November 2011
1 post
New website
You can now find us at Therefinementclub.com.
MassRefinement 05 is Wednesday Nov. 2nd and you can read more about it here.
Hope to see you there!
Gro & Johannes
September 2011
2 posts
The Future of Books - Mass-Refinement v.04
It took us some time, but here are the results from our Mass-Refinement v.04 on books, hosted by Katachi Magazine! It was a great session and we could have discussed for ages. So we hope you want to join the discussion so it doesn’t have to end. The possibilities are endless and we want to hear what you want from the future book!
Take a look at the presentation on Slideshare: THE FUTURE OF...
5 tags
Mass-Refinement 04: Ebooks
Last Wednesday we arranged our fourth Mass-Refinement, hosted by Katachi Magazine, about the future of books and refining the ebook. The whole event was a blast and all the guests shared tons of interesting thoughts and ideas and together we all came up with some interesting insights, ideas and concepts. We are currently working on structuring and elaborating it all into a presentation worthy of...
August 2011
1 post
Mass-Refinement: it's happening Aug. 31st!
The Mass-Refinement that we had to postpone is happening on Wednesday, Aug. 31st at 18.00.
It’s still about the future of books and reading, and how digitalization is affecting how we consume the written word. Here are some thoughts we have on the subject to help you get in the mood!
Primetime vs. whitespace time - we save content to be read on e.g an iPad for primetime, and we consume...
June 2011
2 posts
Connecting Generations
There were some stellar ideas at our last Mass-Refinement about how to connect generations and how to facilitate the exchange of experience, skills and thoughts across generations. We gathered all the thoughts and ideas in these slides. Feel free to dive in and join the conversation.
What do you think? How would you connect generations?
Also remember that our next Mass-Refinement about...
(New date!) Mass-Refinement 04 - Ebooks
We now have a new date for this Mass-Refinement! Wednesday, August 31st!
We have been invited to arrange a Mass-Refinement (formerly known as Pitch Night) at Katachi Magazine.
The topic is ebooks. Katachi Magazine is in the process of releasing the first issue of their iPad magazine, but they’re already planning to start an ebook platform. We want to invite everyone who is interested, who...
May 2011
1 post
Mass-Refinement
As you know, we are having our third Pitch Night next week. But, since there’s not really any pitching going on, we have decided to start calling those sessions for Mass-Refinements!
The Refinement Club arose from an urge to create and share all our ideas. It started out as a creative workout, but gradually evolved to be more and more about sharing concepts and working to create a community...
April 2011
3 posts
The News Curator - How to become a well-rounded,...
We were so lucky as to have Anders Holm join us for our last refinement, and we talked about a subject we have discussed before: news. The three of us agree that even though we are good at keeping ourself updated on news that have to do with our work and interests, we are not so good at keeping up with what happens in the world outside of that realm. We want to, but it’s not always that...
Update
Hi peeps! We’ve been talking a lot about the future of The Refinement Club lately..
We’ve decided that we want to focus more on involving more people in our idea sessions and we’re planning to arrange Pitch Nights and workshops more often. This takes time to prepare, and we won’t be able to keep up with our previous tempo with new concepts every week.
Instead we want to...
Pitch Night v.03: The Brief
Hi guys, we’re preparing for our third Pitch Night which will be in May (date will follow soon). What we want to discuss this time is how we can include senior citizens more in our lives and learn from their experience and expertise. We’ve touched upon this before, in one of our first posts “Old People” and we believe there is potential here, so we want to work more with...
March 2011
2 posts
The Idea Cultivator – Mating Ideas At Work
In the business of work there is a lack of time, ideas and thoughts are seldomly shared outside of your team or your closest co-workers. And the bigger the company gets, the less everybody knows about what’s going on, what’s been made and what people think about. This is poison for innovation. Innovation thrives on diversity and sharing. And that’s what we want to refine; how can...
About Us
Hi peeps! Sorry we’ve been away, we’ve been swamped with work and moving etc etc.. A couple of weeks ago we presented The Refinement Club at Pecha Kucha vol. 17 in Oslo, and since then we have worked on a presentation in English that we can share with you guys. In this way we get to tell you about how we came to be, what we actually do and what we want to do in the future!
...
February 2011
7 posts
The Future of Online Dating (Pitch Night v.02 -...
Yes, there were some stellar results after last weeks Pitch Night / Mass Refinement and we have gathered most of the results and ideas in a keynote presented at Slideshare and embedded here. Feel free to dive in and experience the potential and possible the future of online dating.
