Chapter 2: Week number 8, the end

Sup sup sup everyone?!?! As I told in my previous post that this will be my last post. We were supposed to reflect what we have learnt about ourselves during this course. So where should I begin hmm... At first it took long time for me to realize what this digital course was about. After I got on track, wheels never stopped. Got to say best course so far and time flew by and Summer is knocking on the door. I'm gonna tell what I have learnt about me and what I have learnt all in all.

1. I learnt how important positivity is. Positivity creates more positivity and it really does help you achieve your goals and dreams. I actually noticed that i'm much happier than I thought or actually I haven't thought about it much before. I also have changed my pessimistic way of thinking to more optimistic which have been great!

2. Digital world is developing so fast, you have to be on top of it or in best case scenario in front of it. If your'e not in Google you don't exist, so search engine optimization is crucial for companies. Also content marketing is super important.

3. Effectiveness of videos. We have done so many videos in this course that I have learnt that it's the most efficient way of marketing and doing and planning them is fun but not easy. Thanks to Tommi video guru of our team, we could visualize our plannings to actual videos.

4. Believing. It's only wise to believe in yourself and what you do, eventually it will lead to wanted outcome. Don't just say, really try to reach your dreams, realistic dreams.  Set goals that you can achieve but don't be afraid to be little bit crazy sometimes. Best stories usually starts with crazy thoughts.

5. Connecting with people. Be brave and introduce yourself to people, sell yourself in a positive way. Making your own net with people can open so many different doors for you, then just choose the right door for you. Taking risks is also part of succeeding. We met so many interesting persons during this course, I hope that these contacts will help me in the future,

6. Do things that really interests you. There is a reason why many of our group's projects had football in them. If you are passionate about something it's thousand times more interesting and effective to do something towards it and outcome will also be better because you have put more effort to it.

7. Lucky number. We had these little projects to other countries and it made me realize that digitalisation has made going global so easy and it should be used much in the future.

I want to thank our team POJAT (former kononen) it has been funny road, got to say. Sometimes I wonder how we got everything done so well because it didn't feel like working at all. Thank you Kyla Mitsunaga for co-operating with us, it was super cool! Thank you Linda, our digicoach! Last but not least, I want to thank our teachers Anna and Ilkka, keep it up, fantastic persons and teachers, great work!

The end!

- Miikka

Chapter 2: Week number 7 - Happiness workshop and surprises

So what's up everybody, I'm back! We are getting closer and closer to the finish line of this course and it has been crazy and thoughtful journey with ups and downs. This is going to be my second last post so get your eyes and ears ready!

Monday started as usual with basic lecture, so we thought. Ilkka had Skype-conversation with Kyla Mitsunaga and tried to ask her some questions but there were some connection problems. Suddenly Pharrel started to sing his song Happy in Youtube and Anna came with... Kyla Mitsunaga to the class, everyone was confused and started to applaud. It was pretty funny got to admit. After all the hassle Kyla started to speak and what an amazing woman, so positive, natural, compelling, happy and wise. As you can imagine Monday's theme was happiness. Kyla formed some random groups and we had these happiness tasks and discussions in groups. It was nice to hear other's opinions about happiness. Kyla had many good points and the biggest one was that you can't be succesfull if you are not happy. Happiness has been on surface on this course and I have realized that i'm actually happier than I thought. I've actually changed my pessimistic thinking to more optimistic during this course which has been great. So what is happiness? In my opinion it's a combination of things and that you can be satisfied in every part of your life. It's enjoying your life and it should be shared because happiness creates more happiness. Kyla also brought us some Korean snacks which was very nice gesture from her students and they were quite tasty. Kyla showed us happiness workshops made by her students in  Korea and gave us same task. We were suppose to make as many people in Laurea happy as we could and make a video about it. Got to say one of the most interesting task so far.

Kyla Mitsunaga

On Wednesday morning we went to school to shoot the happiness video. I'm not gonna tell you what was our idea, you check it out below. Little bit humor, little bit love, little bit positivity. We were quite glad what we could came up with. Okay lets be realistic, it's little bit cheesy but in a good way. Without further ado here it is! Video doesn't work with mobile devices.

