It is Saturday morning. The summer is slowly coming to an end even though I’m still waking up way to early due to the light. I’ve had the privilege to have quite some time off with my family. Only one project has been running over the summer.
My youngest daughter Linn trying out her new fishing rod in the evening light
What’s up, that’s the question I’m asking myself right now. What’s the next big thing. What comes after Facebook and Twitter, when will YouTube be challenged, what’s the next hype after the iPhone, we’ve lived for quite some time now with Playstation, XBOX and WII. And what ever comes next, how will that change the way we communicate and sell brands and their products.
I’m searching deep inside myself to find something that shows me the way. Some spark of energy that I can nurture to bring it out in the open. Something that will light the fire that will guides me.
Whatever it is I’m sure it will be as easy to adapt to as the iPhone, it will be as social as Facebook, it will be as entertaining as the first Halo was, it will be as real as a piece of wood and it will be as eco-friendly as something we’ve never seen before.
I hope it hits the car industry cause to be honest, nothing has really transformed that business the last 50 years. I do hope it hits the home appliances industry cause things seems to be standing still there too. I’d love for the tourism industry to change. Not to mention the toy industry, please give me something that makes me and my kids have super fun. Oh please give me a new favorite restaurant. Hmm, beverages. Isn’t it time we found something that truly challenged Coca Cola. Just give me something new!
I think I can see the light…somewhere deep inside.
On monday morning I’m slowly getting back to work. I’m really looking forward to that. See you soon!
And now to a very sensitive issue – monitoring. As some of you know my profession is leading brands into the future of communication. One of the more important parts of this is teaching them how to keep track of their own brands in the jungle of conversation. What are people saying about my brand, where does the conversation take place and how can we respond to it – simple questions really.
However, quite many brands don’t have a clue on how to do this or even worse – they haven’t even started to think about tracking conversations related to their brands.
When I speak about this we often end up talking about me and how I track my own brand. I try to keep track of every conversation out there that in one way or another has my name or brand in it. As often as I can I also listen to, respond or in other ways take the conversation into account – just as any brand should.
One of my Netvibes dashboards that I use to monitor Ronnestam online
Since sharing is caring – here is how to track keywords online on a daily basis without paying for it. NOTE – this doesn’t give you a 100% guarantee and the more generic your brand is the harder it is to monitor it, then professional help might be your solution. It also applies better to smaller brands rather than large ones. But you will gain some [click to continue…]
August has already passed and maybe it’s a little bit late for me to share my horoscope. But since I like it I’ll share it anyway. My birthday is the 20th of August and that makes me a Leo.
I just loved this portrait found on FFFFound of a Leo and couldn’t find a better reason to post it on my blog.
The first event is beeing held north of Stockholm with about 40 people attending the party and I’m honored to be one of them. Don’t worry – there will be new events following this one so get your but mouse over to the TEDx Stockholm website and show your interest.
This first event will be all about inspiration and I’m eagerly looking forward to be inspired by God knows who. I do know that homeboy Richard Gatarski has been given a 5 minute slot that he has turned into a crowd sourcing experiment on his blog and I of course think it’s a great idea.
Richard is asking us all to contribute with some sort of inspirational thing communication how to create the “best start in life for our children”.
As always I couldn’t keep my fingers out of the jam. 1 hour later I submitted this:
Later this day the river was flooding food from the main land. The sharks ended up chasing me to the beach
That is me up there. About to cut back into the white water and sitting on the right, after surf. Below shows me right after dropping in on Uluwatu, one of the worlds finest left handers.
The other day I was backing up some old paper prints and these two shots got me thinking.
This was taken one of the first days surfing Uluwatu. I forgot my rash guard in our bungalow and got sunburned bad
The photos are taken some time back in 1990 when I first visited Bali. I had the greatest time and hooked up with guys like Kelly Slater and Rob Machado that I’ve learned to know via snowboarding buddies.
At this time Internet wasn’t anything I was thinking about. It didn’t exist, at least not in my mind. I had a mobile but bringing it to Bali was out of the question. You called back home every 14 days to say you were ok. People didn’t expect you to communicate more often than that if you were on the other side of the globe. A postcard did just fine!
These were days that defined my life. Internet just came along and swept me of my feets.
My parents always thought I spend to much time in front of my computer. Personally I’m afraid my kids won’t spend enough time there.
If there’s anything I’m sure of its the fact that kids growing up with a sound relation to computers will create a strong platform for the rest of their life.
This is why I love Scratch. Scratch is a programming language suitable for kids that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.
So, if you’ve got kids – move them from slaying other people in war games to building applications in Scratch.
Me interacting with Mr Dolphin, his friends and family.
I have spent the last 6 days on Lanai, Hawaii together with a good friend. We’ve been down here attending Tibco’s yearly conference. He as an employee and me as a guest. The optimum setup for me as I’ve focused more on exploring the island than business.
Apart from getting to know Vivek Ranadivé, Tibco founder and technology innovator, and learning about his thoughts on the future I also got the chance to chat quite a lot with Roger Craig, who (who by the way also blogs) considered one of the worlds best American football players. Roger is working with marketing at Tibco (smart move) and we found common grounds. There is so much to learn from people like this. If you ever meet one of them, don’t stay on the bench. Get up and interact.
My best appointment however was meeting Mr Dolphin with friends and family. Every day we headed down to the ocean to snorkel with these guys. I’ve been diving and surfing with dolphins before. Back in the 80s and early 90s when I was snowboarding professionally I traveled every year to Ireland to surf and sometimes we ended up surfing with these wonderful animals. But the last couple of days on Lanai has been crazy. I got my camera out [click to continue…]
The other day I had to switch phone numbers since I got myself an iPhone 3G. The new number is +46 70 654 90 10.
The fact that this post will be picked up by LinkedIn, Plaxo, Friendfeed, Twingly, Facebook, Jaiku, Tumblr and probably another 20 different social networking services connected to my RSS feed makes me hope that people actually will write down my new phone number.
Why don’t you call if you have something fun to speak about.
At 00:30 this monday morning me and my girlfriend woke up to the sound of our 3 year old daughter Ebba having a lot of trouble breathing. Only minutes later me and Ebba were driving as fast as I could to the hospital. On my way to the hospital I dialed 112 (911) to get [...]
ronnestam.com was voted Sweden’s first blog on Innovation, future trends and digital communication. It’s written by Johan Ronnestam. He's widely regarded as one of Sweden’s leading speakers and authorities in the field of modern creative and conceptual thinking and skill of innovating brands and their communication.
