Once upon a time there was a course about digital business which changed one man's attitudes and visions about life itself by one fell swoop. This course was led by wonderful lecturers Ilkka and Anna (and Kyla of course plus all the amazing guest speakers) who made this spring a memorable one. Gratitude. And also to my fellow group members and student colleagues, a big gratitude. Easily the best course I have taken part in my whole school "career" and will go down in a history as one of the most instructive and eye-opening experiences ever.
I like to believe that when one things comes to its end, it's a beginning for another. Unfortunately, this journey has come to its final stop but when this chapter closes, it's a new beginning, a new chapter for another journey. It's the circle of life, there will always be the next day for a new adventure. Sadly, I was planning to do a LOOOONG blog post with a kick-ass reflection about everything we've had been involved in this course and all the feelings attached to them but I'm heading to airport in just a few hours to wait for a plane to get me to Rome! I've always wanted to go there so I guess this is a one dream turning to reality.
Speaking of dreams turning to reality, we were given one last "task" to review the course by a question "what did you learn about you?". Even though I had some issues with understanding why we talked so much about some positivity, emotions and such things in a DIGITAL BUSINESS course, I certainly realized that those kind of things are completely attached to the digital business world. And the one thing that I learned about myself was that no matter how big of obstacles come in my way, nothing will stop me to achieve my goals and fulfill my dreams if I just want it enough and I'm able to maintain this positive manner of an approach to life which this course gave a huge boost to. I've learned so many valued skills of digital business which will certainly help me to make it big time in the digitalization's transformational times of the field of business. If I listed them, I would miss my flight! If one should be picked, it's the connection with people and building a strong network. And build the network with people sharing the same visions and interests. It will shorten the journey to achieve your goals by many step when you can work with someone/something that you are really into and enthusiastic about.
But most importantly, I've learned to make every day count and enjoy all the little things in life, to live in the moment. And that skill I value high in my list. We've talked in the course that positivity and general happiness will lead to success. I can proudly say that right now, even though I have wistful emotions because of this course coming to its end, I'm a happy guy and have no doubt that success will be waiting for me in the future!
And success will wait for my student colleagues too, no question about that. This group involved so much talent and unique skills that I'm honored to be part of it. So thank you again! Now it's time to wrap it up by saying that these are not goodbyes, it's more like see you again. And what comes to this blog, this will be my last post in this one but do I keep blogging about other things in another blog? Who knows, I certainly do love writing so anything can happen! Thank you for reading my blog, thank you for an opportunity to develop my skills and thank you for changing my vision towards life completely, it's more than I could've ever imagined. See you again!
Greetings my fellow readers! We are so close to the finishing line with this post being the second last one. The final post will review the whole awesome spring and I'm looking forward to write that post because it certainly will be fun to memorize all the fun things and even tough things that have made this course a wonderful experience. But enough of that, let's concentrate on this post first which will be about happiness itself!
On Monday I was on a typical Monday-mood so waking up caused some major difficulties for me and eventually I missed the first ten or fifteen minutes of the week's first lecture. And what I have heard, I apparently missed a big surprise as Kyla Mitsunaga, the TED speaker from some of my previous posts, surprised all of us by attending our lecture and we spent couple of days working WITH (check out that post and I think you get this) this wonderful, HAPPY person. Kyla is so... so... HYPER! SUPER HAPPY! Absolutely lively person who definitely got me as well wake up to that day! We had a "happiness workshop" which included some group work and games. Very nice start to the week and got me to instantly a positive mood.
So what is happiness? We talked about that on the Monday's and Wednesday's lectures and I personally think that you cannot give a specific answer to that question. Everyone builds their own happiness which contains different kinds of elements depending on the person. You can't say that, for example, a rising sun makes everybody happy and spreads happiness because what if a person X lives in a cave and loves darkness from the bottom of his/her heart? We also feel the happiness with very different ways. Most of us smile when we are happy but it's impossible to say that is it like that for all of us. For example, even I have cried with happiness. It's an abstract thing that you cannot categorize or put into a certain mold. You just know, only by yourself, when you are happy and what causes the happiness to fill your head.
For me happiness is ability to live your life at the fullest. All the little things, all the necessary and unnecessary things are included in building happiness and to reach the ultimate happiness, you have to learn live your life the way you want it and know that when the time passes by you, there aren't any regrets considering the lived life. Make every day count, make every single moment count and you'll find happiness. Of course life is not always a bed of roses and some negative and tough obstacles will have to be faced but it's the strength to not let those affect to your happiness. They will only strengthen it. It's like a comparison to professional sports, mistakes have to be made to get to the top of the mountain. You learn from them as you learn from the tough obstacles in your life. You learn how to involve them in the building process of happiness. This kind of mindset works for me and maybe I share the same thoughts with some people or maybe I am alone with those. But sharing happiness is certainly a thing that I will try to keep doing in the future too and hopefully will the others too.
Our "Share Happiness" video made on Wednesday morning with a 20 minutes of preparation and the same time for executing and editing it. Still, it's a pretty nice video and I personally hope that it will get you on a good mood!
We had another lecture on Thursday where we had a guest lecturer from Poland talking about some very current and interesting things that are going on in the fields of economy and business but somehow I just couldn't catch up to it. I usually understand very well English but maybe it was the Eastern Bloc accent or I just wasn't sharp enough for it but the fact unfortunately is, I didn't get anything out from it to write about. So I'll leave it up here and begin to prepare the final blog post of this course! Let's see if I could come up with some unseen and unique things with it. We'll see... At least I'm trying to figure out how to somehow make that final blog post huge and memorable! So until next time, take care and spread the happiness all over the world!
