World Changing Me / Evelina Star

What do you do now?
1. Working with marketing for a clothes company in Austria.
2. Doing things where I learn a lot and feel good. (Blogging, editing, moderating conferences, developing project ideas etc.)
3. Trying to figure out what my next big gig will be about.

Why do you do it?
Track 1 puts food on the table and it's been an ok way of starting to build a network in my new home country, Austria.
Because I like the themes and the people I work with on track 2. I learn a lot, and I'm being part of something greater than myself.
Number 3 is what I have to do. Track 1 and 2 are not bringing me where I want to go fast enough.

What are you hoping to learn?
Track 1 and 2 are neat and safe but are not what I'm looking for. Track 3 is where I need to be to develop and make a difference. But wait! Hoping to learn is vague. Hoping is not enough. Whatever track 3 is, there I want to - there I'm going to - learn more about leadership, taking risks, economy, sustainability, marketing, myself and things I had no idea I needed or wanted to learn.

After you learn it, what are you going to do with it?
- Take my abilities to lead and take initiatives to a new level
I can, initiate, start or develop an old or a new movement, non-profit or company. I can be a change agent in a big slow company, municipality or region, infecting one person after the other with the change virus. Or I can move into sales. Or something else.

- Address the UN
My dream is to address the UN with a speech. I want to use my new knowledge for being part of and leading something so important it's worth talking about in the UN.

- Run a pluming company in Harare... or not
Perhaps I'll end up doing research on sustainable fishing, running a pluming company in Harare or starting up Couch Surfing India - but more likely is that I will use my new knowledge to do something I haven't tried before.

What I'm not planning to do is to go to University, even less Business University.
Almost every day I feel that I should, that it would open new doors for me. But nobody has ever been able to satisfactory explain to me why I should go to University. I want to be scares. I don't want to do what people expect me to.

My biggest project so far in life started around the turn of the century. We were a group of youngsters starting to build a platform where we wanted to communicate our ideas to youngsters and adults around us.

The common nominator in the network is SIP - Samhällsförändring i praktiken - to make the world an even better place here and now.

We had no idea about what would meet us, we just built and built and I led. Now, almost ten years later the network of non-profits has turned bigger then we ever would have expected. Today the network includes organisations and themes like social entrepreneurship, social economics, education, gender equality and sexuality, regional and local development, digital bullying, employment strategies for youngsters, media, inclusion and integration and much more. The network organises thousands of Swedish youngsters, has a turnover of several million SEK every year and is listened to by authorities, companies, regions, municipalities, Non-profits and many more.

Our organisations have made change to pensioners wanting to get started using computers, girls wanting to produce movies, radio and web on their own terms, local politicians and administrators stuck in the status quo and scared by new youth movement, employees at the unemployment office not willing to meet youngsters with the respect and competence everybody deserves, librarians struggling with new digital media, to new Swedes from Iraq and Somalia, supporting them to meet a new society and a new language, young entrepreneurs and artists looking for ways to realise their ideas, young women wanting to start their first business and many more.

And what did I do? I listened, encouraged, built smart changeable structures, sought solutions, people and new possibilities.

I loved it. And I led.

You, reading this application means I got trough the Dip. It was a short dip and it was mostly fun and challenging. Never the less, the feelings of "Where would this lead anyway!?" and "Who am I to think Seth would chose me!?" were there. But I beat them and submitted with a smile.

I've recently discovered that I've been confusing two different Dips for almost a year now. Establishing myself in a new country has definitely been a Dip. The second Dip came along when I started to work at a company going through it's own Dip of starting up and establishing themselves. Throwing myself into the new challenge I made the mistake of thinking that the company's Dip was mine. [... (update 081215)] The company's Dip belongs to the company and my Austria Dip (which doesn't even feel like a Dip anymore) is what I need to work on.

The process of initiating and shaping The SIP Network was one big pattern of small and big dips. But it wasn't until I read The Dip that I realised what it actually had been; some periods where very tough, but most of all, we were a brilliant team and it was fun and rewarding to build the organisation bit by bit to what it is today.

