MindTrek

Måns Adler

Bambuser
Founder & Evangelist

"Rebirth of Mobile Life" session on Friday, Oct 2nd, at 10:10-10:40 + panel discussion at 11:50-12:20

The democratization of communication technologies

A short overview on how communication have developed over the centuries ending up in how democratization of technologies moves us.

Bio

Måns Adler is a leading Swedish entrepreneur. His company Bambuser is revolutionizing the area of mobile media and leading the way in the frontiers of real-time mobile video streaming, by democratizing a technology that earlier only has been available for a lucky few.

Bambuser was announced as one of Sweden’s most innovative internet companies by “Veckans Affärer”, and Måns Adler became listed as top internet entrepreneur in the country, by the magazine “Internet world” in 2008.

Måns holds a masters degree in Work Science as well as a post-graduate degree from the elitistic leadership school the Kaospilot.

Teemu Arina

Dicole
CEO

"Social Media - Now What?" session on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 14:15-14:45 + panel discussion at 14:50-15:20

Collaborative Edge: Real-Time Social Technologies in Organizations

Sustainable success in knowledge intensive organizations is no longer possible without tapping into the potential offered by real-time social technologies. Division of labour has extended outside the organization to include partners and customers.

Products can be rapidly developed on the market through online peer-production. The shift of balance from inside-out to outside-in innovation requires organizations to look into collaborative advantages in addition to competitive advantages.

Bio

Teemu Arina is a popular speaker, writer and entrepreneur focusing on the future of social technologies in leadership, knowledge work and learning.

He works with enterprises, non-proﬁts, startups and universities interested in implementing social technologies and facilitating the required change in attitudes,working patterns and culture.

As the CEO of Dicole he has advised and implemented novel approaches regarding social media for organizations like Nokia, YLE, City of Helsinki, City of Espoo, Tekes and Tieto.

His personal website and blog at includes more information, presentations and writings about his ideas about the future of online collaboration.

Sharon C. Ballard

Enable Ventures Inc.
founding President/CEO

Jury member of the "MindTrek Launchpad" on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 13:00-15:20.

Bio

Mrs. Ballard is the founding President/CEO of EnableVentures, Inc., an Arizona corporation (2005). She is the former President/CEO, and one of 3 founders of Reticular Systems, Inc., a privately held California corporation (1989). Reticular Systems developed intelligent agent-based patented computer hardware and software products that aid customers in solving complex, time-critical problems. Under her leadership, the company won over 30 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program awards. The company spun out new start-up corporations that were quickly purchased by venture-backed companies.

Prior to founding Reticular Systems, Mrs. Ballard was Director of Business Development for Titan Corporation, a NYSE company, where she was responsible for marketing and sales of advanced satellite communications systems such as Mini-DAMA, a $350 million award for UHF satellite communications systems.

Previous to Titan, she served as Business Development Manager with Motorola where she was responsible for technology and systems sales for the satellite communications business unit, a $100M division with 60 engineers.

Mrs. Ballard served as an Engineering Manager then Sales Manager with LINKABIT Corporation, establishing the sales efforts for new lines of digital communications systems, including the first Internet modems. The founders of LINKABIT later founded QUALCOMM Inc. When she left LINKABIT to join Motorola eight years later, LINKABIT had grown to over 600 employees.

She is currently co-writing a book with Jonathan Levie (Ph.D., and director of the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, Glasgow) entitled Launching Technology Startups: Practical Tools and Techniques for First-Time Entrepreneurs.

Peter Cheng

TargetSource Tech Ltd
Community Strategist & Open Source Evangelist

"Mind Your Community Business" session on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 13:40-14:10 + panel discussion at 14:50-15:20

Bio

Peter Cheng is a community strategist and open source evangelist, who is based in Beijing, China. Peter was co-founder of Huihoo.org, which is the largest open source community in China since 2001. In 2003, he initiated the Open Source University program to gather industry experts and help spread open source technology and culture to over 25 universities. In 2007, he organized the Open Source Camp in five Chinese cities, with the aim to enable open source community to share and exchange ideas and to promote technology around the world.

Peter is also general speaker at IBM DevelopeWorks, Redhat Conference and China Software Tech Conference. Currently he is running TargetSource Tech Ltd, a company he founded to provide solution and services based on enterprise-ready open source software.

David Coleman

Collaborative Strategies
Founder & Managing Director

Keynote speaker, Plenary Session on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 11:00-12:00

Why Look at Enterprise Social Collaboration Now?

A Fireside chat moderated by Pekka Pärnänen (Finpro Silicon Valley)

The session will look at the trends of social media and social networks within the work place, how companies are benefiting from implementing social media and collaboration tools as well where the opportunities are for Finnish companies offering social media and collaboration tools.

Bio

David Coleman has been involved with groupware and collaborative technologies since 1990 as an industry analyst, author of books and magazine articles on collaborative computing, conference chairman and consultant to vendor and user organizations.