This past week was definitely a fun one. My girlfriend came from the Netherlands for a week-long visit as she is currently on exchange there. It was of course nice to see her again after a while and also hang out with some of our mutual friends who I haven't seen for a long time. We also went to see a football game of my (and soon to be hers too, brainwash you know) favorite Finnish team HIFK but even though it was the home season opening, it was really challenging to enjoy the game because the weather was so COLD! We were freezing! And it should be spring already. These are the few occasions when I could seriously consider moving out from Finland... I tried to take some pictures and videos about the atmosphere in the game but couldn't take my hands off my pockets because they would have probably frozen to necrosis!
School included lots of fun stuff too. On Monday Sani Leino had a lecture about Thinglink, virtual reality and the hottest trends in the digital business today. Very compelling and inspiring lecture, especially considering the fact that those subjects are very current nowadays. One of the hottest trends is content marketing and videos especially are highly connected to it as a powerful and effective tool to have an influence on audience. We have talked a lot about the effectiveness of videos in this course and I could say you cannot talk enough of it. Videos will be, and actually already are the most effective way to reach and trigger up all the possible emotions among the audience.
We also talked about Thinglink which is an interactive platform/image where you can tag pictures, links, videos etc. into a picture chosen or created by you. It sure sounded like a cool tool to be tested and I found it very effective because of the ability to have an influence on people's emotions by the visual effect. But I'm still wondering how it could be utilized more than just a CV or expressing random feelings. Maybe I should start to use it more often and figure it out! I made an image about, hmmm... living life at the fullest? I don't know, just picked a cool photo from my Facebook albums and started to add tags related to things that just happened to pop in my mind at that particular point. :D Check it our here!
On Monday we had also a privilege to hear about emotions and Emotion Tracker from Camilla Tuominen. As our lecturer Ilkka said before the presentation, Camilla is always herself and that was really easy to see from her appearance. Very lovely and down-to-earth lecture but yet again, I was pretty confused at some points that why we talk about emotions in a lecture of digital business course? Okay, emotions and how we act are highly related to business in all of its form and that is how we build our personal brand. But sometimes it has felt like I have learned more about how to live a good life, how to be highly positive and control my emotions in a digital business course, meanwhile what I should have learnt are the recent skills and know-how to be successful and survive in the field of digital business. But for me, it feels like those lectures and conversations about the actual digital business have been buried under these other subjects about positive thinking, emotions and whatever. Of course they are important things to talk about and once again, are highly related to digital business but sometimes I doubt am I a student of a digital business course or a Jedi academy (actually that would be friggin' awesome, who am I kidding)? Just saying... But don't get me wrong, I really liked Camilla's lecture and found it useful!
On Friday every team presented their achievements with the tasks related to Avionboard and Funking. Ours was to create a video about the Funking app and the feedback that we got from Funking's members was really positive! It was nice to see that having such a fun time making a video could eventually transform to a solid video which has reputedly received positive feedback from other directions too. Well what the hell, it sure was a damn cool video! And all the credit goes to Tommi, our team member, who did all the shooting and editing. Just watch it and be amazed!
I have such positive vibes about this on-going spring right now. School term is coming to its very end and it has included so many good moments and experiences that do I even want it to end? Well, I like holidays too so yeah, I guess I do... some way. Let's just make the most out of the rest of the spring, that is pretty much all I'm thinking about in this moment! See you on next Sunday!
Oh boy, where should I start... Well let's get straight away all the negative things off my chest and move towards the positive ones. Very frustrating week to say the least. I've noticed that for some unknown reason I seem to lack motivation in everything I do. I'm pretty positive that this is just some short downturn for me and maybe next week will already be a lot better. But somehow I just can't find a proper drive to do things and give one hundred percent of myself. Sorry to tell you guys but even writing this blog post is very strained right now and I don't have any desire to make the most out of it. It's not like I'm unhappy and depressed but I just lack motivation to do school things, work tasks etc. properly. I know that we all have these periods in our lives, I recognize my situation and I even know the cure for it. These kind of downside periods can last for a day, for a week or even a year but eventually something else will take its place and in this case, I hope it's a motivation burst for the rest of the spring. I just wanted to unveil my feelings because I think hiding your true feelings is very hypocritical, saying it aggravated way, and also deceiving yourself. Don't act happy if you're not, it's not an obligation in any situation and along with cheating yourself, you deceive others surrounding you by expressing wrong feelings and giving false signals. And even so, don't act super-hyper motivated if you're not. Show your true feelings, talk about them and let other people know about the situation for them to help you with it whether it is depression or lost motivation. Even adjusting tiny things in your life, with a help of other people or not, can help you on the right track but don't hesitate to face the problem valiantly. Just acknowledge it and start to clear a new path to success, happiness or whatever the goal is!
Meanwhile I wrote about my lack of motivation, I searched from YouTube some videos about it and bumped into this one. Very inspiring, encouraging and even funny. If you have a good 8 minutes to spare, I highly recommend it.
One thing that sure wasn't helpful to my lack of motivation considering school assignments and other school stuff was that I got sick AGAIN. Can't believe it, two times sick in just couple of months. Last time I have been struck by this kind of flu invasion in army back in 2014. Really frustrating and due to that, I missed Tuesday's lecture. Luckily this flu wasn't that strong as the earlier one so I managed to get myself in shape for rest of the week and I was able to visit NextLevel event which was held by PCAscala in its premises in Vallila, Helsinki. The event sounded very interesting because it was a meeting forum for exercise students such as personal trainer students and people who are already highly connected and involved in this ''fitness world''. In other words, it was an exercise recruiting trade fair. I have worked my ass out in gym from the early days of upper secondary school so from the get-go I was highly interested in this event and our assignment about it but... meh.
