Space nazis are a no-go for Facebook? February 2, 2010
Posted by kartsi in Uncategorized.3 comments
According to the producer of Iron Sky, Samuli Torssonen “The Wikipedia page about WWII and Nazi Germany has more material that can be considered ‘hateful or obscene’ than our Facebook page. The fact that the removal of the profile of a legitimate business was done without any warning is extremely questionable, especially so because Facebook doesn’t offer any way to contact the administration.” and that is one of the biggest problems: There is no way to contact Facebook, at least in an effective way. To find out even email addresses for the administration is difficult, not to mentions phone numbers or addresses for the people behind Facebook. With the time-difference between Finland and the US of seven or eight hours, getting replies is extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Unfortunately the message Facebook is sending with this is that marketing on Facebook is not a good thing and one should not do it. A lot of businesses see Facebook as a vital part of their marketing. When the word spreads out, other businesses will move to remove their presense from Facebook. I’m fairly sure that is not the aim of Facebook. According to Torssonen “The fact that Facebook can just take down the page of a legitimate business without any warning or any means of contacting them is something most companies don’t realize.” which adds to the speculation if Facebook is such a good place for marketing.
Things like this are not good for promoting the use of social media in marketing. It has the same effect as telling horror stories about the security issues of things online. The people who know what it’s about are not scared but angry but the people who are not familiar with the things might think it’s scary and risky. That is not what big sites like Facebook should be promoting but they obviously are.
Many of the fans of Iron Sky have changed their profile pictures to something related to Iron Sky to show their support. A group called “We want Iron Sky back!!” was set up a couple of hours ago (by me) and it has over 300 members already. The removal of the page has been noted in webzines and newspapers’ websites, the biggest one being Helsingin Sanomat, the biggest newspaper in Finland. Iron Sky and Energia have released a press release and a blog post about the situation.
Check out the following sites:
The official website for Iron Sky
The press release
Blog post in blog.starwreck.com
We want Iron Sky back!! group on Facebook
Article in Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish)
Edit, Feb 2nd 2010, 22.07:The leading financial newspaper Taloussanomat published the story on their website (in Finnish)
Hub Tampere is coming, part 2 February 1, 2010
Posted by kartsi in Uncategorized.2 comments
The discussion started with Jukka and Elina introducing the idea of the Hub and their goals for Hub Tampere. As I had heard all that already in December, I came to the meeting about half an hour later. I was happy to notice there was only one question about the privacy of a company and so forth. I think as time goes by the questions about the privacy will disappear as the people who want to have their private rooms to work in will not come to the Hub. I think Jukka had a brilliant answer to the question, though. He said a place like Hub must be based on mutual trust and that is what they are working to get the Tampere Hub to be, too.
The main point of the Pop-up meeting was to discuss the ideas behind the Hub Tampere. Petra Lattunen from Ingreening and Janne Kukka and Jyri Öhman from Ikimono told about their ways of working. Ingreening is a company helping companies and communities with environmental issues and Ikimono helps companies in communicating environmental issues. Both companies had really good points about entrepreneurship and have a lot to offer to the Hub and it’s members.
After Ingreening and Ikimoni had introduced their activities a discussion about what kinds of environmental and ecological things people do in their everyday life. The discussion was really interested and at some points even quite intense. Hearing about other’s views on environmental issues is always interesting for a Bachelor of Engineering in Environmental Engineering. The different views of people about working (three days a week compared to working as much as possible) and about environmental issues was even a bit surprising.
I enjoyed the discussion and the meeting. I’m happy the Hub Tampere has decided to take a stand for environmentalism and doing things in an ecological manner. One more reason to sign up! I signed up today, hoping to start my membership in the beginning of May when my company KaroKaro starts working. If everything goes well, you can meet me at Hub Tampere once or twice a week!
