Transparency, Social Media and Cultural Patterns » personal

Living in Forest Gate, London

@collentine — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 17:09:43 +0000

East part of London. Messy, harsh, suburbian, worn down but very alive. It’s down to earth without the shallow facade that exists in the center. Living in a “tourist free” zone makes it more alive and real. The part of the city I enjoy being in.
Living in a house gives a freedom to your life. Big spacious areas without having to stay quiet after 11 because of neighbours. The “family” of people in the house keeps it from getting boring but one can’t always be social. Having personal space in your room where you can retreat is important.
Making it feel like a home is mainly done through putting up some of your things in rooms/kitchen. Another way is rearranging things, making you feel more comfortable. Repainting our living room with art was one way for me to make it feel more like “my house”. Once the inside feels good one can explore what exists outside of the four walls.
My walk to the train station takes me 5 minutes. I walk down our street and down to the central part of Forest Gate with all the shops bustling with life. The bus is only a few blocks away from the house but the trip downtown is much slower…
Last weekend I decided to walk around a little and explore the neighbourhood a bit closer. I started walking in the direction of the bus and kept walking down the street. A bunch of shops turned up along the street. I kept walking and the shops were still there. Suddenly a train station was on the right together with a large market. I kept walking and found West Ham stadium on the left. The shops were still there. After more than 20mins of walking I was still in an area bustling of life and energy.
This is one of the things that really suprised me. Living here two months without knowing about this giant shopping street just a few blocks from my house. This “centrum” felt larger than the centrum of Sweden’s 4th biggest city (Uppsala). London and Forest Gate keeps suprising me.

A Letter About Why I Want to Study Abroad

@collentine — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 19:51:48 +0000

Dear Sir or Madame,

the main reason I would like the opportunity to study abroad is that I would like to live in a different culture. A chance to live in a country with different routines, traditions and culture. This would benefit my future career since I would get another way of looking at the world.

I am a dual citizen with a Swedish mother and American father. I grew up speaking both English and Swedish at home with a mix of cultures in the household. When I was very young I lived in the USA for a year. I also spent 6 months there before going to University to “explore my roots”. The rest of the time I have lived mostly in Sweden (with a few months in Barcelona and a few in London). Since most my relatives live in the USA (even on my mom’s side) I have frequently gone there on visits. This upbringing has resulted in me being very eager to meet and explore new cultures. I love traveling around slowly and meeting local people in different countries.

I am a person who loves learning and constantly seeks new challenges. I have worked with TV, radio, as a bartender, salesman, referee, designer, technician etc. From these jobs I learned valuable skills but I probably learned just as much from traveling around to different countries and speaking to people that have a different cultural view on life than I have. This is another important reason I want to study abroad: to meet new people and discuss with them.

Once I am done with my education I hope to work with something on an international level. I currently focus my education on PR and Social Media but have previously studied pedagogy, social-anthropology, digital governments, entrepreneurship and a few other subjects that help me understand people and information in a better way. Hopefully I can find a job that entails communication across borders as this is what I wish to work with in the future.

Kindly,

Josef Ohlsson Collentine

—-
Twitter: @collentine

[pic: CC-BY-NC-SA, Stuck In Customs]

Busy, busy, busy life! Will write much more in a week

@collentine — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:43:43 +0000

As you might have noticed this blog has not been updated for some time now. Mainly due to vacation and right now due to me currently studying two courses for another week. It’s not easy to have time to write here when courses overlap and force you to study 200% as well as taking care of the introductions for the new students at the university.

The positive side that does come out from being under a lot of work is that your limits are tested and often you suprise yourself. Yeasterday I wrote two essays totaling 2000 words, never knew I was able to write that much in a single day earlier…

I have a lot of interesting topics and thoughts I would like to share with you so will write a lot more in the beginning of September when I have only one course to focus on in my education.

[pic: CC-BY-SA, Thetruthabout]

More About @collentine and What I Like

@collentine — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:26:21 +0000

Time for an update for my readers about what kind of person I am and a few things that matter to me. I use Twitter a lot and the lists that people have put me in there summarize me pretty good. What I have not yet been able to be listed as is a dual-citizen (Swedish and American) and my love for traveling and exploring cultural patterns and local parts. I am also very found of organizational learning as well as how to improve the pedagogy in various fields. Transparency and entrepreneurship are two other fields that highly interest me. Most of the rest of the areas I have a burning interest for I have been listed for in Twitter.

A few of my twitter-listings:
Netpolitics
Sweden
Overseas
Advertising-Marketing-PR
SM-Internet
PR-Students
Public Relations
Jonkoping
Communications-Expert
Art-Design-Media
Advertising Folks
PR of Sweden
Creative Marketing
Design
Knowledge
Educators Sweden
—–

If you need even more information about who I am: More about me

Reflections on Daily Updates and Deadlines

@collentine — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 02:48:53 +0000

As some may have noticed my blog gets updated a lot more right now. I’ve decided to post something daily in the blog for some time forward now. With daily I mean from when I wake up until I sleep and not the 24hr system most people refer to when they say daily.

