All Things Go Digital Soon

The Digital Future offers great potential, but needs the right approach so that all will benefit. The next big things don’t just appear from nowhere. We need to be prepared; do the home-work and find the right people, money and the resources needed to get things done.

We have had industrial revolutions before and we were pretty good in dealing with them. What’s new is the enormous speed of the current revolution, which is being fueled by digitization.

We can not change the speed of technological change - so we need to adapt to it. We must be agile, self-organized and flexible. Organisations need to give people more ownership and responsibility for what they are doing.

Traditional hierarchies are smashed and digital nomads are given the ability to self-organize their productive contributions.

The leaders assume the role of coaches, trusting their teams to make the right decisions. Another key for success is diversity. 

We need to enhance the innovative strength and unleash the potential of our participants.

Diverse teams prove highly capable in adapting to to a  changing environment., and thus contributing to the success of smart villages.

We need to do the most of our participants diversity with regard to everything from cultural background , ethnicity and geographical location.

Let’s get started

Let’s get started! From building the Great Pyramids to landing on the moon, humanity's greatest endeavors have required thousands of people working together on common goals. That requires intricate project management to pull off.

Project management is what gets you to your goal. We need to break down the project into manageable, repeatable steps, ones that guarantee success even when working with many individuals institutions, communities, villages and companies.

It was a project management system and teamwork that landed man on the moon in the 60's.

What do we want to achieve?

Like any startup, the Digital Villages project management team and participants have to  set their goals, define their mission, get organized and discuss a common strategy. What do we really want to accomplish?

• A learning process
• Technology improvements
• Better business environment
• Attract more tourists
• Construct hotels and improve housing
• Export local goods and services to new markets
• Improve life for the villagers

If we don’t know where we are heading, we might end up somewhere else!

A Digital Villages startup’s success always depends on the three crucial ingredients:

• access to capital 
• access to talent and 
• access to markets

Digital Villages has been in the making for three decades

It started out as a very analogue process 1987 in Kajaani. Things have changed, we're now taking an aim at our home base from an outsider's perspective.

First, we're chatting about "talking walls" and "info centers".

Back then, it was much talk, visual and digital day-dreaming but very little action.

Personal Computers carried a lot of promises but businesses lived in a paper driven world. Nevertheless, The PC was a milestone for the movement that ten years later surfaced as the concept of a digital village.

The first generation Digital Villages came along 1997 in Southeastern Finland. We were able to use Internet and Web 1.0 technologies as a platform to improve local and regional networking.

We're now ready to reach out and find new audiences.

It's hard to believe that the virtual construction of "Wirby the Global Village" would continue as a self-improving project for such a long time.

The first generation Digital Villages was still a regional story while the products and services connected only had a local, regional or national reach at most.

When we watch the world at present we need to work with people and producers who love to connect with their audiences on a global scale.

It's 2017 and we should be able to talk about digitalization as way to provide visibility and public awareness to products and services that have been limited and restricted to a small local market in the past. We'll do it in a way that counts.

Today, the tools are much more advanced and the fantasies of 1987 can be accomplished through global collaboration of small independent and distributed teams of producers.

Progress was being made on many levels.

• Broadband
• Youtube
• Podcasts
• Picture Galleries
• Digital Storytelling

We're attracting and connecting with people who love to do what they're passionate about.

Today, technology isn't a bottleneck or information flow a limitation anymore. We can  do it! Digital Villages is a living network and a breathing brand.

• We're working to make this a worldwide phenomenon

As a partner, you just have to believe that you're good at what you do, while working to process and integrate those who are willing to grasp their own share of the market.

Now, we're giving Digital Villages a second chance to become a hyper-local and transatlantic success story with a built-in ability to scale for global reach and business growth.

• Micro-movies showing the opportunities to do good
• Representation is the best thing that has come out of the Internet
• Putting yourself out there and being open and honest and authentic about who you are and what you represent creates interest and attracts followers

DV 2.0 is responsive in real time to customer needs and the changing needs of international clients. Many future products and services will be created and improved through crowdsourcing of customer requests.

• We want to be famous around the world in hopes of reaching digital nomads, especially digitally advanced international people with an edge and a pitch
• And with everything going on we can say that multi-channeling has a purpose 

Collaboration is the key to the evolution of the creative process showing networking partners in a flattering light. Our producers are using social-media marketing to create hype as strong that customers join the crusade and start doing their hyper-local activities on their own while sharing with others.

• Younger people are connected by the Internet, and that means we're communicating with people from halfway around the world 

We're featuring characters, personalities and organizations that are real and complicated, contradictory, normal individuals, organizations and companies like we all are, who are also allowed to be funny and challenging.

