Did it in Helsinki – experiences of a stay at home holiday

About two weeks ago I was attending an interesting seminar organised by the Finnish Environment Institute about the preliminary results of the ENVIMAT research project concentrating on environmental impacts of material flows in the Finnish economy. The program was interesting and I was feeling light since I knew that the next Monday I would start my one week autumn holiday. While focusing on the last presentation I got an SMS from my spouse. “My passport is still stuck at the embassy because of the visa application. Seems like we can’t travel anywhere next week”.

Last time we had holiday, we took a trip through parts of Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. I must admit that travelling is one of my passions and I take every chance to travel to faraway places. I’m not sure if that is anything to proud of these days, but still. Well, to get back to the point, this time we had planned to take a short trip from Helsinki to Tallinn. I was feeling good about our choice to this time only take a short boat trip over the Gulf of Finland, no long haul flights or extensive road trips needed. But after receiving the SMS I was disappointed, no travelling at all? What can you do with a stay at home holiday?

At the end of the week I was glad how things turned out. I had enjoyed a slow paced delicious breakfast at the Cafe Ekberg (I must admit that I couldn’t strictly stick to the vegan diet...), wandered around a park covered with yellow and red autumn leaves, walked along some narrow streets in Kaivopuisto with fancy embassy buildings next to the sidewalks. One evening, I was glad I didn’t have to feel guilty about having a Nepalese meal without being in Kathmandu. When travelling abroad I consider it almost a crime to skip the local dishes but since I was at home I could eat whatever I wanted! Another night I had a chance to listen one of my favourite artists Jukka Poika singing his stories about the down to earth life in reggae style. It’s not that often you can enjoy listening to him on the beaches of Thailand.

When travelling abroad I always spend some time shopping, now that I knew all the same shopping facilities are available when actually needed I chose do something else instead. It might sound naive but it is true that instead of shopping I spend some time in the library, museum, enjoying live music and helping a friend with her garden work. Last but not least I went to check the cows grazing on the fields of the agricultural department of the Helsinki University. I was laughing at myself since apparently I had to move to the capital city of Finland before I actually had a chance to get so close with those lovely creatures.

In addition to the fact that I had cycled more than 200 kilometres around Helsinki during my week off, I was very much surprised how relaxing time I had. I won’t make a promise not to ever again to make a long haul trip but what I learned is that spending a holiday at home eases the pressure to do too many things during your days off. Last time I needed few days to actually recover from our holiday trip before getting back to work! This time it was easy to take it slow with the activities, if I won’t have the time to visit the National museum today I can (in theory at least) do it next weekend.

Winners of MindTrek Startup Launchpad

The first-ever Startup Launchpad competition was held 9.10.2008 at Mindtrek conference in Tampere, Finland. One did it was one of the eight startup finalists pitching their idea to a group of experienced jury. The other finalists were Floobs, HammerKit, MahShelf, RunToShop, Star Wreck Studios, and TripSay.

The jury was headed by Sharon C. Ballard, the founding President/CEO of Enable Ventures Inc. Other members were Marc Davis, Social Media Guru and Chief Scientist, Yahoo!; Tapio Siik, Partner, Nokia Growth Partners; Pekka Pärnänen, Head of Finpro, Silicon Valley, and Henri Rantalainen, CEO, Business Development Advisor, Technopolis Ventures Professia.

Every contestant had 6 minutes to present the idea and company to the jury and after that anybody could make questions to the presenter. Our CEO Antti Villanen had his turn on fourth place and told about One did it in a nutshell. The jury seemed interested and asked a lot about MIPS calculation and how our service differentiates from i.e. Yahoo! Green. I think it went very well, the guy sitting next to me in the audience even congratulated me after Antti's presentation.

After couple of hours the jury had made their decision, and they commented briefly to all the contestants. The host was honored to announce the winners and he started to call out the winners. He said that the three contestants ended up a draw on the third place and he asked MacShelf, Hammerkit and One did it to come to front. At that point I have to admit I was a little bit disappointed, our final standing seemed to be something between 3rd to 5th. But after that the host started to thank everyone in the jury, the competitors and the audience, and this was it for this year. After a little bit of confusion it cleared out that there wasn't going to be more winners, the first ever MindTrek Startup Launchpad winner couldn't be selected from there three and we all were winners.

In this situation the winners will take a draw for the prizes later, but we got a chance to choose one member of the jury to give one-on-one time for us right after the event. We chose Yahoo!'s Marc Davis, and got into a really encouraging conversation with him. He was really excited about our concept and gave as hints to succeed with it. What a great day it was!

Quality life

One did it team is in intensive working period to bring the next, exciting launch of the website. As I write this, I hear our technical people go trough the service, new features and improvements. The place is filled with notes, pictures, sounds of clicking and typing. But sometimes it’s nice to get out from the office and participate events related to our project.

Marja and Mari participated in Megapolis2023 festival in Helsinki. Megapolis is an annual event and it emphasises the cities as a frontier of ecological lifestyle. This year’s theme of Megapolis was happiness. How people can live happily in the cities? Amongst many interesting speakers was Carl Honore, author of the book In Praise of Slowness. How a Worldwide Movement is Challening the Cult of Speed. Now, I am a person who likes to give time to thinking. Some people may think that I’m just slow or lazy when I look out from the window and think. But Honore finally gave me the best excuse to do this in peace. He preaches about quality of life versus the speed of our life. We have fast food, speed yoga, drive trough funerals and we speed read the bedtime stories to our children. Why everything needs to be so speedy, he asks. He doesn’t mean that we all have to start doing things slowly right away, but that we should consider doing things in right speed for us. For example, why we all need to go to work at the same time? Or why do we always need to be available via e-mail or mobile? Why can’t we give the full attention to a person we are talking with?

Okay, what does this all have to do with One did it you might ask. I think it is essential. If you consider speed, it many times relates to ecological impacts. If we want to travel fast, we choose the airplane or car instead of i.e. train or bicycle. If we want our laundry dry fast, we put them to thumble dryer instead of letting the clothes dry slowly. If our shoes gets broken, it takes time to repair them and we often choose to just quickly buy new ones. All those things are more eco-efficient when done slowly.

I think good quality lifestyle is in the core of One did it. People often suppose that being eco-efficient means also that you have to give up some good things in your life. This depends on the perspective. Giving up speed or doing things in right speed doesn’t mean that we have to give up something. It is about gaining something more: time for our loved ones and for ourselves. Eco-efficient lifestyle emphasises quality over quantity.