Kaospilot Netherlands

The Kaospilots are startin in the Netherlands this fall, and boy have they done a good job promoting the school! Today I saw the kaospilot videos that they have on MTV, and it made me really proud of this great school that I'm part of! You can all see them if you click here

New business!

Today I sent the application to Brønnøysundregisteret to register not one, but two businesses. One that is mine and mine only, which sells templates to consultants or businesses who want to use a visual tool to gather the content of what they are doing (meetings, processes or whatever). It is called Skrible, and I've bought the domain www.skrible.net for it. Now I just need to figure out how to get a server, make a webpage etc., but that will be no problem I'm sure. The other business is an "ansvarlig selskap" that I'm sharing with my partner in crime Pouria. It will be a business that does systemic consultation using graphic tools (templates, graphic recording) and it is called Begripelig.
We are very excited about it, and looking forward to the first jobs:) We know it will be a hit!

This is us after we had just sent the application

Bowen Island - closing down the outpost

From Monday to Tuesday the entire team went to Xenia at Bowen Island to close down the outpost. Xenia is a beautiful retreat in the middle of the forrest, with horses, a pig, two cats and a dog...and a 1000 year old tree that is known to answer people's questions. We told the story of our stay, reflected upon our personal learning, and had a dialogue around conflicts that exist within the team. It was the perfect space for getting in touch with oneself and reflecting upon one's learning.
Enjoy another island:

Saltspring island

Signe, Mads and I went to Saltspring island this week end to visit our contact person in BCGEU, Mary, and get a taste of the BC nature. It was so lovely! We arrived by ferry and Mary and her brother Peter were there to pick us up. We spent 1.5 hours at the local market where they had all sorts of different locally produced stuff - it was really nice! Then we went to Mary's farm to chill, talk, pat her fat, but really cute cat, and eat a wonderful meal. Today we went for a walk on the island, before we went home with the ferry. Tomorrow we're off again to a secret place with the rest of team 12 - exciting:)

Enjoy Saltpsring island:

"Are you never gonna blog again?"

...it's been over a month!" This is what my dear Kamilla asked me the other day, and so I guess it is time for me to get my blogging glasses back on. A lot of stuff has happened this past month - Jo has been visiting for 15 days, we've finished our BCGEU project, we've had a tour de chambre and a lot of parties. And Kamilla has gotten rid of her moonboot, and we've changed rooms in 1188 Howe street, so Peter is now king of his castle alone in one of the rooms. I've been watching all the Rome episodes, started watching Heroes, and a lot of Prison Break. I've made a font in freehand that has given me an inflamation in my hand, but that I'm very pleased with, still. I've decided to buy freehand and a pen pad and start my own business (I won't share more until I've gotten further) - I'm back in the yoga game, and I've managed to do stuff that I've never managed to do before. It's so much fun! I've bought a lot of fun buttons from action for animals, and I've gotten a vegan starterpack in the mail. So things are happening:)

Here are some pictures from the past month:
Tour de chambre


Ice sports


Party


Group brunch


You can - as always - see all my pictures at my flickr.

Long time no see

It's busy days in Vancouver, and the blog suffers from that.
In short what has happened since I last wrote:
MET COLIN
I met with Colin who I studied with at Århus School of Business during my exchange in 2004 - he works south of the border (U S and A), but his parents live in White Rock outside of Vancouver.

WELCOMING PARTY
We had the welcoming party in our homebase March 9th, and all our customers and friends were there. We were power mingling, the homebase was blessed by a first nations elder, business cards were frequently exchanged and internships were offered from many corners. It was great fun!


PROJECT WORK
We have had two processes with our customer - first with around 20 employees, and later with the executives. We really enjoy the work - the BCGEU are so motivated for change and action, and we get so many opportunities. We have our own blog that you can follow if you're interested, and if you want to get the bigger team picture, you should check out the KP-outpost-blog.
Pictures from the process with the employees:


PODCAST - IMPORTED GOODS VS. SUSTAINABILITY
Yes, and we made our first podcast - the sound quality is really bad, but the content is quite good, so you should really try to see it and get the meaning. If you don't, then you can see it later at the outpost blog with a script of what people are saying. And also Simon K is working on improving the sound, so we might be lucky.

It was supposed to be a birthday post...

..but instead I too got a warning that my blog is registred as spam and will be blocked if they don't hear from me. So apparently Jo and I are perceived in the world of the internet as a spamming couple.

Anyways - I celebrated my 25th birthday Saturday by going to Whistler to snowboard and eating dinner at a really nice seafood restaurant. I had a wonderful day, and I am so happy both that I could in fact snowboard without being dead afterwards and also that I got 11 wonderful people to go out and eat with me. Thank you!



