Mobile & Social

I’m now sitting at a café in Helsinki.
It’s -11°c outside, just bought winter tires for my bike and chilling before heading home.

It has been 6 months that I have not contributed to my blog…
Where have those 6 months gone? What have I done so important and time consuming that I would not have time to update my blog?
I’ve been busy doing stuff, making things happen at Rovio.

Since I’ve started working, I’ve always given myself 100% to my job.
Working at Nokia, projects would come and go, giving some time to breath in between.
When joining the Symbian Foundation, I jumped in the world of startups, in which time is the most important value a company can have.
100% was good, but I wanted to give more.
When starting my consultancy, quite much of the work was social: meeting people, organizing events, speak, leading teams of developers remotely and more.
I could take a break here and there, as projects would have a certain length.
Joining Rovio 10 months ago, I was not only given the same responsibilities as I had already carried on before, but now I was building a full product.
The Bad Piggy Bank, Rovio’s payment processing and handling platform, is not a 4 weeks project. It’s a long-term investment.
And I made that commitment.

So let’s have a look at what happened in the past 4 months in my life, so that I can focus on what’s coming up next!
People like numbers, let’s explore some!

6 months
16 speaking engagements
• MeeGo Conference – San Francisco (via NYC)
• Festival of Games – Utrecht
• iStrategy – Amsterdam
• Israel Mobile Summit – Tel Aviv
• Orange “Hello Demain” – Paris
• Launch48 – Kensignton
• Campus Party – Valencia
• Game Jam – Turku
• Intel App Up – Seattle
• Verizon Developer Conference – Las Vegas
• Mac World Asia – Beijing
• Smart & Mobile Seminar – Seoul
• EFMA “Mobile Banking” – Paris
• TEDx “The Magic of the Game” – Las Palmas
• LincUp Live “From Monopoly to ARG: How games can make a city popular” – Lincoln
• PAX – Seattle

11 Countries: Finland, UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, USA, Korea, China and Belgium.
27 Cities: Helsinki, Tampere, Porvoo, Turku, Tampere, Tallinn, Stockholm, NYC, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, London, Birmingham, Lincoln, Paris, Lille, Geneva, Zurich, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Valencia, Tel Aviv, Munich, Garmish, Brussels, Beijing, and Seoul.

Train: London<->Geek Trip, London->Paris, London <-> meego event, Paris -> Lille
Car: 2000km
Motorbike: 2000km
Cycling: 500km
Plane: over 100h => more than 4 days…

That is a lot of traveling.
But that was necessary.
First of all, it gave me a better perspective of some of the aspects of our industry.
Rovio is not a mobile gaming company anymore. Rovio is an Entertainment company. Discovering the gaming industry was needed to understand where the company is coming from. Speaking about its past and what it did to succeed gives me the opportunity to analyze and digest its DNA.
Engaging with mobile operators has also been contributing to steepen my learning curve. Discovering their challenges, their needs and their assets was a good way to build a vision for our entertainment business that would include them.
So now what?
We’ve been executing!
And since December, I’m not traveling anymore for business.
We’ve entered the eye of the cyclone and it’s amazing!
Of course, a lot of work to execute on the strategy we’ve set up.

The good thing about the new situation is that I have some more time at home!
I’ve been now taking care of my home, my friends and myself.
New hobbies, new fun stuff and cool people in my life.

2012 is going to be an amazing year!
It already started and you’ll hear all about it: am back to blogging!