I may be the last Nokia Open Lab 2008 attendee to finally blog about Nokia's inaugural event. Fellow attendee, Nick Bouton, made me feel better by not posting anything until a couple weeks after the event. It's about a month later as I write this piece. Dear Nokia, please consider it to be the long tail of online awareness for your impressive investment.
My friend told me that her brother's blog effectively made him $25K because his broker refunded the closing fee for his house after he wrote about his online home buying experience. I was reminded that my blog somehow scored me an all-expenses paid trip to Finland courtesy of Nokia, a company whose name gets you past the Finnish passport check quickly.
I arrived in Helsinki (Nokia HQ) with most of the other American attendees by way of JFK. It would have been nice if Nokia had informed us that other attendees were on the same flight, but c'est la vie. Nokia had a cute coordinator waiting for us at the airport, and we were shuttled to the almost-a-W hotel, the Klaus K. I guess I'll post video of the trip on Ovi sometime later…
I had been up for something like 24-hours by the time our rooms were ready. If I recall correctly, I took a quick power nap, showered, and then walked through the frigid night to the opening reception. It was held at a lounge on the top floor of a building with a great view of Helsinki, which helped make up for the long elevator queue. Now that I think about it, every lift I used in Helsinki seemed slow. Maybe it was just jet lag.
Waking up the following morning was painful. Fortunately, the Open Lab workshops were all held in the Klaus K, and there was copious caffeine that included Coke in a glass bottle! James Whatley (hey, where's his Open Lab blog post?) kicked off the first workshop with incredible English energy. I would later learn first-hand that the British do not let sleep, nor a sunrise interrupt their party. The Finns at least wound down by dawn.
I sincerely hope that Nokia learned something useful from the workshops because most of it consisted of blue sky stuff. You can watch the semi-organized chaos unfold on Ovi. I found Udo Szabo's keynote, and certainly his slides to be the most interesting. However, his talk wasn't until the end of the third day when I gave a sleep deprived presentation thanks to hanging out with Mike Bradshaw, Carol Chen, and Stefan Constantine the prior night/morning. Notice how they all use Jaiku in Europe.
The third evening started out with a fun dinner followed by an absinthe experience as Open Lab had concluded earlier in the day. Jenifer Hanen, Myriam Joire, Rahul Nair, Roland Tanglao, Carol, Constantine, Mike, and some others who opted for the non-hotel restaurant food were wonderful company. Then it was time for another all-nighter with Whatley, Ilicco Elia, and Jussi-Pekka Erkkola. I don't know how those guys do it. I ended up catching a cold (a reason this post is belated) after returning from Austin.
Apologies to Zachary Braiker for not meeting up with you in Austin. I was dying on Wednesday. I should also give a shout-out to Steve Dembo, Eric Macapagal, and Mike Maddaloni. To the ladies: Rebecca Cottrell, Anne Toole (sorry I missed your friend in Austin), and especially Donna (and the rest of the WOM World / Nokia team). It was cool to arrive home to find even more goodies from Nokia that had been shipped all the way from the UK. I regret if I've forgotten to mention anyone else here — hit me up if so!