Today we started the project, which means it will be busy days from now on - Wednesday we will have a process with 16 employees at the BCGEU to find out more about where they are now and which dreams and needs they have. We have a separate blog for the project (or at least we will have when it is up and running), so I won't bother you all too much with it here. By the way you should check out the outpost-site soon (it is not compleetly up and running yet) at www.kaospilotoutpost2007.com.

First day in Tofino

We got up at 5.30 this morning, and the mission of the day was getting to Tofino (on Vancouver island), which took about 6 hours.
We went grocery shopping as soon as we got here, and I was in the dinner group finding food for 34 people on a $250 budget...I really thought that would be mission impossible - it equals ca. 10 kroner per person per meal. However the prices here are more friendly than the Scandinavian prices, and also they have these really cheap deals if you buy huge items - like 5,5 kg chopped meat or 2 l ketchup. We payed $251,5 which I think was pretty good.

The landscape here is really beautiful! It reminds me a bit of Norway...it's kind of Norway XL. I'm attaching today's pictures so you can see for yourselves.

Hockey and family

Friday team 12 went to a hockey game to see Vancouver Giants lose to Everett silvertips. The score was 3-3 and they lost on shoot downs (or outs or ups...I'm no hockey person) in the end. The stadium was packed and it was quite an experience.


Also today I met with my cousin's son Thomas who studies business at the UBC here in Vancouver. We actually live on the same street! But he lives in the 30th floor in an apartment whereas I live in a small YWCA-room on the 2nd floor.

However that is soon going to change as we have gotten an apartment now:) We will move March 15th when our payment here at the Y is up. You can see the apartment here


Finally I want to encourage all of you to check out the greenmyapple and maybe send a mail that you want apple products to be the most environmentally friendly in the market. At least I've done that:)

Pictures from the homebase

OK, the plan was to wait with the pictures until we had made the entire homebase ready, but I realise that that might take some time, so I'll share with you what we have done so far. We have focused on the two common rooms which are the lecture room, the entrance lounge and the kitchen. I've put in some before pictures also, so you can remember what it used to look like.



Today I spoke with Jo for the first time since I got to Vancouver, and it was really nice to hear his voice again! We decided that we will choose Uganda (and possibly Kenya) as our honeymoon destinations. We've tried to find out stuff about our winner, dear Paraguay, but it seems like nobody goes there on holiday and there's not really a lot to see. And they don't have a coastal line, which of course also is a downside. Uganda however have lots of wild life to see, and a completely different environment than what we are used to. It is far away, cheap and we can combine both luxury and experiencing 'the real world'. Also we have found two different projects - one in Uganda and one in Kenya, that we might want to support with our wedding gift-money.

We met our customer (BCGEU) yesterday, and they are sooo nice. We basically have free hands to do whatever we want, and they want a creative result. They provide us with all the finances we need, all the people we need, and they have helped us out so much with the homebase. We've mentioned the things that we are lacking, and they say that they will get us a lot of it. Also they want to do something social with us, so they've proposed to go see a hockey game, and to go by boats on a lake where we can see both the city and the mountains - it sounds really beautiful! It's so great that we have support from the top - all the top executives are supporting our projects, which means that we might have a huge influence if we come up with something good. Which we will, of course:)

Sunday was the chinese new years, and we went a group to see the parade in Chinatown. It was a bit of the 17th of May feeling, which was really great for me, as this is my favourite day of the year. You can see pictures from the parade at my flickr if you want to:)

The homebase

Here's a short film that I took the first day we were at the homebase. We've been working on making it look good since Friday, and I'm amazed how much you can improve a place in a short while and with a small amount of money. We got 1000 Canadian dollars (1 dollar is 5,2 Norwegian kroner) to decorate and make it look good. I'll show you what it looks like when it's completely done - until then you will have to live with the before-version.

The homebase and my project

Yesterday we were introduced to our homebase - a wonderful, super cool place; big and dirty! I will post some pictures later - right now I just have too many of them, and I want to give you a before-after tour of the homebase. It is located in downtown eastside which is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in all of North America. We are really facing the real world there - homeless people everywhere, alcoholics and drug addicts...and the most horrible thing is that many of them are our age. On the back of the building there was a little thing to sleep on and needles in the wall (see the pictures). It's a different place to be to work next to people shooting up and sleeping outside your main door. Vancouver is really facing some serious challenges when it comes to poverty and homeless people - and what so many people are angry about is that the government is spending billions on the olympics in 2010 when they feel that this is not helping the social problems one bit. Both the Vancouver government, the BC government and the federal government is right wing, and the poverty issues are (apparently) not their first priority. The federal government could fall any day, so we might be experiencing an election while we are here - there is a minority government in Canada right now.

