Last year I lived in Copenhagen Denmark. I got an opportunity to work with excellent team at Guppyworks, a company developing 3D GuppyLife MMO. I was asked to join the team because of my background and broad knowhow on game design and the specific target group (teen girls). For me that period in my life was very fun but also educational. I would say the key learnings are related to MMO business and issues to consider when running a virtual community (also necessities to keep in mind when building an MMO, how to support community feeling, how to evaluate the balance between unique features or technical development and making something happen business-wise asap, how to keep up constant change or evolvement and balance between polished content or stable technology vs. doing things fast and dirty). How relevant it is to make radical decisions even if you are in between productional limitations and VC's expectations. And those radical decision do not only related to prioritization issues. That's so much more.
Another cool thing was when I decided to take a step to unknown and invested in a startup company called MySites. I have done investments but never on startups. Why did I do it? It was a combination of Heureka! and convincing pitch by their CEO Ramine Darabiha. The Heureka! moment was linked to basic needs and how to make things easier for average Internet users. The case reminded me of comedian George Carlin and his joke how humans spend their lives accumulating stuff. Soon they have problems of where to store all of it. The third challenge is to access that data (of various kinds) in multiple locations and channels.
I agree with trend reports and believe that MySites is answering to few key challenges of coming years. Issues related to the fact that media consumption is (constantly) changing, people ask for one stop shops and easy ways to share different type of data or content with their friends (and strangers). Content needs to be distributed -- the same content should pop up in multiple locations, formats and channels and be personalized. It is very clear that sharing no longer means e-mail, FTP or high number of dedicated services with their limitations. Also I have to say Ramine did really convincing sales pitch. We'll see what happens but he is a clever and dedicated person -- I would love to see more of that energy not only in startups but also within well established companies :)
Besides I did plenty of work with digital media and digital games. I am the head of IGDA Finland and I do game reviews and blogging for Tilt.tv, run Game Lab which develops experimental online game prototypes at Paf, I was in the jury deciding which Nordic game companies would get development fund, I wrote articles of the Finnish game dev scene to Pelaaja (Player) magazine, was in Nordic Game Jam 2009 jury and Live2011 jury, wrote few "digital media & games in a nutshell reports" for Ministry of Education, did consulting etc.).
I also did bunch of presentations (some of them are at Slideshare). My topics varied from game development and management to virtual identity issues -- and from business to academic talks. Just the way I like it. On top of that I wrote several articles and participated e.g. to Diginatives report (in Finnish) and Finnish Game Research Year Book 2009 (in Finnish). I also worked hard with a book focusing on digital media pioneer countries of the late 1990s (South Korea, Japan and Finland) and how social networking and novel ways to participate, contribute and develop digital content and services have changed the picture. It has been rather difficult to find international publisher for the book. If I get one more "no" as an answer, I will move to plan B to make sure the book will come out asap!
Now you might ask what's for next year then? I am not sharing my plans at the moment, I will get back to those at the end of this year and see how I have been able to reach my goals :D Happy New year! Make plans! Change the world! Share happiness!
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