I have volunteered to work on the marketing/PR side of the danish blogaward - “blogprisen“. We are in good time and im looking so much forward to see what’s tricks we’re gonna create with blogprisen this year =).

Also it looks like we are having another blogpris this year by PC world in Denmark, it’s going to be interesting to see if the result from both of them are going to be the same…

Companies tend to see themselves as the center of the universe. They shouldn’t. I have a lot of thoughts and opinions about how companies should act - but I want you to consider to put yourself in the shoes of the person you want to relate to.

I am so sick and tired of receiving newsletters from a company that only evolves .. TA-DA… that same company.

I mean you’re should be really special if you can keep up ratings - while you only talk about yourself - and not a lot of companies are special as such. They might think so themselves - but they really aren’t in the eyes of a critical beholder.

The paradox is, that the real interesting deal ( the processes, the ideas, the discussions inside the company) is kept from the newsletter subscribers because it is seen as irrelevant - or maybe too transparent ?

anyway to all the companies out there… : you don’t appear as a fantastic company if you only talk about yourself. You should talk about everything else BUT yourself…

So - Im back in fulltime Toothless Tiger employment from june 1st. This is the right thing for me. This is the big dive into the open sea. I want to be more efficient evolving my workday - so my question is : what works for you ?

What I have found has worked for me:

- Skype and IM meetings late at night.
- drafting all my thoughts in the wordpress CMS on toothlesstiger.com
- using hiveminder and basecamp as a productivity tool
- getting energy by not reading emails more than at lunchtime and in the afternoon
- incubation on tech blogs instead of normal news sites - they don’t teach me anything anyway

where I really need to improve is:

-keeping myself on track - as I said, hiveminder is cool for productivity but I think I need something else as well
-keeping focused and not being distracted by not-work-noise
-doing boring business stuff (economy etc) as well as fun stuff
-setting both short term as well as long term goals
-family/worklife balance - sharing a calendar with the rest of the fam and other stuff.
-more filters of data instead of just data =)

What I think I need to make things easier:

-Hiveminder as a CRM tool
- some other podcastgear so I can rekickstart GeekArmyKnife together with the amazing Duarte
. (Huge thanks to these awesome guys for inspiring me to start up again)

Please overload me with comments - I need as much inspiration as I can get =) ( especially to make productivity/effectivity easier)

In FDIHs network group that works around “media and content” we had a very good (not to say excellent) discussion around Chris Anderson’s “free” concept and why it emplies to the media companies in particular. The discussion was facilitated by Mads Kristensen of Vadnu.com.

Anyway I got out of the group meeting with one thing completely clear to me. The media needs to change and journalists need to change ( nothing new in that) - but my take on how they should change is to become aggregator instead of a content creator themselves. as Clay Shirky also points out in his book “here comes everybody” - it’s not really about content anymore. It’s about putting up filters that delivers the right content to the right person.

I can give you some examples from my everyday life at good “filters” for my cravings and likings.

for inspiration I have my art bloglines folder that I look through several times a day (crafting, vintage, clothes - you name it)
for my shoe addiction I have shoewawa.com
for cooking I have several blogs -but I love thepioneerwoman and chocolate and zucchini.

I have clearly defined and categorized my own filters in my RSS reader.

Could this be the take that the media companies should have in the future ? - filters ? giving us very niche targeted content after which subject we are interested in right now ?

I am a bit in doubt how you would make such a setup - but I think it’s the closest that I can gather my thoughts on media for the time being

Update: after further reading i am sure that what the media companies need to keep in mind is:

1. in the media “hooray days” there was only one or two places where you could go if you wanted to be outside of the mainstream ( and not be generalised as a part of the public) - the bookstore or the library where you could choose yourself what you wanted to be seeing/reading - you where only in complete control at the bookstores/movie rentals and the library. (Chris Anderson writes a bit about this in the long tail)

2. Today you can go everywhere to be outside of the mainstream - in fact I think I that could even argue that web killed the mainstream… =)

please do keep that in mind when you make your survival strategies.