Slush: a colourful event indeed.Slush/Petri Anttila
Day two didn’t disappoint. Slush brought the visual feast for another dose of tech talk.
“As we know, it takes a village to start a school,” mentioned Linda Liukas, when taking the stage to describe the concept of Hive Helsinki. She added that the coding school is intended for everyone who is open to new ideas and curious enough to enrol in the programme that has neither teachers, nor a degree for graduates. “We are looking forward to change the world with code,” she added. Image: Susanna Lehto
Forget draining your phone battery with GPS tracking! Here comes an innovation created with the support of Helsinki Innovation Services, part of the University of Helsinki. CEO Jari Strandman (left) presented Moprim and its CTO Julien Mineraud. The company’s new technology tracks people’s movement and mode of transport using signal processing to register the way their phone moves. All the while automatically calculating their carbon footprint, of course. “Our goal is to solve the big problems in the world, such as traffic congestion and bad air quality,” said Mineraud. Image: Susanna Lehto
Looking for bright talent and sharing their image to the rest of the world, Finland’s largest media house Sanoma attracted a long queue with a colourful 360 video shoot stand at their booth. “My favourite thing so far has been meeting new people at Slush that I would probably never meet otherwise,” commented first-time attendee Netta Aavikko, a marketing analyst at Sanoma. Image: Susanna Lehto
The Zoan team, represented by its office manager Veera Varnamo (right), Janne Itäpiiri (left) and the designer Aki Hirvilammi (middle), demonstrated a virtual reality cube that gave Slush visitors an opportunity to travel to multiple places all over the Finnish capital area, such as Senate Square, the home of Alvar Aalto and Lonna island. “What I like about the virtual reality is how easy it puts smiles on people´s faces once they put on the glasses,” Veera said. Image: Susanna Lehto
CEO Maria Hakkarainen and CTO Andrey Smirnov from Robbo demonstrated their educational robot that is so intuitive that even preschoolers can make it move thanks to a simple user-friendly interface and transparent details. In cooperation with the cities of Helsinki and Espoo, the company will open ROBBO clubs for children, where parents can bring their curious children to grow a new generation of inventors. Image: Susanna Lehto
Finnish maritime and energy giant Wärtsilä came to Slush with a serious environmental message and intention to change the course of history. With the help of chroma key compositing technology, curious visitors found themselves on screen in the middle of a flood in a busy megapolis, realising quickly that things could get rough if the humanity does not change its ways. Image: Susanna Lehto
Viivi Marttinen, responsible for people operations at Supermetrics, says ‘yes’ to saving people from the intensive and laborious tasks involved in juggling marketing metrics between over 50 different platforms. Supermetrics makes things easier by putting all the fuss and buzz in one place. Image: Susanna Lehto
Who said that Slush is not for babies? Maija Hytti of the Academy for Future Leaders and her six-month-old baby girl Kerttu also attended Slush – an event, where a few years ago she met her husband, the CEO of Finnish innovation platform Keto. “Maybe Kerttu is a future startuper,” she added. Image: Susanna Lehto
Busy street downstairs interrupting your sleep? Looking for some shut-eye on a long-haul flight, but the baby in front of you won’t stop crying? Your other half erupting with a deep bass rumble of snoring every night? The noise cancelling earplugs of QuietOn might just be the solution. “Snoring affects 25 per cent of people regularly in the US,” CEO Janne Kyllönen told. “We were able to miniaturize active noise cancelling so you can sleep.” Image: James O'Sullivan
At the end of the day, there is always time for sauna, at least if you are in Finland. In the Sauna Village in the December rain, we found Finns, Danes and Dutch immersed in a steamy hot tub after the sauna. Surprise surprise, in the hot tub we met Saara Louhensalo (right), who we found in exactly the same place last year. “Good news from Finland!” Louhensalo cheered. Image: Susanna Lehto