Hub Tampere is coming! January 22, 2010
Posted by kartsi in Uncategorized.2 comments
According to the Hub Tampere website “The Hub is an initiative to build a network of places around the world where entrepreneurs, innovators and changemakers can meet and work together to tackle the world’s most pressing social, cultural and environmental challenges. A place is needed to inspire and support imaginative and enterprising initiatives for a radically better world.”
The first time I heard about a Hub opening in Tampere I was exteremely happy. The idea of having a network at hand with all the new and exciting ideas appeals to me. In my opinion community business management and working together with different companies and people is the way business will be conducted in the future. When I heard the Hub Tampere was having their first Pop-up meeting I decided to take part in it.
The meeting itself was really interesting. The organizers showed the drafts the interior designer had sent them just a couple of days earlier. The Hub will be located in the old industrial area of Finlayson in a big hall with lots of open space. The Luova Tampere (Creative Tampere) and Tampere University of Applied Sciences entrepreneur project Voimala will share the space with The Hub. There will be lots of open spaces with nice tables and lounges in which people can sit and work together. I was really impressed, they had really done good work with the design!
However, the meeting was somewhat a disappointment to me. It is understandable that in the beginning people are not aware what The Hub is about and hopefully this changes as time goes by. I went there expecting to see people who think like I do but ended up seeing people who were asking about getting their closed offices in a Hub and who were worried about privacy (customer privacy is understandable) and about other entrepreneurs seeing what the others do. Ideas like these are really against the whole Hub-thinking, at least in my opinion.
I know Finland (and most other countries) have a long history about doing business in the manner of “us against them”, with “them” being other companies. Doing things together has sometimes tried with forcing companies or people work together but most companies still think that doesn’t serve them in any way. In my opinion networking and doing things together are the best way of getting a successful company.
There is another Pop-up meeting for Hub Tampere next week and I’m attending that. Hopefully the people who want to have their own rooms in an office and those who are afraid other people might see what they’re doing will not attend to the second meeting. I don’t think Hub is a place for them. I’m hoping the Hub Tampere will end up having a good network of people who are interested in doing things together, exchanging ideas and brainstorming together. That’s what the business in the future will be all about!
You better watch out…for social media! December 21, 2009
Posted by kartsi in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
One story about the risks of social media was published in the Opettaja-magazine, the biggest teacher’s magazine in Finland, in the issue of the weeks 51-52. It was the first time social media made it to the cover of the magazine and the story was four pages long! As an active user of social media I could be glad about this but after reading the story I have to say it sucked. Not only because it was not true (there were clear errors!) but because it was written in a manner, which implied social media is something to be scared about and something people should not use, unless they get proper education from the “social media experts”. (I use quotation marks on “social media experts” because most of the people are out there just to scare people and to shout in social media and that is not what I think is a good thing!)
The article said that people often start using social media because their colleagues or friends say it’s a good thing to use or find a useful tool which they recommend. Because the people are not educated to use the tools, they use them without thinking about what they’re doing and end up telling things out loud instead of keeping their mouths shut and this poses a security risk, or at least that’s what I made out of the article. Support from colleagues and friends was seen as a bad, bad, BAD thing instead of being an extremely good thing. For me and my colleagues, working without having a network of colleagues to help out is not productive at all. Support from people around you, no matter if it is for tools or for prdagogical things or something else, is the most important part of working communty. If it wasn’t, we all could work from home and never see anyone.
About a week ago I attended a lecture about social media. Even though it was interesting in many ways, the final thing that was covered was the risks. What was said was that it is a bad thing if you’re applying for a job and your future boss can find information about you online! A big risk was that people tell their personal things in publid and in just a few moments the information will be available for all. I admit, telling too personal things can be a negative thing, but if you wouldn’t talk about it in a crowded bus or train (many Finnish people do!), why post it online? But as a person working with education technology and social media I think finding me online is important. If I apply for a job, I know the future employer will Google my name. I would be worried if there were no hits, for the employer it would imply I don’t know anything about this and I don’t use social media in my communication. Why should I try not to be found, instead of letting people know who I am, what I’ve done (it’s nothing illegal, it’s nothing offensive) and what I’m interested in?