• Playful positivism
• Hyper-local live shows
• We welcome those who like to think they're citizens of the world

The Fast Fresh Flow Logistics Chain

We live in the most dynamic and trans-formative time but also facing a diverse range of complex issues and uncertainties.

To tackle modern day challenges in the forest industry we require updated solutions.

Cutting edge innovations that will allow us to connect, reach the hard-to-reach results, we need to engage with those who have the knowledge and power to create better productivity tools and methods.

The out of the box solutions came around when participants got active in their own time-frame and own space, eliminating key barriers that prevented the creators from getting the necessary depth and clarity needed to solve the problems.

We've been out there in the woods, crisscrossed logging yards, visited pulp and paper mills, sawmills and engineered wood components production units where influensers, solution providers and innovators discussed, showcased and explored the intersections of forestry operations, technology, automation and social change.

Learning from these experiences, beyond basic production and processing, we came together with dedicated networks to help drive the impact of social and technological change across the value chains.

Writing Technical Specificatiosn III/1990

Beyond Innovation. DV is an online business market penetration network developed in the early years of the 1990's. At a very early stage, it's impossible to know if there're any realistic possibilities for startups and innovators to connect with their clients at all.

Digital Villages enables us to manage, monitor and evidence business development projects and allow participants to measure and analyse the impact of invested time and money.

The show must go on. We've tested its functionality during the past decades in numerous exciting projects. As it turns out, easy market penetration and entry has its limitations, for ongoing success we need a world-class products and services. Next, we've to make the stuff available and create awareness.

Initially, the DV breaks down the barriers of entry to international markets for small and medium size companies. The growth of social media amplifies the possibilities of innovators to find out profitable niches in the market.

But look closer. It takes in consideration a vast range of opportunities and market conditions for those who travel through the three major steps of internationalization:

1. Penetration
2. Dedication
3. Saturation

Digitalization of Fast Fresh Flow

The Digitalization of Forestry Operations has been taking long steps from conceptual design to real-time value chain management from the stub to pulp, paper, and sawn goods mill. The picture (Irja Kallio) is from Ferdinand-Braun, Alsace, France. UPM was the owner of the biggest sawmill in France at that time (1997).

Digital Village History Tour 1998

This picture is from Loviisan Sanomat November 13, 1998. I’m speaking with Annika Malms-Tepponen about Wirby the Global Village a few weeks after the Galaxia Gala event.

Else-Maj Stenvall, the local teacher, and my father Otto Keitel are framed in the picture below.  They both passed away a few years after the 1998 historical Galaxia event.

Irja Kallio and myself returned back from France November 1997  and we were eager to make a contribution to the local development in my home village and in Ita-Uusimaa.

Today, Viirila is a part of the greater Loviisa area, and Ita-Uusimaa as an independent region doesn’t exist anymore.

What started as Wiirila Werkossa Wiikoittain, continues as a second life project 550 kilometers up north, in Sotkamo, as Wuokatti Werkossa Wiikoittain.

Digital Villages as a concept is still figuring in the background. KK-Net still uses it as a service design and community development platform. But we’re looking for an area or region where it could lead to a more permanent existence.

We still curiously look forward to a re-vitalization of some most intriguing digital traditions.

Trends are short-lived. Everything around us is in a continuous motion. Change is such a vital part of everything. It’s fifteen years to those pictures. Life continues, but some of the participants are looking at our thrivings from the heaven.

I’m grateful to everything that happened in my small home village.

Dear friends and fellow villagers, have a great summer, until we meet again ;)

There is a very new world outside your front door

PICTURE: Helge V. Keitel

There’s a very new world waiting for us outside the traditional village. Hyperlocal activities are great but small communities should be in close collaboration with the outside world.

• The innovationtrain 2.0 has been activated today: Veli-Matti Karppinen / Helge V. Keitel
• DISTANCE is still a major mental problem
• Is Open Collaboration a valid solution?

Digital Villages Ecosystem Improved

Take a look at the improved Digital Villages Ecosystem.

Globally, water consumption increases at more than twice the rate of population growth.

There will be a shortage of Water, Money, Oil and Energy in many parts of the world.

A workforce of several hundred millions is waiting for whatever jobs available.

If cheap energy helped fuel the boom in China and India, then a vanishing supply of fresh water will apply the brakes in the near future.

 

Digital Villages - The Learning Community Concept

The Concept.pptx

View more presentations from KK-Net

Digital Villages Evolution

The concept of digital villages has been in evolution for more than fifteen years. Yes, it was still a prototype year 2006 when we adpoted some new ideas from Italy.

The idea of collective intelligence, global collaboration of human networks, and open innovation had been boosted by social media and its user friendly interface engineering.

People can now integrate their lives - not limited by location - to be a part of a global development community; easier than ever before in human history.