First of all, the assignment's instructions were quite unclear to say the least. We were supposed to come up with some ideas to market this event but we had no idea should we also execute those ideas or not. And then the instruction came to start executing the ideas just a week or something like that before the event. Okay cool but how can we execute an idea where we need free entry to the event's and company's social media channels' profiles and we had also a prize involved in our main idea which included personal trainer services for free etc.. I assume we cannot promise to people in Facebook that if they take part to our social media competition, they will win a wonderful prize from PCAscala, can we? Of course we could have asked about this, I admit that but even if we did ask two weeks earlier, there would have not been enough time to execute our campaign properly. So for next year's event and assignment, more time for planning and more time for executing the ideas.
And about the event itself, it was OK but I can see that it was held for the first time. Not much to do, only look around things and talk to people in a relatively small amount of space (it was basically held in a gym). Fine gym and decoration but too small for an event to be held in. Of course there were not that many visitors either (at least when we were there) but something could be done to little bit spice things up in there (maybe more interesting guest speakers, compelling activities etc.) and if the event at some point hits the motherload, it definitely will need a much bigger place to be held in.
Now I'm off to seek for my missing motivation. I hope you guys are full of it for the upcoming week and see you again on next week's post!
Just got back from work and even though we didn't have that much customers today, it was so exhausting because of the boredom. There could have been even an hour with nothing to do, very frustrating I have to say. But as always, I will give you guys the best possible effort for this blog post too so let's stop this whining and review this past week. Oh and speaking of whining, I have a nice and short video for you to show at the end of this blog post so stay tuned!
I was absent from Monday's lecture because as I mentioned in the previous blog post, we had a cruise to Sweden with our fellow student colleagues from every agency of Laurea. I could write a review about the cruise too but come on, this blog is a school assignment so let's skip that, shall we? After a two-day purgatory (yeah it's Easter, what did you expect?) I managed to get to the second lecture of the week on Thursday and I must say, I have never been that pleased to get to the school as I was after that lecture. Antti Haapsaari. This guy was the real deal. An hour just flew by when he talked to us about his architecture firm Kanttia 2 and how he has had projects even in Egypt with very powerful people as co-workers. I went totally speechless by how compelling and inspiring Antti's lecture was. The best guest speaker easily by far and I will probably remember his tips and thoughts after years from now because the way he presented his thoughts gave me a feeling that this guy knows what he's talking about. And addition to that, he's very enthusiastic about what he does and didn't hesitate to share his experiences with us. And working with some very powerful people in Arab world just supported the image of very successful and inspiring person that I got from him. Simply awesome.
Had to borrow a picture taken by my group member (thanks Miikka) because I want you guys to remember this face, a truly franchise player. And look at that shiny blazer, damn...
One thing that really caught my ear was how Antti talked about the importance of relationships in the field of business. And let's not just focus on customer relationships because there are several important relationships in business that have to be taken under consideration. For example when you're applying for a job, you have only one chance to make a good first impression to your possibly future boss. Do you want to express yourself as a trustworthy guy to whom your future boss could easily hand over some important responsibilities or do you want to give an image about a guy who probably fuc... pardon me, lets your boss down with disloyal acts? Not a hard choice I assume. Of course you have to always be yourself and nothing else but building relationships start from the very bottom and proceeds piece by piece to the unbreakable bond (I should be a writer...). The relationships with customers or co-worker or whatever don't have to be some blood bonds, sharing the deepest secrets among each other but simply a relationship where the other part can have the certain trust in you that you will do your best in a reliable way, no matter what it was. Make your boss believe in you, make your customers believe in you but most importantly, believe in yourself first. You can't form good customer relationships or business associations if you don't have the faith in yourself and your skills.
On Thursday we also got another assignment in which we are trying to come up with some innovative ideas for our student colleagues' team Funking. Funking's idea is to provide an ultimate tool for ultimate fanning. It's like a Snapchat style platform but with a lot more content and elements that create a close connection between fans and their idols. I really hope that we can come up with some good ideas to present for them because I think the idea of Funking is actually very cool and of course I'm hoping that they could be able to launch their idea eventually to the big leagues, so to say.
As I mentioned earlier, I bumped into a very cool and inspiring video about the key to being more attractive. In other words, the key to get the above-mentioned relationships. I think this video encapsulates well what it takes to be successful in business and in life in general. And believe me, it's not rocket science. With some little adjusting you can make yourself attractive in a way to build some relationships, achieve your goals and live a happy life. I could say that for most people, all they have to do is just loosen it up a bit. "Don't obsess over things you can't control. Focus on what you can do!"
I think there's enough for this week so see you on next Sunday!
So what's the haps guys? For me this week has been by far one of the most funniest ones in this year. On Monday we presented our videos to NoBot representatives and feedback was really positive and supportive. All groups had made a great job with their videos and these kind of assignments are always fun to execute because of the chance for some creativity and presenting your thoughts in a form of a video. We didn't win any prizes but well, it just left us even more will and desire to succeed in the upcoming assignments! And of course, congratulations to the winning teams. We were also given another assignments by Mazda which was pretty exciting for us considering the fact that Mazda is "quite" a big company to do assignment for! But more about that later on the post.
