Spring is coming. Summer is around the corner. Hiking is wonderful. I think walking stimulates the mind and brings new perspective on the world. Yesterday I met my mom to look at new cars for both of us:) Since neither of us really care about what type of car we drive, we went on a walk instead. A wonderful walk around a lake in Oslo(Sognsvann). After the walk, we ate lunch and talked. Today I bought a new baking oven. The new one is very nice, but I doubt that I'll start making alot of quality meals.

What a wonderful Easter vacation! Emma and I spent 3 wonderful sunny days in Lillehammer. We got up early every morning and went skiing in the Olympic downhill slopes of Hafjell. We spent alot of time with my brother and his family.

I've started to read "Intelligent Investor", a book written by Warren Buffet's mentor Ben Graham. It's a different book than what I usually read so it will take som effort to complete.

On another note, I've been following The Word of Mouth Marketing Association. WOMMA focuses on word of mouth marketing techniques such as the art of honest, authentic two-way communications with customers. Blogs, communities, viral marketing, buzz, evangelism, word of mouth, and other new techniques are creating a fundamentally more open relationship between businesses and the people they serve. I will be following these guys closely. Very interesting...

I read Seth Godin's blog today. He was asked how to build an e-mail list. He answered:

"I told her that the first step was to offer something in your email newsletter that people would actually want to read. That the second step was to promise people exactly what you intended to give them. And the third step was to create content that was so remarkable that people wanted to share it. I explained that if you take your time and keep your promises, it'll build if it deserves to build."

Pretty interesting..

Easter vacation is just around the corner. I'm heading up to Lillehammer, the olympic host of 1994. Emma is flying in on thursday and we're driving up in the evening.

Last week Norwegian.no was rated the best airline website in Europe. The independant review was done by the respected consumer magazine www.dinside.no (roughly translated to"your side/page"). We beat Ryanair, SAS, Sterling, FlyNordic and many more.. The only differentiatiors was our "Low fare calender", which shows all the prices to one destination in a calender format. It's not unique, but it appeals to customers that are price aware.

Other job news; I am speaking at another conference http://www.estrategi.no/konferanse . Estrategi is one of the leading publications when it comes to strategy and the web..

One strategic dilemma that Norwegian has these days is whether to select a focused product promotion strategy or a wide approach. By this I mean;

Focused product promotion is to focus on the core business of selling more airline tickets to our customers. We can still promote 3 party products, but our focus is on selling airline tickets.

Wide approach is becoming more of a travel agency. Doing everything yourself.

It's an interesting dilemma that reminds me of the Amazon.com vs. eToys dilemma. This dilemma ended up with Etoys going out of business, while Amazon.com created a joint venture with Toys 'R Us.

I think the correct approach is to look for strategic partnerships where each party keeps a focus on their own core competency. If you look at Amazon.com today, the entire Toys section is branded with Toys 'R Us. I believe this has proved over time to be the winning strategy. Strategic partnerships where you benefit from the "start-up spirit" and new technology of Amazon.com while the large brandname Toys 'R us brings the experience from the toy industry and the infrastructure.

The good thing about blogging is that you don't have to worry that much about grammer and sentences making sense;)

Another winter day in Norway. I was just invited to yet another wedding. This time in the USA.

Tomorrow is friday. The weeks pass by quickly. I'm heading off to Stockholm tomorrow. Spending the weekend. Might look for some apartments.. Nothing new. Had coffee with an old friend yesterday. We discussed all kinds of stuff. Very interesting..

I had an interesting experience with an intense customer today. The customer hand-delivered a complaint about a bug in the Norwegian booking engine. The complaint was sent to our customer relations department. They contacted me to discuss the issue. We sent a response, but the customer was not satisfied with the response. Since I was on vacation in Australia, it took quite a bit of time to respond to the customer. When I came I responded to the customer once again. He responded again and we had a discussion going. I went to Linkedin and searched for the customer's name. It turned out that he knew one of my connections. He also had knowledge about a topic where my skills are very limited. I used a random customer response in combination with a personal contact CRM connection to make a connection. I think it's interesting....... A lot of the people that use Linked in are so-called "sneezers", people that spread the word. Customers that complain really care. They spend their valuable time to complain about something... They're similar to the people that call the 1-800 number that's printed on bars of soap.. The type of people that call this number are really valuable customers..

One of the most frustrating things in professional life is working with people that don't care. Another frustrating is working with incompetent people that are not interested in learning!

Warren Buffet seeks to invest in companies where the employees have "ownership". By this he means that he looks for companies where employees are careful with the companies money. They don't spend money easily and they have a loyalty-feeling to the companies stockholders.

