What I shipped in 2010 – inspired by #sethgodin

Inspired by Seth Godin's blog post from December 30, in which he points out that it's a good exercise to sit down and look back on each year that passes and visualize to yourself what you managed to "ship" - that is, in Godin's terminology, what you managed to put into the world - including successes, failures and everything in between.

So without further ado, here are the things that springs to mind for me as the key stuff from my 2010:

  • Went to SXSW with Tone, which was a huge thing for a tiny label like mine (including fundraising the 45.000 kr. to finance visas, travel etc. in only a few weeks, which took quite a bit of creativity).
  • Got the Rooftop co-working space in Platform4 off the ground in collaboration with my colleague and great friend Kristian Ravn. Some of that went really well, other parts didn't. We'll be looking to finetune things for this year. Great experience accumulated.
  • Landed an agreement with a nice New York-based label to release Tone over there in 2011.
  • Organized and lead another European version of the awesome 8-bit phenomenon from New York, Blip Festival, this time under the name Blip Festival Scandinavia. Got some good media coverage from TV2-Nord (pre-mention and a bit longer piece), Gaffa and a bunch of other sources.
  • Thought out the idea of - and organized - the world's first Sail-In Cinema, which worked really well. National newspaper Politiken did a full-pager, which made me really proud.
  • Handed in my master thesis on distributed aesthetics! - and finished 6 years of studies, what a bliss.
  • Did a whole bunch of presentations across the the country (on CC, Urlyd, Platform4 and custom themes), and even a couple abroad (SAE Institute in Berlin, FSCONS-conference in Gothenburg, Sweden). I even battled IFPI Denmark-attorney Peter Schönning in a 1-to-1 session with audience back in August, that was fun.
    A fun contrast that amuses me when thinking back was in October, when I did a presentation in Ungdomshuset (anarchic youth venue) one day and one for Copenhagens Municipality Kreativt Forum (business leader forum) the next day (in front of the Chairman of Dansk Industri/Danish Industry Association and other high-end guys). I guess the sharing of experiences from my projects have somewhat broad applicability! 😉
  • Organized Atrap Electronic Music Festival with Kristian Ravn. Didn't pull in quite the amount of people I/we had hoped for. But still fun.
  • Got hired as so-called 'agent' for the CrossMedia Project under Aarhus Filmby, The Animation Workshop and Bretteville Hotspot. Quite an interested thing, looking forward to get it more off the ground in collaboration with the crew in '11.
  • Organized and hosted the two Creative Commons Salons in Copenhagen in May and November. Great fun, inspiring people.
  • Went roadtripping and hiking in Iceland with my girlfriend! (which is really not something to be considered 'shipped', but it was an undisputed highlight of my 2010).
  • Released the long awaited Kiloton electronic dub/glitch album 'Language Lost' (vinyl and dvd) on Urlyd - with fine release events in both Copenhagen and Aalborg + some nice television coverage. I hasn't sold a ton of copies, but that was somewhat expected. I guess Denmark isn't quite ready 😉
  • Got interviewed a couple of times in national radio DR P1 and P4 (to be heard here and here).
  • Got hired as an academic supervisor at Aalborg University, of which I feel honored. I was actually also offered to teach, but couldn't really muscle it into my mind, so I decided to pass. Maybe it was a bad opportunity to let down.
  • Succesfully handed of Labelkollektiv Distribution to new owners (actually, the transfer wasn't until January 21, 2011, but the effort to set it up took place in Sept-Dec last year). This is huge accomplishment for me, as I am terrible at lettings projects go. This is something I will force myself to do more!
  • And most significantly: I've managed to support myself as an independent bootstrapper, doing what I love. It's a privilege that I think about almost every day. I really hope I can continue doing this in '11 and beyond!

So what's in store for 2011? I am incredibly excited about curating content in Platform4 for the 1,5 mio. kroners that we've received from The Danish Art Council; workshops, tinkering, hacking, community building. Also, we'll be releasing Tone in Europe and the US in the fall - and, with a little luck, also put out 1-2 more albums by other Urlyd artists in Denmark. I'm planning to finish my two book projects (one of diy-ethics for creators and one of business models for free culture), and it's also going to be an interesting year for CC here in Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia. Last, but not least, I have some great ideas for other, totally different initiatives which I am hoping to be able to initiate. More on that later.

In the end, the blog post I will be doing on this topic a year from now will probably include a whole lot of stuff that I never expected would pop up, and that prediction is probably what excites me the most about what lies ahead. I am ready and set!

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