On Wednesday we went to watch football again. It was the second leg of Champions League bout between Arsenal and barcelona (yeah, I wrote it with a minuscule) but once again the second mentioned came up big and dropped Arsenal off the competition. But next year will be ours... Then we ordered couple more beers and tried to figure out how we would present our presentation to Mazda representatives. The task was about Mazda 2 car and our mission was to make a PP-presentation about some new innovative ways to market the car. Target group was 25-44 years old people so there was a quite of a challenge to execute the assignment well considering the fact that the biggest purchasing power happens to be among the 50+ year old people. But we came up with an idea to focus the marketing to radio because cars are usually the most common place to listen to radio, especially in the mornings. We chose to have Radio SuomiPop as our channel for marketing and particularly their morning show Aamulypsy which is hosted by Jaajo Linnonmaa. The idea was to involve Jaajo also to the marketing by advertising through him the car on Aamulypsy as well as on Jaajo's social media channels. He's probably the funniest man in Finland at this point so it goes hand-in-hand with the Mazda 2's slogan ''one of the funniest cars to drive''. Presentation went pretty well and it was nice to hear some god damn CRITIC too and not only praising comments. Constructive critic is always important to avoid the same mistakes next time.
Unfortunately I couldn't make to the lecture after those presentations because I had to jump on a train with a destination being Tampere. There I was joined by my friend who is living in Pirkkala and we went to see a concert by one of our favorite bands, Hollywood Undead. Such a fun night and it sure felt at work on the next day.
Had a blast
I heard that we were given an assignment by PCA-scala gym on Thursday's lecture. As a hardcore trainer and wannabe bodybuilder I immediately turned out to be really excited about this task. Our mission is to come up with some innovative social media marketing solutions for them to be used in marketing of their upcoming fair day event. We've had so many of these social media marketing related tasks so it should be easy for us to execute it perfectly, shouldn't it? And because of the fact that it is related to gym training makes it even more interesting.
That's about it. Sorry guys but I have nothing else interesting to share with you or reflect my thoughts on something ultimate controversial subject this time but as the title says, this week was a bit of resetting my brain so that I can make the most out of the rest of the spring and all the new challenges and possibilities it hopefully will bring to us. And well the resetting will continue on Sunday when we are going on a cruise, heading towards our lovely neighbor Sweden. Might the a bit moist resetting but well, sometimes a good bunch of fun will help you get through the hard times in the past and ahead! I will end this post with one of my favorite quotes which shows the fact that even sometimes it feels like life is hitting hard straight up to your face, just shake it off and keep moving forward. Nothing is too serious to be harbored in our minds forever, just reset yourself and the next day will come with countless of new possibilities. We'll see again on next weekend!
Hello guys! As I'm writing this I've just finished my eight hour working day and yet another school assignment so apologies in advance if there are some typos, misspellings etc. because I'm very fuzzy at this point. But hard work always pays off, that motivates to get me through all of these school assignments by the deadlines and getting my heavy bum to work every week. And a few prizes for my toil are coming next week in forms of a gig and cruise to the lovely western neighbor Sweden. Work hard, play hard as the crappy song says.
Damn, this is some serious background image stuff.
Digital business course contained a lot of law issues this week. Very crucial stuff but personally my interests and law issues have a quite of a distance between them so paying attention for a whole lecture was once again a bit difficult. Maybe some additional group work or illustrative examples could little bit ''spice up'' the lectures? Traditional lectures are a good way to adduce all the necessary things in detail but something to help students get more involved to the teaching process could help the actual learning process as well.
Speaking of involving, we filmed a video for NoBot Oy which was a task given to us on last Friday when I was in the Netherlands. We had to reflect our thoughts in a form of a video about caring and involving in workplace. Very important issue to deal with in today's work life because I've heard from my fiends about their horrible bosses (good movie by the way) who don't seem to care at all about their employees and that also affects on the general atmosphere in workplace. It's hard to get into the group where everybody are crestfallen and instead of getting praises and credit for their work, they get a shitload of complaints for every single mistake. It pisses me off, even writing about this makes me furious and feel bad for my friends to have that kind of experiences from work life. Everyone make mistakes and it's part of the whole process to eventually learn from them. Do these so called ''leaders'' think that Steve Jobs for example didn't make any mistake in his way to the top? Please... Just noticed by the way that the image I posted on above is quite illustrative what comes to this subject. Good background image stuff indeed, goes with everything.
I can fortunately say that I've always had good bosses and team leaders wherever I have worked in. Maybe the best example to tell you guys about, are my experiences from Celectus Oy. The company is all about selling. Its main agenda is to provide sales know-how services and train the best salesmen in Finland. I was part of a sales team in metropolitan area which provided the best energy solutions for customers and companies. We were competing in Leijonaliiga which was like a regular sports league type platform to compete in selling against other localities. We played ''matches'' against other teams from different localities and the team who had more sales at the end of the day was the winner and earned a certain amount of points that helped them in the league table. After 3 month ''regular season'' came the playoffs which culminated to the finals that were held in some trade fair which happened to be on at that time. In a nutshell, Leijonaliiga made sales job ten times more interesting.
It's self-evident that in that kind of job you have to have a good superior who can lead the team as well as the individuals in it. My two team leaders had such a big impact and influence on me which will probably carry on ahead in the future. They genuinely cared about me, not only as an employee but as a person, as individual human-being. That alone made me feel that okay, these guys really want to get to know me and get the best out of me. Because they knew me as a person even at some level, they knew how to train me individually by concentrating to my strengths and bolster my weaknesses. We also had training as a team and we all got to know each other well and were like old buddies among ourselves. This is what caring and involving is all about. I'll put our NoBot video and Leijonaliiga's video (some free marketing for my old employer company, you're welcome) here in below.