View more presentations from TheRefinementClub
We just have to make a shout out to all the intelligent, creative...
Pitch Night v.02: What comes after online dating?
On Tuesday we arranged our second Pitch Night and the theme was “What comes after online dating”. It was a lot of fun. We started out with getting some input from two guys who work for a Norwegian online dating service called Sukker.no, who talked about online dating in general and provided us with some facts and figures. Then we took some time to ask questions and discuss before we...
The 80/20 School
Hi, as we mentioned last week we worked on the brief from No Right Brain Left Behind with Åsmund Gravem. What we came up with is something we call The 80/20 School, inspired by companies like Google.
NO RIGHT BRAIN LEFT BEHIND - THE 80/20 SCHOOL
View more presentations from TheRefinementClub.
The idea:
Leveraging the students’ own interests and allowing them to use the knowledge they...
No Right Brain Left Behind
Hi peeps! Today we’re working on an idea for No Right Brain Left Behind, and we’ll post the result when we submit (deadline is Feb. 14th). You should too!
Assignment brief
Our idea revolves around giving teachers and students tools that will help the students visualize the practical benefits of the different school subjects, that will help teachers make projects that encourage...
My Bookshelf
This week we met up with Åsmund Gravem and talked about lots of stuff including ebooks. We ended up refining the ebook experience and how to add som social features and making it more up to date. We have also tried out a new way to present our ideas. We are pretty satisfied with the slides we have made, but if you have some comments or suggestions on how to present our concepts feel free to write...
FF #3: Pitchroulette
For our third Feature Friday we introduce Helge Svendsen and his idea on how to facilitate cooperation and growth of ideas, regardless of physical proximity:
Great ideas are meant to be shared. That’s the only way they can grow and reach a level of complete awesomeness. But what do you do if you don’t have anyone around you at the moment to share your great idea with?
For instance, if you have a...
Pitch Night v.02: What comes after online dating?
We’ve set a date for Pitch Night v.02! It’s Tuesday Feb.15th, and will, like last time, be at CYAN studio in Oslo.
The topic is “What comes after online dating?” and we will be joined by people from Norwegian online dating service Sukker.no. They will start the discussion by talking about how they see the present and future of dating.
If you’d like to join us,...
January 2011
7 posts
The Food Calendar
This Christmas Gro discovered she might be gluten intolerant. That of course presents some new problems, and problems need to be solved. Writing down everything one eats seems like a smart thing to do in a situation like that, but it gets tedious pretty fast. A friend of ours is having great success with his new eating habits (We’re just gonna mention the book “The 4 hr body” and...
Augmented Art
Last weekend Johannes went to the National Art Museum in Oslo. Great art from lots of different artists, but it’s hard to know everything (or anything) about the artwork. This led Johannes’ girlfriend to end up using the iPhone to google the artists so she could learn more from the experience. So the idea of a tailored experience utilizing the artworks, smartphones and knowledge...
FF #2: Train better fitness
Martin Ødegaarden Henriksen is a friend, and a colleague (he works with Gro at Hyper Interaktiv), and he commutes everyday by train. His idea of how to combine train and training is the second to be featured on Feature Friday:
Being a copywriter, every now and than I get something I call “jackpot” – sentences. It can be described as a being textually satisfied, almost an orgasmic feeling, in a...
Pitch Night v.02
We’re planning to have Pitch Night v.02 in a few weeks, but we weren’t supposed to write about that today. But we ended up getting lost in a mockup app for iPad, making something that wasn’t all that great. So we chucked that post. Sorry about that.
So instead we’d like to hear what you think about the topic we have chosen for the next Pitch Night:
What’s the next...
FF #1: Let your friends help you decide
Casper is our kind of guy, he likes to share! Once again, he was the first to submit when we reached out and asked for ideas to spread. So he gets to kick off our new concept, Feature Friday, where we leave the sharing up to you guys! Today Casper presents an idea that he developed for Pricerunner together with his classmates from Digital Media 11 at Hyper Island; Sebastian Marenius, Stefan...
Feature Fridays
Hi! We enjoyed hosting the Advent Calendar so much we’ve decided to introduce a new concept that we call Feature Friday.
Feature Friday is for you guys to share your own ideas with The Refinement Club community, and we hope this is something that can encourage more interaction. We’d love for The Refinement Club to become a place of inspiration, where ideas can be shared and discussed...