For some reason the personal imformation spreading has started to become a bad and a scary thing. Telling one’s address or phone number is considered horrible and scary, even risky! However, a telephone directory (or a phone book, if you like) has been published annually in Finland, covering a city or a community or a bit larger area. The Finnish telephone directory contains not only the name and phone number of a person but the address AND the profession. This has never been considered to be a risk. Anyone could take the book, start copying the numbers and addresses and sell them to who ever pays the most. “But it’s printed media, it can’t be bad!” is what is being told.
Personally I don’t see a great risk in using social media or anything in the internet. I don’t have to tell about me in public if I don’t want to and the use of common sense is of course required but that’s required when going to a bar anywhere. You don’t give your address or your phone number to every stranger you meet, right? Instead, I use social media for communication, which it is meant to be used for. It’s nothing scary and it’s nothing risky, unless you let it be. It’s not such a big thing and the risks are way too exaggerated and I intend to use social media and preach for the new ways of communication no matter what!
What makes a good workplace? November 19, 2009
Posted by kartsi in Shadow Karma.add a comment
For the past year I have worked in a place I would calla good work environment. The technology is good enough for me to use all the applications and software I need, the tables are big enough, there is enough space, enough light and so on. But the place itself doesn’t make a good work environment. It’s the people around me that do. My colleagues and the people I share the office with are great people who are full of ideas. Whenever someone throws an idea up in the air, people start thinking about it creating brilliand and wonderful things. We have fun together, we disagree and we help each other. That is the thing I’m going to miss most.
Now it seems the group is going to be separated, at least to some extent. What this means is that the pedagogical viewpoint will be removed. Even though I am not going to be working here after the end of this year, I feel there is still going to be a big loss. One big part of this group of people is to develop the pedagogical way of thinking and the use of online tools in teaching. How can this be acheived if the pedagogical view is missing? This is something that is valued in the world but not in this organization and that’s a shame.
When asked about the intfrastructural changes of the office, there were no answers yet. The move itself will happen in a couple of weeks. In order for us to do our jobs we need access to the information systems of this building, not the building on the other side of the road. For many people the only requirement seems to be computers and internet connection. But that doesn’t mean it’s enough for us. Having a help-desk means we need more than that and being in a different building might mean we are not going to be able to connect to the information systems here. No one has any knowledge if it will really happen or not. No one knows who is going to take care of all that.
The situation is not as bad as it seems. The new place might be better. It’s not the final destination of this office as most likely the people are going to have to move again, sometime in the first half of next year. The people in the office have a great opportunity to get to know the people they will be working with in the future. But it’s the message that seems to be coming through in this: The pedagogical view is not appreciated. And that is sad.
Social media, marketing and NASA November 10, 2009
Posted by kartsi in Shadow Karma.add a comment
For some people social media is anything that happens on the internet. For some (perhaps even the same) people internet marketing is something that has to be controlled, directed and done purposely and sometimes even purposefully. Where do those people draw the line between social media and marketing is beyond me but they clearly seem to think those are two different things. Perhaps this shows the way the world has been and how it is not anymore. There are still people trying to hold on to what they are used to doing. No matter how open they are to new technologies and ways of doing, the motivation behind all action is still the old way of thinking.
What seems to be a key issue in thinking the “old way” is the way information is viewed. I find people tend to think information for example about a project a company is doing is not important in marketing. What seems to be more important is the whole profile of the company and the core services they provide. That is not to say the core services are not important but they only build the basis of the company. For me the most interesting and important thing about a company (or anything else) is not what the core product is but what kind of implementations they have used the core product or service for. The projects are the ones that count.
