pic from the geek girl wordpress meetup yesterday

I get asked a lot about my thoughts on “forced quotas on females in executive positions”(Lately by Alex from the rockin’ Scandinavian Startups).

If you want my short answer then I am against it, simply because of the word “forced” – and in my perspective it’s not just something that is forced upon the companies, but also something that is forced upon females and also (thanks to the perspective and genius of Allan Jenkins) it’s forced upon the men leaving the board.

I mean just the whole idea of a forced female is against my principles. I think we have been hunted around enough, and now also in the boardrooms -No more forced females please =)

However I DO think that the discussion is super important, because it brings awareness to a very beneficial possibility for companies – Having a lady on the board with other perspectives on the business. WOW – who wouldn’t like that ?

Im on two boards now – one of them is a regular boardmembership for Nohr-Con where I help them out with the digital part (adding a touch of curly hair and overall Henriette Weber-ness) And an advisory board membership at Niels Brocks iværksætterhus in Copenhagen. One thing is for sure – I love working in boards because it gives you a whole new aspect on things. It inspires me a lot -also for my everyday worklife (in Toothless Tiger.) Oh and if anyone wants someone on their board like me – bring it on. I would absolutely love it. =)

But who wants things to be forced ? I mean you already feel like you’re tied down into this room with men (mostly in suits) and you’re there because of you gender. I really hate that. I love taking initiative to things that improves internet literacy (especially amongst women – and no guys, it’s not to keep you out, it’s because I want my 6 year old daugther to think that having an internet startup or working with them is so much more COOLER than being a supermodel, a barbie or a rockstar (and free’er and all things more creative), and I think the best way to promote internet literacy amongst females and make it cool is to have them meet other cool females (one of the reasons I founded Geek Girl Meetup Copenhagen who had an excellent rockin WordPress meetup yesterday).

That’s the way Im promoting ladies, by creating geek girl meetups. See if it wasn’t only for ladies it would just be another meetup and I don’t pride myself of doing things the usual way=). Oh and everyone there yesterday at geek girl meetup- or who has attended any of the geek girl meetups would be a terrific addition to your board. Because they show that they take themselves so seriously that they would spend a day (or sometimes a whole weekend!) geeking around in wordpress or drupal or together with other ladies, getting  to know more about the internet and startups). Not your average geek – huh ?

I don’t think that anyone will give you an easy time if it’s a forced relationship. However I do believe that cool rockin companies will do anything in their power to have a female on the board. They would be stupid not to. It just sends the wrong signal these days you know ?

In my world it’s all about the brand and the involvement of your surroundings. Heck I even wrote a book about it. And if people can’t relate to your “10-men-in-suits board”, with all this transparency that companies are starting (finally) to embrace, you’re sending the wrong signal.

So get a lady to rock the board. As I see it, it’s the best way forward for your business.

Since I became self-employed and since Elmine’s birthday un-conference on work/life balance a couple of years ago, I have had the notion that I don’t really have a work/life balance and I don’t really want it.

I want to have a life and my work is a part of it. This morning (what seems like the 100th time this year) my daughter got sick again. I had to cancel my morning gym class, had to cancel meetings and take care of her. Normally I can get quite irritated because I have a schedule and plans for the day, and they all go straight up in the air because of a sick little girl. Today I felt different about it. Taking care of my kid is a part of my life. Napping with her while she’s feverish is something I am really happy to do. Singing for her and nursing her is something that is a huge part of me.

I feel truely blessed that I don’t have boss that I need to call up and tell that I can’t work today because she’s sick. I’ll just schedule around it, or maybe work some during the weekend.
I’ve had a  boss who was a ego-centric psycho. Seriously he was. Everytime my daughter was sick (which is quite a lot when she’s little) he would get me in the office and talk about my carrier. When he did it twice in a week I decided that I needed to do something else, because this wasn’t the way I wanted to do things.

He interfered with my LIFE, and the structure around my work made it impossible for me to be happy about my work. It seemed so separated from the rest of my life. There wasn’t really a passion, There wasn’t really anything that was really fun. It was work. It wasn’t something I did out of my own initiative it wasn’t something I created, it was something that needed to be done, because other people said so. So I worked. I worked so hard that there wasn’t anyone that could put a finger on anything and say “that wasn’t good enough, this needs to be better”. I excelled at it.

