Instinct and intellect

Some thoughts about entrepreneurship

2011-10-30T09:31:00.005+02:00

I work with entrepreneurship education because it is urgently needed. Our aging society needs entrepreneurs or at least people with an entrepreneurial mindset. I have not been engaged for too long with this subject as I looked at the aging society from another angle, namely the lack of marketing skills targeting elderly consumers. Fortunately I can use the methodological skills I developed researching "elderly consumer talk" also in the way we are talking about entrepreneurship. I haven't got so far yet but there are some themes that I think that are already stronger than others. Some themes express how wonderful it is to be an entrepreneur (through success stories), some themes want to tell why it is so difficult (and it sure is in Finland) and some themes talk about entrepreneurship as an identity. Sometimes it is all about finances and I would really like to know if today's success stories are made by people who already have stable finances through heritage or something else. Everyone has to eat and pay bills so when creating a business you have to figure out how you should have your monthly income, that's a fact. Usually talk about entrepreneurship addresses young entrepreneurs and at the same time there are a lot of middle-aged persons who start their own businesses. Could be interesting to see who will be supported in the future.

When policy-makers talk about entrepreneurship they could talk about facilitating market creation for those who have new ideas. Often healthcare entrepreneurs with terrific ideas see many barriers and this is something that should also be addressed. Maybe you don't have to be a registered nurse to take the blood-pressure of someone?

Last Thursday I listened to a workshop addressing entrepreneurship education (within the nordic entrepreneurship education). One presenter (whose name I cannot remember and it can't be found on the website of the conference either) had researched entrepreneurship education on different levels and came up with four different ways of impact in entrepreneurship education: It's either declarative, functioning, creating or discovering. I hope that I find this research (I think it was someone from Norway and I will find out). I hope that the impact our entrepreneurial education will have lie within these four themes :-). At the moment we are emphasizing the declarative part mainly.

Can I really be cured through a virtual service?

2011-05-25T12:29:00.002+03:00

We are living a period where there is a hype about delivering health care services online (monitoring chronic conditions, providing technology to enhance remembering, meeting with your eNurse etc.). It is of course wonderful that I can get comfortable by being informed about my health condition and so on. But at this point of time I want to stop this tech-hype a little bit, although I have been an eager fan of being able to stay virtually in contact with my friends and my loved ones. I think that we all know that machines can never replace the physical contact. But how many of you have really tried to be alone and the only caring, is coming by meetings online? When the only real caring love is skype meetings every mornings and evenings? And text messages and phone calls in between? Well, I am in this situation and one day when I was really ill, having backpains, and worried about having something serious it didn't help to talk about that online. When I made an appointment with a doctor who examined my back and put the "finger on my pain" I was in a better shape straight after. So please, you policy makers and technology-based service providers who want to robotize our homes so that we can stay there longer, please remember that we truly need the presence of another person in the same physical space. Nothing can replace the energy of human touch. Or anyway, not in my life.

When do we see elderly as consumers?

2011-02-23T13:12:00.003+02:00

When discussing ageing today we usually concentrate on issues about fragility and passivity. Old age is only about sickness and loss and of course this means a financial burden especially in societie's with a welfare-model. At this point of time we want to talk about older people as people that should be taken care of although we also use a rhetoric exclaiming activity as long as we live. This activity discourse is a good path towards empowering and choice but we still have a long way to go. If we see elderly as consumers this brings more action and another voice to elderly. I am sorry to say, but I think that we have to bring consumption into the context of services to elderly to finally give a real voice to them. Other discourses are so easily passivating and although you talk about activating you use a different voice when addressing elderly.

Active and Healthy Ageing

2011-01-24T13:40:00.003+02:00

I will soon visit the European Parliament for the first time in my life and I am pretty excited about it. Or maybe I should only pretend that this is something I do every day? Anyway, the theme is Active and Healthy Ageing and I decided that I would like to prepare myself by imagining what I will hear on Thursday. I suppose that we will hear how important it is to create an atmosphere and discourse of activity. No-one should be passive in the future. The mindset is steered towards an active attitude to everything. No-one should say that they just sit and meditate or look at the birds flying around in the garden. With this comment I want to address the danger with talking too much about active this and that, although I know that it is a way of keeping people up and running for a longer time. To age in a healthy way is everybody's goal and we should not even have to write it out. Somehow I feel that within the word healthy there is a nuance of success. If you age in a healthy way you are a successful person. Just think about a person who could be defined as a passive and unhealthy ager....

What happens when an organization replaces the family?

2010-10-12T15:20:00.003+03:00

Being in a situation where my marriage is over I cannot stop thinking what big organisations do to us as families. There are many issues that makes a marriage non-vibrant but companies that want to create barriers between the company and the family are really the villains of the divorce piece. Of course empty-nestness or growing apart are affecting us too but I have to say that in my opinion the slogan “connecting people-disconnecting families” is not a joke. During 24 years I have been involved in different stories that mainly have had to do with success or difficulties in project governance. As such the company has remained really impersonal to me. I would have liked to be more involved and I would also have liked our family to be seen, somehow. At this point I am sad, really sad because I really think that a big company destroyed our marriage. They wanted to be the family. I hope that they will perform excellent in the future because now they definitely need improvement.

Finland's mobile giant eats people's souls

2010-09-23T23:06:00.012+03:00

I have been following a Finnish firm within the mobile business really close for about 24 years or in other words as long as I have been married. Already in the nineties I wanted to approach the leaders at this firm to ask what they were doing with people's souls. As soon as the laptops and mobiles made it possible for their employees to be home, physically present but socially somewhere else,us family members should have screamed, and a lot. Little by little the firm decided to become the happy family for its employees and didn't care at all about the real families who supported and approved of having physically present but mentally absent family fathers or mothers at home. We all know that the employees at this firm talk in acronyms, they are divided in three groups according to their performance and strikingly often they dress in the same way (something I noticed last spring when I saw everyone dressed in black or beige). But what you maybe don't know is that information coffee sessions have been changed to information water sessions, people sit in meetings for six hours and when ordering sandwiches the leader gets angry and starts to eat his own sardines from a sardine tin. You should cut down costs, you know. It really makes me sick to even think about it. This firm has also ignored the families because it wants to have those souls for its own purposes. Disconnecting people from their real family. But come on, don't be so dull. By this, the firm keeps the Finnish economy up and running. Well, not as good as before. Why? Creativity has died because of the bureaucracy taking over too much and cost saving is ruling. I really wish that the new CEO will inspire this organisation of tired souls and at least give them their sandwiches and info-coffees back. Or let them be able to leave with dignity at the point when there's still hope of revival.