On Thursday we had a second lecture about law issues and also a very compelling presentation about marketing research. But what really stood out for me the most was a brief speech by our lecturer Anna who talked about finding and creating your happiness. Nice thoughts which sure got me thinking about how I've managed to create my happiness and what are the cornerstones in building it. There was also something about the positive thinking leading to positive things which I mentioned in my previous post too but I started to wonder in a little bit deeper level on that and some other things about happiness. Does it work for everyone, thinking positively and positive things just come one after another as an outcome? Though I believe that there is a obvious connection between them, does it even work for me? At least not always. I might wake up to a sunny day and think positively from the very first glance towards the sunlight but then a few minutes later a car drives by and splashes water onto me. Yeah, really positive feeling about that too. Maybe not the best example but maybe you get the point. We have billions of people in this planet and it's quite obvious that some things work better for others. And maybe that is what Anna meant by saying ''you create your happiness''. Only you know what makes you happy, hell, even it's to think negatively about everything then go for it. Better die happy than bitter about not reaching the happiness. Pursuits of happiness, there are many and finding them may take from a few years to a few decades but I believe that when you reach the complete happiness, that will be the most wonderful thing in the world with no comparison. And it might come already on next day, just open your mind to even the smallest things in life and let the flow carry you wherever it will.
So deep... But hey, what can you do? See ya next week with new deep thoughts!
I'm going to keep it quite brief this time because I'm so tired after my trip to Netherlands. But let's talk about that later on this post and focus on the supply of what digital business course offered to me this week. I took part only for the Monday's lecture which also started the ''part two'' of the studies in this spring. I was absent from Friday's lecture because of the trip which was really a shame since the lecture's topics included, if I understood correctly, something about sales and marketing. Two subjects which I have waited the most to discuss about but hey, that's life... But yeah, on Monday we presented our Superpark marketing videos to a Superpark representative and the winner of the competition about which group gets the most views for their video was also crowned. Congrats to Diginspiration!
On Monday we discussed about power of thinking. The only thing you can have a complete effect on in this particular life is your own thinking. We played a little bit mind games against ourselves by a variation of the Napoleon Hill's invisible counselors method. The idea was to close your eyes and get yourself to the most comfortable place you could imagine with the closest people to you or some of your idols for example. Then ask them how to solve the problem which is harms you and you'll find the answer. Well okay, I didn't but safe to say that these kind of mind trick and finding your mental power takes some time and practice. And actually my flights to Netherlands and back to Finland were good sites to try again that trick. I think I'm getting there... But in my opinion, positive things happen as the outcome of positive thinking and that's the number one mind trick that all of us should learn and internalize. Even the first hit on Google agrees with me.
My girlfriend is on student exchange in Arnhem, Netherlands so as I mentioned earlier, I had a small weekend trip as I flew there in the early hours of Friday. And being such a conscientious student, I felt so bad for my absence from the Friday's lecture that I decided to visit my girlfriend's current university and ask one of their lecturers a chance to come listen the lecture. The answer was yes (didn't catch the lecturer's name) and I had a privilege to listen some interesting thoughts about marketing for an one hour. The lecturer's way to present his thoughts was very compelling and he didn't hesitate to involve the students to the teaching process by asking a lot of questions and presenting illustrative examples. Very pleasant lecture and fortunately it was only one hour long so that my trip would not contain only business studies :).
Had a great time in Arnhem and it was a freshen weekend since we had a brief but long waited chance to spend time with each other after five weeks apart. Arnhem was a nice, small city with a warm atmosphere. Next time we are planning to spend a similar shorter type of holiday in Amsterdam so the perspective between those two places can be quite a radical one!
We have seen and experienced a lot of cool stuff in our digital business course already, even though it has been running only for a couple of months or less. But this week we had a chance to have some sort of a "cool down" in a form of a lecture break. The number one rule was to take our minds off the school for a while and just have a ball with our close ones. Simply just relax. And if there's something that I can say to be superb at, is relaxing and chilling! Okay, I had a couple of shifts at work but the whole weekend was devoted for me and my beloved PlayStation 4. We had a blast together as we always do.
Now a quick and unorthodox change of subject. Here's a video of a TED Talk presented by Kyla Mitsunaga about balls. Yeah, sounds like rated-R material but believe me it's something completely different. Check it out and be amazed how inspiring can one short, 6 minute video be! Actually I will watch it again also so check it out WITH me (you'll get that last part after watching the video).
Very enthusiastic about the cooperation which we will start with a Korean University and Kyla! I could go on an on about this brilliant speech and reflect it with several different ways. But let the video speak to itself. Only way I'm going to reflect those influential thoughts are related to one of my biggest interests and inspirations: sports. And more specifically, football.
We were on a local sports bar on Tuesday with my school friends/group members to watch a Champions League football game between my favorite club Arsenal and teenage girls' favorite FC Barcelona. On the video Kyla talked about throwing balls and also catching them, metaphorically. Those balls can be seen as chances in my opinion. In that distinct game Arsenal were thrown balls at them plenty of times which means in this case that they were given a few chances to score. But they didn't, they weren't able to catch the balls. Then Barcelona were thrown some balls at them and they caught them by scoring two goals. So we were at a point where Barcelona were seen as heroes and Arsenal as zeros. Just because Barcelona capitalized their chances better, in other words: they managed to catch the balls.
