A new year and a new chapter for DanCham

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Thursday the 15th of January the Danish-Thai Chamber of Commerce kicked off the 2015 season with a beer-tasting event at the Danish micro brewery Mikkeller’s Bangkok branch. This is the first event organized with the new Executive Director Carsten Carlstedt, who promises changes in the 22 year old chamber.

At a sidestreet to a sidestreet off of Ekkamai in a luscious, secluded garden with beanbag chairs and a bar with minty-green interior details, the Danish-Thai Chamber of Commerce held their first 2015 event. Circling the floor and pairing business people and embassy personnel, was Carsten Carlstedt, the newly elected Executive Director of the Danish.

“We have knowledge about all the corporate members, and one of our roles is to tap people on the shoulder and tell them to go over and talk with someone who face the same challenges as they do themselves,” Carsten Carlstedt says.

At the networking night all attendees got a 4 beer-free-card and a were able to choose from a larger selection of home-brewed or microbrewery beer served from one of Mikkellers 30 taps. The beers ranged from the house’s own pilsner to more experimental beers like the 9,5% ris-ala-m’ale, that tasted like a mix of a pale ale, cherry- and rice wine.

As it turned out, cards for 4 free beers was a rather ingenious way to make sure people didn’t just stop by out of obligations to show the flag and smalltalk, but actually stayed a bit longer, maybe even long enough to create a stronger sense of network.

Carsten Carlstedt was appointed as the new Executive Director of The Danish-Thai Chamber of Commerce November the 7th 2014, in 2015 he hope to operate the chamber with more focused events and a monthly newsletter with stories about the members of the Chamber.
Carsten Carlstedt was appointed Executive Director of The Danish-Thai Chamber of Commerce November the 7th 2014, in 2015 he hopes to operate the chamber with more focused events and a monthly newsletter with stories about the Chambers members.

Promise of a more active chamber
In an effort to add more value for DanCham’s members, Carsten Carlstedt plans some 20 focused events covering practical subjects like HR, taxes, grounding, bottlenecks in production and of course more networking in the year to come.

“We are not here to be the experts, we have 104 corporate and 25 individual members. If we put together the experience these members have in trading and production here in Thailand, it adds up to an enormous think-tank. It is our role to figure out how we can spread this knowledge between the members,” he says.

At the moment there haven’t been a newsletter out since September 2014 and Carsten Carlstedt wants to change that. He plans to renew the newsletter and send it out on a monthly basis featuring stories about 2-3 members each time. To help make this possible he seeks he seeks a full time trainee for the chamber.

“We will start to bring stories about companies, and not just tell about the upcoming events. Right now, people are yawning at the newsletter,” Carsten says “Giving companies exposure in the newsletter makes it easier for the members to know where they can find knowledge.”

Carsten, has yet to find a trainee or intern, but he is confident that the monthly newsletter will be up and running in the first quarter of 2015.

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