Voluntariness

2010-05-16T12:34:00.006+03:00

I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the TEDx Helsinki event last Wednesday. A lot of inspiring speeches. I got especially inspired by the speech about voluntariness as a phenomenon. And as a matter of fact, the lack of voluntariness, as the speaker Anssi Vanjoki put it. In our culture of "what's in it for me" and especially "how much will I get paid for doing this or that", or "is it within my job description", the phenomenon of voluntariness is worth being reflected upon. I suppose that Vanjoki defined voluntariness as something that has to do with being a member in nonprofit associations where your memberships are based on passion for doing and learning. And where the goal is not about getting financial support but about being part of a community, having fun, refining talents or even wanting to make our world a better place. Vanjoki asked "where has all the voluntariness gone". One of my answers is, we don't have the energy for that if we by voluntariness mean that people should take part in politics, sports clubs, choirs or anything else. Families with children are already voluntarily doing fundraising for camp schools for example, in different housing communities people are organizing spring-cleaning events and frail parents are taken care of. But maybe it was not this kind of voluntariness Vanjoki was worried about. Maybe it was more about the attitude. He was maybe looking for the scout attitude "do a good turn daily" or as he said in Finnish "aina valmis" (always ready). Maybe this is the crux of the matter? My life would really be much easier if my children would volunteer all the time in all the chores that housekeeping includes. Instead of always having to put energy on convincing why something should be done I would have three youngsters in a row wanting to sign up for the job ;-). Utopia? Yes, but it's worth discussing anyway. And maybe we will sow the seed of voluntariness in our childrens minds?

PS. This concept has some power issues too...

Redefining experience

2010-04-25T22:22:00.006+03:00

Often recruiting firms want to have experienced people to work for them. The specific experience needed is usually listed and most probably there will be no-one who has achieved the right experience in all areas of competence. The recruiter has to make compromises and decide to emphasize some of the characteristics that the future employee seems to have. For example having an experience of the tourism industry could be a good starting point for those working within that industry but what is that experience really all about? What is it that you should know? I understand that if you have to create tourism services it is absolutely clear that you cannot be totally without knowing the problems and obstacles in the creation processes. And you maybe should be able to show that you know how to create those services yourself, at least if your job is really about creating services within tourism. But when it comes to the situation where you are leading others who are creators, an experience that has given you the right tools for structuring up reality, seeing the future, being information literate and above all seeing entities instead of details could be sufficient. And well, in the society of today, knowing how to network and build up networks that co-create something valuable within those networks, is utterly important.

Here is one practical example showing that experience could/should be redefined. I have a good friend who has no children of her own. This means that by some definition she has no experience of children and how to bring up them. But as a matter of fact she is the one who has given new, innovative ideas to help me with questions when upbringing my own children. Why? She is a good listener as well as broad-minded. She skips the details and uses the wisdom she has gathered when meeting with really different people and families during her lifetime. And yes, she has helped me in situations when I have been insecure and worried. In other words she has saved me from giving up and helped me with my decisions. So even without that "right" experience you can give a developing and helping hand. And maybe that is just what is needed.

So maybe we should really reconsider what we mean by the appropriate experience for a job? Maybe we just need wise, humane people who know how to see the whole situation? I would definitely like to be that kind of person in my job and I will try really hard to learn from every mistake I make. And we really never stop getting experienced, or do we?

Young and hungry, the golla brand in a nutshell?

2010-04-05T19:08:00.003+03:00

Golla is a brand specialized in fashionable bags for technology products. The bags are really attractive because of the beautiful design and the numerous colours. I really love the products and I could consider myself to be a fan. A middle-aged fan. What I didn’t like to hear in a presentation by Golla, was the fact that employees should be young and hungry. Hungry, that’s okay but is it obvious that you cannot be mature and hungry, older and hungry? Well we meet ageism everywhere…even in events that should be future-oriented…When another young and hungry presenter said that we in the audience seem like retirees in an evening for bingo I wanted to leave the place…But well I decided to stay and listened to the discussions between young entrepreneurs which was really inspiring. I understand that the future is within the young and hungry risk takers but anyhow I protest against ageist attitudes. You don't have to bring forward an age group by diminishing another. What companies really need is a better knowledge and more sensitivity in addressing different audiences. How about being known for communicating age in a sensible non-ageist way?

Wow! The radical, forever-young older woman

2010-03-05T11:33:00.010+02:00

You should really check this woman's website and videos: mamyrock.com

She uses the elements known by young people and combines her experience of singing. So after all this phenomenon shows again that there are different ways of ageing. And by using media you can offer new discourses.

Old and young/Old or young?

2010-01-24T10:47:00.013+02:00

I am really happy to have the opportunity to get back to my research by doing a presentation for a workshop. My task is to create something inspiring about the age discussion, or at least that is the way I am going to do it. It is great to be able to exclude the typical header "marketing to seniors" and dig a little bit deeper in the cultural discussions concerning age as a concept. So I have made a wonderful little "mash-up" of pictures, caricatures, texts and music to show some example of how we construct age in our society. Please listen to my spotify-list as an example of how age is constructed in some lyrics: http://open.spotify.com/user/suokannas/playlist/5pWF40xBRguDc2mc8oHxGV

Transdisciplinary personality?

2009-12-10T11:55:00.004+02:00

In academia we discuss vividly about transdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity or whatever you want to call the practices that aim at finding new research questions or solutions by crossing the borders of different disciplines. Some say that a transdisciplinary personality is possible others say that it cannot happen. Trying to find new ways of looking at the world or solving some problems with people from different paradigms could be prosperous as soon as you find the common language. This is certainly one of the biggest obstacles to collaborating smoothly with different discplinary perspectives. But what if there would be a pool of persons who are stirring the discourses of different disciplines and tearing down disciplinary boundaries?

