Greetings from the Finn Gold Cup in Copenhagen,

Sailing has always been a great joy of mine, so when Olympic competitor and dear friend, Jonas “Hawkeye” Hoegh-Christensen told me that he would be racing in this year’s Finn Gold cup, I jumped at the chance to stay with him and watch the races.

For those who don’t know, the Finn Gold Cup is Europe’s premier sailing event attracting almost 100  from 30 different countries for this year’s event. Hawkeye is a local fan favorite, having grew up in Copenhagen, where the event is being held.
Jonas asked if I could help him with some last minute prep on the boat and help with moral support as I did during his great Olympic run in Beijing in 2008.

After a good day of racing, we met up with another good friend, Thomas Baekdal, for a pint and some laughs. Thomas also lives in Denmark and writes a great online magazine, Baekdal.com. Thomas frequently sends me a story idea that sparks a whole line of thinking and a flurry of emails between the two of us. The latest one involved his phrase ‘Social News’.

In Thomas’ article ‘What the heck is Social News’, he boiled his definition into 4 bullets :

• You, the reader, are in control of your news stream – not a journalist.
• News is coming from all kinds of sources, many of which are not traditionally considered news worthy.
• It is targeted news, and news that is only relevant to you as a individual
• It is coming directly from the source, and it doesn’t have to be distributed.

Its a great article that is well worth the read, especially if you are a marketer that is tasked with finding your target audience and reaching them with a message that will be read. Even Hawkeye acknowledged that he is getting much of his news about what other sailors are up to from his Twtter feed. We all raised our pints to that one.