A Study Trip to California, full of Finns this time
Since last September, I’ve been taking a Ph.D. level course on the future of internet, IT and related fields called Bit Bang at Helsinki University of Technology’s Multidisciplinary Institute of Digitalisation and Energy. The students are all Ph.D. students from either TKK (HUT), University of Art and Design Helsinki or my own Helsinki School of Economics. The course is given by a former CTO of Nokia, Yrjö Neuvo. So, the course is a kind of a dream team of Finnish education system…
During the fall, we were divided into groups and my group’s task was to write about the implications of carbon nanotechnology until 2025. The other groups wrote similar papers on other technologies such as Processors & Memory, Telecommunications and Printed Electronics. Now, during the spring, we’ll do similar papers but on much broader topics: intelligent machines, globalisation, future of media and future of living. These papers will be combined into a book at the end of spring term (thanks to the Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund). To get a feeling of what we are writing, here’s an excerpt of our nanotechnology report’s introduction (PDF).
But, now to the more important part. As a part of this course, we’re going to a week-long study trip to California at the end of February, between 23th–28th. We’ll be visiting Berkeley, Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, and some other places and most of us will spend the week-end at San Francisco. If this sounds familiar, long time readers of this blog might remember Jeremy’s original Tech IT Easy SV trip in 2007.
The program for the trip is starting to form and these are some of the places and people we’re probably going to visit. The official program isn’t out yet, but this is what I quickly jotted down.
- University of California, Berkeley; David Messerschmitt
- Stanford University, and coincidentally, Stanford Entrepreneurship Week (We’ll also be attending the Fair on 24.2.).
- Trip Hawkins at Digital Chocolate (he’s probably more better known as the founder of Electronic Arts)
- Mårten Mickos at Sun Microsystems (was CEO at MySQL)
- The Google
- Ideo
- IBM (most likely one of their research centers somewhere in Palo Alto)
- HP Labs
- Nokia lablet & Nokia Research Center at Palo Alto
- Michel Wendell at Nexit Ventures
- And probably some others that I already forgot about
It’s starting to look like a busy week (perhaps not as busy as Jeremy’s, though.) and the guys we’re meeting with aren’t exactly small players. So, here’s my question to you: What should we/I ask from these guys? We have the amazing opportunity to talk with these guys and it would be nice to know what the Tech IT Easy crowd would be interested to know.
This is my second trip to USA and first to San Francisco, so another question from me is: What should I do and see at SF? Basically we have four days of official program and two “vacation” days.
The above program is just the official program, and there’s a group of us eager Ph.D. students from Finland’s top universities who would probably want to see more of what’s going on in SF. All ideas are welcome, but keep in mind our strict time constraints.
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Education, Entrepreneurship, Europe, Future, Gaming, Globalization, Google, HP, IBM, Internet, Nokia, Silicon Valley, Technology, USA, innovation
What should you ask of these guys? You know, it’s a pretty difficult question to ask the audience, because pretty much everyone will come from a different background and have different questions, perhaps very different to what you need for your research paper/book.
Trip Hawkings is awesome, I just heard an interview with him in combination with a different project I worked on. I’d be interested in knowing where he sees non-smartphones heading and what he perceives as the best mobile platform to develop games on, right now and in the future. Also how they deal with IP, as that was a question in my project (it seems everyone copies everyone in this space). And whether he sees mobile gaming as being able to stay a fragmented market with a lot of small players, or if he rather sees it as consolidating, and why that is so.
IDEO rocks too, I’d be interested in innovation design in recession times.
Stanford Entrepreneurship Week, well you already know I’m a fan, I’d just like a report, nicely typed out here on Tech IT Easy.
Nokia: the future of mobile computing… I’m sure they get that question all the time and it involves Nokia. Is it me or is Nokia just not very sexy as a company…
SUN/IBM… can’t think of anything right now, perhaps something on open source and its relevance to economic principles?
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My colleague and I work with our international partners to support European, South American, and Asian entrepreneurs in their Silicon Valley efforts, and he pointed out your article out to me. Your timing is especially relevant, as we are working on a relationship with Tekes & FinNode to support Finnish entrepreneurs here in the Silicon Valley.
I would be glad to tell you more about what we do, and perhaps give your group a tour of our center during your visit to the Silicon Valley.
Cheers,
JT
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