Missing New York

Picture taken by my dear friend Maria on our long weekend in NY.

Traveling with kids

Flying overseas with kids means:
-Toasting the vacation with mineral water in plastic cups at the airport.
-Carrying a unicorn, a seal, a purple back pack and a pink school bag besides from my own hand luggage.
-Finding the best smoothie at Heathrow.
-Pouting when the entertainment system omboard needs to be restarted.
-Laughing out loud when the plane takes off.
-Trying to peak in news papers while making a rime on cow.
-Explaining why everything has to be x-rayed and therefore explaining terrorism.
-Holding sweet, warm hands.

And while in New York:
-Looking for "broken" buildings - because it´s exciting.
-Having pasta picnic-dinner at the hotel room.
-Waking up jet legged at 4 AM to the sound of cartoons.
-Spending hours at FAO Schwarz.
-Watching sea lions at the zoo in Central Park.
-Teaching sweet girls how to shop :)
-At one point holding hands with your husband.

Circles of News

Now, as I'm about to wrap up my fellowship at PodTech (thank you all great members of the PodTech Family!!), I've had some time to think about the circles of news. It's interesting to see how the principle of nearness still is of great importance - in this world of online video, webb 2.0 and wireless globalisation. In Silicon Valley, tech-news make the biggest headlines and attracts a great number of bloggers. Why? Because they're close to the tech-companies and labs. They can have lunch together with the people/companies they cover, hang out - meet in natural circumstances and have common references to traffic, the weather and a cool new restaurant.
It's also natural that The New York Times has a good take on international politics. They're only a few blocks away from the UN and several great universities.
I find it interesting to see how easy it is to get absorbed by one circle - when you thought that you belonged to another. In the morning I find myself fighting over the biz & tech-section of San Jose Mercury News (I know I'm old-fashioned but I like to read on paper...) just because I recognize the companies and have another relationship to them after some time here.
Personal relations will always play an important role - both to producers and consumers of media. And for me personally, I'll keep looking out for news from Silicon Valley while back in Stockholm...

New York, New York

Sitting in the JFK airport about to leave for SF, feeling absolutly uplifted after having spent three days here. I dont think I´ll ever get over my love to New York. It´s something with the energy in the city, the fact that people and events are simply so much - well - more. People are more creative, smarter, richer, crazier, more excentric, bigger, smaller, more passionate etc than any where else. I could watch New Yorkers for ever - the chic women, the arty girls, the business people in power suits, the dogs... I know its dirty and ugly but I even love the smells and the noice and I actually think it is beautiful.

I was here on a study trip with my fellow Stanfordians. We have visited magazines Spectrum and Fortune as well as Bloomberg. It was really interesting. What strikes me is the fact that few of the bigger magazines have any strategies for new media and their future online life (something I also noticed last summer when I visited Vanity Fair and New York Times Magazine among others). "If I knew that I wouldn´t be working here," was the answer from the editor of Fortune International...
On the other hand, I liked the fact that she stressed the storytelling part - that her magazine is about telling strong stories - and that she revieled that she sometimes uses her intuition in combinaion with observations of people when she tracks down a trend. I do the same when working with Tendens, a series of articles on trends, in Stockholm for TT Spektra.
Bloomberg was felt like something type-casted from the future of media. No walls only transparent glass. Busy, busy. Hi-tech. However they dont really have a strategy for innovation coverage...

On a personal level I got to have lunch with my dear friend Paul (who is one of few native New Yorkers and who knows how to play the saxophone) and to go to dinner and barhopping with his lovely girlfriend Giselle (I felt like 21 when standing on a roof top bar with a cosmopolitan and NY the skyline in front of me...). I also got to do some shopping (strong colours coming now), some strolling, have a great dinner at NY hang out Indochine with the fellows and a group of NY-based journalists, spend the night at my hard working reporter-friend Gunilla's house in Harlem and to go to mysore yoga at a beautiful studio called Yoga Sutra. Today I´ve interviewed a great Swedish designer called Lotta Jansdotter. Visiting her studio in Brooklyn was inspiring and made me think of the importance of having beauty and esthetics in the objects we use in our everyday life.