Later on Wednesday we went to auditorium and each group presented their videos and other groups evaluated those. Again WOW! Each video was so unique and so positive, I have to be proud of our class because all the groups had put so much effort on those videos. Everyone was smiling after the video session. We also bought some Finnish goods to Kylas students. Our team bought some salted licorice, Finnish chewing gum, chocolate, and chocolate mixed with salted licorice. Hahaaa I really would like to see Kyla's students reactions when they taste Turkish Peppers, one of my favourite candies.

On Thursday we had this Javec Welc from Poland telling about numbers and business risks. At first it seemed super interesting but it was too hard to follow for me for some reason and I fell of the wagon and I couldn't catch it anymore. Shame on me, hope other students got most out of it because it really seemed very interesting and relevant topic. Math and numbers have never been my favourite subjects that might be reason why I fell off the wagon. I don't know.

After that I had this Elämäntaito lecture, which has been great course so far. Thursday's topic was stress and how to prevent it. It's surprising how many things can cause stress: Money, school, weather, relationships, eating, sports, pets, job, and so on. It's crucial to prevent it and when preventing is not possible it's crucial find a solution for stress causing things. Did you know that too much stress can raise your blood pressure and in worst case scenario it might cause death. I don't try to scare or anything I just want to tell that stress can be real pain in the ass if you let it. So create positive vibes and deal with stress correctly, that will eventually lead you to happiness!

Be happy and share the happiness

All in all very interesting week, I have been happy all week long, thanks to happiness workshop and everything. Now just have hope that my knee can handle the football, I actually bought massive support for my knee, so we'll see. Thumbs up for HIFK's ice hockey team, they have a mountain to climb in Tampere tomorrow. Well that's about it, next week's post is going to be my last one. Sorry, writing a blog has been quite interesting but i'm not gonna keep it up, it takes too much of my valuable time.

-Miikka bossman boss

Chapter 2: Week number 6, Thinglinking, tracking emotions and stuff

Yeah, I know that you missed me last week but sorry it was blog post free week and we also had online exam. It went great, I got full points of it, okay it wasn't the hardest but it needed some thinking though.

On Monday Sani Leino from Thinglink held a presentation for us. Cool, cool and again cool. Very compelling guy with positive and innovative vibes. At first we talked about what are the hottest things in digital world and it was so interesting. Few things popped out, one was Virtual Reality, which is growing really fast. I have tried these VR-glasses and they are pretty cool got to admit. Technique is pretty unique and I'm really waiting how it's going to develop in the future. Second was content marketing and videos which have been on the surface in this course. We have made content and videos for different clients and I have learned the effectiveness of videos because combining voice and visual things are the most effective way to catch audience's attention. There were big list of other things and I would have to write a book if i wanted to handle all of those. Okay one thing more, in my opinion personalization and inclusion are big trends too. Those can be combined and it's growing value that customer's really like that everything is tailored just for them. I think it makes them feel special and respected. I don't know. For example in Nordea's online bank you can personalize the content in there. So basically customer also creates content there. In my opinion very effective because Nordea have created this ''illusion'' that customer creates content also.

What is Thinglink? It's basically interactive image where you can tag picture in picture, links, videos and everything else, if you don't have it yet go and make your own account here. I made my own Thinglink picture about myself. It's like my CV plus more. Check it out here

On Monday we had also this lovely Camilla Tuominen keeping presentation about Emotion tracker. So natural woman, I really liked her style to present and she was herself all the time. She told about importance of knowing what you really feel, for example anquish can be excitment and stuff. That was great lecture and it was relevant this time because I started this Elämäntaito course which is about knowing your feelings, how to prevent stress and how to schedule your life etc. Great lecture but not much about digital marketing and I actually didn't catch how the Emotion tracker actually works.

Feel your feelings

On Friday each group presented what they had came up for Avionboard and Funking. DigiInspiration team had made supercool video for Avionboard, it was simply amazing. Good job! We also presented our video to Funking and it was pretty exciting because we really didn't know if they liked it or not and our ankle was little bit outside of their own which is musicians and artists. Our was not so surprisingly... Football of course. After showing the video to them, they kept a feedback session for us. Outcome was... that they were actually super satisfied and if I remember correctly Ile's comment was F*****g great! Pardon my french. They had also showed it in start up meeting and according to Funking team, teachers were speechless. They also gave us gift card to Stadium because they thought that the video was so great. Thank you really nice gesture! We decided to give it to Tommi, our video guru because he made the video possible. You can check it out below!

