Radical modernization of the tourism industry is needed

We’ve to do something entirely different. The average tourist has been here several times but still we don’t know the people.

There is an urgent need to move into something that is completely new. Traditional tourism doesn’t work anymore.

We need a new kind of genius to move us from traditional tourism towards something that is entirely new.

Traditional attractions will still remain, but we’ve seen it so many times in so many other industries that the old big names are becoming history and the same will happen within tourism during the coming years.

Think about “ruotsinlaivat” – that was a big industry for several decades. Now, a trip to Sweden is commodity. Nobody buzzes about it. What did happen? Tax Free isn’t an incentive anymore. The same will happen with travels to Estonia from Finland. 

The End Of Work As You Know It

The End Of Work As You Know It: "The End Of Work As You Know It Increasing connectivity will change how and where we labor—even the very notion of an employer You have no idea how you'd get any work done on business trips if you didn't have a laptop.

You can't remember quite how you lived without your BlackBerry. Your cell phone might as well be surgically attached to your ear, it's so crucial to your job. Then there's the Internet.

It's hard to conceive of getting through the day without Google (GOOG )—or, if you're under 40, text messaging or even joining Facebook to stay in touch with your extended network of colleagues. In just a decade or less, technology sure has done a number on the way you work, hasn't it?"

The Next Generation

The Net Generation wants the freedom to schedule time on work at home and within hobbies. They are bringing in a very new work culture.

Web 2.0 applications, Enterprise 2.0, Wikies and blogs are all about mass collaboration and harnessing the power of self organization.

The traditional workplace might disappear. Instead people will start to work more from their homes and go to work only to do some kind of future mashups and un-seminars.

Social collaboration and Enterprise networking will take place over the Internet. Time and place shifting technologies will allow us to do global projects with the same ease as local projects were executed in traditional work places.

Networking and Workshops

While networking sessions provide a meeting place for communities that possibly never worked together before, workshops present the state-of-the-art in a domain and provide a platform for knowledge exchange and learning. "They are less formal discussion groups than the official conference sessions, encouraging active participation and lateral thinking. They are open to everybody who wishes to attend." Informs the Helsinki IST 2006 website.

• Working together
• Contributing
• Participating
• Communities
• Workshops
• Exchange and learning
• Less formal
• Encourage active participation
• Lateral thinking
• Creativity and interaction

21 - 23 November 2006 IST Event 2006 Helsinki, Finland. The IST conference is the main networking event and showcase covering research and development in information society technologies (IST). The event is organised by the European Commission in cooperation with the Finnish Presidency of the European Union, and will coincide with the launch of the EU's Seventh Framework R&D Programme.

• The main networking event
• Covering research and development
• Information society technologies
• The European Commission
• The Finnish Presidency of the European Union