I argue that transdisciplinarity is much about language skills, and a sensitivity to listen to other languages in use. Now I am talking about language more as a discourse than as a language as such. I would like to draw on an example from bilingualism. For many years bilingualism was seen as impossible, or well you could speak many languages fluently but you couldn’t attain the right sensitivity or thorough knowledge that is needed when you are a writer for example. This is no longer the truth, as we have many authors that write with a beautiful, interesting language which is not their mother tongue. Of course you have to be talented but we know that the brain is different for those who have learned at least two languages early in life. A brain that is more dynamic and maybe more apt to find more nuances in life in general. Maybe that is also what transdisciplinarity is all about. There are people who have a talent to learn different theoretical discourses more easily and also to combine them in an appropriate way. A certain sensitivity, openness and even some risk-taking attitude is needed. And as bilingual people, an urge to find new expressions by combining something old. So transdiscplinarity should be offered as early as possible in the academic life. By showing, for example, how different disciplines are born by striving for less ambiguity in the development of concepts could be a solution.

Blocking innovations

2009-11-16T09:04:00.001+02:00

Yes, we need innovations that make our society more efficient, more reliable and also competitive on the global arena. In Hufvudstadsbladet on the 16th of November professor Tom Berglund discusses the need of setting aside different bureaucratic obstacles as well as diminishing jealousy when someone has his moment of ’heureka’. I couldn’t agree more. We often think that innovativeness is born in an arranged (=bureaucratic) setting where we decide or someone decides for us that this is the time and place for innovating. Instead of devoting your time too much to finding out how and where innovativeness takes place you should have a supporting process that gives the creative ideas positive energy and passes them on towards a stage where they can materialize. The biggest obstacle to innovativeness is definitely not money but those whining voices that block developing new ideas further at a too early stage. What we need are people ready to throw themselves into a state of imaginative, ingenious inventing. The best way of killing this state is to inject structure too early in the process of invention. So why do you want to structure ideas too early? Could it be that you are concerned of losing power and control over the process?

Feardriven

2009-10-18T18:22:00.004+03:00

In a time of change we all fear what changes the future will bring. This we do in spite of knowing that nothing remains status quo and never has actually. So by now we should have the tools to handle that. But fear can be constructed in so different ways. In an organizational context it could be fear of losing control over your work, losing a nice working culture, your workmates or even losing your job completely. Or even worse you could lose your dignity or trust in yourself but mostly we don’t think so much about that until it is too late. As many wise men and women have said, it doesn’t pay to worry for tomorrow because it doesn’t help. So true. When tomorrow comes and even if all your fears come true you are not better prepared. On the opposite you have tired yourself with fearful thoughts and as you have to face the facts you have no better ideas how to cope with the new situation. But this is really much on an individual level. On an organizational level you need some reassurance about the future and your opportunities because the organization needs continuity and a certain knowledge-base in order to build new solutions on a solid ground. But nevertheless, fear is partly the reason why people work too much and to an extent where they burn out themselves. So reassurance of what the near future will bring is of utter importance. Or if no-one really knows what will happen you could concentrate on being friendly and respectful towards every person you meet. That will even make the fear disappear. Feardriven organizations and individuals will never be able to come up with something new and creative. To be driven by a trustful attitude you learn the power of now and you can let the stillness speak (Eckhart Tolle). I will end this blog posting with a quotation: ”Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness” (Eckhart Tolle Stillness speaks 2003:5). And the best of all you can do it wherever you are. In your mind.

Managing chaos

2009-09-06T21:54:00.004+03:00

When you are in the middle of change that happens to be on a vertical and horizontal level in the organization and your project is to be a change agent, how do you manage without getting insane? One way is to start to structure things up. A psychiatrist once said that we have schedules in order to get rid of our inner chaos. So that's why we aim to structure things up by writing and documenting what we do. Words on a paper give us structure by leaving things out and by trying to diminish the number of different interpretations. Another way is to try to figure out which milestones and modes of operation we should emphasize. Dates could even be pretty useful in that sense. They help you to structure your time and prioritize. As long as you know what to prioritize. In a changing environment it is definitely the prioritization that is so hard. You want to show you have been working, something visible and even tangible. The operative work is good in that sense and helps you with your chaotic feelings. But to really try to be part of the change and acting as a change agent you have to discuss with different actors, reflect, write it down and reflect again. The results don't come straight away but notes are real. But remember, never to work without a deadline as that easily makes you polish your ideas eternally.

But what happens when you add an inner emotional chaos that people as a matter of fact can experience in their personal life at the same time? Inner chaos in combination with an ever-changing context? How do you find your way without loosing your mind? My recommendation is, schedule routines in your calender: Breakfast at 7.00 a.m., lunch at 11.30 a.m. gym or jogging at 6 p.m. These help you structure your life and helps you in coping with turbulence and chaos. There is nothing as comforting as a bus coming to the bus stop every morning at the same time. They come in spite of what you are experiencing.

2009-07-09T13:05:00.007+03:00

I have to write some rules for my small team and I decided not to get entangled in the rule makers' web of bureaucracy but to emphasize the expression working culture instead. Sometimes it would be really easy to work with strict rules in order to know when you can be satisfied with your input as well as knowing when your boss is. But strict rules easily creates a culture where people start to scrutinize other people’s doings instead of putting their energy on creating something innovative. In that sense strict rules can be energy thieves and instead of being just guidelines they start to be the most important issue in your work. The rules rule. And by this we foster more or less a culture of Management by perkele (authoritarian leadership see more here) But I can understand that when time is scarce you maybe have to skip the consensus and listening mode. And on the other hand you cannot work without guidelines if you want to enable equality as we people work so differently.

