Annnnnd Blastoff!

The last two days have been action-packed. We launched the new bonnier.com into the loving arms of both the Swedish media (they liked it!) and our own staff (a couple of the old people bitched about the change, but whatever). I yawned wrong and threw out my back again, which proves I'm actually 87 years old. And I said goodbye to both Bonnier HQ and my little apartment in Stockholm.

My last day at the office was extremely touching and sweet—the information department took me out to lunch at a yummy Korean restaurant, and then I had a great discussion with Jonas about how my time in Sweden went. In the afternoon, there was a little reception with champagne, fresh-juice cocktails and tea sandwiches where everyone wished me well, and Niklas gave a poignant and hilarious goodbye speech in which he poked fun at me, himself, the Swedish language and our office culture, and I just barely avoided crying. They sent me off with a Swedish care package full of funny stuff like stinky fermented herring, a giant hockey jersey, Absoult vodka and a folk-art horse, and my friends at Bonnier Media University gave me a very stylish necklace as a going-away gift. I didn't expect such a warm farewell—it really was special. I don't know what I could do to thank everyone for giving me such an amazing experience in Sweden. I know I complained a bit during the rough winter months, but I'm very grateful for my time here, and—what do you know—now that it's light out again, I don't want to leave!

As for the Web site, the launch went off with only a minor hitch (we ran a script that broke something and took a few hours to fix), and is now in the talented hands of my job-rotation successor, Ganda Suthivarakom, who, I am convinced, is the ideal person to be in charge of the next phase. I'll continue to act as an admin of the social network, and probably will need to do some sit-downs in the coming months with different teams to show them how to use it for their individual business and editorial needs.

And the next thing I knew, it was the weekend. Last night I had another toast and a nice dinner with our partners on the Web project, River Cresco and the Drupal team, Chas. Today, I mostly chilled out and went to a naprapath to have my back treated. Ganda, Niklas and I went for a walk in the snow and ended the mellow afternoon with coffee at Niklas and Janeatte's house. (Apologies for probably misspelling her name.) I'm really going to miss my Swedish friends, and I haven't yet properly said goodbye to all of them. But I think I'll do a round of hugs and phone calls next Thursday, when I stop in Stockholm for one more day on the way back to the U.S.

For now, it's time to shift gears and get ready for the next installment of the Bonnier Publishing Program, which happens in Finland over the next three days. I am really excited about our business idea. If you'll remember from a bunch of posts back, part of the program consists of conceiving and pitching a new digial project, and I think the one my team has come up with is both creative and viable. This week, we'll dig a bit more into the revenue model and begin to turn our concept into a presentation.

The next order of business: What's to become of artificialswedener.com? Well, I think I'll keep posting periodically, at least until the Bonnier Publishing Program ends in May. Right now there are a lot of loose ends I'd like to tie up. For instance, what insights about the U.S. will I have upon re-entry, now that I'm coming from a Swedish perspective? What will it be like to tour San Francisco in April (the next BPP segment) with a bunch of Scandinavians? Will our business plan turn into a reality? Am I going home to a Mad Max-style, economic-crisis wasteland? Stay tuned to find out!