Björn Jeffery

Will it work? I don’t know. But it’s definitely an interesting concept if nothing else.

Tonchidot via Weconverse.

Without going into lengthy detail about it, there has been a lot of rumblings about laws and restrictions in Sweden lately. I can only add my thoughts on why issues of this kind are turning up more and more often.

I think it’s simply a fact of people not understanding the internet.

The internet has been an intricate part of many peoples lives for a long time. Now, we seem to have reached some sort of tipping point where it can’t be ignored in any social circles any more. People always fear want they don’t understand. This is no different.

Perhaps us living online have been bad at communicating outside our own? It’s considerably easier to complain when people don’t understand than to try and make them understand in the first place. That being said, not understanding is no excuse to be ignorant.

Imagine having a discussion about the industrial revolution and not understanding the concept of electricity.

Competence: the quality of being adequately or well qualified physically and intellectually

Talent: a person who possesses unusual innate ability in some field or activity

Most companies look for a competent work force. Thus, most companies don’t possess unusual abilities.

Okay, so we changed our minds. We’re not selling Good Old. I think it was a good exercise to think about it though, as it forced us to look at our company differently. I saw a company culture forming that I didn’t want to interrupt. Sales figures that were going better than ever. Interesting people wanting to work with us. All in all it felt as if we should continue riding this train as far as it takes us.

I’ve been thinking a lot about talent lately. On how to attract talented people and how to create an environment where they would like to work. Perhaps this is a subject that I’ll come back to during the autumn. At the moment I’m ill and sitting in my sofa feeling sorry for myself, and my brain isn’t quite working the way it should be. It just wanted you to know that the last post wasn’t the end of this blog, so keep that RSS-feed in your reader plz. TTYL.

If you’re Swedish you might have read the news about Good Old merging with The Fan Club. This means I won’t be CEO any more and can fully focus on internet strategy and advisory work. Yay! And maybe more blogging too. I haven´t quite decided how, where or about what I’ll be blogging though. I’ll get back to you on that. – UPDATE HERE 🙂

Until then, I thought you might to see the presentation that I held at the Business to Buttons conference today. It’s a few thoughts on how to make an internet strategy in the web 2.0 era. Sound would have been good, but the slides give you an idea at least.

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tags technorati : businesstobuttons webstrategy internetstrategy conferences

tags bloggar.se: business to buttons, internetstrategi, webbstrategi, konferenser

For me, this was the highlight of Pangea Day. It’s absolutely beautiful.

Just thought I’d give you a tip before the weekend. Moving Images is a conference in Malmö that takes place June the 10th. The theme for this year is storytelling and the line up is really good. Winston Binch from Crispin Porter + Bogusky is one of the speakers for instance.

We’ve have been part of the reference group for the conference which means wifi and backchannels, among other things. You should sign up straight away!

And another thing: I’m going to be in the Bay Area from the 17th to the 24th of May. I’m attending the INJO conference, but if any of you out there would like to meet up just drop me a line and we’ll work something out!

UPDATE: I put the wrong link in, changed it ten seconds later, but for some reason it never published anyway. I blame 3. This is the right link to Moving Images. Thanks for pointing it out, Jonas!

Just a quick thought and another example of The Technical Divide that we’re experiencing. Fring for iPhone was released today. I tried the service in my old Nokia E70 quite some time ago and was not impressed. Full of bugs and bad quality in general. But not any more.

It seems Fring needed the interface of the iPhone for it to click – at least for me. I’ve tried it quickly and it makes perfect sense. Chat and VOIP through wifi. Simple. But the implications of this software is everything but simple. It means that the current business model of roaming abroad for mobile phones is threatened.

The operators charge an absolute fortune for these calls (as I’m sure anyone that pays their own phone bill knows) and it’s been a nice little earner for quite some while. If your phone has the Fring software it means you can phone from the same mobile phone, but for a fraction of that price. This requires some sort of wifi nearby, but in in office environments, where a lot of these expensive calls take place, this is standard stuff.

Software challenges our current business models. Sure – there is a large barrier for people to install software in their phones and getting them to change their behaviour regarding calls. But it can be done, and the thresholds will be lowered. And when they are, roaming as we know it will die. About time too.

(Btw – I’m slightly considering starting a whole new blog that just focuses on The Technical Divide. Would that be interesting? I think Good Old Trend is in for a change soon anyway, so maybe a split would be the right way to go. Feedback plz!)

tags technorati : the technical divide, software, iphone, fring

tags bloggar.se: the technical divide, iphone, fring, mjukvara

Just thought I’d add the slides from Webbdagarna as well. No news for readers of this blog but I’ll post them for reference anyway.

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I just finished my presentation at KTH. Phew! Below are my slides, if you are interested. And thanks to everyone that commented in my last post.

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Watch the event live here: