Right now I’m sitting in the couch of a temp Barcelona office slash Airbnb crib while trying to group a few thoughts together about what’s been going on for the past few weeks. For one, it’s been quite hectic and at the same time feels we’ve found a completely new gear in our to run on: despite everyone being busy, projects get delivered on time, budget and quality while interesting new business and ventures are flowing in.
What’s going on in Barcelona you might ask? Matti & myself are here, visiting the Mobile World Congress side event 4 years from now. Like the title says, the event concentrates on the dominant themes from four years from now: internet of things, wearables, startups, product design and all that in a super vibrant setting. Lot of interesting people, technology & things which actually deserves it’s own post, coming up soon.
Elsewhere, Vuoden Huiput (Design & advertising grand prix of Finland) shortlist was released a week ago. Pivo, the mobile finance app we helped OP-Pohjola design was shortlisted in three categories: Digital design, Service design and Productization of design. We’re grateful for a great client letting us into a great piece of work, and for everyone who participated making the product happen from N2, Toinen to the internal product team and everyone else involved. Let’s have a toast at the awards in few weeks.
Carrying on the same theme, I have the the honor to be invited to be head the digital jury at Küldmuna 2014, Estonia’s equivalent to Vuoden Huiput next week. I am honored and excited to see the Estonian talent in it’s full glory.
Meanwhile, everyone’s hard at work back at the office. Suddenly there seems to be quite a few of large things moving onwards simultaneously: look forward for high impact things in commerce, banking and media/VOD sometime this year.
Here’s what people are up to, in random order:
Panu returned for a short break in the sun only to find himself in between two large projects in finance and commerce. Luckily both in slightly different phases in design and development.
Teppo and Sauli are still crunching it away with our long time operator client, working on an ecosystem revamp and an internal product/startup respectively.
Jukka will be joining them in a few, once he’s done transferring a lot of moving parts at Veikkaus to Lauri who’s helping out our team already. Naturally, he’s got a few other things on his plate too, ranging from a Windows tablet app with Tuukka to pieces in the legislative world, banking and publishing.
Aki is very busy doing what Aki does for several projects ranging from consulting front end architectures & processes to actual development work.
Timo is slowly wrapping up a large piece of work for a startup client of ours in Finland and the US. Looks like the thing is going to be huge — more about that later on.
Shakti just wrapped up a super interesting Android app with Jukka & myself. Our client is about to pilot the thing in India of all places, and we’re excited to see how it all goes down there.
Tuukka seems to have a steady flow of work in a few projects related to commerce, and of course Helsingin Sanomat apps as well.
Myself? While wrapping up the Android thing, I’ve spent a majority of my time on getting the company brand assets pieced together. Slowly but surely Jukka & myself nailed the company identity revamp which is rolling out slowly as we speak: presentation & documentation templates, business cards, signage — it’s been only three months since the move :) — and other bits and pieces. Looking pretty cool so far, and probably deserves it’s own blog post in the near future too. I’m also trying to get my head around the beef in internet of things, smart living and the real business opportunities around this sphere. And products – more about this soon.
Finally, we’ve been positively surprised by our ongoing recruiting efforts. A sincere thanks to everyone who’s applied so far — if we haven’t spoken already we will quite soon. And there’s still time to apply!
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