A FEW THOUGHTS

Archive for the ‘The World We Live In’ Category

On a couple of occasions I have wondered whether I am about to turn into a “real old geezer”… Now, don’t go saying “I knew that”.. I am not! But I was a bit unsure for a bit. It seems like I, over some time, have developed an intolerance for noise. Which really is a bit early, and strange. I am turning 36 (not that old really, and for any stray 20 year old visiting.. “you will know what I mean when you hit 35″), and I am still just as found of music as I have been before. And it is not just the volume being set wrong or my ears being a more sensible before. I did a test –  just to make sure – you see Though parts of it was outside my preference in music I  managed to go through huge parts of the “News-section” of both iTunes and Spotify listening to new Pop, Rock, R&B, Electronic, Alternative, Indie, Techno, House etc… and loud ! My ears behaved perfectly normal, and though there were parts of it I found rather weird I sat there listened to great music for hours acknowledging my love for good music. Thank G.. !

So where does the feeling come from? I’ll tell you. TV and Radio!
I think I have massivly reduced my TV-watching over the last couple of years, but I still enjoy a couple of good sit-coms, entertainment shows or documentaries. So occasionally I sit down to watch one of my favorite shows, for let’s say an hour. What used to be an hour of quality TV has now turned into 40 minutes of what I want to watch – and 20 minutes of advertisements for future shows of some kind, weird noises, clutter, bad jingles with noises made to peak  any audio frequency – not just dogs, shouting, screaming and some more weird noises.  And turning on the radio – it’s exactly the same only they not having visual images to support their message so they have to make a bit more noise. Oh my g.. !

So, what’s the issue here. I have a suspicion that this is something that slowly has increased a s a problem in parallel as the internet services have advanced (and this is really no surprise for any of you ..I know). “Old medias” like TV and Radio need to evolve to keep track with online music services, social media, online chat, video on demand and other great services with advanced user interfaces. These are known facts. But is their approach really to bomb us with this kind of noise, clutter and jingles for the next fifty years? If so, I’ll cut the cable today.

This reminds me of a couple of advertisements I actually have enjoyed. One of them is for “Spotify” where one of the voices breaking through my free spotify subscribtion from time to time says something like “This extraordinary Spotify moment was ruined/spoiled by…. ” OK. The voice is a bit intrusive and bothers me, but at least they signal the value of their Premium accounts with a sense of humour I think. The another one I can’t remember what was for but it was a radio commercial where they actually muted everything into silence for maybe 20 seconds, following with a brief message saying something like ” we think you should have some more quality time in your everyday life…” and then a smart angle for their product. But the ad-spot was delightful and enjoyable for me at that time as it gave a break in the rest of the commercials. This leads me to one of my points here;

Do media and advertisement think they can win me over with peaking audio frequencies like they do today? Will they continue till my head explodes? Will they beat me on stamina? I think I rather will buy that product that from time to time actually brings me some silence on the frequency rather than just clutter. I will buy the detergent that, during a short break, actually serves me Chopin, Satie, Clapton, Nickelback or Metallica – without annoying clutter or noises ! And this is really not just related to the commercials. The way television shows are produced these days are really a lot of the same way; it is supposed to be fast, catchy and  attract young people. But does it have to be noisy and bad quality? What happened to good journalism and the spoken word? Listen to me.. Here I go on like the “old geezer” again…

But seriously; I hope for, and really feel that it is need for, media to change their angle and approach to attract viewers, listeners and subscribers. One of the things that the new era of internet has taught consumers is that assortment of different services is massive and that you can find both high quality and low quality stuff out there. I hope the era of on-demand services teach us to avoid the noise and clutter where we can and instead enjoy quality TV, movies and music. I am sure the advertisers will find ways of attracting buyers. They could try with moments of silence, a poem or some nice music perhaps, and let us instead choose what kind of noise we want to listen to on our own.

As I have firmly stated before.. “Enjoy The Silence”.

I am really happy that I today finally got around to registering as a Kiva lender. Kiva.org is an organization that organizes micro-loans to people with entrepreneurship around the world in need for some business capital to start or continue their business. The business plan and credit is checked by local representatives, and as part of Kiva you make a contribution together with other “lenders” (everything from $25 and up) to the people/business idea of your choice. The payment is through PayPal and you will get the money back as described in the payment plan for that loan. There are certain countries that through local regulations, currency issues or local conditions cause more risk than other places, but all together I am very impressed with the statistics Kiva can show to. For now I have started with a small amount spread on four different projects. If that goes as planned I am prepared to increase the contribution.