As the principal consultant with Collaborative Strategies, David works with clients to ensure the best outcome from groupware. He has led several organizations through the process of determining their readiness for collaboration practices, the appropriate business processes to apply groupware to and the best tools to use in each case. He has facilitated meetings, using electronic collaboration tools, to determine success factors for collaborative projects. His facilitation has enabled organizations like NASA and PacifiCare to determine their internal groupware strategy.

Additionally, David advises vendor clients, such as NEC, ICL/Fujitsu, Apple, The Forefront Group, Hewlett Packard and others, on product strategy and positioning. Often, product positioning comes from market input. Mr. Coleman has lead market research studies for Merrill Lynch, and many of the vendors listed above to help determine product features, pricing, and competitive differentiators. His unique perspective on the collaborative technologies market allows him to see the critical issues facing users of collaboration technologies. David often writes marketing white papers explaining product positioning in relation to market issues and concerns.

As founder of the GroupWare '9X conferences, David has watched over 10,000 people from western cultures cope with collaboration in a competitive culture. From this experience, he developed "The Business Transformation Game" a role playing game that exposes users to a variety of groupware products while teaching them about personal and computer-based collaboration. David is known for his creative solutions to marketing, analytical and collaborative problems. He has run an independent management consulting firm for eight years and is a seasoned leader and project manager.

Prior to establishing Collaborative Strategies, David held positions of Director of Marketing (Natural Language) and Product Line Marketing Manager (UNIX Products Group, Oracle Corporation).

David's entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to electronic collaboration lead him to found the GroupWare '9X conference in 1992 (held annually in San Jose, Boston, and London). He is the author/editor of Groupware Technologies and Applications (Prentice-Hall, 1995) and Groupware: Collaborative Strategies for Corporate LANs and Intranets (Prentice Hall, 1997). He was the editor and publisher of GroupTalk, the newsletter of workgroup computing. He is the founding editor of Virtual Workgroups, now DVC magazine and still contributes a monthly column. Additionally, David writes monthly columns on groupware for Computer Reseller News and MainSpring (an on-line resource for intranet and web developers). David has written for many trade and business publications such as Network World, Datamation, Fortune, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and tradeshows worldwide.

David has been on the boards and advisory boards of a variety of companies and is currently on the advisory boards of Linkify and Knowledge Filter Inc.

David holds a bachelors degree from Connecticut College and masters degrees from San Jose State University and Stanford University.

Ignacio Correas

eBox
CEO and co-founder

"Mind Your Community Business" session on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 13:05-13:35 + panel discussion at 14:50-15:20

8 lessons learned from developing an open source community

How ready should my project be before open sourcing it? How easy is it to create a user community? Will they code "for free"? How much and what kind of activity can I expect from community members? This session will summarize a few do's and don'ts for startups to create and lead an open source community.

Based on a first-hand experience, the session will cover the five-year evolution of eBox Platform, an Ubuntu-based unified network server for SMEs, taking it from concept to a steady growing user community.

Bio

Ignacio started Warp Networks, his first open source-based company, in 2004 after several years of experience in IT industry in France, Finland and Spain. In four years Warp became one of the top open source integrators in Spain, specialized in networks and communication systems.

Currently Ignacio is CEO of eBox Technologies, a spin-off from Warp focused on the development and commercialization of eBox Platform, an open source server for the efficient management of corporate networks. Ignacio is also an active member of the Spanish open source business community, being an advisor for CENATIC (Spain's National Reference Centre for Open Source) and a member of the board of ASOLIF (Association of Open Source Spanish Business), among others.

Jyri Engeström

Google
Product Manager

Keynote speaker, Plenary Session on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 15:50-16:45

"One of the most visionary and innovative people you will ever meet." - Peter Wakim, Director, Corporate Venturing, Nokia

Bio

Jyri Engeström co-founded microblogging service Jaiku, which Google acquired in 2007. He is currently Product Manager at Google, where he has been responsible for areas of Google's social infrastructure including Google Profiles and Google's sharing model; and mobile applications like Latitude, Calendar and Gmail mobile.

Prior to Jaiku he occupied the position of Senior Product Manager at Nokia, responsible for Nokia's Internet Handhelds products. A sociologist by training, he is noted for coining the term "social objects" to refer to photos, bookmarks, and other shareable Web content.

Ryan Genz

Cute Circuit
CEO & Co-founder

"Future User Interfaces of Today" session on Friday, Oct 2nd, at 11:05-11:35 + panel discussion at 11:40-12:10

Bio

Ryan is CEO and co-founder of CuteCircuit and is a pioneer in the user experience and interaction design field. At CuteCircuit, Ryan is responsible for the product electronic engineering and user interface development. He led the development of several Patented and Patent Pending technologies owned by CuteCircuit.