But being an idealist I still believe more in spiritual leadership where the employees are empowered and trusted and rules are not the issue. The employee’s own learning process and spiritual development are thus seen as the starting point when striving towards a more innovative professionalism. I have been truly inspired by the book ”Spiritual leadership” by metropolitan Ambrosius, professor Henrikki Tikkanen and the executive vice president Timo Kietäväinen (here). I will finish this posting by quoting them: "An organization that values human beings emphasizes and encourages open interaction and discussion (page 77)” and ”The inner rhythm and spiritual mood of the individual are often left un-observed in leadership…The daily working hours is an example of this…Almost half of the people want to sleep longer and work in the evening instead…People are creative at different times of the day and even the year. When we don’t take this into consideration when planning flexible work time, we will loose their most innovative hours” (39-40)

Being a stupid consumer

2009-06-20T09:59:00.004+03:00

In January I bought flight tickets from the Lufthansa website for a trip to Italy. At that point I did not know that I would change jobs and be responsible for a workshop on the day of my flight to Rome on the 4th of June. I called Lufthansa in order to try to get my ticket changed but as it was so cheap I could do nothing but cancel them and buy a new one and of course to a much higher price. I didn't know that when you buy a return ticket you have to be on the plane both ways otherwise the ticket is invalid. And the most important thing was of course that I would have to start the trip at the correct date. What I did was that I booked another trip for Rome with Air Baltic (which was a nice flight by the way) and thought that my Lufthansa ticket would have been valid from Rome to Helsinki on the 16th of June. I even checked it on checkmytrip.com the day before leaving Italy and it seemed that everything was okay. But nope. At the check-in counter I was told that my ticket was not valid anymore. I had paid 270 euros for a return ticket that did not exist just because I did not catch the flight on the 4th of June. So although I tried to negotiate it I had to buy a new one for 500 euros. Well, I got a 100 euro reduction because I bought a return ticket to Milan (as a matter of fact I could take the plane to Milan next Monday, lol). So in fact my trip that should have cost 270 euros cost 1030 euros (260 with Air Baltic + 270 + 500). The only answer for this was that it is a pricing policy. I am not a frequent flyer so I fall in the category of naive, stupid consumers that the big companies as Lufthansa can gain on. Onboard the plane I read Lufthansa's magazine and the words of the CEO. He was really satisfied with how well Lufthansa did on the market. One of the reasons was their way of handling cost-effectiveness. Yeah, right. And I think that happily enough they have stupid consumers, customers as me. Will I use Lufthansa in the future? I will try to avoid that if possible.

Gender in IM

2009-05-21T17:33:00.004+03:00

Naomi S. Baron (in the book Always On 2008) has researched gender differences in the language use in instant messaging and presented the following findings: Females were more talkative, had the longest transmissions, had longer conversations and it took them longer to say goodbye. The use of emoticons were more obvious if you were a female person (Baron 2008:67). The more extensive use of emoticons in IM would mean that IM is interpreted more like spoken language which includes the rhythm and proximity. So females would in that sense see IM more as spoken language than males do.

The overall conclusion made by Naomi S. Baro,n with some exceptions (as the use of emoticons) was that: "...male IM conversations have a great deal in common with descriptions of face-to-fae speech, female IM conversations more closely approximate conventional writing patterns" (2008:69). These differences could enlighten how men or women interpret utterances in IM. I would like to find out how emotions are transmitted through written vs. spoken language online in comparison with the body language of avatars for example. Maybe you could compare this by seeing how different areas of the brain are activated?

Finally, is IM spoken or written language? Naomi S. Baron puts it like this:

"Some of both, but not as much speech as we've tended to assume. What's more, gender matters" (2008:70)

Baron, Naomi S. (2008): Always on: Language in an Online and Mobile World. Oxford University Press:New York

Seminar:The power of visual journalism

2009-05-06T13:46:00.029+03:00

I am just listening to the presentation of Peppar (Sofia Holmlund as a presenter) that is a website which combines news with social media or in other words creates synergies between community building and news "distribution". People register at peppar and by that those "behind" the site will get more information about the different emerging "tribes" and their information retrieval behaviour and interests. This information is important for the advertisers and enables customized solutions. The idea is to catch a young target group (Swedish-speakers in Finland) in order to attract advertisers' interest (money makes the media go round)

Senior researcher Anssi Männistö from the University of Tampere presented "New forms of photojournalism : utilizing the web creatively". Today the internet connections, the multimedia phones and the YouTube revolution enhance the easy production of visual material and sharing it with others. Anssi showed two examples of how videos could be presented on a newspaper website. Please go and have a look and decide which one you prefer: satakunnankansa.fi and nytimes.com. In print these two newspapers look really much the same but on the web there is a huge difference. Photojournalism on the web needs new decisions: choice of tools, what kind of editing, who does the editing, which genres (stills+audio, stills+video+text...), design and brand managing of the website, metadata and contextual information, who trains the staff" (Comment:Don't you have to make decisions about this also in the traditional media?). Contemporary photojournalism could be a video-slideshow, wide audio-slideshow (includes effects), multimedia slideshow,multimedia feature (see: L.A.Times:Marlboro Marine By Luis Sinco) and interactive videos.

Anders Enström from Nordström & Frank editorial development elaborated around the theme Alternative Story Forms. He emphasized that you should optimize the readers' time (note: average reading time is 30 minutes in spite of the size of the paper, 45 percent of the time is dedicated to scanning and 55 percent of the time to reading and the average reading speed is 5-6 stories with 2500 characters). With alternative story forms you can meet the need for optimizing the reader's reading time.

Anders Enström also presented some results from a knowledge test (see Poynter) which showed that readers remembered best the contents of a print-page which was divided in multiple parts and not perhaps the most visually attractive one, but the content was well-labeled. There are two theories about this: Alternative Story Forms (different parts) are read with less cognitive effort and variation stimulates the brain and makes you curious. To strive for reading with less cognitive effort and delivering variation you should create a palette of different stories. The palette could consist of timelines, facts, pro & cons, guiding panels and different polls (the voice of the ordinary people).

The seminar was closed by a panel discussion where Petri Krook, videographer; Jenni Lieto, executive editor; Sofia Holmlund, executive editor; Jesper Vuori, AD and Saku Heinänen, MC discussed around the following themes:

Jenni: Not putting the printed media on the web but instead creating something new for this media and understanding that the web is working 24/7 is important
Jenni: Content vs coding. Why are media putting so much effort in coding instead of in creation of the content.
Jesper: Does anyone really understand new media (my comment: is new media really new anymore?)
Sofia: Readers like stories that are at most 2000 characters long
Jesper: The newspapers offer analysis and that is the only way they will survive
Saku: What about the education of graphic designers when people are pretty talented and self-learned already?
Jesper: Important within graphic design education is to know how web-design works
Jenni:Learning can happen by doing and on-the-job
Jenni: Educate the advertisers to be more knowledgeable about whom they are targeting

Thank you for an interesting seminar!

