During the summer of 2008, I started a translation agency together with my girlfriend Sara. The idea of this initiative stem from my time as a researcher at Visit Aalborg's Meeting Planner department. Working within the field of business tourism and tourism in general, I discovered how unsuccessful the international communication within the local and regional community can be (and often is), so I decided to do something about it instead of just pointing fingers.
Beg Your Pardon? has evolved into more than just a translation agency and we now also - besides translating English and Danish texts - proofread, quality assure and develop websites for small and medium businesses. I really like the idea of Beg Your Pardon? being something I define myself - together with Sara, of course - and in the future I would be able to draw upon my academic profile in the expansion of the Beg Your Pardon? business profile.
It's been well under way for some time, and in January 2010 I founded Kollaboratoriet (in English: Collaboratory) together with Mia Bisgaard and Tolborg, with whom I have had the pleasure of studying with at the Information Architecture programme at Aalborg University. We are currently working with a bunch of local clients of different web design projects alongside working on our Master thesis.
Kollaboratoriet works from a philosophy of bringing in as many people as possible in the design process to optimise the outcome. We have a great experience in initiating workshop and group interviews, and will continue having this as a core element in the many future projects. If you need anything done online, please visit kollaboratoriet.dk and get in touch!
During the summer of 2009, my good friend Anders Tolborg and I developed a site called What's Aalborg? The site provides information about events and stuff to do in Aalborg. Mainly targeted towards the international students at the university, we maintain calendar, blog and lots of static information that guide interested people in the right direction.
What's Aalborg? is sort of a constant work in progress and we'll keep developing as time goes by, but our main focus is to provide an quick and easy overview of happenings in Aalborg. So far, we are recruiting a small team of editors to help us maintain the information level and update the calendar.
Working very project-oriented together with Anders was a great experience and I believe we both gained some practical knowledge, especially from working with Drupal.
Copyblokking is a blog a co-write together with my long-time friend Mark Jensen. In the beginning of 2008, we started sharing links, pictures and what else by copying and writing a bit about what everybody else produce. Pure copying. Pure niceness.
Labelkollektiv Distribution is a part of the Aalborg-based Labelkollektiv, and does not only distribute music of the labels connected to Labelkollektiv, but also supply Danish and world-wide record stores with a great part of the Danish and international underground scene, mainly within alternative and electronic genres. The man behind all of this is the always active entrepreneur Christian Villum and his ideas of creating an awareness of the non-mainstream and sometimes crooked genres imbue the entire organisation. I'm really fond being a part of a project where there doesn't seem to be any creative boundaries as long as the idea is with the best intensions.
Since August 2007, I have been in charge of coordinating Aalborg University's International Office Buddy Network. This network gather local university students and provide all international students coming to Aalborg University with a buddy. It is indeed a buddy network in every sense of the words, since we like to stress the informal and friendly atmosphere of the network and not just provide the international students with an academic tutor.
Every year, more than an 1,000 international students choose to study abroad at Aalborg University, which surely underlines the need for locals providing guidance and help when all these young people meet the Danish culture, probably for the first time in their life.