Previous to founding CuteCircuit he was Art Director at ASAP Media Services and Signal Interactive in the US. He has developed interactive products for Hitachi, Motorola and Telecom Italia. In addition to speaking on Interaction Design and Telecommunication Design in the US and Canada, he is visiting professor in the Textile Futures MA course at Central Saint Martins in London. One of his sculptures is part of the permanent collection of the White House, Washington DC. Ryan has been visiting professor in New Media and Interaction Design at NID (National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India) and professor in Cultural Anthropology and New Media at Rockport College (Maine, USA).

Ryan has a Master in Interaction Design from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy and a BA in Cultural Anthropology and Studio Art from the University of Maine. Ryan holds an Innovator Visa from the United Kingdom. The Innovator Visa is granted to outstanding individuals in the field of Innovation and Technology.

Adam Greenfield

Do Projects
Co-founder

Keynote speaker, Plenary Session on Friday, Oct 2nd, at 13:20-14:20

"Adam Greenfield is intense, engaged, intelligent and caring. I pay attention to him. I counsel you to do the same." - Howard Rheingold

Bio

Adam Greenfield is co-founder of Do Projects, author of "Everyware" and the forthcoming "The City Is Here For You To Use," and currently works as head of design direction for service and user interface design for Nokia.

He has been exploring issues at the intersection of technology, design and culture for the last ten years, with a particular interest in the implications of ubiquitous computing for urban form and metropolitan experience.

Ido Guy

IBM Haifa Research Lab
Manager of the Social Technologies group

"Social Media - Now What?" session on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 13:40-14:10 + panel discussion at 14:50-15:20

Recommender Systems for Social Media

Millions of people are actively using social media sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, Digg, Delicious, Facebook, and Twitter. By creating content, commenting, rating, and tagging huge volumes of information are created by the masses. As social media sites continue to proliferate, it is getting harder and harder for users to sift through all the new information being created.

Recommender systems aim at alleviating information overload over social media users by presenting the most attractive and relevant content to the user on a personal basis. Using emerging types of social media metadata, such as social networks and tags, social media recommender systems can play a key role in making a social media site successful in terms of adoption, engagement, and retention of users over time.

Bio

Ido Guy currently manages the Social Technologies group at the IBM Haifa Research Lab, to which he joined in 2000. He started his work as a student at the Verification Technologies and Asset Management groups, and then joined the Collaboration Technologies group in 2004. Ido lead various projects in the group dealing with synchronous collaboration and social networks architecture previously to becoming a manager.

Ido holds B.Sc (Software Engineering) and M.Sc (Computer Science) from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. He is co-author of conference and journal papers in the fields Data Mining, Human-Computer Interaction, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, and Recommender Systems. Ido's research interests include social network analysis, search and recommender systems, collaborative applications, web mining, and graph algorithms.

Mikko-Pekka Hanski

Idean
Chief Evangelist, Co-founder

Host of the "Rebirth of Mobile Life" session on Friday, Oct 2nd, at 10:00-12:20

Bio

Mr. Hanski is a true pioneer in the field of mobile user experience and strategy. For over 10 years with mobile service and application design, Mr. Hanski has led hundreds of research and design projects for world¹s leading mobile device, game, entertainment and carrier companies. With exceptional talent in understanding cultures, social networks, behavior and people, Mr. Hanski is well known story-teller in the global user experience field. He also has the wonderful ability of looking things from a fresh new perspective and making complex issues simple.

IDEAN

Idean is a unique user centric design company. We provide customer-driven user interface design, holistic research, market analysis and innovation services. Our wide range of solutions represent the cutting edge in the digital domain - our playground is where people meet digital devices, to deliver solutions which are easy to use, exciting and relevant for the target audience. We create world-leading digital concepts, applications and platforms for web, mobile and integrated industry systems.

Pekka Himanen

Helsinki Institute for Information Technology / University of Oxford
Principal Scientist & Professor

Keynote speaker, Plenary Session on Friday, Oct 2nd, at 14:25-15:25

Culture of Creativity: Enriching Interaction

Bio

Prof. Himanen is one of the internationally best-known researchers of the information age, whose works on the subject have been published in 20 languages from Asia to America.

After obtaining his PhD in Philosophy as the youngest doctor ever in Finland at the age of 20 (University of Helsinki 1994), Himanen moved to carry out research first in England and then in California (Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley). The best-known publication of this research is the book The Hacker Ethic (Random House 2001). Himanen has also coauthored with Prof. Manuel Castells the influential book The Information Society and the Welfare State (Oxford University Press 2002), which has been discussed worldwide in the leading academic and political circles. Himanen is nowadays a popular lecturer around the world.

As a sign of his impact, Himanen's work has been recognized with several awards, such as the World Economic Forum's respected Global Leader for Tomorrow Award in 2003 and his selection of being one of the 200 Young Global Leaders in 2005. Himanen has also had an important role in the actual making of policy. He has advised leading global organizations and corporations. In Finland, Prof. Himanen has recently finished the preparation of a new information society strategy for the Finnish Parliament's Committee for the Future and a national innovation strategy for the Finnish Technology Industry.

Himanen's untraditional work has always also had a broader cultural impact. This includes the media: Himanen is frequently interviewed by the media around the world, from the TV to newspapers.

