Archive for September, 2009

This is how i Vote

Friday, September 11th, 2009

Norway votes on monday, and as usual I try find out which party to vote on some time before the big day. Here are a couple of the things I’m considering when finding good candidates:

  1. I don’t have any parties that are “mine.” I find worthwhile arguments both on the left, center and right side of the political spectrum, and I try to be open to new arguments.
  2. There are waaaay too many things going on in our society (and in the world in general) to make informed decisions on everything. This means I’ll have to look for the basics – values, world view, ambitions, priorities between group/society and the individual, previous history and other “gut feeling” factors.
  3. Still, there are a couple topics I think I’m comfortable with – topics where I have a slight opportunity of making an informed decision. For me, these include ICT policy, IP issues and questions rising from the tensions between traditional media+business and new technology.
  4. I’ve chosen to weigh the issues where I’m informed higher than the topics I don’t know much about. This is mostly because I see which parties have bad and/or lacking policies, but also because I think it’s the right thing to do.
  5. Voting for me is about which direction I’d like to see my society move. But in order to have an idea on this, I’ll have to understand as much as I can about how society works. This is a work in progress, and in the meantime I’ll vote mainly on issues where I can say something coherent and useful.
  6. I’ve decided not to vote tactically (“likelyhood of winning” is NOT a criteria I’m considering.) The notion of tactical voting even disgusts me a little. :-6

Happy voting!

Entrepeneurship 101

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

I’ve followed a couple different entrepeneurship and business podcasts for a while now (oh my, I think we’re talking about 3-4 years!). Stanford’s “Entrepeneurial Thought Leaders” series, or “Peter Day’s World of Business” have been quite informative, but after listening to enough “war stories” I’m thinking  that there has to be a limit to how much I have to listen before I try doing something. I’ve been more interested in “learning from other people’s mistakes” than making my own, perhaps.

Time to do something! Two weeks ago I signed up for ENT1000 – the “Entrepeneurship” class at the Uni in Oslo. Our first class was about creativity (very fun.) Our second about building groups and communication (we made a Lego castle without talking, and everyone with their designated tasks to fill.)

In the meantime we got our first home assignment: Make a presentation/sales-pitch about one horribly bad product. Our product was “Contact lenses for flies,” and we made a story about the need to “humanely remove the files from your home, using our patent-pending UV filtering spray (that covers the fly’s eyes) and UV-emitting tape.”

The presentation went well. :)

Next, we’re supposed to try ourselves on something more serious and ambitious.