As an example of an interesting thing could be NASA. The core product or service of NASA is of course space study and exploration, at least that is something I first think when talking about NASA. That itself is extremely interesting but the reason I keep coming back to NASA’s site and the reason I registered to that site is not the space study or the exploration in general, it’s the projects they are doing, the missions. I follow the missions, I look at the photos, I read the articles and the updates how the mission is proceeding, I find it fascinating. If NASA had only a list of ongoing missions with only the names of the missions and perhaps a brief explanation what the mission is about on their website, I wouldn’t keep returning to the site. The names or the purposes of the missions are not important, what is important is how the missions are turning out, which ones are successfull and which have not succeeded that well. The new information about the solar system and about the Earth is what makes the site meaningful.
The example given above would most likely make sense to most of the people. However, when thinking about marketing, the information is stuck on a different loop. I think what NASA is doing with their website is the most important marketing they can do to general public. But for companies that need to sell something, having updates or telling about projects and partners and visits to partner institutions seem to be considered meaningless. The education background of the employees, the amount of years the company has been in business and irrelevant things like that are the ones that are used to market and sell the products.
If I had my way and could build the ideal world, all the companies would have a lively website. This doesn’t mean one should use social media at all. NASA doesn’t use social media on it’s website and yet the site lives. Building a lively website doesn’t always mean being social. Sometimes the information and the way different media is used (such as videos, pictures and text, sometimes even sound) are the only things the site needs. In cases like these, a blog can be good as long as people don’t think a blog itself will be what sells the product because having a blog and never updating it is really worse than not having a blog at all. Having a blog because “every one else has one, too” is also wrong. If the blog is not something the people in the company are not interested to update, the blog will not survive. The content of the blog is the most important thing and if the content is not interesting or relevant, the blog provides really bad marketing.
When talking about internet marketing, one should never separate the marketing from everything else the company does on the internet. The company’s website can be a way of giving contact information but in most of the cases that can be the only thing a potential client gets from the company. If the website is good but a blog is bad, the company will be viewed in a light that it’s not too good. If a blog is good but the actual website of the company doesn’t work on some browser or has other problems or is not user friendly, the company will once again be considered not so good. But whatever the company does in the internet is public and all of that has an effect on how the company is viewed. Because of this social media and internet marketing should never be separated.
Social Media FTW November 9, 2009
Posted by kartsi in Shadow Karma.add a comment
I use social media daily. I use it to keep in touch with people. I’ve been on IRC since 2002 or so and it’s still one of the most important means of communication (on the internet) to me. I’ve got a journal on LiveJournal but for me that is not social media. Only when people leave comments (which happens every five posts or so, depending on the post, of course) it becomes at least remotely social. But the site itself has nothing to do with social media.
I’ve used Facebook since 2007 so not very long. For most people Facebook seems to be a site on which they do tests and harass people by sending invitations to events their friends are not interested in. It seems to me people think setting up an event in Facebook is internet marketing, which in my opinion it is not. It’s like setting up a blog and then never updating it. I’ve heard a lot of people say “I don’t really know why I’m on Facebook, I don’t really keep up with people there or log in to the site that often”. Sure, if you don’t log in often enough, you can’t keep in touch with the people there. For me, reading other people’s status updates and commenting on them (I do this quite a lot) IS a way of keeping in touch with them. I also use Facebook for my work. Whenever I’m in need of a gadget or a plugin or something like that to do something specific, I update my status, ask for suggestions and get five to ten ideas from friends.
The latest “upcoming” thing in Finland seems to be Twitter and all the other similar services. There even is one that was made in Finland, which is in Finnish, called Qaiku or something. I haven’t used Twitter for a long time, a bit over half a year now. But for me, it’s really important to follow others, read their tweets and reply to them. I’m always somewhat reserved when people who don’t update their Twitter at all talk about Twitter and tweeting. I think you really have to use it in order to know what it’s about and how it can be used for being social. I’ve seen really brilliant things being done with Twitter! For me microblogging is really the way to go.