Currently, Himanen divides his time between being a professor at the University of Art and Design Helsinki, a visiting professor at Oxford, and a principal scientist at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (a joint research center of the Helsinki University of Technology and Helsinki University).

Hannu Jungman

Veraventure Ltd
Manager

Jury member of the "MindTrek Launchpad" on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 13:00-15:20.

Bio

Hannu Jungman is manager at Veraventure, a goverment backed early stage venture capital company. Before joining Veraventure he has worked several years with startups, university spin-offs and investors. He started his professional career at Tampere University of Technology (TUT) where he worked as teacher and researcher of growth venturing.

Later on he was managing TUT's spin-off activities at Tamlink Ltd and founded a management consulting company Prodia Ltd. At Veraventure, Mr. Jungman is responsible for investments in mobile and web companies and managing business angel network InvestorExtra. He has a master's degree from Tampere University of Technology, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management.

Antti Karjalainen

The Finnish Institute in London
Programme Director

Panel discussion at 11:40-12:10

Bio

Antti's background is in philosophy. After finishing his academic research work he worked on a number of different projects at Bristol University, aimed at socio-economically less advantaged academically talented young people. From Bristol he moved to London to work for the Sutton Trust, one of the UK’s leading think-tanks promoting social mobility through education.

More recently Antti has designed the Society programme of the Finnish Institute in London. The aim of the programme is to identify solutions to pressing social problems in Finnish, UK and Irish societies.

Slava Kozlov

Philips Design
Philips Futures Desing

"Beyond Open Innovation" session on Friday, Oct 2nd, at 10:45-11:00 + panel discussion at 11:40-12:10

Wikinnovation: New state of mind is in demand

The presentation will touch three themes:

(briefly) current developments in open innovation and key drivers behind them
our own experience at Philips and Philips Design - both successes projects and the problems we experience
new mindset and new skills required for business to participate in these open, co-creative environments (and possible ways to develop these new skills in the future)

Bio

Slava has been working with the Strategic Future Design Team of Philips Design for more than ten years, heading (or contributing to) numerous projects for both Philips and external clients. He supports design and innovation by informing and inspiring creative teams with the knowledge about possible futures, social and regional trends and cultural developments. He also helps them to better understand people's lives in multiple contexts and involve people in co-research and co-design activities with the design and client teams.

Lately, and increasingly, Slava explores the potential of digital tools to support and enable design process, including multiple social web platforms, virtual worlds, multiplayer online games, and hybrid interactive and experiential environments.

In addition to business projects, Slava also actively participates in R&D programs, such as studies of Ambient Intelligence or the Internet of Things, and visionary Design Probes into the future. Over the years he developed a range of new tools and methods for people research, futures studies, and innovation.

Slava is an author of numerous research papers and publications, a frequent conference speaker and a participant of international workshops and creative sessions.

For a number of years he was teaching, at the Department of Industrial Design, Technical University Eindhoven, a course on ‘People and Societies Change for Design Process.’

Slava studied Clinical Psychology, Sociology, and Mathematics, and prior to Philips Design worked with a range of research institutions and business consultancies, including OMRI, GfK and Burson-Marsteller.

Slava is a keen photographer, and maintains his internationally acclaimed blog of abstract and conceptual photography for more than 7 years (http://aman-geld.livejournal.com).

He is married and a father of one son.

Leo Kärkkäinen

Nokia Research Center
Research Fellow & Chief Visionary

"Future User Interfaces of Today" session on Friday, Oct 2nd, at 10:10-10:40 + panel discussion at 11:40-12:10

Mobility

The current paradigm in user interaction bears still a strong connection to a "Computer Operator's office" environment of last century. It is time to disconnect this umbilical cord and see what is really the way to interact on the move. We need a large screen to view, but small to carry, we need multimodal, peripheral interaction that augments the surroundings in a natural way. We need aggregation and mining of data, connectivity to the cloud, to bring relevance and ranking for optimal representation of fused virtual and physical worlds. I will describe ways, ideas, and technologies that could make this happen"

Bio

Dr. Leo Kärkkäinen is Research Fellow, in Nokia Research Center Tampere, which has its strategic aim in intelligent interactions and context- aware multimodal experiences for fused physical and digital worlds, with intent on driving breakthroughs that will reach far into the future, enabling new business opportunities for Nokia.

As a technology expert, Leo is responsible for development of the research content and practices that pursue disruptive innovation in addition to individual research activities. He is a member of CEO technology council of Nokia.

Leo joined Nokia in 1996 as Senior Research Engineer in acoustics. Later, as a Principal Scientist, he led the Electroacoustic group in the Speech and Audio Systems Laboratory and Multimedia Laboratories of Nokia Research Center. He has extensive experience in physical modelling of acoustic phenomena. During the years 2006-2008 he was, Research Fellow, Chief Visionary of NRC Systems Research.

