Ho, ho! I am really heading away to spend the next coming days with the wider family. Snapped this photo around midnight yesterday when I was done with the cooking, wrapping, and chatting.

2008 has been wonderful. I wish we all will create an even better 02009 (mind the leading 0). Meanwhile, take care – and try some cauliflower.

I will attend BETT, ”the world’s largest educational technology event”, which take place January 14-17 at Olympia in London. First time visit for me, and my primary interest is of course within a marketing perspective. Not how educational technology vendors market their products, but rather how schools implement and utilize all kinds of digital gadgetry and Internet stuff in order to market their products (e.g. lectures in math) and their institutions (e.g. the school unit). Hopefully also a lot of how the curricala is being modified in order to fit with our and future times (not the agricultural society).

I am joining a group of (I guess) over 100 Swedes, travelling together by arrangement of Datorn i Utbildnigen (DiU), a Swedish magazine about computers in education. DiU have also formed a BETT-travel group in Facebook, unfortunately closed for non-invited members. They have asked if I know of any schools in the London area that are interested in hosting a brief visit from some of the Swedes going to BETT. If so, please let me know.

Besides visiting the exhibition and seminars at BETT, I will also attend the BETT Network Meeting arrranged by Rektorsakademien and Apple. That Thursday evening is fully booked – 350 people! In other words, there seems to be many Swedes going to BETT.

I will be staying at The Regency Hotel, arriving January 14:th in the afernoon and leaving in the evening on the 18:th. Most likely I will tweet my positions throughout the week. So, if you are around I would love to meet with you there.

I am at SIME. Ten minutes ago Ulf Ekberg from Ace of Base introduced the Music remix. In short it consists of a number of parts. First people can use a mixer widget to control a song that Ase of Base have (pre)produced. Second, it is also possible to purchase the song (USD 4.99 at Koblo.com) with all the tracks (13 original WOF 2009 stereo tracks), including a complete sequencer. Three, we may then remix, add tracks, etc in order to create a new version. Included are also a number of widgets/apps for a range of social media networks. Fourth, optionally you may upload our recreation to Ace of Base’s web site where people can vote for it. Fifth, the most popular version(s) will end up on the bands next CD.

Cool, inspiring, and a perfect illustration of customer conversations support as well as ”letting go”. That is, leaving control over the brand to the market.

Yesterday I noticed in the Twittersphere that Twingly would be in ”a cool site” today. I have no doubts that the integration of Twingly’s services with Newsdesk, one of the leading online newsrooms, quicly spread. Even without my little post about it. This is more a courtesy to Newsdesk and Twingly. To show that I care, concgratulate, and is impressed. Without this is a win-win-win-win step. The winners are we actors in social media (e.g. bloggers), organisations using Newsdesk’s services, and of course Twingly and Newsdesk.

As far as I know Twingly is alone in the global sphere when it comes to provide their unique, smart, and effective way of connecting media outlets with the bloggosphere. In addition to provide related meaurement and monitoring services. By definition this means that the Twingly kind of functionality in a social media newsroom environment is new to the world. Did I mention that both sevices are founded in Sweden?

Read more in Twingly’s blog, and if you understand Swedish in the media release and in dojjans PR20 blog.

I love Sweden, the country I was born and live in. Of course I want to share all the wonders available here. Please see one of my earlier attempts. In low quality video, but of high emotional value.

This morning I begun writing this post when the ”Swedish channel” was introduced to the world at an event arranged by The Swedish instute, hosted at Svenska Filmbolaget. I was not sure where to direct you in order to check the new channel out. On our seats was a six page pamphlet. In it I finally found, the almost hidden, URL www.thenewsmarket.com/sweden.

All in all, what is dominantly communicated is ”The Newsmarket”, not Sweden. Hopefully this will change. In other words, I miss the connection between the content and the brand ”Sweden”. Both in the service discussed here, and in the content provided.

In sum, and please bear in mind that I have only spent around 30 minutes to take a look at the stuff in question. The Swedish channel is a very promising initiative. Although in my view balanced more to the slowly changing broadcast/main stream media environment, than the all so fascinating and frightening social media sphere. Furthermore, it is less about Sweden and more about the provider(s) of the services.

In the invitation e-mail (basically a jpg file, hard to share and pick items from) for this mornings event I could read:

”Does your business or organisation need more global exposure? The launch of the Swedish Channel provides you with the opportunity to globally reach 16 000 TV-stations and online media with moving images and press releases [my translation]”.

The audience, around 100 people, was briefly introduced to the background and the ideas behind the Swedish channel. By the way, a not so very search friendly term as it is indeed generic. Google tells me that it is actually TV4 that is the Swedish channel. The opening was followed by a short panel discussion and a Q&A with the audience. Beata Wickbom, one of the panelists, was eager to know how many of us blogged from the event. It seemed that I was the only one, and I mentioned that there was no WiFi provided (and my mobile operators coverage was low but usable),

I addition I shared my concerns that The News Market setup, seems to be geared towards (registered, image left) established news outlets, rather than social media savvy citizens. The panel replied that videos are immediately shareable through an embed code. But if you want the high resolution and editable, versions you need to register. So, I took a look at the embedding functionality (image below). Before I could get the embed code, I had to accept the terms. Those turned out to be a multi page long text (which can not be copied, printed out, or downloaded). Furthermore, I had to provide an e-mail adress. The result, when embedded here is found below (note ”The Newsmarket” is promoted, not Sweden):

Another obvious questions concerns copyright issues. Creative commons is more or less the de facto standard in social media. For a while I looked around for information about intellectual property rights. Finally, in the help page I found regarding the usage rights: ”Most of the content on The NewsMarket is free for use by the news media”. If so, that mean I cannot share/re-purpose it, unless I am news media.

Perhaps bloggers are news media (mark my irony). Registering as a blogger requires you to fill in name, e-mail, a password, physical adress, and information about my blog (assuming I have only one). The latter includes a description of the blog. They say that a good description will ”speed up the processing of your registration”. When I saw that I simply cancelled my registration. I also noticed that their publishing platform inhibits video ripping, i.e. use of tools that copies the stream onto ones hard drive. For me that means I most likely will not return to the Swedish Channel. But of course, without irony, a lot of interested journalists will most likely register in order to get the video material in a comparably very conventient fasion (download/e-mail/ftp).

Another interesting question from the audience was about who allows what can be uploaded. The answers was

 ”There will be a reference group. The point is to have a dialogue. There are different views on what Sweden is. We have no reason to take a side.”

I have my thoughs on that, guess you have too.

If you want to be inspired about how video can be used for brand building, take a look at www.ted.com/talks. That is an excellent combination of truly useful content, high emotional value, unique material, and state of the art sharing capabilities. An alternative to The Newsmarket is Newsdesk, which perhaps does not support raw high resolution video but is rich with sharing possibilities. Those include RSS and tagging. So you may tag your videos with ”Sweden” and ”Swedish channel”.