We met with Kevin the day before yesterday - he is the leader of Check your head - our major partner here for the outpost. The pictures on the previous post are from his building which is a cooperative where you pay according to what you make. Beautiful view! I got "the corporation" - both the book and the documentary - for christmas, and I really enjoyed reading the book (still haven't seen the documentary). I asked Kevin if he knew Joel Bakan (the author) by any chance, and he did. He knows both Bakan and the guy that directed the documentary, and he says it would be easy to have them come talk to us. That would be so great!

I bet some of you wonder what it is that I'm actually doing here, so I will give a short explanation. The team is here to explore and experiment with sustainability, and the reason for going to Vancouver is that there is a will in the city to be more sustainable, there are some cool trends, yet at the same time the city is - as I already mentioned - facing some big challenges like homelessness, poverty and the highest AIDS-rate in North America. The team is separated into seven smaller groups that are working with different clients on sustainability issues within the following areas: culture, education, urban, ecological/environmental and business/economy. My project is called "Climate Change Action Plan" and is in cooperation with Check your head and The British Colombia Government Employee Union. The union wants to look at all their operations (daily life, meetings, travels etc) and figure out the impact they have on the environment, and then come up with more sustainable solutions. It is really exciting - if the project is succesful this might be spread all over Canada. It is a big task, and we will have to see how we can limit it to fit our seven weeks of project, but I'm sure we will learn a lot about new and sustainable solutions for businesses that will be valuable to businesses all over the world!

Pictures today - words tomorrow

Exploring Vancouver

Kamilla, Peter and I have been walking and walking to explore the city today. We had breakfast at Café Crêpe where we were introduced to the first cultural shock - the waitress actually talked to us other than just taking our orders. In summary her daughter feels she has too small breasts and want to fix them, and she has done a nose job and laser on her eyes. And she doesn't like breast implants, 'cause it's adding something to your body. After that we spent the first part of the day downtown just getting to know the streets and some stores, and then we took a bus down Main street and went to some really nice stores. I bought two t-shirts in Voltage, two t-shirts made of different recycled clothes put together, and a short, strange dress/top from one of the vintage stores. A man with a small dog inside his jacket fell on me on the bus back home...I guess that's a happening of the day.
Vancouver is called the rain city which we really got to experience today - it's been pooring down, and we were all soaking wet when we got home. Now we're just relaxing in our beds trying to get the warmth back and fighting the urge to go to sleep. We were all up at 8 this morning, which is kind of strange on a day off...when you're not jetlagged, that is.

Arrived in Vancouver

We arrived yesterday and today is dedicated to exploring Vancouver. It seems like a really nice city where they unfortunately are doing a lot of construction work everywhere - probably to be ready for the olympics 2010. We are living at the YWCA hotel where the rooms - I'm sorry to say - are smaller than they appear on the photos on the site. So the Kaostrinity is facing a challenge when it comes to living on top of each other for one month..at first. But that's a challenge we meet with open arms.
Pictures will come later today:)

Sustainability kick off

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Vancouver, and today I read this article on World Changing about how they are planning to make Los Angeles more sustainable. That's a good inspiration for us and our work in Vancouver!

New kids revival

I haven't thought about the new kids for such a long time. Then all of a sudden Gunnhild started talking about them, and we found ourselves searching the net for music, videos or anything about them. And we found it...their greates hits. I started crying like never before when we heard the songs...so many memories - my entire puberty is related to this one band. It's just too many emotions to deal with. But also there's all the videos - that we didn't see when we were young. So we didn't really know that Joe was about 13 years old...and that maybe we should have digged Donnie, 'cause he's kinda cool. Oh, well.of course I have to share it with you - if you cry, please let me know. It will feel better if I know that we are more than just one.

Go here to see them

Our honeymoon.

Jo and I were at Café Jorden one evening to figure out what we wanted out of the honeymoon, so that it would be easier to decide upon a place to go. It started with a list of things that were important to us when choosing a place, and ended up with a competition between the different countries. Enjoy!

Visit from the police.

It's always fun when Gunnhild (aka the police) comes visiting from Copenhagen. Fresh young Norwegians don't waste their time watching TV and being lazy in the sofa - they make fake magazines. Here you can enjoy some of the good stuff...that is if you understand Danish. If you don't - I can assure you that it is very funny!

fairy tale party

A good initiative from team 11, and impressive costumes by everybody!

Back to school

I thought it would be hard to come back to school after having missed one week and having read all the e-mails that the team had sent about what they were doing. Luckily my school is the Kaospilots, and luckily I wasn't the only one to have my first day. Team 13 also started school this Monday, and to create a good energy and start of the semester somebody had invited Jane to come and sing with us. Life is good!