Before joining Nokia he studied quantum field theories at high temperatures, especially the formation of quark gluon plasma. After having his PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Helsinki, Leo served as a Research Scientist in University of Bielefeld Germany, University of Arizona Tucson US, and Niels Bohr Institute Copenhagen Denmark, before joining Nokia.

Leo is also an Adjunct Professor of Theoretical Physics in University of Helsinki. His interests lie in various fields of physics, from nanotechnologies to modeling of complex systems. He is also interested in teaching and creating organizational structures for innovation. Leo is the author and co-author of more than 60 academic papers in particle physics, and acoustics. He has five patents.

Pekka Markkula

TeliaSonera
Head of Service Enablers, R&D
Mobile Services

"Rebirth of Mobile Life" session on Friday, Oct 2nd, at 10:45-11:15 + panel discussion at 11:50-12:20

OpenTelco APIs as mobile service enablers - Case: Contextual Aware Mobile Gaming

API's have become evident building block for Mobile 2.0 services. Operator Network APIs and other resources give the expanding cloud of services more opportunities to be contextual aware. As a case study TS built a contextual aware iPhone game to utilize location and messaging.

Pekka Markkula has been working with TeliaSonera since 1999 (previously Sonera). He has been working for the areas of B2B telecommunication service development, Sonera Information Society Unit, regional business solution sales management, business development, product management and recently as a Head of Service Enablers, R&D Mobility Services.

Presently Pekka Markkula’s main responsibility is in the area of Research & Development is heading the unit for Service Enabler addressing the development of areas such as MobileTV, content delivery, authentication, mobile payments, NFC and Operator APIs. Pekka Markkula has Master of Science in Engineering (Information Technology) degree in Tampere University of Technology majoring in Software Systems, Software Production, Industrial Management and International Marketing.

Inka Mero

Backstage Alliance / Koppi Catch Oy
Evangelist, Chairman & Founder

"Rebirth of Mobile Life" session on Friday, Oct 2nd, at 11:20-11:50 + panel discussion at 11:50-12:20

Mobilizing Fan Communities - New era of Music Industry

The presentation will address the rends in and evolution of music industry, the impact and opportunities of mobile and music, and present Mobile Backstage, innovative mobile solution targeted for bands and artists for capturing the fan communities on the move.

Inka Mero is a Chairman & Co-Founder of KoppiCatch Oy - a global new business production company, accelerator and seed investor. By definition, Koppi produces new business for its customers, startups and young growth companies, and is specialized on mobile & internet related business model centric innovations. Koppi is investor in 4 startups in Scandinavia and US, including Mobile Backstage run by Backstage Alliance in Finland, and has multiple companies under incubation.

Inka is a new business pioneer who has been creating, establishing and growing innovative services, products and solutions in Internet, Mobile and Telecoms arena over 13 years. Her professional scope has been varying from global venture capital investing and corporate venturing to CEO and management team level positions in growth companies like Sonera, Digia, Nokia and Apaja - common nominator always being new business. In addition to her 24/7 work related to startups and innovations, she acts as board member at Staffpoint, one of the largest resource hiring companies in Scandinavia with over 12 000 employees.

Chris Messina

Citizen Agency / OpenID
Co-founder / Board Member

Keynote speaker, Plenary Session on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 10:05-11:00

"How does Chris Messina always manage to have the best ideas about the most interesting work two years before the rest of us? I have no idea and I don't care. The ability to harness the future for the benefit of others and not simply yourself? That's a cowboy I want to ride with." - Kevin Smokler, CEO of Booktour

Identity is the platform

Much has been made of Twitter and Facebook's successes, and of the power of their technology platforms. But there is a bigger story here about what's happening to the web: it's becoming social and this changes everything.

Bio

Chris Messina co-founded the Flock web browser and led the community marketing of Firefox. He also co-founded San Francisco-based Citizen Space and started the coworking and BarCamp communities. He was named one of theDigital Utopians and People Who Populate Web 2.0 by the San Francisco Chronicle.

He is board member of the OpenID and Open Web Foundations, and a frequent speaker at technology conferences such as Web 2.0 Expo. He is quoted in The New York Times, Business Week, LA Times, MIT Technology Review and Wired. Chris received the 2008 Google Open Source Award in recognition for his work advancing technology initiatives such as OpenID, Oauth, Activity Streamsand microformats.

Jani Penttinen

XIHA
Co-founder & CTO

"Mind Your Community Business" session on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 14:15-14:45 + panel discussion at 14:50-15:20

Building a Multi-Cultural Community: Think outside the English-Speaking Box

When we travel the world, we get exposed to different languages. An international airport is a melting point of languages - it's a place with no country or cultural borders. There is no reason why internet should be any different!

When building global communities it's important to not make any assumptions on what each visitor can or cannot do. Majority of people around the world don't know any English at all. Someone might speak 3 or 4 languages, but not English. Someone might live in China and not speak Chinese, or live in Finland and not speak Finnish.

This talk highlights some of the common pitfalls which seriously limit the growth potential of web communities today and offers solutions on solving the issues.

