In my posting of yesterday I referred to my next trip. After Salzburg I will fly to Finland, where I will attend the annual conference Mindtrek. In fact, as business partner of Hans Sleurink of the news and information service Media Update I will accompany a delegation of Dutch educationalists to the conference.In 2005 Hans and I organised a trip for educationalists and business people to Tampere. It was a great success as there were almost forty people in the delegation, thanks to a European grant for regional business development. This time the delegation is smaller as we do not have a grant; besides it is a week after PICNIC 07 in Amsterdam.
Today we travel to Tampere via Helsinki. There we will have a coach waiting for us to bring us to Tampere. We purposely did not fly on from Helsinki to Tampere, not for ecological reasons, but for social reasons. In a bus it is easier for people to introduce themselves and get to know each other. Once we have arrived at the Scandic Rosendahl Hotel just outside Tampere, where the Mindtrek Conference will be held, we will continue the introduction during the welcome dinner and bring in the Finnish hosts. My friend Cai has been appointed the chaperone of the Dutch delegation, but more Finnish friends will join us at the dinner.
The Mindtrek program looks very attractive. On Wednesday and Thursday they have interesting key-note speakers such as Mark Ollila of Nokia on games, Zak Greant on literate machines and Rick Falkvinge on copyright and society. After the key-note speeches the audience will break up for different tracks: Social Media, Open Source Business & Innovation, Games as Services, Ubimedia, Government, eGovernment – Virtually Yours. I guess that the ubimedia (love the term) and games and services will be the favourite tracks. On Thursday morning there will be a special session for the Dutch delegation. The subject will be mobile gaming; a state of art of the Finnish game industry will be presented, the state of art of mobile gaming and how Finnish multimedia school departments teach the subject. On Friday morning there will a session in the Tampere School of Art and Media. Cai will tell about the Finnish University system of colleges and university and will show the delegates the premises of TAMK, his school.
The delegates will have access to all social events. So they will be present at the Mindtrek award party, but also at the Tampere City reception. Besides there will be an interactive movie session Cause & Effect by Chris Hales; I am sure that this will be great entertainment.
Of course the question will be asked why we organise such a trip to Finland. Besides the effect that everything that comes from far tastes better, I had learned Mindtrek to be a very guiding conference in a country which has always been in the forefront of digital media and these days of course in the forefront of mobile media. The conference will now be held for the eleventh time. And to adstruct my position I would like to refer you to an overview of ten years Finnish digital media, written by my friend Tommi Pelkonen, who is these days working for Satama in the Netherlands.
By Friday night we will return to the Netherlands.
Blog Posting Number: 883
Tags: digital media
No comments:
Post a Comment