19.6.01
19:07
For beer-drinking, Carlsberg-loving people:

This is from darling Mark.

18:39
Last week I was at a very fancy seminar arranged by a very fancy agency (probably shouldn’t mention any names). This very fancy account director asked me if I had seen an article of his in the Danish newspaper Børsen the same day. He hoped I wasn’t offended as it criticized reboot a bit as he put it.

As I hadn’t seen it and liked the idea of a fancy account director with an opinion (critical or not) I asked him to send it to me.

I received it this morning and my God – I was offended – it was the stupidest thing I ever read. I don’t mind people criticizing reboot. It’s gotten too big and important for people not to have strong opinions about it and I guess I’ve gotten used to the criticism as well. Besides from that – I’m not actually involved in any way anymore – I’m just a fan who gets to hang out with the interesting and always very nice speakers once a year.

But the stupidity of this guy offended me. He was critical about all the wrong things and actually horrified that the speakers at reboot urged the audience to start their own web-logs and tell their thoughts to the world.

”What about over-communication?” He wrote. Are we supposed to shout totally unimportant stuff at each other?

Who ever heard about over-communication? If someone actually want’s to listen it can’t be unimportant can it?

Not too long ago I insecurely tried to justify my own blogging and wrote that I mainly write for my own sake – for therapeutic reasons. I didn’t expect anybody to read and value it.

But this is so typically Danish. All the Danish web-logs that are popping up these days have pay-offs that all basically say’s: ”These are my unworthy opinions – I don’t want you to think that I think highly of myself and my opinions. You don’t have to read this!

That sucks. I find Dave’s, Peter’s and the rest of our foreign blogger friends sense of self-worth refreshing.

So I guess I don’t believe that it’s all about one-2-one sense making. The important thing is the constant discourse. The reality created when multiple voices mingle. Each voice pushes the boundaries of reality in a new direction. We don’t all have to be right – we don’t even have to talk about important things all the time. But by expressing our opinions we might participate in the shaping on new and wondrous ideas. A small unimportant statement might carry ripples that have greater impact out there in the maelstrom of sense making.

So if the writings of a fancy account director offends me I have to accept it and speak up so that I might push our common sense of reality in another direction.

This is also how I feel about Guan He has a right to express himself no matter what his opinions are. He has the right to flame Speednames, Mondosoft etc. But he shouldn’t underestimate the power of his own opinions. This is a strong media. His words have impact and he will force people to take a stand in the new discussions he brings to life.

18.6.01
11:01
Guan, Guan, Guan – gotta love that crazy prankster.

”On May 31 I started an ad campaign on Google. Anyone who searched for "arsdigita" would get a link to my Shaheen v. Greenspun page. Results: 1,274 impressions, 98 clicks, giving a clickthrough rate of 7.69%. Total cost: $19.11.

This campaign will go on until the total cost is $25.” - Guan

Yep – it’s there.

Also love the Microsoft free friday - All-Microsoft Monday thing.
"I have now inserted the meta-tag that disables Smart Tags on Unicast, except on Mondays. This is how I'll celebrate All-Microsoft Monday."

Ha ha ha....

And our foreign reboot-friends and mentors are having fun as well.

Peter Wrote:
The Winerization of Evan. Is it just me, or is Evan starting to read more and more like Dave? Is there a condition endemic to developing weblog maintenance software that leads to the quoting of people who agree with you, ending posts with a comment in italics, and prominently featuring song lyrics? I guess we'll really worry when Ev starts quoting the Dead instead of Byrne/Eno.

And Dave's merry reply:
Hey it would be great if Peterme would get a little Winerizing himself. (My kid brother's name is Peter, btw, I can't take people named Peter seriously. It's in my ROM.)

Touché!

Evan didn't bother with a comment.

17.6.01
18:18
What a nice day. Done nothing much . Been chilling with Thomas all morning and just went for a walk and had coffee by the lake with my favourite colleague Marcus. Love sunny Sundays.

Also seems like Hartvig is having a good time. A la mother fucking dendro – eh?

And Guan, whom I chatted with at the reboot after-party on Friday, is as obnoxious as always. His crusade against Speednames has reached new highs.