Bio

Jani Penttinen is the co-founder and CEO of XIHA Life, the world's leading multilingual social network with a truly global userbase. XIHA was started in China, incorporated in Finland and is currently headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland.

Prior to XIHA, Jani worked as a game developer for EA/Westwood Studios in Las Vegas and later founded and operated mobile game companies in the USA and China.

Maria Pienaar

Finpro Silicon Valley

"Social Media - Now What?" session on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 13:05-13:35 + panel discussion at 14:50-15:20

Bio

Maria Pienaar is a seasoned professional with extensive experience in launching and marketing successful revenue generating products and services on mobile and wireline networks as well as developing new market opportunities.

She was instrumental in pioneering and launching the most successful voice and SMS (text messaging) services globally as well as the world's first mobile Internet service during her tenure at Vodacom (Vodafone), South Africa.

Prior to Vodacom, Maria was instrumental in launching the first online services through Telkom South Africa's videotext service. Maria worked with numerous world leading vendors in the US where she developed and launched a number of mobile related products and services with Lucent, Nokia, Nielson Mobile and Globalstar for the global and US markets. Maria was one of the key players in her role as Director, Business Development Wireless at Solid Information Technology, for developing new go-to-market and positioning strategies that helped grow Solid's market share in the embedded software and Telecommunications industry segments in the US.

Maria is currently a Sr. Consultant with Finpro USA, where she is working with Finnish companies on market entry and acceleration in the Software and Digital Media industries in North America. Maria holds a BSC, Electrical Engineering decree from University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Pekka Pärnänen

Finpro, Silicon Valley

Jury member of the "MindTrek Launchpad" on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 13:00-15:20.

Bio

Pekka Pärnänen, currently the Head of Finpro Silicon Valley where he also was key in establishing the FinNode (Finnish Innovation Center in Silicon Valley) in 2007. In Finpro Pekka is responsible for the ICT and Services Sectors in North America.

Pekka has more than 20 years experience in international business in Internet, IT and Communications industries. He has been helping companies to establish or re-establish themselves in the international markets with specially deep experience in establishing companies and partnerships in North America, Japan, Europe and Asia. Pekka's experience has enabled companies to go through accellerated learning curves in establishing successful business and technology strategies driving successful international market penetration.

Prior to Finpro, Pekka was Director for Global Business Development for Solid Information Technology. Prior to Solid, he was VP Global Marketing and Sales for Cybelius Software and also set up the company in the US and prior to Cybelius he was President for T.V.I - TEMET Vision Industry in Helsinki and Atlanta, GA, USA.

Kaija Pöysti

Aldanella
CEO & Co-entrepreneur

Host of the "Social Media - Now What?" session on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 13:00-15:20

Bio

Kaija has almost 30 years of entrepreneurial and management experience on starting and successfully growing companies. When studying at the Helsinki University of Technology for her M.Sc. in Operations Research and Strategic Management, she established her first company, Trantex, in 1983. Over the years she grew it into one of the leading providers of software localization, translation and documentation services in Europe, with annual sales of $20 million, 250+ employees, and a large number of customers, including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Nokia, government agencies and the European Union. She received the National Finnish Entrepreneur of the Year award in 1996.

In 1997 Kaija and her partners sold the company to Lernout & Hauspie Translation Division and moved first to Bonn, Germany and then to Boston, MA. In 2000 she realized her goal of becoming an independent consultant for Finnish technology companies that were looking to establish business in the US. As a partner at Blue White Venture, her customers included Finnish and American companies and Finnish public sector organizations.

After 8 years in Boston, Kaija returned to Finland in 2007 and began to pursue a career of an independent business angel and professional board member. Currently she holds board positions in 4 companies and has made angel investments in 5 companies. She has also been a member of several public task forces.

Her special interest is enterprise social media and especially its uses for innovation and learning in organizations. She collaborated on a book by Frances Cairncross, "The Company of the Future", published by Harvard Business Press in 2002. In 2008 she co-authored with Leenamaija Otala a book on Finnish enterprise social media called "Wikimaniaa yrityksiin". She is a guest blogger for Gilbane, and a frequent speaker on social media and multilingual solutions.

Henri Rantalainen

Technopolis Ventures Professia
CEO, Business Development Advisor

Jury member of the "MindTrek Launchpad" on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 13:00-15:20.

Bio

Henri has 20+ years of experience in corporate management. He started his career as a successful entrepreneur, and has since served in international business development activities at Synopsys, Inc., as well as in the management team of Nokia Networks´ OSS SW group.

Henri has a M. Sc degree and has experience in SW, semiconductor and service businesses. In addition, Henri has been appointed to the boards of several growth companies.

Francesca Rosella

Cute Circuit
Chief Creative Director & Co-founder

"Future User Interfaces of Today" session on Friday, Oct 2nd, at 11:05-11:35 + panel discussion at 11:40-12:10

Bio

Francesca Rosella is Chief Creative Director and co-founder of CuteCircuit. Her expertise is in wearable technology, textiles and fashion design.