Together with a client (large international corporation) I recently attended a workshop looking at, and discussing, cross-culture elements and awareness. I found the workshop to be very interesting and giving, so I figured I’ll try to give a brief recap of it here.

Culture is the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one category of people from another

Geert Hofstede

What is Culture? Culture is a shared system of attitudes, values and beliefs. First of all I found it interesting to discuss all the elements that, when brought together, constitutes to what we call culture, and identify all the different types of culture we have:

• National & regional culture
• Corporate culture
• Professional culture
• Gender and age
• Religion

And within these you have different dimensions; direct vs indirect cultures, rules vs. relationship oriented cultures, time, hierarchy, individualist vs. collectivist cultures, non verbal communication. All these types of culture we can break down to many elements. Just think of the differences in language, dress code, food, public holidays, way of thinking, beliefs, attitudes and values.  All these elements are important factors that contribute to a diverse community. And for an international company it’s important to both be aware of, respect and take care of the different dimensions in this. Building and preserving a corporate culture can, in my opinion, only be done by respecting each employees personalculture.

Now, working together in a corporation like this does demand that you are able to sort out the different dimensions of this. Escpecially being aware of the non-verbal communication is extremely important. It’s not a secret that working together across boundaries like language, time zones and different tools for communication can cause misunderstandings and discontent . Being aware of this is half of it. The other half is adapting and contributing to adjustments in a positive way.

Imagine that you have a project with project members and stakeholders from United States, Brazil, UK, Germany, Norway, Russia, Malaysia and Japan. Most of the meetings are probably over web or phone, so the project teams are more or less “virtual”. Communication will be only in written or orally and you will seldom see any body language unless you use video conference. It’s quite likely that during your project you will face more than one challenge due to cultural differences and misunderstandings. Just trying to arrange a meeting that works well in each timezone will be a challenge. We also need to think about all the hidden messages in what we say. Some cultures are more direct and some have more hidden expression. Just look at  the possible meanings of these statements:

So being aware of the cultural filter of each other and the fact that when we say something we “encode” it, and the receiver doesn’t necessarily “decode” it the same way, is very important. Another important thing is also to be aware of the pitfalls of stereotyping and generalizing. However, looking at the different ways of decode/encode messages it was interesting looking at the Lewis model which in fact “stereotype” this in National Cultural Profiles. This is a way of looking at the majority of certain countries and how you can expect to experience the different types  of behaviour and leadership.

Looking at these different profiles we can clearly see how one can misunderstand one another as there are so clear differences in how we:

• talk vs. listen
• network through official channels or through connections
• plan in details or in general principles
• show or hide feelings
• do confrontations logically, emotionally or not at all
• handle direct truth vs. diplomacy

Let us remember it doesn’t have to be another country. You can easily find cultural differences, for instance between a project manager and a programmer.  Being a project manager I see some clear benefits of being aware of these issue and try to be open about them when managing cross-cultural teams:

• Bring cross cultural communication up as an issue at a very early stage and let the team be aware of it
• Define basic project team culture and rules
• Make team members curious to learn about the others
• Prepare agenda and do action minutes with deadlines in your meetings
• Limit number of participants and include the “silent” colleagues
• Avoid criticism in public and do not dominate

Cross-Cultural Awareness is a very large topic and not easy to summarize in a workshop, minutes or a blogpost. But it is important for each of us, both in working with other cultures and in our everyday life. So…

• Know yourself
• Be open and curious
• Get to know the other

And by that

• Improve effective communication and cooperation

Brian at CAIN MOSNI thought of a cool concept and coordinated a virtual “jam session” with musicians from all over the world!
It’s AMAZING what you can do nowadays!
Dumbfoundead

When we look around us and see that so may problems in the world are based on, or is projected from, differences in religious beliefs as well as religious “excuses” (the christian crusades, fatwas and jihads, one can really start to wonder whether we may have a bit too much religion in the world. I can certainly acknowledge the fact that religion is the key element in many peoples lives and that religion in most ways contribute to hope and peace of mind rather than war and chaos. Though I can not shake the voice in my head going “Come on, Enough already!” when I read about six “new religions” at the Matador Network, “new” being just a figure of speech meaning that these are religions more or less unknown in “the west”.  Though it seems that only two of these are beliefs dated A.D.; the persian/iranian Baha’i from the 1800′s and Mandaeism dated back to Late Antiquity.  The other four all seem to origin from before christianity/BC.