"I have just sent this e-mail to Martin Roll, VP Global Marketing at Speednames. They address a number of issues that developers and end-users might raise about Digital Identity, Speednames' new product. I promise now that if Speednames addresses these questions to my satisfaction, Unicast will have a DI service at their launch, if the specifications are made available to me in advance." – Says Guan .

Tsk, tsk - bad, bad boy!

Wrote Dave about the party on Friday. But seems Guan beat me to it. Didn’t know those two are bonding. Guan must be right up Dave’s alley though. Microsoft free Friday and all.

16.6.01
02:13
"A bit of philosophy. What happens when someone dies. People are kind to memory of the person. What a waste. The person you're being kind to is dead. Be kind to people who are alive. Blow their minds. See what comes back.

As I've said, without many details, there's been a lot of death around lately. On the Web too. In a sense, everyone who participates in the Web as a writing medium (not just reading) is going through a grieving process now, whether we're aware of it or not. The Web as we knew it is gone. The thing we shared, the vision, the hope, it's hard to find in all the confusion. But at some point the grief stops being everything, and you go on and find what's new and alive. One thing's for sure, if you're reading this, you're alive. So let's have fun!" - Dave

Agree, agree!

15.6.01
14:28
Tonight is reboot-party time. Can’t wait.

Love my reboot-guys, and am so happy that Niels and Thomas finally got their web-logs up and running so that I’m always updated.

Keep posting from Majorca Niels!

14.6.01
16:53
I love Sony. Don't want to waste time on work now that I have my new DCR-PC5E. Should never have started this movie project - I'm hooked. Have to work out how to FTP everything here. Why write when I can make movies.

Oh! and by the way - mindfucking???? - Honey The only thing I want is to make movies and shop - It's as simple as that.

10.6.01
21:44
Had so much fun today. Heidi is getting married and Dorrit, Mille and are making the cutest little movie for her bachelorparty. Today we Interviewed her parents and her sister Karina here in my appartment and Dorrit brought her son Daniel. Lot's of laughs.

Daniel, Dorrit and Nanna

9.6.01
16:50
Baby - lets make it a brand new day!

13:25
"America is waiting for a message of some sort or another" - This statement hit me when I cheked out evhead a few moments ago and got me thinking about the whole web-log/blogger thing once again.

I've always been fascinated by the whole idea of storytelling - what it does to the listener and how the storyteller is also affected. I also guess that is what keeps me going with this blog. It's an experiment. I want to see how it affects me. I'm publishing my words and thereby exposing myself. There's probably nobodies watching but if anyone want to he or she can dig right in to my thoughts. So maybe I'm driven by a desire to be heard? - It's like I'm putting it all out there and maybe someday somewhere by chance someone will be affected by it. Like a message in a bottle.

But there is more to it than that. It's also a historic record of who and what I am. Something semi-durable. But why am I keeping this record. Is it for the benefit of someone I might meet in the future who I would like to share who I am with? Maybe - but maybe it's also to assure my self that I'm alive. It's right there in front of me - the life that I'm living - if I can write about it it's real. I add value and meaning to my memories and ideas by making them tangible with words - they won’t just dissolve and drift away.

So at least I'm affected by telling my story - I do have an audience - me.

Did I wander away from the thoughts that arose when I read the statement on Evans site? "America is waiting for a message of some sort or another". No I guess my point is that this statement indicates that people are waiting for someone else to tell them a story - someone to enlighten and bring meaning. But maybe the whole point of this blogger thing isn't that. Maybe the important thing is this: by writing your own story YOU carve out the message and thereby YOU shape the meaning that you need to go on.

It doesn't really matter if you don't have anything big and important to share with the whole world and your interpretation doesn’t have to be 'true' (whatever that is) as long as they make sense to you.

It's one-2-one sensemaking.

And hey - if someone stumbles upon these stories and is affected by them - that’s OK.

7.6.01
14:20
Wauw... this is amazing. Am testing out my GSM connection. It's beautiful. Just plugged in the cable and called up our network with my RSA secure id code, and I'm online. I'm sitting in the lobby of Hotel Northern Light in downtown Stockholm. Already checked out this morning so no nice hotel room to go to. Well It's OK. My meetings are over for today and in a little while I'll join the Nordic Sony coordinators in a nice cofee shop around the corner.

