PR

Today the Finnish Information Processing Association, FIPA (or TTL, Tietotekniikan Liitto) has chosen me as the opinion leader in ICT along with Angry Birds as the ICT product of the year!

The FIPA is a bit similar kind of organization in Finland as the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) is in the USA and worldwide.

It's a very positive surprise to be chosen in the first place, and even more positive to have such great company as Angry Birds by my side.

This honorary title of "Opinion Leader in ICT" (vuoden tietotekniikkavaikuttaja) has been received by some very prestigious people in the past;

Prof. Reino Kurki-Suonio
Prof. Pekka Himanen
Prof. Hannu Jaakkola
Risto Siilasmaa (2007)
Dr. Jyrki Kasvi, Member of Parliament (2008)
Dr. Mikko Kosonen (2009)

And now me for 2010.

What kind of themes I want to introduce in to the discussions?

Finland can no longer succeed with old models and processes of leadership, thinking about the old fashioned nature of work, and having an attitude geared more towards industrial production than for modern innovation.

People are not resources in a production facility.

The amount of work no longer correlates to good results or with more profits - the quality of the work and the brilliance of the idea does instead.

We kind of have an existential crisis in the Finnish economy; we have to be able to innovate and to think of work very differently from what we are used to.

Defining problems is more important than honing your skills in solving them. Independent critical thinking trumps common problem solving skills any time.

The whole world of ICT is full of opportunity for us all; and we have to be able to grasp those. Renew our entire concept of creativity, education, work and what it means to live your life as a contributing creative member of an organization and of society.

One good place to get your mindset right would be to start from reading Rework by 37signals. I have never seen more good thoughts compressed into a book than in Rework.

A finnish language story about this in Tietoviikko.

What do you think: how can we solve our crisis? Renew our thinking? Succeed in global competition?

Here's the TV talk from today (25.8.2010) with Anni Ronkainen of Google.

All chatter in finnish (sorry folks).

Taneli Tikka in Huomenta Suomi 25.8.2010 with Google from Taneli Tikka on Vimeo.

We talked about Nokia, services & software, Google, the upcoming changes in the media field, advertising, the iPad, and teh internetz.

Challenging topics for the main stream, that's for sure.

I will be on live TV again, this time it's with Google's local Country Manager Anni Ronkainen.

It's going to be on MTV3 Channel, "Huomenta Suomi" -program (good morning Finland) wednesday the 25th of August at around 08:00 or (08:05) in the morning, right next to a news segment. I will have my iPad with me, and we will be talking about technology and the interwebz no doubt.

Probably will be posting the video clip here later on, as previously.

A day after that (on Thursday) I hear that mr. Samuli Torssonen (emperor Pirk himself =)) will be on the morning programme, probably talking about Iron Sky. Watch that too!

Today Sanoma Magazines announced the details of their new glossy magazine AKU ("Donald"). It's going to be out on June the 9th (Donald Duck's birthday) and they describe it with: "Targeted at adults, AKU. is a completely new kind of glossy magazine that combines fashionable lifestyle contents and hilarious comics."

Part of the magazine's concept is choosing and naming real life people as witty representations of Donald Duck characters. They announced the "Duckburg characters of real life" today at around 15:20

Kalle Palander (alpine skier, celebrity) got chosen as Donald Duck ;) a good choice considering his personality, ups and down, temper etc.

They chose me as Scrooge McDuck. Not because I would own 607 tillion 386 zillion 947 trillion 522 billion dollars and 36 cents, but rather because of the similarities in Scrooge being an entrepreneur and succeeding by his own merit.

Scrooge left Scotland for the US at the age of 13. I started working at the same age.

Scrooge's motto is "Work smarter, not harder." - which I totally agree with!

To me Scrooge is a very positive character; demanding for sure, has a bit of a nasty temper (or lacks some patience?), while simultaneously being very keen towards learning new things and having an adventurous spirit. Amateur treasure hunter and all. Despite of being a centennial Scrooge still has the energy left in him to get excited about new opportunities, new adventures and winning over his competitors. That's the spirit!

Often the character of Scrooge doesn't come off as a big corporate industrialist (you never see him working a gigantic corporate HQ, with office politics and all that crap..), he comes off as an entrepreneur-adventurer instead. Always looking for the next-big-thing and feeling depressed if there's no action around.

Makes you wonder; is Scrooge's character really a tribute to entrepreneurship?

Sure would like to see Scrooge invest more of his money into startups ;)

Yesterday morning I was a guest at the Good Morning Finland (Huomenta Suomi) TV show again.

The overall topic was adult usage of the Internet, privacy and people's rights to their own content.

Language handicap: unfortunately the talk is entirely in finnish again, sorry. Here's the embedded video:

Taneli Tikka in Huomenta Suomi at 11.2.2010 from Taneli Tikka on Vimeo.

Couple of things concerning this: I don't talk about the usage of the Internet for entertainment purposes - because that's a given. Everybody does that. So only focusing on the differences of usage. With adults its much more official and serious -toned, while the younger age groups simply have all aspects of their life online, one way or the other.

I mention insurance and finance product comparisons as one of the uses adults have. That's linked to www.vakuutuskone.com

The end segment is about banks who do not provide XML feeds of people's own data to the people, while it would be technically simple and while they simultaneously do provide it for companies. That's linked to www.balancion.com

Banks have intentionally decided to stand in the way of progress and disable the XML feeds for private accounts. I have understood that they would have the infrastructure in place already because of SEPA and the way their backends are build. In some banks enabling the stream would be almost like flipping a switch, some others would have a small amount of work to do.

Why do they disable it then? Because they have failed in their strategic thinking. They have made the false conclusion that by being protectionist they would somehow run a better business - while in fact they are missing out on a huge opportunity for growth and new revenue generating services, entire new business models, etc. Opening up the feeds would grow the entire market and increase the size of the pie for the whole sector. Their decision is cowardly, showcases weak leadership and communicates fear and lack of self-confidence from their part.

Finland had it's first telephone line in the year 1877. Back then the printing press, the "newspaper men", were afraid of this modern form of progress; and protested against the telephone by arguing that it will kill out the print media because now news can travel faster. While in fact the opposite happened; faster communications and the telephone is a big reason why the print media grew to be bigger than ever, as gossip spread faster and people were even more focused and interested about the news they provided. The telephone increased the need for their newspaper products and grew the entire market size.

When ever I see this kind of fearful and weak resistance to change with false logic behind it, I most certainly remain unimpressed. Banks should do better than this, way better. And we as their customers should actively demand them to do so.

Banks have opened up their XML (and various other formats) feeds in Estonia. Finland is the backwater hillbillytown of progress. A country of fearful weak banks that would rather fall behind in progress than go for the huge opportunities ahead and grow their businesses. Not progressing a vital infrastructure the like the banking system makes us fall behind even on a national level, which makes it even more sad and reprehensible.

Few links about the Balancion discussion:

http://www.tietoviikko.fi/taustat/apaja/article370344.ece

http://www.arcticstartup.com/2010/02/01/osuuspankki-says-no-to-balancion/

http://twitter.com/#search?q=balancion

http://www.kasvua.org/~toivotuo/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2010/01/29#banks-and...

http://www.tarkkamarkka.com/blogi/2010/01/osuuspankki-kielsi-balancionin...

http://www.sombiz.net/content/osuuspankki-says-no-balancion

http://www.pinseri.com/2010/02/01/balancion-ja-opn-oma-talous/

http://tweetmeme.com/story/513122620/osuuspankki-says-no-to-balancion

http://onespot.contentnext.com/paidcontent-uk/2010/02/01/a/572900074-osu...