Distractions, reflections

Routing a flight through the UK is generally fortuitous, because it’s on the way to Finland. Since I’ve been coming to the Helsinki area relatively steadily during since 2003, I’ve developed a routine of doing similar things when I’m in town. On this trip, Minna and I co-taught a class at Stadia. One difference on this occasion was the grand meeting room, which is an improvement over the basement lecture hall.

When I stay at Taina’s house, my schedule follows her commute pattern. Picking up Rulle from tennis lessons in Munkkiniemi puts us near warehouse shopping, so we stock up the pantry.

On weekends, there’s an opportunity to prepare a leisurely dinner. This time, at Taina’s house in Soukka, we decided to cook Chinese food — an improvement over the choices available in local restaurants.  Read more... (444 words, 10 images, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

For the Helsinki portion of the Rendez workshop, we were joined by Gary and Teri, who had just flown in. With DLH in town for such a short trip, Karlos joined us for dinner at Eatz.

Although I prefer the apartments at the Accome Parliament, the rest of the group stayed at the SAS Radisson Plaza just east of the Central Railway Station. The 20-minute walk to Stadia started by a new Ice Park directly on Railway Square.

 Read more... (270 words, 10 images, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)

Instead of the usual “English class” lecture, David speaks on “social software”.

(by David): Minna had asked if I could talk with her friend, Taina, who had opted out of Nokia in favour of teaching at Stadia, which is the Helsinki Polytechnic. Taina finished her Ph.D. at HUT, probably a year or two ago. Minna told me that the Stadia building was actually the original home of HUT. It’s on the Bulevardi, beside the shipyards and waterfront in central Helsinki. The institution started as a Polytechnic, became a Technical University, and then grew out of those buildings for new labs to be built in Otaniemi, which must have been a forest west of the city back then. (They must have put those bridges in, because there are two choices to cross that expanse of water).

As it happens, one of the few times that our schedules lined up was during a class, so Minna and I went over to speak to the class. When I walked in the classroom, this seemed like an IBM meeting — every student had a laptop, and their screens were up. (There was a uniformity to the HP machines which makes me think there’s sponsorship going on). Taina introduced us, Minna talked about knowledge management, and I talked about my experiences with Instant Messaging, wikis and blogs.  Read more... (431 words, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)