But it didn’t feel like a part of my life. They wouldn’t let it be a part of my life because life kept interfering with my work. I mean I EVEN told them considered having a second child – that was just really bad for productivity in the company.

But I think that’s my personal key to happiness at work. It has to be a part of my life process – if you can’t manage to make it so; Im not happy and I will do something else. So I did. My happiness lies in the now and knowing that in 10 mins when my daughter wakes up feverish, I can take care of it because I don’t have client work that can’t be postponed. I can sit and watch cartoons all day with her and be at ease with it. It’s not a big thing on a larger scale, it really isn’t.

I guess my point is, that happiness at work for me lies in being able to be at ease when life interferes. So If I where a boss I would facilitate that. Im pretty sure I would have happy employees, and I hope they’d appreciate that notion in me, because bosses like that rarely happens.

These days I think the internet is a true wonderland – more than it has been before. As well as we see former geeky communities has gone more mainstream, we are seeing so many people actually starting to make it into very profitable subscription based services. Two of my favorites these days are Morningcoach.com and myyogaonline.com and they are totally awesome worlds of self-development and Yoga/ Pilates.

It seems to me that entrepreneurs has gotten into the learning curve of the internet and they are starting to use it in ways that support their overall business idea..or even better – for their personal mission statement and passion. If I where a coach or a fitness company I would start to look in the general direction of the internet. The beauty of these services is that they are available when you are, and not the other way around.

That might seem like a small thing. But it’s a huge thing, because it’s so convenient for us (aka the clients) instead of the old way where they were supplied by businesses when it where convenient for them.

Another thing that I think is so fantastic is that it isn’t only people who basically sell software that are doing this – its people who’s in the yoga and personal development business as well

this breaks my heart. And it’s one of the reasons I got into marketing for the first place – im unacceptable of things like these – so nice going major brands. Im inparticular so disappointed to see IKEA on that list – a company I have used as casestudies in my talking and speaking because they actually look like they are doing good stuff. They where even on a panel at the nordic climate convention in copenhagen last year stating how much good they did for the environment. I guess not ?.

The sad sad part is that these companies will probably all use the same excuse for doing this and causing us all harm by global warming “it’s hard to manage your suppliers”. well for me – that’s not a good enough excuse. I have talked with companies where the ethics of the company was higher than anything else. Flying their goods around wasn’t an option to solve the logistic problem of getting parts of a product form a – z. These companies are so much smaller than ikea or nike – so they could probably make an effort and do it too.

Anyway the tigers has build something that are going to measure companies by their faults and their actions – basically how much of a difference they do to save the world.

it’s coming up shortly in closed beta and it’s gonna be called superhumanity – doing well by doing good. We have a lot of great people working on this concept which is still very much in the making. I’ll let you know when something happens on those parts – we are almost ready to rock n’ roll =)

I would totally provide bike transportation for flat/broken bikes. Maybe even repair the bikes on site.

Anyway it would save me a lot of worries and planning to actually take my bike (and my husbands) to the bikestore. In a busy day it takes a lot of planning and time to actually get the bikes repaired. Hey – I would pay for it =)

If I was in the fridge industry – I would create something like this: Britains oldest fridge. I love the idea behind the actions here, and it would actually help out the environment, give people new fridges and get a lot of PR and rockbandism.

Im busy now – I am off to call SMEG =), to see if they will hire me to facilitate a project as great as this for them =)

I am IM’ing with one of my old friends from marketing school. and he tells me about his job. Im shocked !

actually he works for a large company doing marketing of their products. well it turns out he is briebing the buyers from the next tier to choose their products over the competitioning products. they can’t afford to market themselves to end consumers.

so what do you do when your product don’t cut it ? when everything you are fighting against is competitors ?

I referred the man to hugh macleod – may he find peace in his marketing there *s*

of convincing a friend of mine who is CEO why his company should have a corporate blog.. he simply doesn’t see it… maybe this link – (blogging on business )