Camp X seems to have an interesting programme lined up for the fall. What especially has caught my eye are the posters, with a cool underground/street feel to them, that they have put up around the city. I saw these two behind the church of Saint Nicholas in central Copenhagen.

I like the reference to Dynasty and the satirical tone in the posters. There are more than just these two; check both Camp X’s website and this photo grabbed in the wild.

Camp X has two Maersk plays this Fall; the first one starting early October. The brother to a friend of mine has a major role in one of the plays. I can’t wait to see the plays in the Fall.

A loyal and avid reader since issue 06, it is about time that I make room for a few lines on my blog for Monocle — one of the best magazines in print today.

Founded by Tyler Brûlé, who also started Wallpaper magazine, Monocle is a global affairs magazine comprising niche stories, anecdotes essays, photo montages, and more in affairs, business, culture, and design. It is a cosmopolitan mix-and-match, and its sweet layout and structuring makes it great for reading on the flight, in the bathtub or on the couch.

What continues to amaze me about Monocle is that, although highly globally oriented, Denmark somehow finds its way into each and every issue (at least how I recall it) — the peak was, as some of you may remember (correctly), when Monocle placed Copenhagen as the second most livable city in the world last summer. If nothing else, Denmark at least has a place in the Kita Koga manga series at the back of each issue where Niels Watanabe goes through life as a new James Bond.

If this sounds anything like something you like, pick it up. You won’t look back.

I am on a four hour train ride. It is the trip between where my parents live and where I live. I don’t know how many times I have taken this trip, but these train rides are among the most reflective and emotional moments that I have. These train rides. This state of mind.

I need a good book and a good record. Right now I’m holding Naja Marie Aidt’s Poetry Book (Poesibog) and I’m listening to Azure Ray’s Sleep. This is my opium right now. What is yours?

One or two of you may have heard “Fly or die” fly out of my mouth. I stole it — along with the headline — from Paul Arden, the author of these two books:

   

I read them a couple of years ago after which they ended up as shelf material in my apartment. On a lucky strike, I rediscovered them after a friend of mine returned them after having lent them for a while. I picked them up and read them again. And they are even better the second time around.

They are both easy and quick reads with Paul Arden’s input for how you can approach life. When reading, you may find that many of his ideas are self-evident, but give me, him, and yourself a break. Many of us need a push once in a while, and these books do it, so it’s fun to read. (Paul is a former advertising executive, so he has flair for good copy writing.)

Let me bring up just a few great passages, which are not only well-written, but also touches on important topics. Firstly, about our tendency to neglect to assume responsibility when things go wrong:

If you are involved in something that goes wrong, never blame others. Blame no one but yourself. If you have touched something, accept total responsibility for that piece of work. If you accept responsibility, you are in a position to do something about it. There are no excuses.

Secondly, about sharing ideas and how we tend to “sit on” ideas and knowledge instead of sharing. Remember, sharing is caring :-):

Do not covet your ideas. Give away everything you know, and more will come back to you. If you give away everything you have, you are left with nothing. This forces you to look, to be aware, to replenish.

And lastly, about problem solving leadership and taking chances:

If you can’t solve a problem, it’s because you’re playing by the rules.

(…)

But you must show no fear. It must be what you think, not what the client may think or your boss will think. This is your job. Don’t refer back to those in authority, they will play for safety. You’re on your own. Fly or die.

[All bolds in quotes my formatting]

If you have to choose the one over the other, I think the first one (It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be) is by far the best. But I’d pick up both any day.

Paul Arden has also written a new book (new and new — end of last year) — God explained in a taxi ride. Has any of you read it? If so, let me know if it is worth picking up.

Below is the stock price development of Bombardier, the company behind the infamous DHC-8 Q400, the past 3 months. The first serious SAS incident with this aircraft type, was on September 9 this year. Can you spot the trend?

I wonder what this will look like tomorrow morning when the stock exchange in Toronto opens. And I also wonder how other airlines will behave following SAS’s complete abandonment of the Dash 8. A move, which–by the way–in my mind was the only plausible course of action to maintain/restore long-term customer confidence and thus SAS itself.

So many things are happening right now. One of the leitmotifs of my life, “It’s always showtime” is more true than ever.

