Swedish Bay Area Achievement Award for InJo Fellowships

Very honoring, indeed! I was awarded the Swedish Bay Area Achievment Award for Most Beneficial Exchange. The Innovation Journalism Fellowships have been going on for several years and have led to improved networks between journalists in Silicon Valley and in Sweden and other countries with InJo Fellowships. So I wish to share the honor of this award with all Swedish InJo Fellows!

The Press release is here below:

Contact: Maria Larsson                                                                      FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Email: maria.larsson(at-sign)sacc-sf.org

The Swedish Bay Area Achievement Awards are successfully concluded for this year

On October 22nd, more than 160 Bay Area cultural personalities, businessmen and –women celebrated the winners of the Swedish Bay Area Achievement Awards. The winners were 

• the Swedish-American Library and Archives Committee (Cultural Enrichment), 
• David Nordfors (Most Beneficial Exchange), 
• and Mimi the Sardine (Business Achievement).

The gala is an event set to take place every year, celebrating and awarding the people furthering Swedish culture and business in the Bay Area. The idea is to build on our solid history as inventors, innovators and pioneers, paying homage to our brilliant forebears, i.e., the inventor of the dynamite, the innovator of the modern zipper and cultural pioneers like Jenny Lind and Greta Garbo.

The first winner was The Swedish-American Library and Archives Committee, a dedicated group of people preserving the Swedish heritage by archiving books, memorabilia, photographs as well as historic Swedish newspaper Vestkusten in their offices at the Swedish-American Hall. They were represented by Susan Bianucci who thanked the jury and spoke of their upcoming plans of the upcoming plans to go completely digital. The group was awarded the prize for being the most original contribution and for “their innovative spirit that helps keep our past as a part of our present” as presenter Mark Johnson of San Francisco State University put it.

The second winner, awarded for his work in innovation journalism at Stanford University as well as in Sweden was David Nordfors. A tireless traveler and promoter of Sweden, David Nordfors was handed his award “for being particularly successful within both the academic and the business world” and the jury particularly picked him for his efforts to continually improve the bonds between both countries and commerce between them. Said Mr. Nordfors, “Thank you so much for this, this award was totally unexpected!”

Mimi the Sardine, the recipient of the third award, for success in business, expressed the same kind of enthusiasm for the honor. “This is immensely meaningful for me personally. This is the result of the creative power of the Fika-rast”. Pia Andersson and her team stood out among the stiff competition in the award category for Business Achievement. The motivation for the winner emphasized innovative thinking, display of corporate social responsibility, business savvy and creative playfulness, all the while walking their own path in creating children’s eating accessories.

The Award recipients were selected by a distinguished Panel of Judges:

• Pär Arvidsson, Founder and Managing Director at Snowshoe Capital and Olympic Gold Medalist 
• Katarina Bonde, Managing Director at Kubicorp 
• Mark Friedler, Consultant, Entrepreneur and Speaker Netanel Jacobsson, CEO and Founder of PlayHopper (former Director of Intl Business Development at Facebook)
• Mark Johnson, Professor of Art and Gallery Director at San Francisco State University
• Barbro Osher, Consul General of Sweden in San Francisco 
• Rikard Steiber, Global Ads Marketing Director at Google 
• Jan Uddenfeldt, Senior VP and Senior Technology Advisor to Ericsson’s CEO 
• Nils Welin, CEO of Cypress Security and Chairman of the Board for SACC-SF/SV

The award dinner was held at the crimson halls of the Regency Center’s Lodge Level in San Francisco, with guests enjoying wine provided exclusively by vineyard Malbec & Malbec Cellars, exquisite food by caterer Chef Pelle to the sweet tunes of world-renowned singer Jan Johansen. Highlights of the evening included a dance performance by Katja Björner and Garen Price Scribner (appeared courtesy of SF Ballet, Helgi Tomasson, Artistic Director), choreographed by Yuri Zhukov, an hors d'oeuvres cook-off between Ola Fendert (Oola Restaurant) and Thomas Weibull (Swell) and an energizing speech by Dan Parisi, Executive Vice President of BTS Group in San Francisco, who in a humorously way assured the audience of his Swedish street credentials.

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For more information about the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce-SF/SV visit www.sacc-sf.org For questions regarding this press release please contact Maria Larsson.  415 781 4188 email maria.larsson(at-sign)sacc-sf.org  

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PS. The list of judges is inserted from a previous release /D

Kirsten Mogensen: Finding New Journalism Research Directions at Stanford

Prof Kirsten Mogensen at Rosilde University found a new direction in journalism research as a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center for Innovation and Communication, the home of the Innovation Journalism Fellowship Program. Kirsten was a journalist for many years, her story has a very nice flow - click on the video to see her tell her story.

During her stay at Stanford, Kirsten performed a series of interviews with innovation journalists in Silicon Valley. Says Kirsten: "I thought they shared some norms and values, but I soon realized that journalists in a networked based society like Silicon Valley are as innovative as their environment, also when it comes to ethical questions. That was a surprise. Nobody had written about that before. So now I know what to investigate for the years to come."