Capturing beauty

2009-05-02T10:03:00.010+03:00

Next Saturday I will take part in a seminar where different experts are discussing beauty and the way to find it. We are trying to capture beauty in other words. I was invited to be a "co-thinker" or commentator as I emphasize that "beauty has no age-limits". It was a thought I launched in my doctoral thesis. I elaborated around different sayings as "age before beauty" which in my opinion means that both characteristics cannot describe the same person. This could be discussed but as I searched for expressions that combined older age and beauty they were hard to find. You could say that combining older age and beauty is not typical and could even be considered radical. Especially as beauty often is equivalent to youth. So why aren't older people beautiful? We know that beauty is subtle and a result of interpretation so why is old age ruled out?

There are theories emphasizing that beauty is about proportionality, symmetry and the harmony of details (according to Platon) or beauty as radiance (Faidros in Eco 2005). But these theories are not age-related or are they? According to Gilleard, who has researched the understanding of age in the ancient Greece, youth was described with the words cute, beautiful and heroic but old age with the words ugly, evil or tragic. Our task is to change this view if it still is prevalent.

Skipping the definition of beauty as being only about proportions I want to discuss beauty as something that is socially constructed and interpreted (beauty is in the eyes of the beholder). We learn what the ideal beauty is throughout life and as we inherently have the urge to strive for beauty, we must be aware of what forces make us believe that we are not beautiful enough or too old to be beautiful or forces that give power only to those who match the ideal beauty. Looking critically on especially advertisements and their truthfulness, make us aware of how beauty is constructed today and what ideologies are prevalent.

I asked myself at which moment I am only seeing beauty in everything. My short answer is: You see beauty when you are embraced by love and you are yourself part of the mystery of love. I will take that as my starting point for next Saturday's seminar.

Ethnographic study on my way to work

2009-03-26T19:05:00.006+02:00

I have a new job and at the same time a new trip to work every morning. Three different vehicles with different profiles. The bus from Espoo to Helsinki was the one I took earlier also and as I am usually vividly discussing with my friend the whole trip I haven't had the time to observe anything. On the other hand my friend and I observe the bus driver as he is a good one and really polite in every sense. Rarely seen before. Anyway, nowadays I have to change to the underground and after that to the tram and at last I can see some diversity in this society. To only sit on a bus from Espoo to Helsinki and after that work with people interested in higher education could slightly distort your way of constructing the world, you know what I mean. I see different lifestyles, different representatives of ethnic groups, different ages and different gazes. Without trying to go more into the concept of "gaze" (if you want to read more turn to Kress & van Leeuwen, Lacan, Foucault, Schroeder or Jacobsson) I thought today on my way to work about people's eyes and their gaze. The eyes are the mirror of the soul, they say. What did I see? A lot of inward gazes and gazes that weren't directed outwards and even scared to do so. Try to get eye contact with people and see what happens. I have a feeling that we're so much into getting impulses from different devices (mobile phones, mp3-players and even books) that we don't have the time to see what happens around us. How many details do you remember from your daily trip to work, as a matter of fact? Even more worrisome is when you talk to people and you see that they look at you but then on the other hand they don't. Either they have a veil before their eyes or they stare at your forehead. Are people scared of looking another person in the eye? What could happen? You come too close perhaps. I think it's more about not being able to play a role anymore. Your eyes could reveal something about your vulnerability.

Blurring the lines between SL and RL

2009-02-19T12:35:00.008+02:00

My avatar already knows some social codes in Second Life but she's still confused about some stuff. Yes, it's nice to chat with someone but be careful with the information you give about your real-life self. You just need a name, country, job title and it's already easier to narrow down the information search. And if someone wants to kiss your avatar, attention!

What is really interesting is how the line between your physical body and your avatar body is vanishing. As long as your avatar isn't saying anything to anyone the line is clear but as soon as you utter something in writing you come closer to reality. Writing is you and not avatar-writing as I see it...Or maybe I'm too rl and old;-).

Anyway second life research around the reality concept, intersubjectivity and the social context would really be intriguing. And of course how your "tabula-rasa-avatar becomes a capitalist".

My first steps in SL

2009-02-09T19:26:00.006+02:00

I decided to try out the virtual reality from the perspective of my avatar created by myself. I had some difficulties finding the right clothes and in no time I found out that my clothing was too auntish and old-fashioned...Wasn't it strange how we get influenced by all the other avatars in fancy clothing? The first two days I was just hopping around and didn't find anyone else. I felt SO lonely I could have screamed...And I tried of course to change my clothing and suddenly I found myself totally naked as I had pushed the button "take it off" or something like that...Luckily enough I met a friendly avatar in Mexico who gave me some fancy clothing for free (or is the saying "there's is nothing as a free lunch" applicable in Second Life?)...The Crystal-avatar also chatted with me and gave me a socalled RADAR with which I can scan who is in the neighbourhood...But I must say all the hyped learning centres and educational sites didn't convince me...Mostly you was just staring at a billboard and then you had to click on it to be taken to a webpage...Marketing of course...But anyway...The only more serious educational system I found after my short existence in SL (I was born on Friday last week) was the Harvard Law School's course where SL was introduced and I suppose it was about immaterial rights...They had scheduled lectures and I can imagine that when you have fellow-avatars that you also know in RL (Real Life) you feel in another way...I felt so sorry for my lonely avatar being in total solitude and bumping into really badlooking guys...I thought, naive as I am, that in SL everybody acts differently i.e. you connect with anyone who is coming your way...But no...The social rules are really still a mystery to me...The rules could be the same and are even accentuated, I suppose. I have now my first avatar-friend and maybe our SL-friendship will bring us some new crosscultural knowledge. BTW, if you want to dance and have a dance partner there's a place where the female avatar has to push the pink button and the male a blue button and swoosh you are swept away in a wonderful waltz for example...Female-pink, male-blue is the rule though...interesting...

Waiting time

2009-01-31T09:43:00.007+02:00

There's an interesting new book by Billy Ehn and Orvar Löfgren. I could recommend it to anyone who is interested in what is going on when nothing happens (When nothing really happens or in Swedish "När inget särskilt händer" is the title of the two ethnologists newest book). In the book you can find a lot of really interesting examples about small scale "dramas" happening when it looks as though everything is moving forward in an automatic, dull way. In the shop queues, in the doctors' waiting rooms etc. And how about the intriguing so called disguised waiting (Ehn and Löfgrén 2007:70)? It's the situation when you wait for someone and you don't want to look like a waiting person...A perfect time for playing with your mobile phone or music player...And what about other situations of waiting? Waiting for the weekend , waiting for a project to start, waiting for funding and in case of illness waiting for the decisions and results that predict your future? How about analyzing waiting processes and forced waiting using the concept of power? Be nice and patient, and wait for your turn is used to educate us from the early childhood into becoming humble "waiters" (there's really not any word for this. What should you call a person who is waiting?). Anyway, our society is trying hard to avoid waiting and make everything more efficient. Using the slogan "you don't have to wait here" are for those who want everything straight away and at the moment they get in contact. But what about the opposite? What if you like or get so used to waiting that it's a part of every service delivery? Are we segmented into those who can't wait and those who can or are forced to wait (because of power issues?)...