Francesca designed for fashion brands Valentino and Esprit GmBH and developed advertising campaigns for TIM and WIND, the two largest Italian mobile telecommunication service providers. She developed interactive products for Hasbro, Sony, Illy Caffe' and Telecom Italia.

Francesca speaks often at international events including: Gravity Free Design and Innovation Conference (USA), Smart Textiles Conference in Washington DC (USA) and Rome (IT), Aventex and Techtextil in Frankfurt. Design and Emotion Conference (TUR), DIS in Boston, and at Salone del Mobile in Milan. Francesca also chaired the Emotional and Affective Computing session at CHI (Computer Human Interaction) Conference.

Francesca has a Master in Interaction Design from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy, a post degree diploma in Eco Design from the European Commission Education Fund, and a BA in Interior Architecture from the Istituto Europeo di Design in Italy.

Juha Rytky

Ball-It
CEO and co-founder

"Future User Interfaces of Today" session on Friday, Oct 2nd, at 10:45-11:15 + panel discussion at 11:40-12:10

Future of Motion Control in Gaming Industry and Other Consumer Applications

Bio

Juha has extensive experience in information technology markets. He started his career in Singapore working at AsiaCom One Pte representing European IT companies in Southeast Asia. He acted as an agent for European telecommunication companies opening business prospects in Asia.

After working period in Singapore he moved back to Finland to work for Polar Electro Oy where he was responsible for component sourcing and leading the Global Source & Supply Team. Polar Electro is world leading heart rate monitor manufacturer. Most of the employees in his team were located in Malaysian, Hong Kong and China.

After Polar Electro he joined MyOrigo Oy, a company developing the next generation java smart phone using sensor technologies. At MyOrigo Oy he was a member of the patent committee and responsible for operations including component sourcing, purchasing, manufacturing, logistics and after-sales service. His responsibilities also included partnerships with sensor manufacturers and custom-made sensors. Myorigo’s core technologies were touch panel and virtual screen based on accelerometer and force sensors.

F-Origin was founded by a management buy-out arrangement from MyOrigo Oy. F-Origin continued to co-develop the existing sensor technologies from MyOrigo and sell them to the handheld device market. Juha worked at F-Origin as a Sales Director responsible of EMEA and Asian sales activities. F-Origin was able to sell the smart phone project with sensor technologies inside for one of world leading mobile OEM in the world. Juha was also a member of executive team both at MyOrigo Oy and F-Origin Oy.

In 2005 Juha was founding Ball-It Oy together with Johannes Väänänen. Ball-It has developed the most advanced motion control technology to date, outperforming all the existing ones in physical size, feature set and price. This technology is compatible with Mobile Phones, PCs and Game Consoles. Unlike other motion control devices, our device fits in your pocket, is truly portable, cross-platform compatible and affordable. Our device can recognize the direction, position and rotation. We offer possibilities to create sophisticated and yet intuitive and simple motion controlled games. The games can be based on full 3D motion, full 3D rotation (360 degrees around every axis), or both, which is unique combination not possible with any other technology. The sensor combination of accelerometer, magnetometer and pressure sensor utilized in novel way for gaming is unique and it makes it very advanced, sophisticated, inexpensive and small.

Petri Räsänen

Hermia Ltd.
Vice President, ICT

Host of the "Beyond Open Innovation" session on Friday, Oct 2nd, at 10:00-12:20

Bio

Petri Räsänen is a Vice President, ICT, in innovation agency Hermia Ltd. Petri obtained his M.Sc. in Sociology and Business Administration and L.Soc.Sc in Sociology in University of Tampere.

After working in various research and development projects on network economy and innovation systems at Work Research Centre of University of Tampere and VTT, he joined Secgo Group Ltd., a Finnish VC funded network security solutions company.

He joined Hermia in 2003 and has created and managed several Finnish and European initiatives within ICT industry, focusing especially on open innovation (www.demola.fi, www.protomo.fi), digital media services and open source (www.coss.fi).

Manu Setälä

Tekes
Senior Technology Adviser

Jury member of the "MindTrek Launchpad" on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 13:00-15:20.

Bio

Mr. Manu Setälä acts as a Senior Technology Adviser at Tekes - the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. His work is mainly targetted to applications from companies about funding research and development of new business products and services.

Manu has a M. Sc degree on software systems and about 25 years of experience in ICT sector of which about 15 years at Tampere University of Technologie

Miguel Sicart

IT University of Copenhagen
Assistant Professor

Academic keynote speaker, session on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 13:00-13:45.

Not to Choose – Designing Ethical Gameplay

Bio

Miguel Sicart is Assistant Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, where he teaches game design. He received his Ph.D. in game studies in 2006. His book, The Ethics of Computer Games is published on MIT Press.He is currently working on developing a design framework for implementing ethical gameplay in digital games.