Baha’i was proclaimed by a young Iranian, who called himself The Báb. He said that a messenger would soon arrive from God, who would be the latest in a line of prophets including Moses, Muhammad and Jesus Christ. It was founded as late as in the 1800s, and all the prophets of the world’s major world religions are all accepted as valid, including Krishna, Abraham, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad.

Mandaeism,  originally practised primarily around the lower Euphrates and Tigris, was a Gnostic Christian religion believing both Jesus, Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad to be false messiahs.  There are thought to be between 60,000 and 70,000 Mandaeans worldwide, and until the 2003 Iraq war, almost all of them lived in Iraq. Most Iraqi Mandaeans have since fled the country, and by 2007 the population of Iraqi Mandaeans had fallen to approximately 5,000.Most Iraqi Mandaeans now live in Syria and Jordan, with smaller populations in Western countries.

Jainism is an ancient religion from India that teaches that the way to liberation and bliss is to live a life of harmlessness and renunciation by living rightly after an ethical code known as “the three jewels of Jain ethics“: right faith, right knowledge and right conduct. Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankar, is the earliest Jain leader who can be reliably dated. However, Jain mythology asserts that the line of Tirthankars began with Rushabhdeva. Jains themselves tend to believe that Jainism has no single founder, and believe that Jainism is the one of the world’s oldest religions, predating Hinduism.

 Zoroastrianism was founded by the Prophet Zoroaster in ancient Iran approximately 3500 years ago and was for many years one of the most powerful religions in the world. Zoroastrians believe in one God, called Ahura Mazda (meaning ‘Wise Lord’). In Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda has an adversary called Angra Mainyu (meaning ‘destructive spirit’), and it is in the Abrahamic religions accepted that the concepts of Heaven and Hell, as well as the Devil, were heavily influenced by Zoroastrian belief.

The Yorùbá religion originated from the Yoruba people, one of the largest ethnic groups in west-africa. Yoruba includes one creator and approximately 400 supernatural spirits. The god Orisa’nla (The great divinity) also known as Obatala, chosen by Olodumare, descended from heaven on a chain, carrying a small snail shell full of earth, palm kernels and a five-toed chicken. He was to empty the content of the snail shell on the water after placing some pieces of iron on it, and then to place the chicken on the earth to spread it over the primordial water. Yoruba religious beliefs are part of itan — the complex of songs, histories, stories and other cultural concepts which make up the Yorùbá religion and society.

Mami Wata is another African religion that describes a water spirit known as Mami Wata. She is pictured as being incredibly beautiful with long hair and is frequently accompanied by an incredibly large snake. The religion holds that Mami will sometimes assume human form in bars or busy markets and also will abduct people while they are swimming or boating on the water. These captives are then released in dry clothes and better health, but only after agreeing to an oath of sexual fidelity to the spirit. Mami Wata is related to the Vodoun, which later has been transformed into what is knowns as Voodoo, these days in Haiti.

As a project manager in the IT-industry I would welcome an architect and migration specialist for a huge migration project of world religions, but that’s only in my dreams of course…

Newsdesks all over the world are now covering the situation in Haiti after the mindblowing earthquake that shook Port-au-Prince with 7.0 on the Richter’s scale.
I’ve just read the story about a couple, she working in christian aid in Haiti and got stuck in the collapse of the office building but manages to call her husband for ten seconds. He of course gets in the car and drives for six hours to get there. Manages to find the building in the rest of the chaos, jumps into a hole and finds his wifes hand waving. And after being pulled up with cuts and bruises she has now told rest of her family she can’t go home but have to stay to help others. Some of her co-workers had worse injuries. This is one of many stories we will hear I am sure. And we need to hear them. What we need to know is also that these are stories of people making it. We will not be told the stories of the hundred thousand or so that did not make it and the families they leave behind.