And that's life there in a nutshell. As I said that I was reflecting the subject by my biggest interest, sports, all the same I actually reflected on the everyday life of ours. When we see a ball coming towards us and eventually don't catch it, should we just give up and accept the fact that there it went, the once in a lifetime chance? Absolutely not. As the Champions League is played every year, so are chances coming by every day. If we don't manage to utilize the first, let's move on to the next one! This world is so big that maybe it will run out of oil at some point, but chances will never, eeeeeeever, run out from the world as we know it!
This came from a proud Gunners fan. There will always come the next season, the next chance to catch the ball and eventually reach the glory! And the same mentality goes with everything else, believe me.
That's about it. Something to think about until the next time we meet. Cheers guys!
Another week is done which will remain in history as amazing as I thought it would. On Monday we had a lecture about social media marketing and it's self-evident that social media marketing will and maybe already is the most efficient channel to reach the widest crowd. As I mentioned the assignment about Lacy Box in the previous blog post, this lecture definitely gave us some tools to make the most out of the quite a difficult challenge which this particular assignment was for sure. The lecture's main point was to concentrate on target markets and how to properly identify them. The marketing campaign's main message should be somehow appealing but how to reach the genuine target audience is the tricky part. The manner of an approach should be considered with a thought: how to reach the customers with a way that guarantees the best possible result. Is it measured by customer contacts, customers' buys or what is not relevant but how to fabricate an appealing and compelling message which will reach the crowd and push the campaign towards its wanted result.
We got some ''homework'' too. The idea was to choose a quote and comment it somehow.
I chose the ditto from Corey Eridon. This guy nailed it. The marketing as a whole is going more and more to this kind of a direction where the customers are used as a marketing tool. Social media allows customers to express their feelings towards companies publicly and I can't come up with a better way to market your product or service than a straight, positive and public feedback by a satisfied customer. Of course not always the feedback is 100% positive but even that can be turned as an upside when the company correctly reacts to the negative feedback and give a professional and helpful image of itself. Social media activates the customers as a part of the companies' marketing and that is the beauty of it. And in addition to that, social media is pretty big channel as a whole to get your company to the people's awareness. Social media can be seen EVERYWHERE in the Internet and gaining the trust (this is the key word by the way) there will be quite essential in the upcoming years.
Here's a video about profits of social media marketing in just three minutes:
On Friday we presented our achievements in the Lacy Box project. Planning and creating a social media marketing campaign about women's lingerie was as difficult as I thought it would be but we managed to get something presentable for Friday. Even though our outcome could have been better, this assignment surely gave us some valuable knowledge and insight about the social media marketing. There is a bunch of things to consider and by doing them right, company's coverage can burst rather quickly.
And then came the groups' SuperPark video presentations which we shot before as I told you guys on the earlier posts. And... wow. WOW! I'm still speechless, always thought that my student colleagues were talented but even in my wildest imaginations I would have never thought that our class consists this kind of a pure talent. Huge respect for every group, the future seems to be bright for us! And when I say us, I can proudly say that our groups' video didn't pale in comparison. Our group member Tommi made an awesome job with the editing of the video and we all put together our best efforts to make this marketing video a success. Which it was in my books, just check it out from below! (WARNING: if and when you're watching it more than once, the music might get irritating at some point).
Oh boy, what a week it was once again. Had a privilege to be part of some really funny stuff this week but before that, let's take a brief recap to our week in digital business course. On Monday we had a presentation about developing new ideas and concepts for SSM (Suomen Suoramainonta), specifically concentrating and targeting to employees and SSM's social media marketing. We came up with an idea to engage employees with some additional work assignments in addition to delivering advertisements. These assignments could involve taking care of customers' everyday routines such ass cutting the lawn or clearing snow. Customer expresses the need and the company provides the solution by an efficient and young workforce. Win-win situation, right? I'm pretty positive that SSM representatives do not hesitate any more to co-operate with universities and other school systems as they, according to my understanding, did with this one. Our lecturer Anna had to even persuade them to give it a go. The ideas that we groups came up with were quite solid to say the least that it's safe to say that the SSM representatives won't regret this!
On Friday we received another assignment from our wonderful guest speaker Lynn-Marie Sederlöf-Airisto (hope I got it right). The assignment is to conceive and execute a marketing campaign for Sederlöf-Airisto's own company Lacy Box. Which sells women's underwear... First reaction, well, not so delightful. Group consisting only lads trying to execute a marketing campaign about women's underwear is definitely not in any of our comfort zones. And in addition to that, the theme should be somehow related to bachelorette party. Well it's a challenge for sure but I live on them. In other words, challenge accepted and we're definitely going to make the most out of it.
So about the funny stuff. On Wednesday we visited the Superpark, which I mentioned in my last blog text, with intention to shoot some material for the marketing advertisement video. I was a bit skeptical about the place in overall, would our age of people enjoy ourselves there but damn, was I wrong?! The place was tremendous! Countless of possibilities to do different sports, some of those which I've never had an opportunity to try including baseball and scooting. My inner child woke up immediately as we entered the park. We played and tried some different sports and exercises, such as football, floorball, basketball, golf, hockey etc. and just messed around like some ten year olds! Extremely fun time in overall and we sure got some solid material for our video. After a quite of an exhausting few hours too, we all agreed that we would certainly recommend Superpark without a doubt and could give it another go (if it wasn't so damn expensive for an adult).
