Alumni party at Norwegian School of Management

September 16, 2006
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During almost a year, I’ve shared a lot about Norwegian and the Nordic countries, our culture, traditions and habits. Now I take the opportunity to tell you a bit about my academic life and carrier. This Friday I was invited to BI Norwegian School of Management’s Alumni 2006. Almost 1500 students from 1980 up until today who have completed their degrees at BI had signed in. We got the participant list two day in before hand and it was an interesting read. I was the only one from my class and some of them was actually from classes I have lectured. So I didn’t know many of the personally, but hey: that’s a great chance to making new business relationships and get to know new people. I do call myself a network evangelist you know:-)

BI – Building (all pics with my mobile phone – click to enlarge!)

BI moved in to their brand new building last year and it’s a great campus with an educational atmosphere, inviting you to share and collect knowledge of any kind. The vision of the BI is to become the leading research based business school in Europe with lifelong-learning as its fundamental idea. It is Norway’s third largest educational institution and the largest provider of education in economics, business administration and management in Europe. The School has a total of 18 700 students.

There where three sessions on the agenda, all taken place in the biggest auditorium with room for more than 600. The subjects were ‘Leadership’, ‘Job Mastering’ and ‘Self Leadership’. My favourite was a presentation in the last session: ‘How to take control in your life?’. Mainly because it was about coaching but also since the speaker was Morten Emil Berg, one of my teachers 26 years ago. Morten always said he was an eclectic existentialist and he hasn’t changed much:-) Actually we talked a bit before the start of the program and both agreed to that the world need an academic alternative for a coach education. He promised to work for a Master degree at BI and I promised to sign as the first student.

RennyBA lecturing (taken with my Nikon cam!)

Since I’m at it, maybe I also should tell you that I am a guest lecturer at BI for bachelor and master students. This semester my subject is eBusiness and Knowledge Management. BI says: We are the first and only business school in Norway to offer a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) taught entirely in English. The BBA will give you a solid first degree in international business with a distinct Scandinavian approach. Any of my readers want to sign up next year?

But an alumni gathering is more than academic subjects and presentation. It’s networking and partying. My experience is that seminars like this gives the most in meeting people between the speeches, so actually I like breaks the most. Since the service was excellent and the mingling area is an invitation to discuss and exchange thoughts and ideas, I had a smashing good time and met a bunch of interesting people. I had more than 20 business cards in my pocket and they are all gone.

Then it was time for the network evening and with a concert. I felt like home when I came into the Students House. It wasn’t the same building as in 1980, but the atmosphere was the same. A lot of memories were passing by from the best time of my life. Let the pictures speaks for themself: ‘Those where the days, my friend’:-)

Referral links: BI and BI Alumni

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