What else, as I told this Elämäntaito course started and it seemed very interesting. Oh and I also got back to football trainings, i'm so excited about that because season starts soon and I have to get fit really fast. So that's about it, see you on next Sunday!

- Miikka

Chapter 2: Week number 4, knee is okay and Next Level event wasn't so okay

I missed Tuesday's lecture again because I had doctor's appointment for my knee. Good news, all the main parts are okay but slight damage on the right side. HUH got to say because the same knee has been operated before and another surgery would crash my football career probably for good.

Back to business, on Friday we went to this Next Level event arranged by PCAscala. In the morning I checked Facebook and there were some tasks that we were supposed to do there. I was like whaaat, you got to be kidding me and why you inform us so late. Tasks were something like cleaning and showing their products and stuff. I thought that I was going to fair trade event to make new contacts and hear the guest speakers there. I'm pretty sure that this kind of tasks doesn't help us making new contacts. Sorry but not well organized at all. First impression of the place was not so good. There were no signs or anything that this event was held there. We went inside a dark staircase and still no sign. We didn't know if we were supposed to go up or down. Okay we found the place. New gym, nice and modern but not the place where I would hold an event. In my opinion this kind of positive event should also be marketed much better and much more welcoming, so lots to do for them. I got to hear one speaker there, Mika Järvelä by himself and speak was awesome. He told about his career as a coach but between the lines I tried to catch tips. It is easier ask for something after you have given something. That is true, it's called reciprocity. Invent, develop and try, that's the pattern how your development should work. I've talked much about trusting in my previous posts and Mika also talked about it, NEVER trust the word, ask always black on white. It sounds kind a harsh but it's true and it's not arrogant to ask black on white because contract concerns you and you have right to do it. When applying for a job, selling yourself in a positive way is the key thing, just have the courage to tell honestly what you can do, where you are good at and so on, forget the prattle. Learn and teach, make contacts, ask for help, develop yourself and last but not the least explore the world. If you do all those things you have possibility to succeed in a way you want. Exploring the world is crucial and it will broaden your view of thinking. I did this test recently and I have explored only 5% of the world, so lots to do for me.

I also talked this Mizudo presenter there. It's a sport brand from Japan which is not so known in Finland but in Asia it's quite big. He told that one pair of sport shoes goes through over 100 pair of hands before it can be sold. Also one shoe has so many little parts which came as a surprise for me. He had torn one shoe down there so we got to actually see all the moving parts there. Those things kind a explains also the high price of some shoes.

Mika Järvelä's presentation

Gym was small but modern and effective

Long awaited Veikkausliiga started on Saturday, PK-35 vs Rops. Me and my friends as a PK-35 fans bought season tickets for this season. Sun was shining and weather was sweet but the end result was bittersweet. PK-35 was 3-0 ahead but crashing on second half and 3-4 on scoreboard. Yeah not much to tell but if something positive have to come up with, there were lots of goals!

Season ticket

At least the weather was nice

See you on next Sunday!

- Miikka

Chapter 2: Week number 3 started little bit exhausted but things got really interesting

I missed the Monday's lecture because the cruise to Sweden. Yeah we went international and the trip was great but exhausting. I'm glad I got myself to school on Thursday because we had the most interesting speaker in this course Antti Haapsaari from architecture firm Kanttia 2. Got to say, his presentation style was amazing. He was present all the time and very natural. I actually checked around the class and everyone was listening. I actually noticed that Anna was checking the same. He told us about their projects in Egypt and how it is going towards European style in the future. There will be shopping centers which are mix of Egyptian and Scandinavian architecture. Globalization is this day and it's good thing sometimes but what I really hope that cultures stays the same because what's the point everything being similar? When time goes by, eventually it will be very boring. I've talked about mixing in couple of my posts and mixing everything in a right way is good and welcomed but roots of the cultures should still stay the same because if those don't, new generations will not know where they came from, my opinion.

Otherwise you will forget where you came from

Antti also talked about customer relationships and what is important in those. I had written in my notebook that everything should be thought by customer's point of view and instead of making lots of money you should think ways to help customers and how to make more value for them. After that money will come along those things. The most important thing is to understand customers. I also wrote that confidential customer relationships are the key things in successful business. It's actually true in every part of your life, if you have confidential relationships in every part of your life, you are winning. BUT big but, when confidence is lost, it's really hard get back again, sometimes impossible, so maybe the key thing is how to maintain it. Making contacts with new people is also crucial when building confidential relationship. First impression should be made correctly because you have only 7 seconds to make it and you don't get another chance to do it.