Seniors 2.0

2009-01-16T10:42:00.012+02:00

It's not that easy to start writing after a longer period of leisure time and especially extensive eating. But by relaxing I found a lot of interesting ideas that could be developed further. Here is one example. As my favorite research subject is senior consumers and my work is becoming more and more a part of the social web world (just starting a project in our Library) I decided to combine these two. Seniors 2.o is emerging and we should really be aware of this development. In Finland there has been some trials but I think that they have become unknown and not so socially interactive as the design of the websites is old-fashioned and there is no good network of active participants.

Facebook for seniors has been demanded in this blog post and there are plenty of examples of best practices all around the world agetimeseconomie and boomerwomenmarketing and 50plusmarkt

So there really are interesting issues both in research and innovations to launch in this area. It's important to fight against ageism, to empower every age group in the society and also facilitate communication and the feeling of being included.

Christmas 2.0

2008-12-19T17:16:00.003+02:00

I still send a Christmas letter to my friends and I haven't gone completely Christmas 2.0. I'm not broadcasting or podcasting our Christmas practices (decorating, baking, cleaning) and I'm not sending the letter through my blog. But why not? It could be cheaper and wonderfully multimodal. But on the other hand who would have time to stare at, read and listen to my Christmas instead of constructing their own?

Last Saturday I listened to a short lecture where Marika Borg talked about the importance of connecting with yourself and finding harmony in this hectic time. You just had to close your eyes and think and feel your breathing for three minutes. For those who practice Yoga or Pilate's or sing a lot know how awareness of breathing gives energy and help to relax. So instead of trying to create and share a virtual Christmas I think that we should have Christmas practices in the physical space and even more than usually. And feel our breathing. Getting together and feeling how the real meetings in opposite to virtual ones make you grow and makes it easier to connect with yourself. Have a peaceful, breathable Christmas time!

Service euphoria

2008-12-12T21:27:00.005+02:00

The other day I read professor Magnus Söderlund's interesting thoughts about customer satisfaction. He convinced the reader, including me, that customer satisfaction is not enough. Instead the customer should experience stronger positive emotions during a service encounter. One emotional state could be joy. If the baseline today is that services are okay, smooth and provided by a talented personnel how should we move to the next level? One example from service encounters I had recently and which wasn't just satisfying but something more:

Last Thursday I had to go to the dentist and reluctantly so. I know the dentist from earlier visits so nothing was new in that sense. At first I had to wait for 20 minutes because of a delay. So I was in a bad mood as I could have done something productive at the same time. Anyway, my dentist came and apologized for the delay and asked how I was. Okay, I answered, but I don't like waiting. He explained politely why he was delayed (because of the patient before) and I understood all that...But if he hadn't listened to my suggestions for improvement of the service in a way that opened up a good dialogue, I would have been just a satisfied customer but nothing more. As our discussions went on (discussing my doctoral thesis and dissertation) until I had to give up my talking because of the drilling, I felt somehow relaxed and in a good mood. It wasn't euphoria but an encouraging moment of energizing dialogue. Maybe, if I wouldn't have anyone to talk to, these encounters as a customer would be the ones that would make life worthwhile.

As I was in Vienna last week I had lunch in a small restaurant the customers of which were elderly and obviously loyal customers. The service included a warm friendliness and especially a helpful attitude. On top of that the personnel wanted to know about their customers. There was nothing manipulative about it but instead authenticity ruled...I think that this will be the future...We will have to go back to the small-scale service providers. They are the only ones who can stay true and authentic and connect. It could be a way of creating euphoria and fight the feeling of loneliness and meaninglessness. After all what we really need is to be seen and that our existence makes a difference.

6-word-play

2008-12-03T15:04:00.006+02:00

I read about the 6-word-memoir on a friends blog (bajde.net) and surfing around I found more information here www.smithmag.net/sixwords. So today when we haven't time to read as much as we have time for writing we could start compressing our life, our job, our week, our day, our love story in six words...Here are my examples:

My doctoral theses: Catching the ageless, anonymous senior consumer
My life so far: Inspired by words, music and love
My ideal workday: Creativity born in action and reflection
My Christmas: Connecting, Caroling, Caking, Cooking, Consuming, Conviviality

How about your examples?

I got carried away!

2008-11-26T14:22:00.006+02:00

Yesterday I built up my own netvibes page and got carried away. I don't know if I made it by the book (and I suppose that there isn't a saying like that in the virtual world) but now I have my information flow-page that keeps me updated with those issues I'm currently interested in. The problem is minimizing the content as there's so much wonderful new things to learn and get updated on. From a researchers point of view I would surely like to research what identity we're constructing by combining different information resources. Who am I to someone who doesn't know me? Can you figure out the age of someone who is behind a certain netvibes page? This question comes to my mind because we usually market services or products according to the age of our "target". In spite of the fact that the virtual reality is the place where the consumer isn't constructed through demographics but through different practices.

Anyway, netvibes is something that I would really like to recommend to every researcher, student who wants to handle the daily information flow easily. My page is found here: www.netvibes.com/msuokannas

Getting inspired by web 2.0 for libraries

2008-11-21T14:49:00.004+02:00

I am currently taking part in a conference in Stockholm. Read more here: http://www.nordlib20.org/ It's nice that I don't have to provide the information but I can of course share my interpretation of things that I have heard. I am already inspired by web 2.0 and now I just have to find out how I should convince faculty members to understand the opportunities of web 2.0. I would also like to give some supporting tools or good practices and that I surely have learned today. I already got my account in netvibes.com and I hope that I could inspire both students and faculty to build up their own "research source site". I see that the discussion around web 2.0 is much about being visible or not, who the model reader for a blog is and how you should get empowered by web 2.0.-stuff.

