People against Dirty

So I've been thinking about how to apply the innovation-concept to my areas of journalism (politics, economics, trends and design) while at PodTech here in the Bay-area. Some time ago I decided to make a green show on design, i e where sustainability and design converge. In a way design is very much an innovation-process. And - for most of the time - design is visual too. The first piece is about a company in San Francisco called Method. They make biodegradable cleaning products, soaps and detergents (all based on green chemistry). But the products are beautiful, they come in bottles by award-winning industrial designer Karim Rashid. I really like this trendy, funky and yet idealistic and responsible company that combines some of the best things in the world. Watch the video here.

New York, New York

Sitting in the JFK airport about to leave for SF, feeling absolutly uplifted after having spent three days here. I dont think I´ll ever get over my love to New York. It´s something with the energy in the city, the fact that people and events are simply so much - well - more. People are more creative, smarter, richer, crazier, more excentric, bigger, smaller, more passionate etc than any where else. I could watch New Yorkers for ever - the chic women, the arty girls, the business people in power suits, the dogs... I know its dirty and ugly but I even love the smells and the noice and I actually think it is beautiful.

I was here on a study trip with my fellow Stanfordians. We have visited magazines Spectrum and Fortune as well as Bloomberg. It was really interesting. What strikes me is the fact that few of the bigger magazines have any strategies for new media and their future online life (something I also noticed last summer when I visited Vanity Fair and New York Times Magazine among others). "If I knew that I wouldn´t be working here," was the answer from the editor of Fortune International...
On the other hand, I liked the fact that she stressed the storytelling part - that her magazine is about telling strong stories - and that she revieled that she sometimes uses her intuition in combinaion with observations of people when she tracks down a trend. I do the same when working with Tendens, a series of articles on trends, in Stockholm for TT Spektra.
Bloomberg was felt like something type-casted from the future of media. No walls only transparent glass. Busy, busy. Hi-tech. However they dont really have a strategy for innovation coverage...

On a personal level I got to have lunch with my dear friend Paul (who is one of few native New Yorkers and who knows how to play the saxophone) and to go to dinner and barhopping with his lovely girlfriend Giselle (I felt like 21 when standing on a roof top bar with a cosmopolitan and NY the skyline in front of me...). I also got to do some shopping (strong colours coming now), some strolling, have a great dinner at NY hang out Indochine with the fellows and a group of NY-based journalists, spend the night at my hard working reporter-friend Gunilla's house in Harlem and to go to mysore yoga at a beautiful studio called Yoga Sutra. Today I´ve interviewed a great Swedish designer called Lotta Jansdotter. Visiting her studio in Brooklyn was inspiring and made me think of the importance of having beauty and esthetics in the objects we use in our everyday life.

Conversations with O

My fine and very beloved father finally came to visit. When he got off the plane he had a bit of a beard and was groggy from the jetleg, but now - a few days into the visit - he is his very own self (going on about very large and very small things at the same time, always with a list of things to do or to buy in his hand...). The first weekend we took him around Palo Alto, to the PowWow-festival at Stanford (oh yes - hundrads of indians dancing and drumming). We also went through the magical mountains of the peninsula to the beautiful driftwood-beach.
My dad, or O (we call him O since his name is Omar), has been a journalist with Svenska Dagbladet for more than 40 years. Sitting there at the beach he started telling me about how difficult it was to deliver texts from the six day-war in Israel, due to censorship all his conversations with the newspaper had to be in English. Today he told us about the reality of covering the nuclear mealtdown at Harrisburgh in 1978 - when you got different versions of the "thruth" from every official you talked to.
His stories gave me some perspective on the journalistic work I do - having all modern tools in the world, transfering media over the globe in seconds, having access to information and people through the webb. It's always good to have a larger picture. And its also good to remember that most of the time nothing beats the human story.
I keep telling O he should write a book, but he says that he likes to be lazy and that he prefers to play with our kids. For now I'm thinking about giving him a blog - then he can´t get away...
The ongoing week is intense. I've shoot a few podcasts (desperatly trying to get some space in the editing-studio), gone to a seminare on the future of news-media (that didn´t provide any bright visions), prepared for the innovation journalism-conference, done research on design and covered Swedish prime minister Reindfeldts meeting with ex-Terminator and govenor Arnold Schwarzenegger in Sacramento for TT. I´ve also seen some lovely friends and had nice dinners with O and the family.
Things I have not done that I want to do: Drink wine in the garden with A when the kids are sleeping. Paint with the girls. Bake bread. Write to people I love. Spend more time with our fabolous roomie Leo. Put up our new lamp. Hike with the family. See the Vivien Westwood-exibition at the De Young-museum. Discover San Fransisco. Paint my toe-nails.
Theres always a tomorrow - but the challange is to capture the essence of now.