Antti Haapasaari keeping a presentation

In job interviews they have always asked what are my best skills for the job. I could enumerate what I can do or what have I done but I have always answered that being natural is the key thing and complying different situations with being natural. Guess what, there's only one job that I haven't gotten when I have managed to get in job interview. Being yourself will pay off eventually. That one time they chose more talented person for the job, which was more than okay for me. That leads to one thing Antti told us: BELIEVE yourself, if you don't have the courage to believe yourself that much that you could get a job or something else, then don't do it at all. It's not arrogant to believe yourself. Make your own decisions whether you want something or not. Move towards your dreams. Every decision should be made by yourself. If you want to be successful, that doesn't mean you have to be the best immediately, the point is that you have to be able to see in future that you can be the best or at least good at it. For example this blogging thing, i'll probably never win the blog of the week but i'm 100% sure that i'm getting better at it all the time and that's my main goal in this. This is really close topic for me, because those things I mentioned before, got me back to school in first place. I want to learn more and achieve something meaningful in life, for myself and for others.

Remember that

We also got another assignment and we actually got to choose from two presentation. First presentation was held by Tuomas Kidron and Viveka Kulmala from Avionboard. Company sells those electronic boards, you have probably saw in the streets. Presentation was very natural and energetic, easy listening some might say. In addition of marketing their product they also talked about importance of making contacts, which I also mentioned earlier. My first touch to those boards was in Dubai where in breakfast buffet kids balanced with those and it was super annoying. But when I got to try it in my work, it was actually really fun and I wanted to roll around Jumbo with it. But it's very hard for me to find anything useful out of it but fun. That's why we decided to take task from Funking team. They have developed this idea of ultimate fanning thing that where artists or other celebrities can share exclusive material in style of snapchat but little bit differently. We are looking forward to this task because being a fan is so big thing and you can be a fan of basically everything. Idea is originally Ilkka's from Funking and one of his friend. Ile's enthusiasism shines through when he talks about it. Hope we have something to give them for this idea and I hope this pays off for them in future because I really do believe that this idea is possible to execute successfully!

Lots of blasting again, hope you enjoyed, see you on next week!

-Miikka

Chapter 2: Week number 3, MRI-scan, Mazda marketing plan and other stuff

I missed Monday's lecture because i had MRI-pictures taken from my knee. Fingers crossed that I don't need another surgery. Athlete never sees healthy day expression is made for me unfortunately. It was pretty hard for me to stay put for 45 minutes in a tube where you can't move at all. I still made it!:D

MRI-scan

On Tuesday my team told me the topic of assignment from Mazda and it was super interesting BUT deadline in three days, come on! It is very nice that we have possibility to do co-operation with this kind of world wide companies. I really do appreciate it but it's only glimpses to real learning because everything has to be done in a rush. Assignment was to make an innovative marketing plan for new Mazda 2 car. We got it done by Tuesday and we were excited about our idea. Idea was to market it in radio. The place where people listens radio most, is in the car, morning on the way to work and the most listened radio station is Suomi Pop especially the show called Aamulypsy which is aired 6-10am. Our idea was to put Jaajo Linnonmaa to market it, because he is one of the host in this show and probably the funniest man in Finland. We also got couple of other ideas too, how to ease the car purchasing decision.

Mazda 2

We kept the presentation to Mazda people on Thursday and feedback session was great. We got positive feedback that our presentation was strict and natural, the points we showed them why to use our idea and for that we had counted the marketing budget roughly. We got negative feedback also because our idea wasn't the newest or the most innovative. All in all nice and interesting assignment but waaaaaay too short. Good thing was honest feedback session from Mazda people, the professionals from marketing field and next time we turn the criticism to win. I've always thought that criticism is the best feedback, because if you never get it, you don't get an honest opinion what needs improvement or what have to be done differently.