Something big is going on. Increased openness is a real integrator + facilitator of an amazing change. We're now better equipped with communication tools making it possible to initiate political changes in Tunise, Egypt, Libya...

The web has always been about hacking. Now activists are hacking the poltical systems to suite their own lives. The changes are profund and rapid.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Social Media are helping to transform the world. We're the web of the future. And who are we? You and myself, the grassroots activists connected to easy to use collaboration and sharing platforms.

Business Improvement Distrcits

Business Improvement Distrcits

• Business
• Improvement
• Districts

(BIDs) a practical tool for the revitalization of downtown neighborhoods

We start with the VISION and work out a GOAL. 

Make a smart move

It did take us years to understand the scope and impact. Hard work makes us smarter: learning by doing is a great idea.

I'm working to find a better translation for 5T. How about SMART?

SENSITIVITY
METHODOLOGY
ACTIVITY
REASON
TARGET

The wording isn't perfect but SMART could become a useful slogan.

• DATA
• DESTINATION
• DETERMINATION
• DESIRE / DISLIKE
• DOING

 This isn't bad either. When we've the ecosystem documented it's time to start knocking doors.

It started as a small scale building project

The Digital Villages history goes back in time to the 1970's.

Fragmented ideas started to visualize in the 80's during multiple training projects of start-ups and entrepreneurs.

But the technolgy had to improve, networking had to become cheper and easier.

We followed the evolution of technology villages in Finland, North America, Asia, and Europe.

Learned a lot about how to network, how to engage people and work towards a goal.

The first prototype villages development took place in regional development project 2001 - 2005.

We've improved the model and are ready to take the next step. This time going for a full scale community development.

• Financing is essential
• We need full-scale targets
• Possible to handle multiple projects
• The model spreads like a Domino game

Moving Forward in the Village

He moved quickly. Let me explayn why. Digital Villages is a ten years old concept with a huge glocal potential.

The concept offers new ways to approach hyper local problems and the development of solutions with the help of grass-roots tools.

RFID and NFC are twho of them. The barcode will be replaced by RFID one day.

The Future Store is waiting around the corner and NFC will have an important role.

Every single step is taking you deeper into the village

You can never step into the same river or room twice.

We learn new things from every single steps we take.

There’s no limits of learning. Learning organizations are not limited to acquiring knowledge from seminars and meetings.

I’m interested in the ability learn from trivial every day events. Unique things are happening every single day.

Take a closer look

I've not done much for Digital Villages during the past ten months.

The concept is waiting for some action. We do have interesting activity and learning organization traces going back ten years in time.

I need to get DV reconstructed or the whole project has to be pushed over the edge.

How can I get in touch with a new trace leading to additional social inventions?

• I want to do the right thing this time
• We've a great ground work
• The platform is perfect
• Need to take advantage of the old stuff
• Let's creat a new schedule

Toys and children plays are predicting our future

Toys are telling about our history. Now kids are playing with video games. Drawings and cartoons are low-cost items that also can be used to sketch coming times.

I work with the future idea of Eco City along with the concept of Digital Villages.

Let’s take a look at very ordinary everyday tasks. Going to a bank teller to pick some pocket money is a routine operation but it hasn’t been around for more than twenty years.

Phone boots were located all around cities but I suppose there aren’t a single one in Finland anymore.

My view about Digital Villages has changed during the past ten years. The first ideas were drafted over twenty years ago but Wirby the Global Village became the first prototype 1998.

We’ve much more experience and better tools and networks for distance work. The idea of networking villages emerged 2001 to 2005 but the realization of all the ideas is more realistic today. It takes years to work out and test a new community concept.

I’ve seen ET on the Road

I’m still experimenting with Paint.Net and became interested with picture manipulation again.

I’ve Photoshop on the other laptop but the Samsung PC-20 is my on the road laptop.

The above pictures have been taken with Nokia E71 mobile phone camera.

Mobile phones do not produce the best quality pictures but with some layer playing it’s possible to create new things.

Augmented digital reality can be produced with simple tools. Meeting ET on the road is possible for the average person today. I know how to improve the picture at the left, but wanted to show this early creation.  I know how take away the shades but it’s nice to see early bird test works.

I’ll be speaking in Tallinn May 25, 2010

Microblogging is fun. Qaiku is one of the Finnish services taking it mainstream. Before this we had Jaiku.

Everybody knows Twitter and Facebook but the Finnish Qaiku is much more advanced for those who want to interact, report and advance open innovation.

Why is managing technical people difficult? I had this question on of my blogs.

Some would say tech people are socially inept to adopt social media and some don't communicate well.

While that may be true in some cases, saying so doesn't help managers deal with social media in a better way.

The solution is learning by doing. I’ll be speaking at Tallinn BlogFest 2010 May 25, 2010. Take a look at the details here.