Richard for real

On Tuesday February 8th my faculty of communication and media sciences at Lund University pulled together a seminar on career opportunities in the field of strategic communication. Here is a summary of some of the insights shared by Inger Larsson (whom I couldn’t find a relevant link to after 5 mins on google), Martina Hansson (she works for Doro at the moment) and Jesper Wendel (PRoperContent):

A manager newer forgets a communication professional who saved them from utter catastrophe.

In communcation, what is true this year might not be true the next.

A successful corporate communicator must know the core business and be able to translate that complex mesh of activities to a long-term communication strategy.

It is important to never forget that the person responsible for communication has the “formulation prerogative” and therefore must “seize the word”.

Dare to be a PITA! Sometimes it is the only way to get what you want.

In an interview for a position in communication, illustrate your love for learning.

And finally, to stay up to date on the (Swedish) digital PR and social media landscape, follow:

doktorspinn.se

jardenberg.se

mashable.com

Today I went to see the people who are responsible for issuing diplomas at my current university in Sweden. Some interesting knowledge came out of this meeting.

The whole started with me wanting to use the same credits from a ten week course (15 ECTS) in two different diplomas in two different fields of studies. Two separate people have ensured me that this is possible. When speaking to the second of these today I chanced to ask how many credits I could theoretically share between diplomas. The answer was the somewhat suspicious: “well, that has never been legally tried … it can actually be quite a lot … but our main concern that our students come up with varied and interesting main subjects for their diplomas”. In my interpretation, this means that within the new Bologna diploma issuing system for three-year bachelor degrees (where a bachelor  consists of minimum 90 credits or three semesters in the main subject and 90 credits, or less as long as the total adds up to 180, in any other subject) Swedish universities allow students to use the same credits to “back up” any number of diplomas as long as the main subject is new and fresh. If this is correct it would have the following implications:

* After finishing a first 90+90 bachelor, a student could get what looks like a new three year diploma every three semesters.

* More ambitious students could study the basic courses leading up to a bachelor thesis semester parallelly during one year and then spend the next year writing their theses and getitng done with courses they might have skipped during the intense year. Then these students could apply for two diplomas: one with thesis A as the main subject and thesis B as “backup credits” and one reversed. If this works (which very well could be the case, especially if the theses are presented at different universities) the student would after two years end up with two diplomas, each saying they have studied three years. 

The bottom line? Congratulations to all students in Sweden and a warning to all employers worldwide!

In no particular order:

Po the panda:
There is no charge for awesomeness … or attractiveness

Po the panda, dreaming:
He was so deadly, in fact, that his enemies would go blind from over-exposure to pure awesomeness!

Oogway the turtle:
One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.

Oogway the turtle:
There is a saying: yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the “present.”

Mr Ping, Po’s father:
The secret ingredient is… nothing!
…
To make something special you just have to believe it’s special.

Shifu, the kung fu master:
There is now a level zero.

And then a bonus from my friend Niclas:
Only he is lonely, who does not know himself.

This perspective has grown out of discussions with friends over the last week and started with a question posed by a buddy of mine one late evening: “What if openness and spontaneity are opposites?” These words are commonly used in conjunction when people describe themselves. One could even go as far as to argue that they are synonyms in some contexts. But let us reconsider things for a little while.

Openness in the sense discussed here is about accepting and appreciating new people and ideas, roughly. But being open is not only about about relating to the outside world in a specific manner. In its purest form openness is an active mindset rather than a passive one. It’s more about actively living openly and engaging the people that come in your way than statically being open and waiting for new stuff to happen. Looking at openness this way, I would argue that it requires an investment of time and effort.  Being open will have you tangled up in all sorts of relations, relating to people and their thoughts. 

Spontaneity is the virtue of following one’s instincts and taking opportunities. Carpe diem, really. Spontaneity is often seen as a sort of freedom. It is important to be aware that this freedom comes at a certain price. To fully enjoy the option of always doing something unexpected requires short-term, or even the complete absence of, planning. Spontaneously jumping on something new, we inevitably cut some connections to our past, or present, and discard some future paths of action. Acting spontaneously will be easier the fewer engagements (work, friends, hobbies, families, etc) you have.

The point I want make here is that if we define openness and spontaniety as above, they actually seem pretty hard to combine. In a short and simple form: openness leads to and deepens relations, while spontaneity can establish but also weakens them. Another way of putting it is that openness means slowing down, whereas spontaneity is more about gaining speed. Both of these forces are of course positive. We need to strive for balance and find ways in which openness and spontaneity can enhance each other, but that’s another story…