On Thursday we got another assignment from PCA scala-gym, which has focus on personal training and coaching training tailored for the companies. Presentation was held by Mika Järvinen who has actually lectured for us before. Very interesting speaker and rarely uses anything but his own voice. They have this fair day event coming at their gym and our task is to come up with marketing solutions how to get more followers on their social media channels and how to get participants to this fair event, using social media competitions and other stuff. Mika told that he is not very good, when it comes to social media stuff and I actually remember from last year's presentation when he showed their website... I'm glad that some improvement has happened because old site hmm.. Ascetic might be the best word haha. This kind of tasks where teams can actually see the outcome of their work, are the best. I think it's important to see outcome of our work and in my opinion teachers should trust us more because they have been amazed many times in this course what the teams have came up with.

On Thursday we had this freelancer video dude who held a presentation about videos. Purpose of the video, planning and manuscript are the key things. If you need video for something you should think the very purpose of it. Costs will be the financial resources which are available to use for the video and based on this it's possible to approach the video maker. He also told that it's important to ask from the video maker, how many repair times is included in the deal. This presentation was very useful because we haven't had this point of view at all that if we need video from someone else. In this course we have only made videos to somebody. Either way video business is growing and it's one of the most effective ways to market nowdays and in this course we have had glimpse to video world which have been very new to me.

On Sunday we are going on a cruise, so Sweden here we come!

See you on next week!

- Miikka

Chapter 2: Week number 2 , law issues and secret of life

Hi everyone again! This week started on Monday when we had lecture about law issues held by Marjaana Marmo. She told us what consumer protection act and commercial code means. For me as a salesman consumer protection act has come pretty familiar. Everyday I have to deal with customers reclamations and handle them within the law. For me this lecture was extra useful because I can use this information in my working life and I got memory refreshing information about it. In my opinion consumer protection act is pretty shady, for example if customer buys a product, She/he will have 6 months to open it and if some fault comes up it should be assumed that the fault was there when customer bought it. Basically customer can use the product for 6 months and brake it and if customer can proof that the fault was there when it was bought, she/he will get new product or refund. Commercial code wasn't so familiar for me so it was very nice to hear about it. Marjaana also gave us 7 tasks considering those laws and we had to solve them. Very useful to do those kind of things in practice.
We also got our video for Nobot ready, you can check it out below!

On Wednesday started this E-service competence course, interesting topic and very relevant at this point. E-services are the most growing business at the moment and I think its going to be huge and it will eventually replace many old services and jobs we know.  But I'm sure that it will also create many new possibilities. Interesting topic and lots to do, we'll see how I manage to do everything on time.

Kevin and Lasse gave us presentation on Thursday considering marketing research. It's crucial for companies to make market research properly. Kevin and Lasse told us an very good example what happens if you do it wrong. Nokia Failed their tablet and mobile market research badly because they didn't understand customers enough. As you can see, there is no Nokia anymore, i'ts Microsoft nowdays and they can't compete with Apple or Samsung at all. Companies should also know the markets they are stepping to, where are they going to be situated in there and which companies they should compete with.

Kevin and Lasse keeping presentation

On Thursday Anna Ikonen gave us lecture about secret in life. At first when she started to talk about it, I thought that it's going to be some hippy stuff, which actually would have been interesting too haha. I'm myself little pessimistic always and I always try to be realistic when it comes to real life matters. This lecture opened up my mind more! Your thoughts attracts things you are thinking about. It's the law of attraction. If you send message to universe, it will send something back, so if you are positive, you get positive back. Negativity to positivity is the key and as I told in my last post, your own thinking is one thing you can control 100%.

Placebo effect is funny thing, I've red so many articles when some medicines had been tested and how the people who actually didn't get the drug felt better than those who got it. So you can think positivity as a placebo effect, if you feel positive, you'll probably get positive things back in your life in form of health or thoughts or something else. I actually red this article today which claimed that actually healthy eating could replace many medicines because if people would eat healthier some of the medicines wouldn't even have to exist. But you can't rely blindly on that, I watched this episode of Arman ja viimeinen ristiretki, there was very sick little boy in Africa who needed medicine badly but only thing he got was some voodoo stuff  from a local priest. That was really sad and I really don't know what happened to that kid. Even though drug business is very much about money and making profit, those companies creates life saving stuff too.

I will rest my case here, are you ready to make a revolution in your mind and change negativity to positivity? As Dennis Brown sings, it's all about living, loving, caring and sharing.

 Peace and love!

-Miikka