• Just over a month ago, I handed in my thesis, and two weeks ago I had the oral defense. WUHUU! Read more about my thesis here.
• Also, just over a month ago, I started my new job. I love it — the people are great, they are extremely impressive and they carry so much empathy it is unbelievable. There are so many challenges and so much stuff I don’t know how to do — it’s incredible, but enormously rewarding.
• Next week is CBS Case Competition – I wrote the case with Thomas, one of my best friends and one of the greatest guys to have ever walked the face of the earth. Read about the programme, which is open for everyone to attend, here.
• The Organizing Committee behind CBS Case Competition is one of the most impressive groups of people that I have ever been part of. Thank you.
• Christoffer, also one of my best friends, returned from New York City. It is inconceivable how I could get through the fall without him. He is not a Mr Anybody. He is also in the Case Group of the CBS Case Competition now.
• Much more is happening, but the time is not for writing a novel :-).

Okay, maybe I went over board in this post, but I feel like the guy in picture, that’s the name of the game. Fly or die.

Happy New Year! And what better way to start off the New Year by taking a personality test (I introduced you to one here)–but this is not your standard personality test–this is the “Which Super Villain Are You?” test (seen at Jason’s blog).

Let me know which one you are in the comments. Below is my result. (I don’t know Dr. Doom, I’d better do some research.)

You are Dr. Doom, blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

My brother keeps sending me links to funny videos (like the M5 video). This one is well filmed and has the “play” theme over it, which every Christmas should have. The guys who made the film are really talented, and I keep wondering how on earth they got the time to do it and how many times they redid it. I won’t reveal too much — but let me know what you think in the comments.

I treat this blog and website as my hobby. Therefore, I feel very flattered by all the visitors stopping by on their way on the web. But where do they come from? Where do you come from?
I took at look at the traffic on my website for the past 14 days, and here is what I got out of it:

So about a third of my visits are from Denmark — that’s not so difficult to explain :-). What’s also very interesting is the “Other” category, which accounted for 15 pct of my traffic in the past 14 days. In fact, visits from 40 different countries (!) compose the “Other” category in the chart above. Wow!

My blogging activity is still not up to normal pace. Feel free to attribute that to either (1) my computer being down, (2) the usual indoor inactivity (and outdoor activity) of summer time, (3) summer university–or any combination of the prior of your choosing :-).

Meanwhile, I found a very good post from Jeremy Zawodny on sense of accomplishment, and where you get it from. He divides personalities into the individual contributor, the team player, or the team leader/manager. I think the thoughts are very spot on, so go have a look at what he writes.

I always run with my iPod, but I’ve had to use third-party devices for everything related to my running - even for timing!

Answering all my prayers, :), Nike and Apple has made a kit, Nike+iPod, that times, provides calorie burn data and a lot more; it also syncs with the new iTunes.

How cool! I’m getting the kit as soon as it’s out.

I have not read Timothy Koegel’s The Exceptional Presenter yet, but Tom Peters posted about it on his weblog (He Has a Point: A Damn Good One). Tom extracts one simple, very obvious, but—often—very forgettable piece of advice from this book:

Those who practice improve. Those who don’t, don’t

What people often complain, however, is the lack of time to practice, and maybe this should be linked to the fact that the pay-off from practicing is not immediate—it is somewhat distant in most cases. What Tom points out about this book in his post, is that one should simply seize more opportunities to practice, such as in everyday tasks:

One of Koegel’s greatest contributions is suggesting-revealing the fact, the great news, that we have many, many mundane opportunities to practice! He offers numerous ideas. Using people’s names in conversations is very powerful. So practice it at a party this weekend. Smiling is a matchless “weapon” for winning over audiences … so be aware, in family communications, the degree to which you smile, or don’t. In my case, and my wife laughs at me over this one, I spend as much time spell-checking and working on grammar-word choice on emails to old friends as I do when writing something formal to a prospective Client: Every time I communicate with anybody is an opportunity to improve my communications effectiveness.

What a wonderful point. Every time we communicate, we have the chance to improve our communication and presentation skills. Seize the opportunity and Go Own the Room.