Your Local Community Hub
Our city, Oslo, is made up smaller parts called “bydeler” - local communities. These local communities often have their own local newspapers that you get in the mail. They’re seldom very interesting. We thought about what we would like to know about our local environment, and how we’d like to get that information.
Surprise, surprise: we want everything and we want it...
December 2010
25 posts
This Year of Refinements
In the first year of The Refinement Club, 2010, we have posted 56 posts. Most of the posts are ideas and concepts, about 50. We think it’s swell! There are tons of great ideas to dig into and refine even further. If you got some spare time the rest of the holidays, here are some of our favorite ideas and concepts.
The Ultimate Workflow System was our second concept at The Refinement Club....
Dec 24th: Managing your web apps
Today it’s Christmas eve, and this is the end of our Advent Calendar. For this idea we were joined by Daniel Engebretsen who presented a problem and an idea.
Problem:
There are so many cool and useful web services out there, but it’s easy to forget that you have them.
Solution:
Some sort of dashboard widget for your computer, a toolbox, where you can collect these services. By...
Dec 23rd: Giving away the feature Facbook forgot
On the twenty third day of The Refinement Clubs Advent Calendar features Are Sundnes and Hyperinteraktiv and their really useful service Hyper Alerts. Go check it out!
Working in interactive marketing, it’s only natural that a lot of our work these days is somehow related to Facebook. Most our friends and clients administer a Facebook page, and a few of them have asked us whether there is some...
Dec 22nd: Wikipedia your friends
On the 22nd day of our Advent Calendar, Johannes presents an idea that opens up a whole new level of online humor. Enjoy!
In the old days when some one said or did something particularly humours, dumb, heroic or smart we sometimes replayed them with a phrase like this: “When you look up stupid in the encyclopedia there’s a picture of you.” Now encyclopedia is of course Wikipedia...
Dec 21st: Kontribit: Sharing reinvented
The 21st day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Mats André Kristiansen, Andreas Skaranger and Funkbit AS. with their cool concept about social curation. We have been alpha testing their site a little bit and are starting to dig their service. Make sure to opt in for a beta tester spot.
We’ve been thinking about something.
Social networks connect us in fascinating new ways. We all...
Dec 20th: To the point
The twentieth day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Theo Blackburn, Jonas Laberg, Ine Marie Vassøy and their genius idea about efficiency in everyday life.
We are truly blessed, for these days it’s not particularly hard to think of examples of stressful situations and time-gobbling, irritation-generating friction as we move around the city trying to get the Christmas...
Dec 19th: The friendly wargame
The nineteenth day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features an idea by Jonatan Filip and Christel Marie Blunck about a new kind of wargame.
There is a lot of violence in the world. Even though we know this is horrible, we tend to chill out in the sofa getting our mind off stress while playing videogames simulating wars with life realistic graphics. It you ask me, the only thing missing...
Dec 18th: Digital Receipts
The eighteenth day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features an idea from The Refinement Club about digital receipts.
This week Ingrid Lea, Torny Hesle and Thale Høy-Petersen presented their idea for a budget-app. Something that would make all budget apps noticeably better is access to more information. The fact that what we buy is registered, but we only get access to where and how much...
Dec 17th: i.favorized.it
The seventeenth day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Cas Lemmens’s Idea about collecting all your favorized links on one site. Great idea!
i.favorized.it When you forgot to mark where you marked it.
We bookmark links on Delicious, and share them on Twitter. We also digg them, and sometimes stumble upon them. We love videos on Vimeo, and add them to our favorites on...
Dec. 16th: Budget App
The sixteenth day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Ingrid Lea, Torny Hesle and Thale Høy-Petersen’s idea about budgeting and money spending. Enjoy!
Problem The replacement of debit cards instead of cash as the most common payment form has made it harder for users to control their own consumption. Unlike before, when you could clearily see your wallet shrink after...
Dec. 15th: Bathe for Water
It’s the fifteenth day of our Advent Calendar, and a Wednesday, so today we present The Refinement Club’s very own Gro Larsson’s idea about how to raise funds with your water consumption.
Bathtubs are pretty damn awesome, and on cold days I especially wish I had one. But I can’t help think of how much water you end up using if you have a bathtub. In Norway we have plenty of water, but...
Dec 14th: Power to the Consumer!
The fourteenth day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Doffen Trellevik’s idea on how to make the consumers even more powerful. Enjoy!