We've had some very interresting meetings the last two days. All of Sony's Nordic top management and marketing people met here to discuss issues corcerning new strategies and this summers marketing activities. It's always hard to implement huge shifts in strategy and the general ressession tendencies are hitting our market as well as the rest of the economy - but I guess Sony will manage quite all right.

I've been a bit vasted, but have had some time to think a lot of issues through. I guess the next couple of months will be just as demanding as the one's I've just gone through, but I'm getting used to it.

Looking forward to getting home tonight though. Tomorrow I'll try to focus on my totally overloaded mailbox. And then it's weekend and I'll try to relax and not do anything work related.

Hmmm.....

5.6.01
22:01
Weheee.... my own site - up and running with Blogger. This is funny! - Would never have done it if it wasn't for Mygdal and recent events – involving a bunch of Reboot speakers, a huge round pool, hash cookies at Christiania (unfortunately I didn’t have any - but oh boy - my companions sure did) and a famous author who thought I should go for it.

I guess this urge to express myself on line came about around Reboot-time last year. Mygdal – my former boss and current best friend – kept asking me why Ragegirl didn’t have her own site. (got the nickname Ragegirl after bonding with beautiful Christopher Locke aka Rageboy).

Well I guess I really wanted to do this – but wouldn’t it be rather self centred to have a site if I didn’t have anything big and important to share with the world? This thought kept me from doing my own site. But then a few weeks ago the whole round-pool-hash-cookie-thing began and despite of low self esteem about what I have to share, it changed my perspective.

Things started happening when I decided to join the fun helping out with reboot once again as speaker hostess.

Reboot – a big IT-conference if anyone doesn’t know - was on Wednesday the 23rd but the first speaker arrived on the Saturday before and the last left the following Saturday so it was a whole week of reboot hostessing. But what a week. The speakers this year were Mark Hurst, Evan Williams (and girlfriend Cammi), Dave Gray, Dave Winer, Douglas Ruskoff and notorious Justin Hall. They all turned out to be great people and everyone seemed to like each other very much so we had a fantastic time. As always reboot was a great experience for everyone. The topic was web-logs and as the day passed I got more and more excited about the whole idea. The following day most of us had a slight hangover (OK – I admit – all I wanted to do for the first few hours was hurl and sleep somewhere very, very cold) but we decided to make a whole day of it anyway.

We started with a chilly brunch on the lake and then we vent on a spa-adventure in DGI city. It’s funny how you forget your age and dignity when you jump into a pool with lots of floating toys. We fought and laughed and burned away all hangover residue.

While we were playing in the pool the sun came out so when we finally got tired of all the liquid fun we walked by the beautiful waterfront all the way to Christiania. The most daring among our little group ate a bunch of hash-cookies and we all quenched our thirst in cold beer and lots of water. When the cookies started kicking in we decided to walk around the surreal beautiful lake of Christiania. What a walk. The conversation was mind expanding, and very much evolved around the blogger/web-log concept. I don’t think the wonder cookies had so much to do with the extraordinarily interesting conversation. It seemed it was the common love for the work these people are doing, which ignited the wonderful mind-fucking on this memorable walk. A naked hippie looking angrily at us through a window when walked by his house and a little kid who jumped out on the road and splashed us with his water-pump-gun only added spice to the magical mood.

Some pictures from this memorable day.

We ended up at BaseCamp where we had dinner and from there everybody went tired back to the hotel. Some of these guys I’ll probably never see again – but I don’t think I’ll forget this day soon. Dave Wine said he'll be back soon though.

A couple of days later Mygdal, a couple of our friends, Douglas Ruskoff and I had dinner a Zeleste. Mygdal once again asked me when I would get my own web-log. I told him and Douglas about my concern that I wouldn’t have anything very important to write about. But Douglas urged me on. He told me that I should call my site NannaManna. My words would be like the biblical manna that falls from the sky to the hungry people. A few days later I got a mail from Mygdal. He told me he signed me up at Blogger and got me nannamanna.org.

So here I am. Writing my own blog. I’m not sure anyone will perceive my words as manna falling from the sky, but it’s a great experiment and I’m having fun.

Thank you Mygdal!