Authenticity & Nation branding: #fail

This text is currently only avaliable in Swedish. I'll just to give you a quick summary. Sweden and Norway are working intensly with nation branding and spreading the word about them selves as nations of peace and environmentally friendly/progressive etc. But looking at the facts another ugly face appears... Norway is one of the top oil-nations in the world, Sweden the biggest exporter of arms IN THE WORLD (per capita) . Looking at how corporate branding has been developing since 1990 it is easy to see that nation branding is lacking in authenticity. The question I ask is when the Nordic countries (and other nations) will start walking the authentic path in terms of communication and leadership. I hope that consultants like Niel Crofts will get some nation branding gigs soon.

(an interesting comparison is how the British Council is spreading the word about Creative Industry, Culture and Creativity in the world but reports from GB tell a story of radical cuts in arts and culture.)

Hurra för fredsnationen Sverige! 300 år av fred inom landets gränser, men Kriget går på export... Dags att vi alla inser faktum: Vi exporterar mest vapen i världen! Samtidigt berättar vi för världen om hur fredsälskande vi är som nation.



Läs artikeln i DN om Sveriges sorgliga världsrekord.

Och Norge som delar ut fredspris i dagarna är inte mycket bättre. För olje-nationen Norge är det tydligt att ser lika dant ut på miljöområdet - höga hästar i ord - slingrande ormar i handling.

Om det är sant som det sägs att "nation branding" är det nya heta så är dags för oss i Norden att gå en kurs i autentisk kommunikation... och då förhoppningsvis inte ändra kommunikationen utan börja leva upp till vad vi säger. (Här är ett konsult-tips: http://www.neilcrofts.com/)

Om de stora varumärkena klarade det vid senaste millenieskiftet så borde vi också i alla fall göra ett försök.

Ebbe the movie

Yesterday, on my way to Doc Lounge, I was on the phone with Chelsea in San Francisco. I told her I was on my way to see a documentary about Ebbe Carlsson. In the 80s his name spread like a rash all over the media. Ebbe caused the biggest scandal in modern swedish history. But it is totally weird to try to explain to someone who is not from here... and the fact that I hadn't had my tenth birthday when the whole thing happened doesn't make it easier... I told Chelsea he was chief of police or commisioner or something (as I remembered he was involved with the search for the person who murdered Olof Palme)... but the scandal was in fact that he wasn't. He was a book publisher with very good connections. This is like the best documentary I have seen in a really long time...sadly this trailer is only avaliable in swedish.

Slussen - Måns Stylee

My friend Måns has made one of the suggestions for the remake of Slussen in central Stockholm. It's really cool.

The-eXperience: Stockholm (Round2)

For a while I've been talking to Jens at Roskilde eSport to bring The eXperience to Stockholm. I had seen pictures from last years' event, this year they had an awesome trailer and the event was a success. Would be soo cool to bring them to Botkyrka.

The question is: Can Scandinavian esport get to where it is in South Korea?

Pro-ams & Gatekeeper development

The coverage of Star Wars Revelations on MSNBC Live gives a good idea of what a fan-based project can be today and how it works.

There are many terms used for the growing group of people that in an economic sense are amateurs but pursue something to a professional standard, be it programming, filmmaking or city planing. In the book "The pro-am revolution" published by DEMOS, Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller describes the term "pro-am":

Pro-Ams - people pursuing amateur activities to professional standards - are an increasingly important part of our society and economy. For Pro-Ams, leisure is not passive consumerism but active and participatory, it involves the deployment of publicly accredited knowledge and skills, often built up over a long career, which has involved sacrifices and frustrations. The 20th century witnessed the rise of professionals in medicine, science, education, and politics. In one field after another, amateurs and their ramshackle organizations were driven out by people who knew what they were doing and had certificates to prove it. The Pro-Am Revolution argues this historic shift is reversing. We're witnessing the flowering of Pro-Am, bottom-up self-organisation and the crude, all or nothing, categories of professional or amateur will need to be rethought. Based on in-depth interviews with a diverse range of Pro-Ams and containing new data about the extent of Pro-Am activity in the UK, this report proposes new policies to support and encourage valuable Pro-Am activity.

The latest partner joining forces in the Scandinavian Sci-Fi mega-project "Gatekeeper" is the crew behind the pro-am production "Star Wars: Threads of Destiny". Thomas Dahl from the 4Fathers has made their new poster.

In "The Making of Star wars: Threads of Destiny" you get a feeling of how the global collaboration works. The clip features many of the 3D-artists who have now agreed to join the Scandinavian Sci-Fi mega-project Gatekeeper - The Nexus.

Star Trek: Phase II (aka "New Voyages"), the biggest Fanbased Star Trek production with a large number of professional actors in supporting roles has agreed to supply the gatekeeperproject with actors.

Housing and Communitybuilding in Stockholm, Botkyrka and SödertälYEAH!

This post was initiated by a question from my great new friend Anaïs from Paris who is working at Artfactories. She is organising a seminar on community building in november and asked me about some housing companies that I told her about when we met in Brussels.

What I told her is that some housing companies have started working in a different way as a result of seing them selves in a new way. What they seem to have realized is that they are not merely the builders and maintainers of housing but are actually community builders. Here are a few examples in the Stockholm region...

BotkyrkaByggen has started working with community theatre.

And AP fastigheter who are creating an international centre for scandinavian design at Telefonplan

Telge Fastigheter has a youth project called Hovsjösommar have started creating projects to give summerjobs to kids in a suburb of Stockholm.

Södertälje is interesting and has received alot of attention lately.

The last few months Södertälje has been invaded by international journalists because the town receives more Iraqi immigrants than the whole of North America put together. Södertälje welcomed 1,268 refugees last year of which 95% were from Iraq, a figure that is expecting to rise to 2,400 this year. Here it is appropriate to mention that Sweden took in over 9,000 Iraqi asylym-seekers, or almost 50% of all Iraqis coming to Europe. The USA in comparison took 202.

The block quote has been copy/pasted from another blog. Here is the great blogpost on Södertälje by Anna.

And Anaïs if you want some other interesting organizations for your seminar I strongly recomend you to get in touch with MIKU (one of the top youth oriented think&do tanks in Sweden)and jagvillhabostad.nu (a network for solving the housing problem in Sweden)

If you have more questions Anaïs, please feel free to call me.

/Obi-Wan Canole