What struck me first was the idea of the stress and thoughts the husband goes through while he is driving for six hours with no idea of where his wifes is and how bad it is. What thoughts goes through a mothers head while se frantic digs through concrete blocks and dust for her children. What thoughts goes through a childs mind after finding his/hers family members killed. And what can they do, other than to search for loved ones.

Video of CNN in the streets of Port-au-Prince

People of Haiti are now digging by hand. Corps are lying around in the streets. They have no power or water. I know that help is on the way, but this is a situation that is not going to get solved the next week. It is time for each and everyone to do something. And I am sitting here in my nice and cozy home, 5000 miles away and wondering what the hell to do. Trust me, I have already praised the aid organisations, the volunteers, Wyclef, Brad and Angelina and the rest of the people that are standing up to help out. And I wish I could do the same. I wish there was something reasonably helpful I could do in this situation. Thats my grief. Not really much compared to the real problems. So…

If you cannot go yourself: Donate to those who can.

If you can not donate: Get someone else to donate.

There are many organisations on the way there and they need money to continue their work. If you do not know to which organisation to turn to: One of the teams that are able to help the situation are among others the Doctors Without Borders.  Here is a link for how to donate.
Please, let us not have another Tsunami- or Katrina-situation here.

Rescue teams. Get on your way. I beg you.
People – Get on your way – or open your wallet.

illustration by: Ron Tandberg

Both in our everyday life and on journey we are faced with new people and that often means making up an opinon on that person, his/hers beliefs, actions and way of life. Christine Garvin just wrote an interesting post at the BraveNewTraveler where she debates this issue and how we as humans interact with others based on what is often only our first impression. Maybe we all have something learn by some inner soul searching and maybe a more critical approach to our own fear and prejudice.

I just realized that Newsweek reporter Christopher Dickey is right about three things in his article “What Would Jesus Do in Gaza” where he discusses what he assumes is Obamas lack of effort to resolve the crisis in the Middle East. The three things are: 1. Obama is not the messiah. 2. Obama did not mention Gaza in his Peace prize acceptance speech. 3. The conflict on Gaza is for many the core question of peace among Arabs and Jews. I could be the first to stand together with Christopher Dickey in his wishes for settlement, stability and peace in that region. That IS the core reason for many of the problems we experience in the world today. I will even say that I missed Gaza in that speech myself. I will not argue with the importance of this matter or other matters in his article. What I do have trouble with is the angle of this. What Mr. Dickey seems to be doing is comparing Obama to a mix of the messiah and World Police. He started his article stating that Obama is not the messiah, so what is he?

He is certainly not World Police. I think that job is taken by a part-time worker called UN. Many global citizens has claimed that the U.S. wrongly have claimed the role as World Police several times. And sometimes they seem to go very up in that role, even though they dont get any extra paycheck for it. Some presidents have probably seen a paycheck in the future and navigated with that in mind. Anyway, it would be very wrong for any president of the U.S. to take on this role as he is just………….the president of One country. A large country yes. And the best armed country. And here is the dilemma. U.S.A is the best armed country in the world and have the largest set of troops ready to be dispatched to every part of the world where there is injustice. Does that make them a better or more suited cop? Does that give them the right to take on the role as World Police? Do we want the police man with the biggest gun to be the chief of police? Dirty Harry? So this creates a number of question in my head as I of course do not believe Newsweek to be ambiguous. 

The only clear reply I can come to on this matter is the following:
Our Newsweek reporter C.D. actually do think that President Obama is a mix of messiah and the world police (with G. Bush as former chief of police), and unfortunately a lot of people think the same thing. World Police from being Commander in Chief for the biggest gun in the world and messiah from the grace and panache of his speeches. Let me make my statement very clear: U.S. does not have a bigger responsibility for fixing problems in the Middle East than other countries in the word, for better or worse. It is not the U.S. duty or right. It is, however, the U.S. right and duty to act upon injustice as a fellow global citizen. And I must say that often U.S. responds very rapidly and efficient but that is from having decisiveness and large balls, not collecting an extra paycheck for being world police. It is just as must the duty of ANY other country in the world to respond to the conflicts on Gaza strip, especially their own politicians and the Israeli.

I thing this post is 33% request to European leaders to grow determination and …., 33% request to President Obama to maybe tone down the world police role (good speeches I will allow), and 33% invitation for the leaders of the Middle East to get of their … and act. The last 1% I think goes out to Newsweek for a nice and bold, but maybe a bit ambiguous, article. But I will keep my subscription for now.