As for other services, I use Google’s services quite a lot (Gtalk, Gmail, Googlewave, GoogleDocs, etc., not all of them social media, of course). I’m not really into wikis (again, not social media actually) but when needed I use them. I haven’t really been writing a blog before so this is the first time for me but I’ve updated a couple of websites through WordPress, which makes this system somewhat familiar. I use Ning for certain things. I’m active on one discussion forum and follow a couple forums every now and then. I’m a member on one of the most known sites in Finland, IRC-Galleria. Not to mention MySpace, which I hardly ever use, but have been an active user before they made the changes to try to be more like Facebook. I use YouTube nearly daily. I’ve used SecondLife (because of my work) and use other services as well. So my field of internet services is not that narrow but it’s not very wide either.
I’m happy people are using different services and find use for them. I’m happy people develope gadgets and software to make the use of for example Twitter easier. I use TweetDeck because I think it makes updating and following Twitter easier! It can a be good thing one can bring the tweets into Facebook or into a journal. But. There are things I really don’t understand about sharing the content.
One thing I don’t understand is sending ALL the tweets into Facebook status. For me, Facebook is completely different. With 550 friends and about 50 of them being on Twitter (meaning I follow them), I really don’t want to read the same updates from Twitter and from Facebook. I think it defeats the purpose. I understand sharing a link or something can be easier when one can post to two places at the same time but to post all the Twitter replies to Facebook, what’s the point? Facebook is not a microblog (even though the status updates seem to be going into that direction) and Twitter is not Facebook. The profiles of the services are two completely different things, why should one try to use them in the same way?
Other thing I don’t understand is having a feed from a blog into Twitter and still manually posting “I’ve just updated my blog”. If there is a reason for this, could someone please explain it to me? I’m also against having way too many feeds to way too many places. It’s one thing to have a feed from you Twitter account on your website or a feed from your blog to you Twitter account but to link your Twitter feed for example to a feed that should be from blogs seems absurd. Yes, more people notice your Twitter that way. No, it’s not in a good way!
So, who determines what is the “correct” way of using social media? The developers, the users, the “audience”, the experts? The users, of course. Are the examples mentioned here completely wrong? No, they’re not because that is the way the users are using the services. But does this mean it is the right way to use it? Are users always right? In my opinion no. It is not the right way to use nor is it the wrong way to use a service. No, users are not always right but that doesn’t mean they are wrong either. On some services there are some general rules how to use the service, most of them are so called silent information. Those rules are mostly related to treating others using the same service. But what about the wrong and right use of a service or a system? There are no rules. What I would like people to have is common sense. Perhaps it’s asking too much from general population but in my opinion that’s the only way the social media could become even more useful and could earn it’s respect. Not as a service or as a system or as a “cool, new and exciting thing” but as a way to communicate with people and to build networks.
Welcome to Shadow Karma November 8, 2009
Posted by kartsi in Shadow Karma.add a comment
I’m currently working in the Education Technology Centre of Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Finland. My work involves in technological advances in teaching and in learning environments in general. I’m interested in the way sharing the information and the information itself has changed, especially because of the internet. I’ve noticed in my own life how the development of mobile technology has made the internet and all the applications one can use for communication more available and how we depend on those applications.
Apart from work issues, I organize science fiction conventions. Not by myself, of course. I try to attend to as many international conventions I can but so far it’s mostly been conventions in Finland and in Sweden for me. I suppose one could say project management is my hobby and some day perhaps it’s part of my work, more than it is now.
I love music and have always played some instruments. Now I play music mostly for myself but there was a time I used to play in a band and sometimes I do miss that. I listen to all kinds of music, with the exception of techno, which I don’t seem to understand. My favourite kinds of music are rock, pop, (hardcore) punk, musicals, classical, jazz… So, basically anything goes!
That’s it about my background. Welcome to Shadow Karma! Enjoy your stay!
