Different stuff...

We had a great vacation with the kids in October. We stayed in Copenhagen and enjoyed the new apartment. Marie and Frederik just loves their new rooms. We did some different activities e.g. Ghosttour in Copenhagen (that's a walk in the old part of town – with a story-telling guide), went to the Theater to see ‘Ronja Røverdatter’ and we went to ‘Glyptoteket’ with sketching paper and drew some of the statues. Well the main focus was to just enjoying being together.

‘Lille pjevsen’ is not sitting in the right position – so tomorrow we’re going to ‘Rigshospitalet’ where the doctors will try to turn him. We hope everything will be ok after that – so it can be a natural birth. Should it be a section we're ok with that as well. At this point we're just looking forward to having the birth well over – and meeting our little beaty. We have been looking at names – but that a secret so far. Well we're down to approx. 20 boys and girls names – so we're not quite there yet.

MBA TMO Alumni Seminar #2

On the 10th and 11th of November we held the 2nd annual MBA TMO1 Alumni seminar. This year the theme was ‘New Organization forms’. We had guest speakers from DR and Devoteam talking about loose coupled organizations. Then we had some from the team talking about Blue Ocean Strategy and Scrum development model,
It was so great seeing the guys from the MBA class again. 26 out of 28 participated – which is just unbelievable 2 years after graduation.
My contribution to the seminar was being responsible for a ‘playing’ session before dinner. I brought 4 canvases, brushes and paint. The group was divided in 4 teams who had to paint some of the highlights from our 2 years at the Copenhagen Business School. The painting turned out to be really good – and they were all given to our ‘old’ programme leader – Peter Karnøe who were guest speaker on day 2.There were a fantastic energy and atmosphere – and i’m looking forward to seeing them all again at our spring meeting in April.

Harvard Business School

It seems like I got a little carried away when telling about the NewYork trip – so I’ll try to keep the following ‘posts’ a little shorter. My expectation about going to Harvard was just sky-high – HBS is the best business school in the world. The course I participated in was titled ‘Negotiation and competitive decision making’ – my classmates were from all over the world f.ex. I was sitting next to the Nigerian president to be the whole week. It was a great learning experience – the professors, the campus, the classmates, Boston. I learned my first lessons 15 min. after the first class started, when I lost 110$ in a bet to the Programme Director in front of the whole class. Well 110$ is really not that expensive for making a strong appearance – well at least all of the 75 classmates knew who René Balle from Copenhagen was from day one. Actually I made a deal with the Professor: I didn’t have to pay him as long as I spent the money on drinks for the Class down at Harvard square…and within the next couple of days I brought him receipts covering way more than the 110$.

New York, New York

WHAT A CITY! Annemette and I went there on the 28th of September – and no planning was done before we went….NONE! So at the airport we bought a travellers guide and the trip started. After some stressful weeks at work for both of us it was just great to sit down in the plane-seat and just totally relax. On the flight we saw the beautiful Greenland from above – a really spectacular view.
Well landing in Newark airport, New Jersey – Thursday afternoon it was the end of relaxing and the beginning of an exciting 4 days of high paced adventures in the BIG APPLE.
We agreed that we wanted to get a feeling of the energy and vibes of New York rather than spending our time in museums – so MOMA and Guggenheim, sorry perhaps next time.
So what did we do? Well staying on 32nd between Broadway and 5th Avenue – 10 min. walk from Times Square….we just had to go see a Broadway show (actually I don’t like musicals…but I got carried away). We went to see ‘The Producers’ and from what I heard from Annemette it was a really great show – unfortunately I fell asleep.
During the days we spent a lot of time just walking around 5th avenue shopping and going to lower Manhattan with Greenage Village etc. By coincidence we passed Ground Zero – which turned out to be quite a strong experience. There were a photo exhibition there – and some of the faces captured from 9/11 really told a story more powerful than I have seen it in any news on tv.
We went for a baseball game in the Bronx – the New York Yankees vs. Toronto Blue Jays. That is just one weird game – in the 3½ hours that they played (including approx. 1000 breaks) – I didn’t come any closer to understanding the rules of the game. But it was a really funny event!
Sunday morning we went to a church in Harlem – participating in a Baptist service. It lasted almost as long as the baseball game. But it was a very intense experience – the church was very involved in the local community and the preacher spoke not only about the bible but also about healthy food habits. Well all that talk about food made us hungry and we went for a good brunch in Harlem before heading back. On the way back we went for at long walk in Central Park – it was so beautiful with the red, yellow and brown autumn colours.
Well we experienced more than I can even come close to describing here – but Sunday evening ended with a boat trip to Staten Island and back - passing Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty on the way. Just sitting there in the dark cold October evening at the upper deck of the ferry with my beautiful girl and with the Brooklyn bridge and the Manhattan skyline surrounding us – that was just one of these rare perfect moments….Monday morning the trip ended. I went to Boston and Annemette went back to Copenhagen. Thanks for at fantastic trip, A.