Amnesia

2008-11-18T18:36:00.004+02:00

I just read an interesting article in Svenska Dagbladet (published on the 9th of November). The article was about research results that describe how every generation remembers better than the previous one. The professor of psychology Lars-Göran Nilsson is the leader of a project where 4200 randomly chosen respondents aged 25- 80 have had their memory tested during 20 years. The aim is of course to find out the reasons for dementia and at an early stage. One of the results is that the development of the socalled episodic memory is mainly dependent on education, nutrition and how many siblings you have. So this means that if you are educating yourself, eating well and on top of that have sisters and brothers you could perhaps feel saved from the horror of dementia...Another thing is that the flow of information also makes the brain more flexible...So my future concerning a functioning memory looks great (well educated, two brothers and a sister and taking care of my diet more or less successfully, working with information every day). But it doesn't help that I have senior moments and I have to admit that CRAFT (can't remember a f**king thing) lurks behind the corner. Yesterday I didn't remember the name of someone I should know but of course when I say remember it means straight away. After some minutes I knew the name... Some kind of cognitive overload, tiredness could have been the reason...Or maybe my archiver was resting ;-). Anyway to avoid these scary moments of amnesia I'll try to concentrate on taking care of the factors mentioned above as much as possible. BTW, professor Nilsson suggests that the year for retiring could be higher as we're getting smarter and remember more and more...

To read interpretations of your thoughts

2008-11-09T22:31:00.005+02:00

Yesterday there was a story about my subject in Hufvudstadsbladet and I was even interviewed for that! I really liked the story and how it was written and combined with comments from other researchers and older consumers. In the text there was once again an example of lived ideology: seniors don't want to see older faces in advertisements but they like their own age. In other words they are content with their age but don't want to be reminded of it...So the lack of older faces in advertisements has to do with the fact that you feel okay being older but you don't want to see yourself in the mirror (if you see advertisements as some kind of mirror). It could be that how the older body, face is met in society doesn't correspond with your inner feeling...What do we think when we meet an older person?

Tuning in for choir practice

2008-11-06T17:28:00.002+02:00

It's time again for my choir practice and I usually look forward to it as singing always gives you energy. Breathing in the right way and trying to produce a sound as nice as possible is so inspiring...But today...I'd rather stay at home as I can't stand one of the monotonous pieces we will perform in two weeks...It's a piece that was found in an archive and I really think that it should have stayed there...Maybe it sounds nice when we all sing together but I can't catch the pulse of the stuff...It feels like eating a lot of crispbreads without drinking anything between...And as my mental state is this the singing will certainly sound flat and stiff and dull...A good metaphor for anything that we're forced to do...It becomes tuneless and without rhythm. But then again there are these wonderful songs that make every cell membrane come alive, breathing becomes easy and your stiff face muscles loosen up...

Reading with awareness

2008-11-04T21:22:00.006+02:00

Today we don't meet just a lot of advertisements but we meet texts of different kinds that tempt us to take part of some thought that someone has written either profoundly or maybe just scribbled. At the moment I see myself as a surfer between texts of different genres: from profound texts to scribbled texts and the reading happens from dawn till dusk. There is the morning newspaper, the newspaper on the bus, the five books I read at the same time, the e-mails, the blogs, the documents of strategy, the texts I try to produce myself, the discussions of students within a course...But do I really read with awareness so I could tell another person about what I have read? How profound is my reading and do I really have time for that? As I work with information literacy skills "cognitive overload" is often mentioned ad nauseam. But I even think that that's a really important point when information literacy skills are learned. We don't just need the skills to find the information and evaluate it we should also try to process the information so much that it evokes new innovative ideas. It goes of course without saying but I feel that it's rare that you are both a really fast and a profound reader and that you're able to read a lot of texts and process them thoroughly. Do we really have time today to read a text, then think about it, and then read it again and then write about the thought? And if you read a lot and surf around, is there a possibility that you get lost in the texts and the border between your thoughts and other people's thoughts get blurred...These thoughts come up as I have to discuss plagiarism with students within a course...Soon....Anyway couldn't you say that academic texts differ from other texts also in the sense that there is more thinking behind, which means that you can't be that up-to-date with all the superficial societal changes...Just a thought

Postdoc-depression

2008-10-31T22:09:00.007+02:00

Some weeks after my dissertation the daily question I had to answer was: How do you feel now? Any post doc-depression vibes? As a social constructionist (today) I feel that words have a power to make us into something, so the post doc-depression came. A sudden feeling of restlessness and so-what and hysterical thoughts that blur your mind...and then of course new opportunities you would like to try out...But of course your dissertation is like a premiere where you aim for some kind of confrontation or meeting in public and you're not able to hide behind closed door with your ideas anymore. That takes a lot of energy and you need to rest sometimes afterwards to get the creativity flowing again. There is also a certain responsibility to act like someone who is knowledgeable. And yes, of course, you know a lot about your subject. I know more about aging in combination with consumption but above all I have learned how to deal with the everlasting brain gymnastics that research is all about. Relating concepts to each other and defining them and knowing that when you read and learn more you feel like you know less. I call it the information anxiety as you know how much information there is that you can't handle. If I had lived in a small village with no connection globally I could have had another identity as a PhD than today in an ever connected global world where you have to be aware of so much more and feel your littleness. But in order to stop dwelling in some post doc swamp I have decided to be happy and not worry about the future and simply think that I am good enough. When I was little, three-years-old I liked to sing and I had learned a lot of hymns in the Sunday school. One Sunday I was in church and during the service I sang eagerly in some of the hymns I recognized and afterwards I cried "I was good" so the church walls echoed. This story was told by my mother and sister all over again during my childhood. I always felt a little embarrassed about this story as you're not supposed to be so self confident. But I would really love us all to be able to think more in this way and stop putting a damper on our feelings of joy and success.

