So yesterday the first un-sauna took place here in Helsinki.

Sami from HUB Helsinki had decided to take the un-conference idea and add a Finnish twist to it.
The idea being to do short discussions between the “rounds” of sauna.

Even though only 3 of us turned up, as one of the ideas behind un-events is that “the people who turn up are the correct people” it was still a fun event.
During the discussions some interesting ideas were generated (mostly for a potential HUB Helsinki un-conference that is in the planning stages currently).

There was some idea to do this again i August. As this covers E of my favorite activities (suauna, interesting conversations and some beer) I plan to be there.

Mämmi beer from Laitilan Wirvoitusjuomatehdas
Mämmi is a traditional easter dish made of rye, molasses and water. Like many things in Finland the description does not sound that great, but try it and you might like it.
The beer did not have a particularly strong flavour to me, something similar to a stout. But I do like the Laitilan brewerie’s packaging.

Easter beer from Vakka-Suomen Panimo
That is at least my translation of the label. A nice beer.

midvinter
From Sweden. Light, not too much body (I find winter beers are normally stonger and “fuller” than this), but pleasant all the same.

Next up an import from the UK. This one I got from Alko (as it is 7.1%), you can actually taste and smell the rum influence on the beer. Again, I would probably would not drink too many of these in an evening (though this time more due to the alcoholic strength rather than the flavour).

I then followed this with a nice scottish beer from the Caledonian Brewary. THis brewary is one of the ones I have actually had a tour round a number of years ago.

Two that stuck out for me were; feminism (there are more women involved than thought & some advice on how to get more) and Open farming (the open source tractor in action video is rather cool)

The Qi Hardware folks seem to have a solution searching for a problem, but the hardware itself is very cool tech. The FAQ provides a good overview.

I also learnt of the Touch Book. An ARM based netbook with huge bttery life, detachable keyboard and touch screen.

The saturday night conversation about maths (and mutilple infinities!) ensured a complete fun weekend.

I started with a couple of export only beers from the Ridgeway Brewary.

A nice stout, that tasted very nice. Was a rather strong beer.

On the recommendation of the barman, I took an IPA from the local brewary and it was very refreshing.
I then took their porter, again, very pleasant.

My view is that what happens at unconferences, is more about people communicating as peers together, even when it is a more classic presentation style, rather than the traditional conference format where it is more a single person at the front attempting to distribute their wisdom.

But the killer difference for me is that at BarCamps there are intermediate level people teaching beginners or learning from one another.
At a traditional conference the “guru” will often attempt to please both types of audience (beginner & intermediate), and thus often fail to please both . I find that by teaching people who know less than you, you will often find the gaps in your knowledge & understanding, and thus progress towards mastery faster.

But the reason I keep coming back to these type of events is the sheare randomness of what happens at them.
The core principales of BarCamp type events Seems to cause people with a commaon characteristic of having a willingness and desire to share to come togeather. This in turn, leads to oppertunites to be exposed to new things. Emma Persky touched upon this in a recent post where she points out that not everything happening at a BarCamp is about technology, in fact the most memorable/remarkable sessions are often the ones no-one expects.

Posted by Wordmobi

The food was provided by Eat&Joy Maatilatori, it certainly looked good (not just standard Makkara!)

Seemed to be something like a 65-35 split men to women (is this higher than at other beer events?), seemed similar to similar to the small breweries event.
There was also a luxury toilet truck for your convenience.

Syystober toilet truck

The music got a little loud after 20:00, but that seems the norm nowadays (turn it up, cos the kids want it loud?)

If someone asked you “Hey, do you want to spend 50 hours traveling to spend 41 hours surrounded by 250+ people you have never met before?” you would think they were mad, but then they would have missed out some cool times and stories.

Would I do it again? Just show me where to sign up!
Would I change anything? Probably not

My tripku
Vesa’s tripku

A sequence of memories
(with (other people’s) photos added where appropriate or relavent)

Eating FAR too much at the ship buffet (because we had already paid for it?)

Queueing for the ferry to the Island, “it’s ok, we have beer”, “wow that’s a lot of jellyfish”, “Arse, where’d that bus come from!”

Waiting for the boat

Damm, looks like the next boat then

The guys who brought a mannequin with them

maybe encouraging someone to hold KnitCamp (if you hold it, they will come)

Suddenly it’s dark, then it’s not so warm.

Waking up at 5am, going to toilet, then finding a flock of sheep wandering across the camp site

Sheep invade the camp

Attempting to get a network up and running, using only consumer grade equipment, and some guesswork.

let's use wires

lots of wire

Learning some cool stuff at various sessions.

Seeing Vesa power a boat with a broken oar.

Floating Sauna

quite a few inside

Being asked “ok to interview you for a podcast?”, then finding out it is actually being filmed and broadcast live to the web!

Handing out thepresents from Finland from their gift-box

The amazing night sky when you are far away from cities.

Talking with @lemonad and discovering that the JaikuEngine project has really high standards.
Being interrupted by actually good guitar playing by @emanuellantz (there was also some fun and games with the megaphone, but those videos don’t seem to be up anywhere)

Damm, but it gets cold on a clear night, but lukily it then warms up again quickly in the morning.

Damm, it's cold

Repeatably being surprised at how smoothly and well everything went, as this was by far the most people ever on the Island, yet all of the staff seemed constantly happy & helpful.

Happy Campers

Nokia in recent history has been all about segmenting the market and having at least one handset that competes in every segement.

By extending their experiement in the MID platform area to also include GSM capabilities Nokia should be able to get similar benefits to Apple i.e. a very small number of hardware platforms to support.

They can also expose the work they have been doing over the last few years with the Open source community, which is not to be under-estimated.

The other thing Nokia seems to have taken from Apple is to have the device available a month or two after the event it was announced at, rather than a half year (as was the case with the N97)

You can see a marketing type video here, and a more “human” version here
The Hardware specifications are listed on the site, but the really interesting thing is that Nokia seems to have listened to the information around the iPhone and seen it is all about the software, for example see this review over on maemo-guru.

The thing that may get ignored/glossed-over in all of the geekgasms happening all over the place (examples here and here) is Nokia’s moves to provide services targetted at the developing world.
I think at least some of this has to be caused by Nokia employing people like Jan Chipchase who was talking about something similar to Nokia Money over two years ago. It is also a nice complement to Nokia life tools.
These are HUGE markets that California (home of all the Web2.0, Social Media hype engine) currently does not seem to understand or want to work with, and while the margins may be very small, they are there!
Over the past few years Nokia has shown it understands how to work a very high volume, low margin business (at least for hardware) and it will be interesting to see if they can do the same with services.

The Nokia Booklet announcement resembles the begining of the partnership announcements made with Intel and Microsoft. I am guessing that although this product was being worked on before the announcements were made and may have even helped them along.
Of course i can’t find the article now, but I remember reading an article recently that pointed out that Enterprise IT changes very slowly (something like 3-5 years per cycle!) and even then is not keen on the change. As pointed out in this article by Tomi Ahonen, many Enterprises are currently married to the Microsoft stack (essentially Exchange and Active Directory), and for many this has also meant moving to Blackberry.
I see the combination of a stylish netbook alongside a small handset (for example the E52, allowing the modern road warrior to do their job more effectively, than using the compromise device that is the Blackberry (screen is too low resolution, can’t connect to a project, etc). The inclusion of Quickoffice on E-Series devices is potentially yet another string to this bow.