We waited, it came and it went.. the christmas. Once again we have managed to prepare ourselves for christmas by endless shopping, decorations, baking, cooking, eating and drinking. I think christmas is great.. but it’s great when its over as well. Writing this on christmas day is of course with reference to our tradition as we celebrate christmas eve on the 24th of December, not celebrating christmas day the 25th. Christmas day, for me, is more about walking around in pajamas all day long eating cookies and left overs from yesterdays dinner. Today we also managed to get out for a quick exercise walk. It felt good.

Looking in retrospect to our traditions I can not disregard the some of the other, maybe negative, sides of christmas too. Although I most of the time enjoy christmas, and enjoy the tradition of it, it is also the time when someone feels left outside, is left outside, some sit home alone, someone is drinking their way through christmas and someone just don’t want to be a part of it at all. All this both to the neglect, sorrow and despair of other family members. There are familes where the bonds are strong and even stronger after their christmas celebration. There are families where the bonds are strong all year through but is hurting through christmas because they feel the everlasting stress and tension of keeping everything perfect and everybody content. There are families where the bonds are not as strong and where christmas is turned into tense feelings on “why bother in christmas when we don’t meet rest of the year”. And there are people without families or without contact with their families. I don’t think it is any secret which category we all want to be in, and I am sure there are other “categories” as well.  The common denominator is often one of these: Family. Parents. Depression. Inheritance settlements. Alcoholism. Drug abuse. Shame. Guilt. Reasons can be many, but the christmas being the time for everybody to enjoy themselves and have a good time, all the time, can maybe be that extra burden that someone doesn’t need. Christmas is a strong reminder of everything you wish were different.

We are experts in shopping, eating and drinking. We are experts in following medias promotions of traditions, customs and habits. We are experts in promoting how happy we are and how successful we are. And we are unfortunately also experts in looking the other way.

How good are we really at taking care of our own? How good are we at asking our next man how he really is doing? Have we learned how to forgive? Have we forgotten about the important things and the message of christmas? Did we learn it in the first place? What did we learn? I wish I could come up with a brilliant answer to all these questions, or some theory of humanity and mankind that would explain why things are the way they are. Why is not christmas just a enjoyable and easy holiday? Why all these thoughts? Why do he/she make everything so difficult?

Whether trouble is related to friends, aunts or uncles or your parents – you can be quite sure the situation is not very different across at your neighbour across the street, your co-worker or your friend. We all got them! So why are we so afraid of this? Why do we struggle to keep up appearance? I can see somebody is about to mention the argument of passing on good traditions and values to our children. But shouldn’t that be an all-year exercise? You don’t think your children wonders about why auntie Marge is hammered and depressed through every christmas dinner, or why their father is quiet throughout the christmas? Why not tell them instead of sweeping it under the rug? Let them later make their own traditions instead of trying to keep up with Marge. And why not try to confront our issues sometime between January and November instead of piling it up for the Grand Finale on christmas eve or day?

I wish everybody a merry christmas and a lovely new year, even aunt Marge who really is quite nice. I hope we next year may take a bit better care of eachother. Both our children and parents - disregardless of your age.

Once again the Nobel committee has awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, this time to the President of United States, Barack Obama. The president arrived early this morning and attended meetings with the Nobel committee, the prime minister, the royal family and later the award ceremony at Oslo City Hall. The Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel committee gave the presentation speech arguing that the Nobel Prize had not just been used to honor specific achievements, but also to give momentum to a set of causes. The Prize could thus represent “a call to action”. President Obama gave a long and thorough acceptance speech “taking the bull by the horn” and addressing the controvercy of both being awarded the peace prize and at the same time sending troops to Afghanistan.

In the evening the President and the First Lady showed their appreciation on the balcony of Grand Hotel Oslo to the ten thousand people paying tribute to the president. Surely some people also attended to protest against the president and the war in Afghanistan. They were, however, too few to even break through the cheering crowd. Later the president gave a speech from the banquet where he humoristicly mentioned that the Chairman during his speech earlier almost had him belive he deserved this.

For Norway, and Oslo as a capital, I think it is fair to say it is exciting to host such a big event for a person of his proportions. You can agree or disagree with his politics but he is the most influential politician of this time, and I for one am excited about his work and await the results with great hope for us all.