40 is the limit

2008-10-23T10:36:00.005+03:00

I heard the astonishing news yesterday (from a reliable source) that one finnish headhunter had recommended the recruiting firm not to hire anybody over 40. So finished at forty that is...Unfortunately I don't have any other details but you could speculate...Who the h*ll is so childish that (s)he puts rigid age limits to development and learning in a society that fosters a lifelong learning culture and antiageist culture? We have the same situation if we say that don't hire a 30-year-old. Arbitrary age-limits are so old-fashioned and narrowminded but I suppose this is the way we have constructed our reality since we were born. I admit that chronological age could be informative when you talk about entering the education system as a child but even then we know that this age concept doesn't tell us everything. It would be interesting to know if a person saying that 40 is the limit is younger or older than forty. Anyway (s)he is perhaps not taking into account the cultural change in the attitude to learning and to the fact that we are living longer nowadays...We have to use all the brain capacity in our country and people are innovative and creative without age limits. I surely would like to know more about this firm to be able to hurt their brand a little...If somebody reads this, what do you think? Are we all finished at forty? Should everything happen in the age of 30 to 40?

Students and plagiarism

2008-10-21T10:55:00.006+03:00

One of my tasks as an information literacy teacher is to discuss the ethical use of information with students. To put it simply it's a question of using reference technique correctly and being aware of the difference between your text and somebody else's text. So if you refer to other authors in your text in a correct way and the author's name combined with the article she has published is found in the reference list you should feel secure. But then there is of course the discussion of when something becomes common sense, common talk and doesn't need to be referred to? I had a student coming up to me after a lecture about reference technique and he was really worried about how he should know which thoughts are his own and which are not. And he added that he had been reading a lot since he was three years old...Can he ever be sure that he isn't plagiarising someone somewhere? My answer was that if you feel unsecure you can always use your information searching skills to try to find out if there's someone that has come up with the same idea. But being afraid of plagiarising shouldn't cause fear of writing. It's easy to find traces of plagiarism if someone has copied and pasted a text but how should we find the owner of ideas? I suppose the experts in immaterial rights can answer this...Anyway I am afraid that the plagiarism talk today, plagiarism discourse could even result in the death of creativity and passionate writing.

Interesting seminar for women as entrepreneurs

2008-10-19T12:37:00.009+03:00

Yesterday I attended a seminar for women entrepreneurs arranged by the so called Junior Chamber Havis Amanda. The seminar was well organised with really interesting speakers as the CEO of Kalevala Koru Laura Lares, Riitta Saarikangas an experienced educator and coach, Juha Rouvinen from the digital media agency Gyllene Skor, Sisko Sammallahti from Stockmann and the legendary Esko Reinonpoika Alanko. All the speakers gave their own contribution in inspiring the women listeners to believe in their capabilities, to be aware of their own values and staying truthful no matter what. I especially liked the way Laura Lares used alliteration and metaphors and that's really one thing we should remember: leadership is mostly about talking in a convincing and down-to-earth way. So why don't we have rhetorics as a mandatory subject in our business universities?

What else then? One woman in the audience asked Laura Lares about the three most important characteristics of a good leader. She answered like this: Predictability, Fairness and A true enjoyment in other people's work. This is something I would have loved to discuss more...I would like to add that a true enjoyment in other people's success and happiness is something that should characterize not only leaders but everyone of us. But maybe the leaders enhance the feeling of success and happiness?

Voting for those who work with the unwanted work

2008-10-15T22:50:00.004+03:00

I work at a university and I would really like to bring out those people who work year after year with one of the heaviest loads of all: teaching the basic courses for all students! This means that they have to examine at least 200 students that are more or less uninterested in the subject as it is mandatory. And this results of course in a situation where the poor teacher has to use all the charm in the world to try to motivate the unmotivated...I suggest that lecturers, THE workers of the academia, should get some special reward every year they have coped with the heavy workload. Today we are mostly admiring and rewarding those who write in top ranked journals, something a lecturer can only dream about.

Kauppalehti Thursday 9th of October

2008-10-11T13:25:00.003+03:00

I read in Kauppalehti about a seminar that had been arranged for advertising people. In this seminar they were again discussing seniors as consumers and how they are treated. The old thought that glorification of youth is the obstacle to finding new ways to market to older consumers, was popping up AGAIN. Are we really still at the point of elementary knowledge about older (than what?) consumers? Maybe some researchers cannot see the symbols that are created for the older consumers? Maybe it's only a question of being myopic and not seeing that the older consumer is constructed all the time but without emphasizing in a subtle symbolic interchange...

Old stereotype

2008-10-02T23:37:00.002+03:00

Walking to my work to the library today I thought of the image of librarians. In Finnish and Swedish women working at the library are named "kirjastotäti" or "bibbatant" which means something like the library spinster...Do we have to find out a new title for us working daily with interesting information retrieval practices and really being on the edge of technological development? Some social creativity to get rid of the disempowering title is needed...Information wizards?

About my thesis

2008-10-01T08:45:00.000+03:00

Contemporary senior consumers are often described as financially strong and with a willingness to consume. Combined with spare time they become an utterly attractive consumer group. In spite of that, marketing to the older consumer has been off the track, as old age has meant thriftiness, decline and withdrawal. At the moment a change is to be seen. Age can be commodified in order to sell more to the older consumers who are eagerly waiting to be noticed and to blow their money. In this commodifying process, marketers as well as society in general offer different ways of interpreting and giving meaning to age when talking about or visualizing the older consumer. By this representation they at the same time create boundaries for how older age and aging will be and can be interpreted. These boundaries construct age identities. The thesis contributes to consumer culture theory where marketing is seen as a discursive practice with an ideological character. By using discourse analytical concepts in combination with a cultural approach to consumption the thesis provides tools for grasping commodifying identityshaping processes where marketers are involved.

There is something in Swedish also behind this link: http://www.hanken.fi/staff/suokannas/

Discussing senior consumers and web 2.0 with Tuija

2008-09-30T21:49:00.004+03:00

I had a really interesting discussion with Tuija Aalto this evening over skype about senior consumers and web usage. As I have introduced some age discourses in my doctoral thesis (senior, radical, forever young, hedonist and soulful) we went through possible web usage profiles for these discourses and tried to draw up a picture for how for example a senior profile differs from a radical. That's a thought that should be further developed... Here you can find our discussion: tuhatsanaa.net

New models for aging

2008-09-27T16:09:00.000+03:00

When you talk or write about age or aging people start to discuss how bad the situation is within elderly care or how their parents or grandparents are lousy in using new technology. We are so locked within the old age stereotype which only talks about decline and loss and misery. A minority of people discuss progress or innovations in combination with aging. Maybe that's why marketers weren't so interested in older consumers two decades ago. Now new ideologies are evolving and we need other models for aging. In this process marketers play an important role as I see them as identity-shaping professionals.