Last year a friend of mine told me that successful businesspeople often make presentations. I like to think of myself as successful. Even though I hate presenting in front of a crowd, I say "yes" to speaking engagements because I have a strong desire to be a successful business person... Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Anyway, in June I'll be presenting at a conference along with a lot of famous people! Not bad...

I'll also be presenting at a conference in Oslo in June. Read more about that here

The cool thing about speaking engagements is that I force myself to learn new stuff. Here are a few interesting sites:

http://www.womma.org/ - Word of Mouth Marketing Association.
http://www.bzzagent.com/ - A very interesting idea.

Back from Australia. It was a great trip. The trip took about 20 hours. I'm totally caught by jetleg and I woke up at 4 am this morning. We went to Brisbane, Sydney, Fraser Island, Herron Island (click on the link for more info on the islands) and Melbourne. Fraser Island is the worlds largest sand island. Emma and I had great time together and I'm planning to move to Stockholm pretty soon....

On the cultural side, we attended the opera "Carmen" in the Sydney Opera House. It was a very warm experience. The air condition in the building was not very effective. Here's some pictures from our vacation.

I did some reading on my trip to Australia. I finished up Victorian Internet, which compares the telegraph with the modern internet. Pretty interesting book that is light reading with interesting observations about innovation.

I also read a book about the world's most successful investor, Warren E. Buffet. His book, Buffett : The Making of an American Capitalist follows Buffet from his early childhood to the present day. His investing record is truly amazing and he has consistently beat the market the last 30 years. His successful investing style is explained here. It looks easy, but if it was so easy, everybody would be doing it. I like Buffet's down to earth personality and his ability to explain things in its simplest form. Simplicity is genious!

The final book I read through was a book about Richard Branson called Losing my Virginity. This autobiography introduces the founder of Virgin Atlantic, the successful low-cost airline that fought a vicious battle with British Airways. Richard Branson is a risk-taker that has succeeded(So far).

I just checked in at a hotel in London. Tomorrow I'll be attending some travel conference somewhere in London. The hotel has a wireless connection, but I have to sit down in the lobby to access it. Wireless networks are popping up everywhere. Soon we'll have wireless phones with direct always-on access to the internet. What will happen to the phone companies?

I'm reading the book Victorian Internet for the 3rd time. I covers the first real worldwide network; the telegraph. The book compares the telegraph with the internet. Pretty interesting to read how there were geeks and techies back then as well. Even more interesting to read how these technology freaks became absolete when the technology went from technology controlled to business controlled. We are seeing the same trend when it comes to the internet.

SMS marketing is getting pretty hot. Consider a medium where the advertisers pay someone to receptable for well-targeted ads. The recipient controls what type of ads they want to receive and at what rate they receive it. Wouldn't it be great to be able to let the newspapers and TV stations know what type of products and services you're interested in and then get paid everytime you viewed them? The term infomediary comes to mind. It's an old term, but a very interesting one..

I forgot to mention that I'm heading down to Australia for a couple of weeks. I've never been there and I think it'll be fun:)

I'm meeting Emma down there! What an adventure. My boss got a little upset when I forgot to tell her how long I was staying down there. I'm getting a little tired of my job. To much politics and discussions and not enough action. It's depressing to work with people that are more focused on going through the motions(processes), rather than worrying about the results. I guess it's a conflict in philosophies? What do I know?

Sometimes it seems like people are more interested in finding problems than finding solutions.. I wish I didn't care, but that's not part of my nature.

Well.. hopefully a couple of weeks "down under" will get me back on top;)

Happy new year. A new year with new opportunities. Yesterday I decided to go visit Australia. I've never been there, so it's about time. I'm leaving on February 7 from London. What a blast!

I finally sold the Jeep I imported from the US. I got cash and a Mercedes E230 in exchange. Nice little profit.

Finally I got some help at work! I actually have two people to help me with the internet initiative at www.norwegian.no ... One of the guys has experience from EBookers. He's seems talented and works hard. He's a smooth talker and easy to work with. He has some very good connections in India that will help us with som search engine optimization.

The other guy is a web designer. He's a hard working guy... We finally got moving on a new web development project. We've chosen to work with Apt. They have a good reputation and has done some amazing stuff.

I went to Stockholm last weekend and spent some quality time with my girlfriend. We stayed in a nice hotel and had nice and romantic weekend. I actually enjoyed SHOPPING! What a disaster.. People are asking when we're getting married.. I'm getting tired of the question.