Problem: In 2010 it should be obvious that the consumer perception should be in the core of every consumer-driven company. But still consumers constantly experience bad service and unacceptable behavior from companies that fail to deliver what...
Dec 13th: www.diglitt.no
The thirteenth day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Hans Gerhard Meier’s bold idea on how to kickstart ebooks in norway. The idea is great and we couldn’t agree more in this matter. Check out his website, www.diglitt.no and become a fan on Facebook. But first read and enjoy Hans Gerhard’s idea:
Problem Tablets and e-readers have been around for a year or two,...
Dec 12th: Translating value on the go!
The twelfth day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Åsmund Gravem’s genius browser plugin idea. Enjoy!
My name is Åsmund Gravem and I am an Art Director from Westredals. I love technology, cool ideas and learning new stuff that i hope to use to save the world, so every day I browse articles on the web, and most of the time when i read articles containing currency, length...
Dec 11th: Time to give tv a break
The eleventh day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Rannveig Revhaug’s idea on how to personalize the ad break on TV.
TV is so 15yrs ago, I know. But still, it’s there, and it’s partly annoying. The main reason it bugs us is the massive bundle of stupid, untimely and useless ads in the middle of your favorite tv show - a great reason to download or watch series...
Dec. 10th: The (real) Fashion Forecast
On the tenth day of The Refinement Club’s Advent Calendar, we present the idea of our recurring guest Maja Folgerø and her team partner Felipe Montt. Their idea has great potential when it comes to making a lot of people’s mornings a lot easier. We like!
Problem: Hi Refinement Club, we are Felipe and Maja, and we’re not what you’d call “morning persons”. As we’re constantly looking...
Dec 9th: Complaining sucks!
The ninth day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Tim Oudenstad’s idea on how to appreciate living in Norway and realize how privileged we are.
I’m really sick of Norwegians complaining about… Well, almost everything. Also, I’m tired of the negative attitude many people have towards giving money to charity.
Idea: I’d like people to realize how privileged we are to be born in...
Dec 8th: Loot Deck - Making chores fun
It’s the eight day of our Advent Calendar, and a Wednesday, so here’s an idea from The Refinement Club’s very own Johannes Rummelhoff about making chores more rewarding to do.
Problem: I procrastinate. Fold clothes? It just got damn boring. Do the dishes? Come on! I’m doing it after I read this chapter. I promise. Wash the house? Really, I did it three weeks ago!...
Dec 7th: Bike away cars and pollution
The seventh day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Helge Svendsen’s idea on how to encourage people to use the bike even more.
Problem: It’s no secret that many cities has too many cars. Cars contribute to increased pollution and bad health (because of the lack of psychical movement due to excessive use of cars). The world’s governments have tried to decrease the...
Dec 6th: Curiosity - It’s a virtue!
The sixth day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar (Sorry about the delay, but yesterday Tumblr was down and we wasn’t able to post anything.) features Paul van Brunschot’s idea about curiosity.
The problem: Schools educate our children to be incurious. Children are supposed to memorize ”correct” answers and are not supposed to question them. Children are brought up to believe...
Dec 5th: Augmented decoration
The fifth day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Håkon Krogenæs. Enjoy his cool idea about augmented decoration.
My name is Håkon Krogenæs, and I’m in the process of buying my first apartment. Due to my financial situation it is going to be a small one. With almost minuscule flats it is essential to make the absolute most of every square centimeter, and when you are looking...
Dec 4th: Content - Creating and consuming
The fourth day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Didrik Sten. Check out his thoughts on paying for and consuming content in a digital world.
My idea, solves the problem of piracy. It also simplifies publishing content - and getting paid for it!
Imagine having a simple social network where everyone can post content of any sort (videos, games, blog posts, articles, etc.), and...
Dec 3rd: The Icebreaker Application
The third day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Martin Ødegaarden Henriksen aka Den Glade Pendler. Enjoy his funny and smart idea.
X-mas is a jolly good time. At least for people with jolly good lives. Sure, some think that their mother-in-law is a PITA (Pain in The Ass), but that`s forgotten when da freakin Christmas dinner is on da table and the helium-voiced boy choir sings...
Dec 2nd: Gifts from yesteryear at...
The second day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Anette K Hansen & Deidre Ritsche with their idea about upcycling. We love that they are actually doing this, so if you’re in Berlin on December 4th make sure to check out their Show & Sell event! If you’d like to support their concept, you can do so at the funding site Inkubato.
SemiDomesticated’s focus is...