For some reason, I love personality tests (well, not all—it really is a jungle out there). I recently bumped into a good one called Personal DNA, which also makes a nice graphic illustration (DNA profile you could call it) of your personality.

Mine looks like this:

…which makes me a Benevolent Creator. Try it out yourself at http://www.personaldna.com/ and let me know how you fared :-).

This is the fourth and final post in a series on presentation technique discussing your mental state while presenting—whether you own the room or not. Prior posts are How to Get a Standing Ovation, Go Own the Room: Enthusiasm, and Go Own the Room: Connection.

Sincerity is where I think most people fall to the ground. It is hard to fake, and it is not easily broken down into components that you can manage and measure (as for instance with Connection). However, it remains important if you want to own the room when you present (it remains important throughout all of life).

What, then, is sincerity all about? How do you come across as a sincere person? The easy answer, albeit not necessarily easy to implement or live by, is to be sincere. Do not underestimate the difficulty in being sincere – day in and day out you are confronted with dilemmas and tough choices that can compromise your sincerity—selling a product you don’t believe in, telling a white lie, doing something you’re not passionate about. It is small things, often, but they are there—day in and day out. And, eventually, larger dilemmas will appear, and it will make it all that more difficult.

My short answer to all of this is: Don’t compromise. Never. All you have is your word, your values, and your will, and the only one who can take these away from you is yourself. Don’t.

While your values and will are more or less tools (to use a very inappropriate word) to keep you on the track you want to be on, your word is something you share with others. Values often change as you grow up, which is natural—and not even close to what I will call compromising. Your will is how passionate you are about these values. Your word is what you tell others. Always keep your word—it is your bond, be true and live by your values with every will possible.

If you do this, which is difficult—please don’t underestimate its difficulty—I promise you that it will shine through when you present, be it in terms of presentation technique or when you present yourself through out life. Go own the room.

In January of this year, Copenhagen Business School (CBS) opened its new building Kilen (which is Danish for The Wedge). It is located very close (2 minutes of walking) to the main building, Solbjerg Plads, which was opened in 1998. Now, almost all of CBS’s activities are located in the Dalgas Have (late 1980s), Solbjerg Plads, Kilen and Porcelain Garden (2006) facilities and has replaced older buildings, which means that we have very nice and new facilities here at school.

It also meant that we (by we, I mean the CBS Case Competition) moved our offices to the new Kilen facility. We now have two very nice offices and a handful of extra meeting rooms at our disposal. The competition is only two weeks away, which means that the offices are in use almost around the clock (the first people pop in at 6-7am, the last leave at 5-6am). I love it.

Photos by Tao Lytzen: Kilen from the outside and the inside.

Good presentation technique (and good conversation and good karma) requires enthusiasm—read my post on Enthusiasm, Connection, and Sincerity to get a heads up on what I’m talking about. This post will elaborate on enthusiasm.

It’s Not What You Say
It’s how you say it (communication break-down chart)—there is no doubt that enthusiasm about your topic enhances your message, and it increases the effect of the conveying of information. The tricky part, then, is how you get enthusiastic. Even if you are enthusiastic about a topic, you may be nervous (or have tonnes of other things to think of) when you present, thus not being able to convey your enthusiasm. This is clearly an obstacle to effective communication.

Let me break down enthusiasm into two basic components, namely (1) teaching and (2) learning.

Teaching
Truly enthusiastic individuals know peculiar things about their topic, and they have an innate desire to share knowledge about their passion. Conveying enthusiasm is about showing a willingness to teach others (or at least convey, communicate or talk about) the topic at hand, and especially anecdotes and other peculiarities. This willingness should be burden-free. The virtue of wanting to share, underlines your enthusiasm of the subject matter. If you were not enthusiastic, why would you know this stuff, let alone teach/talk about it?

Learning
Enthusiasm never ends. Enthusiastic people spare no opportunity to learn something new, and they do so with a wonderfully childish and unbiased approach. Their enthusiasm is not about confirming what they know (nor the opposite) but about learning. Enthusiastic presenters treat their audiences as equal peers, because they know that presenting is in fact communication and conversation, and that they can extract as much from the presentation as can their audiences.

Be Enthusiastic
Conveying your enthusiasm, then, can be achieved by expressing interest in and fascination of teaching and learning your subject matter, using some of the characteristics I described above.

