Nokia OpenLabs 2008 [Helsinki, Finland]

Photo Credit: philcampbell on flickr

I’ve just returned from a 4 day trip Helsinki, Finland brought to you by Nokia’s Open Labs. I had a fabulous time, between all the other attendees I connected with, and exploring a new city that seems to find most americans a bit ‘exotic’.  Now I just have to get used to being back in San Francisco, and learning what time and day it is, along with the fact the stockmarket seems to have blindly stepped into a manhole.

THE SHORT OF IT: The Open Labs event was an amazing time, as I explored a new corner of the world, met very interesting people, and had an all-out fabulous time!  I was a bit critical on the workshops during the day, because I didn’t know what the goals were, but I loved my time there, the people I met, and would enjoy the opportunity to do something like this again. 

Upon arrival, I received an Nokia E71.  As a recent adopter of the iphone, it was difficult to make the OS switch, I wasn’t the only one poking at the screen from time to time trying to open an app.  I know the symbian and nokia OS’s are loved around the world, but when it comes to an advanced smart device, their beauty in simplicity doesn’t match the iphone.  On just a plain (dumb) phone, I understand nokia’s OS is great, but trying to configure my e71 and run installed apps felt like a slow process.  Little annoyances included not knowing how to add my contact book to the main screen menu, not being able to quickly ‘lock’ and ‘unlock’ my phone to put it in my pocket, and not being able to ‘reply’ to txt messages i sent out by typing the number (if it’s in your sent box, you can’t reply to the sent number, you must retype it.) To be fair here, I truly believe the iphone is the worst phone I’ve ever owned.  It’s an amazing little computer and internet device, but as a phone, it’s pants – it feels to slow to get to a dial pad and call somebody.

After unpackaging my new phone, we all went out to a night club that nokia rented for our private event, which provided a great atmosphere to meet people involved with social media from all corners of the world.  (side note on Finnish culture here, when leaving the club, i noticed a lot of young Finns walking around with parachute-type jump suits and garbage bags around their chest, I later learned these are freshman entering their first week of university, and this is their drinking suit that ensures they stay dry between drinking and puking :)

Friday was spent in workshops, where we broke out into groups, to help come up with ideas relating to how mobile and the internet is changing how we all interact with each other.  While interesting at times, the workshops felt a little too big, a little too loud, and too many opinions for me, an attendee, to get much out of it.  Many of us were curious to what Nokia’s goals were for the workshops – in order so that we could help them achieve those goals – we were all very grateful for being there.

Friday night again was a great time, and one were I spent the most talking to people about what they were doing, who they were, where they came from, and what they were interested in.   Of course drinking added to the fun.  Talking to both attendees and Nokia folks was a good time.  What was so great about the Open Labs Event, that it was people from all walks of life on the web, like Nicky of nickydigital.com who puts together one scene of NYC nightlife on his site.

Some recommendations for next year:

• A pre-event website URL would be helpful, I don’t believe I received a link to http://events.nokia.com/openlab/, so I never bother searching for it.  Somebody organically created their own (of course, this is a social media event!)
• Pre-tag some content on flickr/blogs/twitter, and link to it, maybe tag a few Nokia ppl organizing the event as ‘openlabs08′ on flickr so I can see who I’ve been talking to over email, and also train me to use a certain set of tags when I talk about the event.
• As people fly from all corners of the world, most of which have never been to Finland before, encourage them to stay an extra day to explore Helsinki, it’s a beautiful city, most people I met flew in/out just for 48hrs of the conference.
• I was a bit confused on the goals of the event, a number of people I spoke to had the same questions.  What was Nokia looking to get out of it?  What was the benefit for the individuals attending?  What should we (attendees) have taking out of the workshops?  (My #1 reward was all the people I met and the connections I made, most of which happened at night, over drinks, just like at sxsw.)
• If you’re giving out sim cards, please provide people with the option to keep them pass the event closing ceremony.  I wasn’t the only person who had made plans with local Finns to hang out Saturday night and Sunday, who then found ourselves a bit screwed without the contact number we gave out.  (we’re all the socially interconnected type).

UPDATE 9/17

After talking to a friend about this workshop, just wanted to give some info about how it all came together.

It was pretty amazing, as Nokia reached out to social media people around the world, with just an email through a PR? firm, WOM (word of mouth marketing), inviting them to Helsinki.  When I first received the email, I was a bit skeptical as it was text heavy, with no links to a nokia website.  I almost thought it was spam!  I replied with a short answer, to get another email that made it seem more legitimate.  At that point, I was pretty excited, like "wow, this is pretty cool, I feel like I just won something :)"  It’s pretty amazing of Nokia to put on such an event and I’m very happy to have been a part of it.

The invited folks from all over, from Croatia to Mexico, Asia to the US.  People that were creating all types of content, from bloggers to video publishers, to forum moderators, to heavy twitter users.

Photos from the event can be found here. 

tags: NokiaOpenLab08 openlabs08 openlabs nokia workshop nokiaworkshop helsinki finland