Still here. Still curious. More relevant than ever.

It started with making things

In 1993, I was handcrafting HTML and helping people find their way onto the web through Mackmeckarna in Malmö. We ran some of Sweden’s earliest web education, learning alongside librarians, architects and archaeologists. Each new website could give us a different idea of what this thing might become.

At Aftonbladet in the early web years, I worked with a small team to turn the paper’s text-TV news into an automatically updated web news flow.

For the 1994 Swedish election, my colleagues and I helped newspapers get connected to receive results by email. Much of my own work was at Aftonbladet, receiving and processing those results. Once people had the tools, they started finding other uses for them. I still recognise that moment today: someone tries a thing, sees what it makes possible, and begins asking a bigger question.

The world got bigger

That curiosity took me through Helsingborgs Dagblad, into running Mindpark, and later into public service as Helsingborg’s Head of Internet. It also took me around the world: speaking, teaching, advising and working alongside people in very different organisations.

Over the years, I’ve worked with companies including Google, Lufthansa, Volvo Group and Atlas Copco, as well as founders, smaller teams and public institutions. The setting changes, and so does what people need from me. Sometimes it’s a question that opens up a room. Sometimes it’s staying with a team long enough for a new way of working to take hold.

The CEO whisperer

Some people call me a CEO whisperer. I like that description. A leader needs somewhere to think aloud, ask the unfinished question and have an assumption challenged. I bring experience, curiosity and a willingness to say what I see. We work out what matters and what to do about it.

Those conversations are most useful when I also spend time with the people expected to make change happen. I want to know what their work looks like, what helps and what gets in the way. What I learn with them belongs back in the leadership conversation. Strategy, implementation and adoption need to keep talking to each other.

Big change, many small moves

This is where much of my work lives today. We take something people actually need to do and try a different way of doing it. A colleague finds a useful application for AI, shares it, and someone else takes it further. We make time to practise, compare experiences and adjust. Small changes can travel a long way when people help each other.

Leadership matters here: giving direction, making room for experiments, removing obstacles and noticing what deserves to grow. I call my approach Guided Emergence, drawing on Henry Mintzberg’s thinking about how strategy is crafted through experience. We need enough direction to move together and enough openness to learn something we didn’t plan for.

That is why I work with sustained learning journeys, hands-on workshops and the everyday questions that follow them. I want people to leave more able to act, with the confidence and support to keep going. Their next attempt is part of the work too.

There’s a person in all of this

Family, equal human worth and the world younger people inherit matter deeply to me. So do play, generosity and a good conversation. I want technology to give more people the chance to understand, create and contribute. That matters in a global company, and it matters when one person discovers they can do something they thought was beyond them.

And I’m still making things

These days, AI lets me turn more of that curiosity into things people can use. I build tools, open up archives and explore ideas in public. Much of my work happens inside client organisations; what you see on this site is a selection. Building keeps me close to the possibilities, the awkward details and the surprises.

Back in 1993, I made websites by writing HTML by hand. This one has grown through conversation with AI. After all these years, I can still sit here and be amazed by what we can do.

I have never worked as much as I do today, and I have never had this much fun. What a time to be alive.

In The next 5,000 days of the web, Kevin Kelly looked at the abundance the web had brought us and observed that it “is amazing, and we're not amazed.”

I hate to argue with Master Kevin Kelly but he was wrong. I am amazed.