„First of all I want to thank all of you who participated in Suwalki for the nice words at the annual meeting and after. I hope that I can fulfill some of them. Nevertheless, the board is not only me. I will also have high demands on all board members and the rest of you out there.
I will use my wife Maggie’s wisdom, who said that I should at least spend 15 minutes a day for the network. And if you will follow me, we can make changes together.
I have been directly involved in the network since 2008. In that time, when Robertsfors didn´t take part in the Trans in Form project it was a good position to take part in the development and ongoing processes around the network. Both, the municipality and me are interested in the development of the network and we want to see it grow and blossom.
My personal ideas for the Innovation Circle Network and its future are as follows:
I hope that ICN will become a network similar the Union of the Baltic Cities but with focus on issues and needs for small and medium sized rural municipalities in Northern Europe. We, the members of the network, all come from municipalities that struggle with similar problems such as: ageing population, youth emigration to urban areas, lack of incomes for the primary needs that a municipality should have for their citizens.
So far we only showed what we do in the network. As far as I am concerned I wish that we will present all projects that ICN members are part of in our annual report. I hope that in the next report we can document the projects that each member is working on, either together with ICN, ICN partner or with other partners from Europe.
We, the network survived with a vitamin in form of a project that helped us to let the network grow. In the application that the Municipality of Robertsfors wrote for Swedish Institute to get funding for the network we put a focus on both, the growth of the network and also to have a task force for a new common project. Despite that, I also hope that we see a diversity of projects that members of the network are involved in."
Focus on the growth of the network & new projects
New ICN chairman Michael Noren about his ideas for the network
As we already announced, the ICN members have elected a new board and also a new chairman of the board. The man to lead ICN in the time to come is Michael Norén from Robertsfors in Sweden. He works as head of the leisure department at the Municipality of Robertsfors and he loves Metal Music. About his visions and ideas for ICN Michael Norén gave us some interesting insights:
