Time to open my on-line archive & blog for the rest of you. This will be the site where the different threads of my life come together – work, innovation, music, bikes. There probably are bugs & mistakes on the pages, and some are not finished at all yet – I am doing as I preach, launching in beta. Lean startup, you know! See you around!
I am heading to Africa again, one year after my trip to the World Bank event in Kenya. Now I will speak in the innovation ecosystems track: “This session will explore the relative roles the public and private sectors play in facilitating innovation, innovative enterprises and a productive economy.”
Living labs, open data and community-driven smart cities on the agenda. More insights when I get there.
I got the chance to explain the benefits of open data to the Finnish public in the most popular talk show of the country, hosted by Arto Nyberg. Hard thing to do in 15 minutes, but my mother thinks it went OK. And she should know. For the international network, this is a good chance to practice your Finnish.
I was fortunate to be invited by the World Bank to Nairobi, to participate in a round table organised by the Kenya Open Data Initiative and then to the Open Innovation Africa Summit.
The level of understanding the challenges regarding Open Data is high, but combined with a genuine enthusiasm about Open Data as an accelerator of innovation. And they are moving fast. For example, Kenya is starting a code fellowships program following the Code4America model – before anyone has done it in Europe.
The OIAS deep dive tackled the innovation challenges in Africa; the full report is still on its way, but you can find a good partial report in the Balancing Act blog.
So, what’s next? It seems that we are doing something right with Helsinki Region Infoshare because Petri Kola from our office (and Aalto University) is travelling back to Nairobi this week, to participate in an open data WS using Design Thinking methods.
For boosting innovation in Africa, I think that networked local hubs like M-lab are critical. Living Labs for user-driven, grassroots-level innovation could really make the difference here.
Keep an eye on Kenya & the rest of Africa. The challenges they face are gigantic, but so is the drive.
Sitting by the laptop at the home office – but I should be sitting on a BA plane to London.
After trying to check in on-line (as I usually do) at 8 PM, 1 Am and 5 AM just to get an error message, I was finally left out of the plane after queuing for 1,5 hours at the check-in counter (two officials and looooots of people – of course, as the on-line did not work…) when the flight was closed. At that time, there were six of us left in the queue. Way to go, BA.
Anyway, the whole frustrating process really made me think of the stupidity of the current check-in-systems. Why on earth do all the airlines have their own chek-ins (especially since most of them are sorry pieces of web design & technology, and I fully understand that people are afraid of, don’ t trust them and still prefer to queue)?
An universal check-in would finally rid us from airport aggressions; especially if combined with body scanners for security. Maybe Foursquare could extend their service from just playing around to real check-ins?
Gross Weight 