Networking at Hole Artcenter in Norway

May 31, 2007
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My regular readers know me as a network evangelist. One of my working tools, LinkedIn where I have more than 500 connections, gives me accesses to millions of people throughout the whole world. Networking is basted on mutual trust and a givers gain. The more you invest, show interest and care about others, the more you get back. It’s impossible to meet all those people all the time, but you can meet some of them some times. Therefore I’m also a co-fonder of LinkeInNorway. We meet at least four times a year and this time I’ll take you with to a very inspirational workshop. I trust that pictures says more than a thousand words, so I base my minute on what I captured with my Nokia mobile phone (click the pics to enlarge):


Taking notes on the table cloth:-)

I’ll get back to that picture, but let’s start with Hole Artcenter itself. I let our host and the owner, Åsmund Bergwitz, introduce you: ’Hole Artcenter is build on a personal and passionate relation to art, design and architecture. We wish to develop a modern inspiration-centre in the style of Louisiana in Denmark. In addition to the gallery, we organize workshops, conferences, concerts and events. The environment at the Artcenter makes it a unique experience.’ I can assure you that it lives up to its goal and more! Let me give you a glimpse of what Åsmund showed us on a guided tour:


Åsmund showing around in the Arcenter

In that environment, a good friend of mine: Paal Leveraas, a coach and journalist, started with a very good presentation on how to how to make a good profile on LinkedIn. Then we had this inspirational workshop and that’s when the first picture in this post comes in. We where discussing in groups and was writing on the table cloth! Actually the workshop was organized in a very interesting way – what they call ‘a world café’; there was one group exercise on each table and we toured around with new people all the time to discuss the subjects. I’ll recommend that kind of work shop organisation to everyone so ask me if you want more details! After an hour there was time for summarising and here you see the conclusions on one of the tables (randomly picked of course:-)

After the workshop we were invited upstairs in the restaurant which ad the most wonderful panorama view to the valley and its beautiful lake (Tyrifjorden, one of the biggest in Norway!). You can read more about Hole by clicking here! The municipality (originally the parish) is named after the old farm Hole (Norse Hólar), since the first church was built here. The name is the plural form of hóll m ’round (and isolated) hill’. The owner and host was the chef too of course (he together with is wife Elenor Martinsen is multitalented you know!) and made this wonderful soup or more like a stew:

The food is excellent too!

If you still wonder about the outcome of the meeting – to make it short: the best LinkedInNorway meeting ever:-) and if you like a proof, click here for my LinkedIn profile. I would be delighted to receive a request for connection from you!

Update:
My colleague and best networker friend Edgar (was at this meeting of course!), have a great post: ‘Why don’t we teach Networking in universities?’ Click and read it!

Habits, Travel Norway