The reason why I’m trying to post something daily is not to increase readers, there are a lot better ways to do that. The reasoning behind the constant updates is mainly to produce a lot of content (which hopefully maintains a high level later into this “experiment” as well). Producing a large amount of content is good for formulating thoughts into coherent and processed output in various fields. It is also good since I get used to a high production rate, this makes it very easy later on when I step down the tempo.

Having this deadline each day forces me to constantly think about the blog and also about what to write here. It is also good for later on when one needs to get more used by working against daily deadlines. If I get used to it now it won’t be stressful and bad later on. A deadline is also good for me since it forces me to reflect further and more coherent then I would do otherwise. I normally don’t like to write much and tend to focus more on cognitive aspects of information.

[apologise for grammar, logic and dullness in above post that have arised from writing this at 4.30am]

Some very good tracks collected in a playlist

@collentine — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 22:11:43 +0000

Sharing some of the tracks I enjoy:) Very easy to create your own playlists with this grooveshark app.

About Inspiration and Writing; a Fresh Start to the Blog

@collentine — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:32:53 +0000

When you’re not a writer by heart it is hard to keep up the writing, you miss a day or two and then suddenly it’s very hard to get started again and back into it. It’s now been more then a month since I wrote on this blog, but now I have a good plan on how to get back into it. But firstly I’ll explain why I have this blog and why I want to write on it.

There are several reasons this blog exists. One of the main reasons is to leave a ‘digital footprint‘ and help to build up my ‘personal brand’. This is becoming more and more important in our information age and it is important to control and effect how that personal brand is portrayed through the internet. The second reason for writing this blog is to dig a bit deeper into what I learn and thereby reach a higher understanding at the matter at hand. Writing your thoughts down and taking time to actively reflect on them greatly enhances your remembrance of the knowledge. A third reason is expanding my skill in writing which is a very important skill for me in my future line of work within PR and Marketing. Knowing how to write in a good, fluent and effective way is essential to a lot of work. The fourth and last reason I’m writing here is to share my knowledge and help to contribute to this information age.

So how will I get back into writing here on the blog to reach all my goals with it? First of all I’m going to start being more consistent (this helps since you always know you should write something here). I’m planning to update this blog six times each week, this may seem like a lot but maintaining a high frequency of posts will help me to not miss a few days and lose the writing again. This high consistency will be achieved through structure and keeping my inspiration high (Listening to interesting people, reading blogs, expanding my horizons, networking, starting conversations, books, traveling etc).

My structure for blog posts
Mon A review of important blogs, events that happened last week
Tue Free reflection
Wed Book disectomy, sharing some important thoughts from a book
Thu Free reflection
Fri MKV-PR/Marketing. An insight into my formal education.
Sat — [my day off]
Sun Inspiration

Plan for my Blog a Month Forward

@collentine — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:30:37 +0000

20 Tue About Inspiration and Writing; a Fresh Start to the Blog
21 Wed ‘Massmedier’-Massmedia with focus on Sweden (essential book parts)
22 Thu Dirty Rap Scholars, the logo and work behind it
23 Fri Method and Theory (life of a PR/Marketing student in MKV)
24 Sat -
25 Sun Get inspired and create! week 15
26 Mon My weekly media focus #mwmf week 15
27 Tue Some good music from my playlist
28 Wed ? (essential book parts)
29 Thu Stereotyping maintains status quo
30 Fri sista april = holiday in sweden, no blog post
01 Sat -
02 Sun Get inspired and create! week 16
03 Mon My weekly media focus #mwmf week 16
04 Tue Getting Started on Twitter
05 Wed ? (essential book parts)
06 Thu Macro-economics summarized, how knowledge is connected
07 Fri Method and Theory II (life of a PR/Marketing student in MKV)
08 Sat -
09 Sun Get inspired and create! week 17
10 Mon My weekly media focus #mwmf week 17
11 Tue CC and ‘Historiska’, a good example
12 Wed ? (essential book parts)
13 Thu Social Media Overload, when attention hits you hard!
14 Fri B-essay: Social Media and Organizational Learning (life of a PR/Marketing student in MKV)
15 Sat -
16 Sun Get inspired and create! week 18
17 Mon My weekly media focus #mwmf week 18
18 Tue ?
19 Wed ? (essential book parts)

reworking design and restructuring

@collentine — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:04:56 +0000

Apologize for the mess on my blog right now, on my way of re-working the design of it and also structuring up a much more active posting on the blog.

On the 20th I’ll start the blogging again with a high activity and posts almost every day.

Currently building up a small buffer of posts and outlining the structure of my blogging. Will rework the design of the blog over the weekend.

Out Traveling

@collentine — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:23:43 +0000

I’m currently out traveling so no updates for now. Will create some new posts when I get back on Sunday from my trip in Milano and Switzerland. Different cultures, different cultural patterns, always good for inspiration and knowledge traveling around.