I had two exciting events today: I’ve been invited to join Bergen Chamber of Commerce’s resource group for ICT, and was at my first meeting this afternoon. The vibrant discussions and let’s do this spirit made me realise how much I’ve missed participating in groups outside of academia, now that last year’s monthly meetings in the Digitutvalg are over. And our discussions from the Digitutvalg and our report on hindrances for innovation in Norwegian IT mean I actually know a lot about things like public procurement processes (offentlige anbud) and the challenges they pose to innovation. If you’d asked me two years ago whether I was interested in that I’d have looked at you in perturbment, but I had great fun discussing it today. I’m the first representative for higher education and the public sector in the group too, and I’m excited to be building more bridges between the local IT industry and academia.

Then earlier today, I visited Nordahl Grieg high school to give a talk and a workshop, and had such fun.

I’ve been hearing about this school for a while: it’s the newest school in town, with fabulous architecture and wonderful ideas about digital and innovative education. And a couple of my friends work there, too, and I’ve heard about UiB’s collaboration with the school, especially in the sciences. The media students ran around taking photos, tweeting and blogging of course, so here I am, documented while talking about power in social media.

I was on a panel with Lars Nyre, who talked about technological determinism, and Knut Olav Åmås, the culture and debate editor at Aftenposten, who spoke about participating in public, online debate. My talk was about power in social media, and of course the students blogged it. Very inspiring.

Afterwards I gave a workshop for 25 or 30 students – we visualised our Facebook networks of course. It was interesting teaching high school students for a change, and I must say I would have liked to get to stick around for longer to get to know them better. Maybe I’ll get the chance to return.