Three of my greatest moments

- My baby Grrl Tech was awarded with the Anna Lindhs Memorial Foundation Development Scholarship for our work to encourage young women to use digital media on their own terms.
- Me and a friend of mine gave a speech to hundreds of people working for the Swedish unemployment agency about unemployed youngsters' situation in Sweden. By the end of our speech two chief executives were crying with hope (tears were literally dropping down their cheeks!). A magical moment of empowerment!
- I was asked to make a reflection about the development possibilities of a region in southern Sweden in front of a big group of politicians, private and public sector and non-profit people. I unintentionally ended up exposing the inefficiency of a university headmaster in the region. It wasn't until later that I realised I'd been playing with fire. I, however, still get appreciating comments for this speech. I'd said what everybody else had been thinking.

I consider myself an energetic and optimistic person, but I must say I don't believe much in wishes.

Wishing is a passive concept, too passive to make a difference. (Writing this my sister sends me her list of Christmas wishes...) With hard work you get things going, not by whishing. (See, she's working hard on persuading me to get her some snowboard stuff.)

But ok, I'll give it a try. It's really simple actually.

Seth, I wish you would choose me.

I think it's important that you know that I may be a good leader - but that I would be nothing without the tribe and the tribes that I myself am part of.

Thank you for reading this far and thank you to all of you who believe in me!

Having said that... I'm getting impatient.

I know this application is about me and what I have done. But all this talking and writing; I think, I like, I was, me me me... is making me impatient. Let's get started already!

The digital footprints I leave are in shapes of interviews, blog posts, movies, Skype and MSN conversations, project and organisation websites.

It's very important for me to focus my web activities to a few places where I find useful action. These places tend to come and go. My favourite places on Internet are right now my blog and Facebook, my favourite instant messaging tools are MSN and Skype.

I have hundreds of contacts online, perfect for reaching the right people with the right information. I use my online network every day for collecting ideas and information, talking to my friends in other parts of the world and working on project and ideas.

You have to find a place to stay that allows an easy commute to my office outside of NY.
OK, I'll start working on that when I get in :) Craiglist, Facebook, friends and some hard work - there are many possibilities of finding somewhere to live.

You have to speak perfect English.
Yes, I speak super duper English. I'm not a native speaker though. I used to spend a lot of time in England and that made me speak Queen's english. But since I moved to Austria I've started to speak English with a german accent. For a swedish person, english with a german accent is a no-go. My sister always laughs like crazy when I speak English, she says I sound like I'm making fun of the swedish queen. (She is of german origin.) And I would'nt want to do that...

You can't smoke.
Never in my foot. Believe it or not, I never even tried.

You have to be both nice and smart, with an impeccable list of references.
Yes, that's me.

I don't care a bit about how old you are or particularly what your business background is. I care a lot about what you've done and even better, how you've done it.
My resume and this lens gives you a good picture of what I do and what I've done earlier.

I came across a strategy for telling as many people as possible about Seth's alternative MBA program. Translated into my reality I'm not sure that strategy works very well. Because most people aren't up for this challenge.

What this tasks really means is that I should tell the right people.

So, that's what I'm working on. The right people are those who are information nodes, people in the World Changing Business and/or people who love trying new things. During the last couple of years that's exactly the network my friends and I have built up in Sweden. Time to get connected via E-Mail, Skype, Facebook, Xing, MSN, blogging...

Apart from getting the information across; there are two interesting challenges to this process. Firstly; almost everyone I've spoken to here, mainly in Sweden and Austria have no idea who Seth Godin is. My experience with marketing is that a person has to get the information from several trusted sources before he or she actually makes a move. This being the first time they hear about Seth's ideas makes the process slow.

This leads me to the second challenge; I'm telling the people a story of something I don't have a clue about. I speak passionately about the ideas of a man I've never met, never spoken to, never even seen live. Except for my liking for Seth's ideas, my energy and capabilities of inspiring other people the story is thin. If I were to become one of the selected few the situation would be quite different when I would come back and recruit people for next year's class or some other exciting project. Then I would be filled with personal references, experiences and thoughts about Seth's way of contributing to the world. I want to become that person!

People persuaded: 0
People told: ca 35
People inspired to read Seth's books: 2