As Teppo is spending his quite earned last days of paternity leave in the lovely, springy coastlines of Estonia, I’ll be writing the weeknote this week. And it’s been quite an interesting one to say at least. Like I wrote earlier, a project we did for SuomiTV scored a world record in speed and efficiency. Here’s the platform provider Brightcove’s blog post about it.
Regarding other projects, the service ecosystem we’ve been designing on is taking steps towards first private, and then public beta later on. While I finished the visual framework I’d been working on, Panu and our new guy Fabian will be taking on implementing another piece of the puzzle. It will be an interesting bunch of services when it’s released, and will impact quite a few people’s lives quite soon we hope. Another interesting thing is that in this ecosystem we are actually working in sync with a some of our competitors and are totally fine with that. Whatever gets the best work done for our clients, the 10 people team we have has it’s limits which we are very well aware of.
Meanwhile, Matti, Panu and Ilkka have been working on the transformation project, which we shall call “Oslo”. It is now shifting from research to synthesis and concept design both visually and conceptually. The partner we have on the project have been building the brand and now it’s our turn to turn that into a tangible service. From our behalf, I will be stepping onboard as the visual lead as well.
“Projects never finish, they just move to maintenance phase”. That’s what Panu commented on the banking project his team has been working on. The service they’ve been working on is now 95% done, and waiting for the last wrinkles to be ironed out, meanwhile we work on assisting the client’s internal communications with the assistance of Henrik W. Carrying on with a similar theme, Panu and Teppo are also helping myself to draw together on a strategic design project named “Narvik”. Things are looking quite interesting, and… futuristic enough to work on.
Among other things we’ve been working is also a mobile web application tool for industrial management. The project is lead by our interaction design partner Petteri H. It’s also an excellent opportunity to peek inside Cooper’s GDD methodology, as Petteri is one of the few Finnish people fully qualified on that. And the odd-bit of communications / transformation project I’ve been working on got it’s final touches by Samuel and Fabian, and should be live any day now. You’ll probably see the results on your favorite social channel sooner or later. But of course, you didn’t hear it from us ok?
The Black Art of Business Development
On business development side of things it’s been a blast as well— First, we got accepted to the Luovimo program by Finpro. The program aims to help international growth for the accepted 20 companies and I’m quite sure it will be an interesting journey for us.
Oh yeah—on Friday, we also moved offices. From about next week on, you’ll find us at Köydenpunojankatu 2 a D, 3rd floor. Due some renovation mishaps, we will officially start working there some time next week, which means a few days worth of experiment in nomadic work life. A lot of our people are either working or starting up projects on-site with our clients so things should go quite smoothly after all. We do have a few months on our old lease left, so why such a rushed move? There’s a reason for everything, but more about that later on.
Personally the move was quite literal for me—after packing up on Thursday, I had my last telco in the old space on Friday, until my table was literally yanked under my arms to the truck. I took my bike and headed to the new space, which had piles and piles of our furniture, equipment and so on. Actually, before I even got there Matti and Panu had already retreated into one of the project spaces to work on Oslo. After a cup of coffee and bit of a walk around the space, Matti and myself concluded it will be the perfect space for us. Even at a very work-in-progress stage, the space just *feels* right, and I’m sure what we’ve planned together with Minna and Johanna will only make it more perfect. A snap from the telco is the title image, and a few snaps more on my Flickr account. Naturally, we won’t miss a chance to throw a party so a proper housewarming is due too.
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So to summarize this week somehow: Exciting, and exhausting but at the same time, a huge relief due closures and things quite literally moving forward. Until next week, by the words of great Ron Burgundy… stay classy, San Diego.
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