Email: miguel (at) itu.dk
Website: miguelsicart.net

Taneli Tikka

RunToShop / Brain Alliance
CEO

"MindTrek Launchpad" session on Thursday Oct 1st, at 13:05-13:35

Ingredients in a successful startup

Exploring the learned lessons of an active entrepreneur. Sheds light on the kind of properties you should emphasize on when planning a successful startup - and the kind of attributes that don't seem to correlate to success that much. Contains a few war stories, anecdotes and observations from 10+ years of building growth companies.

Bio

Taneli Tikka (CEO) a serial entrepreneur and dealmaker, has run 8 companies and held board seats in 17. He has also served in the advisory boards of many companies including StarDoll and Xiha Life. Taneli has been involved in closing 10 rounds of risk capital financing and has negotiated 5 tradesales out of which 3 have been personal exits.

Lately he has been the CEO of RunToShop and previously COO of Dopplr and previous to that the CEO and a major shareholder at IRC-Galleria (the largest social media company in Finland) which he sold to Sulake Corporation (the company behind Habbo Hotel) in the spring of 2007. Additionally Taneli is a board member in two TEKES boards, and an investor in several companies and holds active board and advisor seats in many of them. Taneli holds an Executive MBA degree from HSE, and an AS degree in construction engineering and architecture.

Marko Torkkeli

Lappeenranta University of Technology
Professor of Technology and Business Innovations

"Beyond Open Innovation" session on Friday, Oct 2nd, at 10:10-10:40 + panel discussion at 11:40-12:10

Theory of Open Innovation - possibilities and potential limits

The "open innovation" model is currently being touted as a superior path for achieving long-term success. Rather than relying on their own, limited resources for R&D in the traditional, closed invention system, firms are encouraged to share knowledge across firm boundaries to enhance their innovative potential. Yet, such sharing may also have adverse consequences by reducing the rarity of a firm's inventions.

This speech accordingly attempts to identify and analyze the parameters that determine whether open or closed types of innovation management are most appropriate for a given firm. Several theoretical concepts are presented to provide evidence regarding the value generating properties of open innovation.

Bio

Dr. Marko Torkkeli is the Professor of Technology and Business Innovations at the Lappeenranta University of Technology in Kouvola, Finland.

His research interests focus on technology and innovation management, strategic entrepreneurship, and decision support systems. He has published in journals such as the Int. J. Production Economics, Int. J. Foresight and Innovation Policy, Int. J. Business Excellence, Int. J. Technology Management and Int. J. Technology Intelligence and Planning.

He is a member of the editorial boards of the Int. J. of Services Sciences, the Int. J. of Innovation Management and the Research J. of Business Management. He is a Visiting Researcher at INESC Porto (Portugal), a Docent of Technology-based Business at University of Jyväskylä (Finland) and a Docent of Technology and Innovation Management at Helsinki University of Technology (Finland). He serves as the Director of Publications of the International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM).

Andrea Vascellari

iTive
CEO

Host of the "Mind Your Community Business" session on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 13:00-15:20

Bio

Andrea Vascellari is the CEO of iTive an international digital marketing consulting firm based in Finland. Previously Andrea was founder of A-Project Productions his first company which was founded in Italy, the country where he also got his Master's Degree in Business Administration from Udine University.

He has extensive international business experience and speaks six languages.

Andrea is author of a highly influential blog and he is producer of VMC the Vascellari Media Channel. Both, blog and media channel, attract the attention of world wide subscribers and are accessible from his website at www.andreavascellari.com.

He has run executive education programs, lectured at academic institutions and delivered keynote speeches internationally.

Antti Vilpponen

ArcticStartup
Founder

Host of the "MindTrek Launchpad" session on Thursday, Oct 1st, at 13:00-15:20

Bio

Vilpponen is a very active member in the Nordic and Baltic startup community. He is the founder of ArcticStartup, the most followed startup medium in Northern Europe profiling startups from a variety of industries.

ArcticStartup operates in the Nordics and Baltics, enabling growth entrepreneurship by profiling companies, linking entrepreneurs both online and offline in entrepreneurial events organised in the largest cities in the area. ArcticStartup is constantly followed by over 10 000 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, people from government organisations and other stake holders in the industry.

Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila

Tampere University of Technology
Professor

Host of the "Visions of Future User Interfaces" session on Friday, Oct 2nd, at 10:00-12:20

Bio

Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila is a full professor of usability in Tampere University of Technology, department of Software Systems, where she's leading the unit of Human-Centered Technology.

Kaisa has over 15 years experience in human-centered design, both in university and industry, including 10 years with Nokia Inc. Kaisa's research interests cover user experience and user-centered design methods in product development, with emphasis on design and evaluation of mobile communication products and services.

Kaisa has Master of Science degrees from Helsinki University of Technology (software engineering) and (Human-Computer Interaction), and a doctoral degree in computer science (multimedia information systems) from Technical University of Darmstadt.

Currently Kaisa is also a part-time visiting professor at Nokia Research Center, focusing on user experience of mobile and mixed reality services.