All this, of course, assumes that you are, in fact, enthusiastic about your subject matter. If not, conveying enthusiasm can give you a hard time.

Super Bowl XL–XL has to stand for extra large: What a blast and what a game! Congratulations to the Steelers. We could’ve had a better half-time show, though.

One of the very exciting things about the Super Bowl is also the commercials. However, in Denmark it is illegal to interrupt programmes with commercials (you can only send commercials in between the programmes). So when all the cool commercials take the screen in the US, we have to listen to our Danish commentators. Hoorah (or not).

In contrast to last year, Google Video is here this time around. And of course the Super Bowl XL Commercials are on Google Video.

From the book Karaoke Capitalism (by the authors of Funky Business:

- In 1998, CBS, Fox and ABC paid $12.8 billion to broadcast National Football League (NFL) games until 2005. The very same year the Minnesota Vikings franchise was sold for $250 million. In fact, the three networks could have bought all 30 NFL teams and had free broadcast rights forever. They didn’t.

Unless there is more to this story than this, it a big Oops. Read more fun quotes at Stefan’s Karaoke Capitalism post.

I told you about Guy Kawasaki’s new blog before—and it keeps getting better. One of his latest posts is about how you get a standing ovation, i.e. how to present well. He has eleven good points (go to his post for full details):

1. Have something interesting to say
2. Cut the sales pitch
3. Focus on entertaining
4. Understand the audience
5. Overdress
6. Don’t denigrate the competition
7. Tell stories
8. Pre-circulate with the audience
9. Speak at the start of an event
10. Practice and speak all the time

I think they are all good points, however, I disagree with point 5. It can be as disastrous to overdress the audience as it can be to underdress it. Preferably you should match-dress it, which goes well in line with Guy’s point 4: Understand the audience.

Although I do not have all of Guy’s experience, I also have a couple of tips, which I go by. They all point to the fact that the good presenter should own the room—be omnipresent. How to get there is very difficult, but one step of the way is to realise that you have to speak to everyone (or as many as possible) in the audience—they have to feel you are speaking to them (and—almost—them only).

I try to achieve this by being enthusiastic about what I talk about. When people feel you are enthusiastic, it is much easier for them to be so as well. It is much nicer to hear from someone who loves what he does or speaks about, than a boring nuthead.

I try to connect to the audience, so they feel I am in the room. It is as simple as establishing eye contact while making key points, but also utilising other body language—smiling (!), using my arms, using the depth of the room (walking to and from the audience) (not just the width—walking from left to right on the stage).

Finally, I try to be sincere. If you’re faking it, there is a good chance the audience will spot you, so you might as well just lay it off to start out with.

In summary, my three points, for now, is:

1. Enthusiasm
2. Connection
3. Sincerity

Go own the room.

In the buzz of web 2.0, I had heard about a service called del.icio.us for some time now—actually for a very long time. And I had gone to their website several times to see what this was about, but every time I found myself leaving their website, because of lack of intuitive design, explanation of purpose, and clarity of contribution to the user. Well, call me a late adapter or whatever you want, but now I finally signed up. And I love it.

• del.icio.us is a web service where you save all of your bookmarks online, so you can access them from any computer. That’s not new. What’s great about the service, however, is:del.icio.us makes it extremely easy to find your bookmarks again, because you “tagged” them with a number of keywords of your choice and saved them in a flat hierarchy. The easy retrieval of your bookmarks is one of the real advantages.
• Super fast and easy saving of bookmarks is also a huge advantage, because saving a bookmark, then, does not become an obstacle. Further, if you run Firefox and install the del.icio.us extension, you are really rolling.
• You can browse everyone else’s bookmarks—on the fly. So you really know what moves the web (and/or the world, for that matter) the second you surf. This can also be done by keywords, of course.

So I like this web service a lot. It also makes it a lot easier for me to do my links page, right here on my blog. If you visit it, you will see a lot of output coming directly out of my del.icio.us bookmarks, most notably the tag cloud. The tag cloud contains all the different keywords I have assigned to my bookmarks. The biggest and brightest are the keywords that have been assigned to bookmarks most often. Go explore it on my links page.