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Had some spare time today and thought that I could spend it wisely by surfing on the Internet, looking for some digital business articles. I found some familiar articles from the past but after a few minutes I bumped into a one particular site which is about the 2020-scheme for making Finland's working life the best in Europe. One part of that is to instill the benefits of the groundbreaking digital era to Finnish companies' operations. As it is written on the site, Finland most definitely is one of the top dogs that comes to the knowledge and skills about completeness to succeed in digital era. But we just don't know how to utilize these multiple different possibilities that we sure already have. And that takes some time. In my opinion, 2020 is VERY optimistic estimation for digitalisation getting involved in businesses' daily operations but I would be more than happy to be proven wrong. But for me it seems like assemble a football or ice hockey team. Finland has all the key pieces there and the core is strong but that something is still missing and that comes little by little, season by season and in this case, year by year. Well again, not in four years but we will get there without a doubt and at that point, there's no reason why Finland couldn't take a stronger foothold in the international markets. All the necessary tools are existing within us, we just have to make a better effort to find the ways how to utilize them more profitably and effectively.
This week is on its homestretch and have to say that this particular week was for some reason quite a heavy one for me. The original plan was to find a good balance between studying, work and spare time activities but it went down the tube. I had more working shifts as usual and they contained only long evening shifts so it goes without saying that I was pretty weary when I got home. We have a deadline coming up on next Sunday for one subtask which I haven't even started yet. I simply haven't had any time to do school tasks and even if I would've had, I would have certainly had a lack of creativity and text producing because of weariness. Actually, all I did this week was basically eating and working, it was hard to find time even for sleeping. I made it to the gym just a couple of times this week which was also one reason for my "unfreshness", I just need my 4 or 5 workouts per week to keep my mind and body fresh. But I'm more than sure that next week will contain more spare time to do school tasks, work out and just relax, forgetting everything related to school or work.
In addition to heavy work week, we had once again two lectures this week in school. On Tuesday we received an assignment which takes us to the world of shooting and editing videos, really excited! We are supposed to prepare and shoot an advertisement video for Superpark which is, highly summarizing, a firm that offers exciting ways to try different activities indoors. We will also develop some ideas for them how to evolve their social media marketing and get more connected with a wider audience in different social media channels. So enthusiastic about this assignment!
On Thursday's lecture we had cultures as our day's topic. At one point we had to dive in to our history to find some experiences where we had a share in when two different cultures collided. At that point I couldn't get anything on my head but when I got home, I suddenly remembered one moment from my recent history where two countries and their cultures and habits collided. My girlfriend and her family are Estonian and I happened to spend a Christmas party with them. There's a habit in Estonia to sing a Christmas song or recite a poem before you get a present. Of course I was not told about this particular habit and as a Finnish man, I certainly wasn't in my comfort zone when I had to recite a poem or sing to get a freakin' present (yeah I got a few and had to recite some poems...). For them it was odd to see someone so confused and awkward about singing a song before getting a present because for them it was natural and an old habit. But managed to get the presents even though my performances weren't that worthy of praise...
A tough week physically but once again it was very rewarding and I have high hopes for the upcoming week!
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Keeping it a bit more shorter this time because I want to get some well deserved sleep finally but I would like to share this link to a Ilta-Sanomat article which deals with a new tool provided by Facebook. It allows its users to test their average distance to any other Facebook user in the world. The number shows by how many users are you connected to the user you are searching for. So basically it tells you how networked you really are. My number was 3,58 which was slightly above the Facebook's users' average 3,57. Very interesting tool to say the least. Network is the today's trend so being slightly more networked than an average Facebook user is pleasant to hear. Of course it's hard to say how accurate and true-proofed this tool really is but it gives at least a some pointer!
There you have it, let's get back to it once again on next Sunday!
Greetings everyone! So what's the haps? As I wrote last week, a flu almost knocked me out cold but I managed to get up from the canvas and as a result, what a week it was! On Monday we had a lecture about personal branding which for me was the most interesting subject to deal with by far. You can make a good first impression only once and that's what the personal branding is all about. The looks of you is the logo and what you do, how you behave and act is the brand you form of yourself to others to see. And as we dug deeper into the subject, I instantly started to wonder how personal branding is related to the digital business? Well it's obvious, it's related entirely to it. While I'm blogging right now, I somehow modify my personal brand. How I appear online to others, maybe even to my future employers. Blogs, social media channels, all of those are attached to the personal branding and Internet has become more and more some sort of a self-marketing channel instead of just a place for information, amusements and entertainment. Kinda scary though, pictures from my last weekend might end up to my employer's laptop's screen by just a few clicks. :S Not saying that there would be some unproper material but just thinking...
On Thursday we were blessed by two amazing presentations. First was by guest speaker Heini Karppinen who told us some fascinating things about her career and digital business as a whole. Heino confirmed my thoughts about the rapidly changing world. Next few decades will show the way where the digital era will take us and can we keep up with its transformation. Heini actually gave us a little task about the future: learning, education and school in the future. Actually it's very current topic as well because Finnish upper secondary schools are testing the digital format way to execute the final exams. Those will probably consist exercises which are done by laptops and tablets. With my imagination it's hard to come up with any other ideas for how will the education system be related to the digital era but maybe social media could be utilized somehow in the learning process. For example essays could be written as blog texts so that student's own voice could be heard too from the text.
After Heini, two Kevins took over the stage and had put together a fine presentation about their project which had worked out quite a well as they are now even hiring a new person to their business! Props to them, encouraging and motivating presentation about how you can make it even to the big leagues by just selling your know-how.
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Going back to the subject of Monday's lecture "personal branding", I read some interesting articles and blogs about the personal branding online which dealt with the pros and cons of digital revolution."If you're not searchable and foundable in Google, you don't exist" caught my eye immediately on one particular blog.
Digitalisation will rule this planet at some point, there's no doubt. everything will be related to digital era. But the question is: are we ready yet? Are we ready to step in completely to this entirely new and fascinating world of digital revolution? No, we are far from ready. While the people evolves with the same familiar speed as it has over the centuries, technology has passed us by a lap or two already and it doesn't get any slower.
Should we slow down a bit and take a look around what's going on in the world right now and most importantly, where's everybody standing at this point? For example my close relative is currently planning to seek a new job but he is highly worried about the fact that it's quite challenging to make new contacts and find a new job nowadays if you don't represent yourself on any social media channel. And he doesn't have ANY desire to join them, it's just not his thing and for me it sometimes seems like the community is somehow forcing everyone to get involved in the fast-growing
times of digitalisation but don't seem to notice the fact that not everyone are ready for the quick transformation. Some of us don't even want it to happen, it's enough comfy for them as it is right now. And in my honor opinion, we should take that matter under a serious consideration. Of course you have to make hay while the sun shines but should we just hit the brakes and think the fact that we may not be as ready and prepared as we thought we were for the digital revolution.
Again, the phrase "technology evolves, people don't" comes in my mind but at the same time I keep thinking the fact that the only species who can affect to the growth and evolving of technology are we, the people ourselves. We pull the strings here on Earth so let's pull them more wisely and patiently I'd say.
People and technology evolves constantly, it has become more of a standard than aspiration which the previous history has shown by industrial revolution for example. But now it feels like we're trying to take a little too big leap sligthly too fast. Returning to history, even Rome was not built in a day. So what's the reason for hurry when we cannot keep up with the development of technology yet? It's easy for my generation, the so called ''diginatives'' to say that yeah, of course this digital era is a wonderful thing and will provide billions of new possibilities. Surely it will, there's no doubt about that but the modern human wants all at once, right here, right now. It's safe to say that digital era will take everything in our lives to the next level WHEN its time is more proper than now but before that, older generations in the first instance have to absorb much more information and knowledge of the possibilities of digital revolution before we can adapt to it.
Summarizing these thoughts, I would say that younger generations have some learning to do with patience and human consciousness meanwhile older generations have to be provided with more time to adapt to the digital era. And while we are focusing on these subjects, technology keeps evolving. Should I say ''unfortunately''? Tricky question but we have to consider various problematic things that digital revolution brings to us in addition to those countless possibilities.
We also had another task to do which was to make an "elevator pitch"-style video of ourselves. Like a CV in a form of a video. So I went random. Very random. You may have to watch some other illuminati-videos on YouTube if you don't catch the idea on this one but here you go, enjoy!
This week was a bit two-folded for me. It sure had a nice and interesting start when our new digital course in school started on Monday. The opening lecture was very motivational and thought-provoking to say the least and we were privileged to hear some subjective thoughts and experiences from our guest speakers. It definitely gave me more perspective and boost to make the most out of this course with our group.
After a positive start for the week, I thought that this flow would last till the end of the week. Wednesday was not an exception yet, I planned my working shifts with my new boss in my new job and that's another thing which I am excited about. Well it sure looked a bit too good for me and of course I got sick the following night on Thursday. The fever rose up to that kind of numbers that going to school or anywhere outside the house would not be possible. So I didn't make to the second lecture which was a huge setback for me because we had prepared a nice presentation with our group to our fellow teachers and student colleagues. It addressed our group's scenarios for what could the world look like in 2020. Very interesting subject to make a presentation of and that's why I will curse this damn flu to a deepest... whatever.
So I missed the second lecture where the instructions were given to these blogs which are part of the course module assignments. Pretty bad for me because I have never written a blog so any given instructions would have been welcomed. But here I am typing and trying my best. Luckily this week's offering what comes to the digital business didn't stay that diluted even though the flu almost ate my heart out. On Wednesday I escorted my girlfriend to a health station and decided to kill some time in a library next to it. I had browsed the bookshelves for a couple of minutes when a one particular book caught my eye. It was called "Digitaalinen jalanjälki" written by Antti Isokangas and Riku Vassinen. Because my girlfriend's examinations took some time, I managed to read about 40 pages of this book and I have to say that it was really exciting to read. Perhaps the biggest reason for me to read it was to gather some information for our presentation and other assignments of the digital business course but it really was compelling.
The authors delve into the groundbreaking times which the digital revolution has brought to us. Especially they focus on how the digital revolution has and will affect on businesses and their procedures. For example, there were listed theses for how a business can get through the transformational times successfully and keep evolving in the future. What I also liked in the book was a very critical and objective manner of an approach to a social media for example. What really caught my eye was a strong and pithy statement by the authors: technology evolves, people don't. Do I agree with that? I don't know but certainly got me thinking about that. I would warmly suggest to explore this book. I myself will definitely borrow or buy it at some point.
So let's close this first chapter with a summarized look-back at the week. As I probably already said before, I'm very excited about this digital course and even though that flu was a downside, let's not give it a chance to ruin this on-going flow completely. I will rise like a phoenix from the ashes and give the best possible load for this course, its assignments and our group. Looking forward to work with different kinds of multimedia, especially videos from which I have a little bit previous experience from comprehensive school and upper secondary school. Unfortunately almost every videos I have made, edited or filmed are swimming in the "bit space" but to make a fool of myself, I could link a Kalevala-themed video which we made at 8th grade. It was the first video which I directed, edited and also done a little shooting but when we sum up the key points "8th grade" and "first video", have to say that the editing, shooting and the overall offering of the video is quite horrible... But you have to start from something so try to enjoy!
