One week to go!

One week from now and IIAS participants will start
arriving to Helsinki. Today we recieved from the City of Helsinki all the material (info, gift, pen) that on Thursday we will be packing to the conference bags. Still a lot to do, but fortunately the "To do" -list seems a little shorter than a week ago.

In the picture you see here is the University Main
Building. It faces the Senate Square which is a square where from time to time concerts and different kinds of happenings take place. For people of Helsinki it is the place where we welcome the New Year.

Just two blocks away is the Market Sqauare that during summer is open also in the afternoons. The time of strawberries is just beginning in Finland and if you want to have short break during one of the conference coffee breaks or during lunch hour to taste them, this is the one place to go and to see. In the centre of the Senate Square is a statue in honor of one of the Russian tsars and at the market square in the very middle there is a statue in honor of a wife of one the tsars. Those remind us Finns of the Russian era in our history. The start of the Russian era was exactly 200 years ago and it lasted until 1917 when Finland gained independence.

In the maps that we have included in the conference programme you may wonder why some names of the session or meeting rooms are in different languages. We have chosen always to use the name that appears on the door of that particular room. That way you know when you have reached the right room. There is also some logic behind the room names. For instance rooms on the newer side of the building are all in Finnish (like Sali 6). Also it is good to note that in Finland we have no ground floor so the first floor is the one that you enter from the street level.

Welcome to find more about our ways! See you soon1

Katju

Building Public Trust – Hear my Part of the Story!

The programme of the National Event on Tuesday is getting better and better all the time. The more confirmations from performers taking part in this occasion we receive, the more excited I get about the whole event! We will surely hear a colourful story about building public trust from different perspectives.

The interesting variety of speakers include for instance former Minister of Public Administration Ms Suvi-Anne Siimes, now representing business as the General Manager of Pharma Industry Finland and Ms Fatbardhe Hetemaj who was chosen as the Female Refugee of the Year 2009 in Finland...to mention a few! In addition to all the speeches, we’ll also get to enjoy about excellent music played by a multifaceted Finnish musician, Mr Zarkus Poussa. He will entertain us by taking the story onwards with his spontaneous and catching music.

A famous Finnish TV-journalist Ms Maarit Tastula is also participating in the event. In my opinion, Maarit is a person you can’t forget after seeing her somewhere even once. Her impressive personality is something so unique that it’s not leaving anyone cold!

I’m looking forward to have all these interesting speakers and artists under the same roof and hear what they have to say. Or even better, under the same warm sun in the beautiful Esplanade Park! If the weather is going to be at least half as glorious as it has been for the past few days, the day will certainly be perfect!

Marja

A sunny day by the sea

They say that few things impress first-time visitors to Finland more than the midnight sun in summertime. In Helsinki the sun sets for only a couple of hours on the longest day of the year. The long white and sunny days gives us all a great opportunity to enjoy the sea, which is an essential part of Helsinki.

Many guided excursions are offered, making it easy to discover the water and islands. The islands also provide beautiful settings for dining in many idyllic island restaurants.

The dinner of the IIAS2009 conference is also hosted by the sea at the restaurant of the Hilton Helsinki Kalastajatorppa hotel, overlooking the Gulf of Finland, just 10 minutes' drive from central Helsinki. I hope you all will enjoy the beatiful surroundings of the restaurant and get a glimbse of the Finnish nature so near to the centre of the capital city!

Greetings from sunny and warm Helsinki,

Johanna.

Helsinki -my home town

The City of Helsinki is where I have lived all my life except for one six month period my family lived closed to our grand parents in Häme. For the last 28 years I have lived a couple of blogs away from the Senatre Square where also the IIAS2009 confrerence venue - the Univesity of Helsinki main building - is located. Now that I am working for the Ministry of Finance I cross the Senate Sqauare every morning going to work.

The City of Helsinki is one of our partners in building the conference and we are happy that on Wednesday evening (8th of July) the city is also hosting a reception for the conference participants. The reception takes place at the City Hall where also the City Council meetings are held. The entrance to the City Hall is from Pohjois-Esplanadi 11-13. This is the nothern one of the two Esplanades. The City Hall is a light blue big building opposite the Market Sqauare. Also this building is very familiar to me, as I used to work there for one summer during my school years taking care of delivering the post to the right people. The summer was very quiet, with not too much work. What I remember from the summer about the city administration was a warm and cosy atmosphere and people that were very nice to a young school girl in her first job.

Helsinki has over half a million inhabitants, that is 10% of the Finnish population. In the metropolitan area there are around 1 million which is one fifth of the country's population. If you are interested in more information about the City administration, please visit our website www.iias2009.fi and you can find a presentation on Helsinki in the Venue/Helsinkii/Finland -section of the pages.

I am looking very much forward to welcoming you to Helsinki!

Katju

Getting oriented

The IIAS2009 conference is clearly approaching fast. As the days go by, questions to deal with are becoming more and more practical. Currently, among other things, we are working with the details of an orientation guide we will be distributing to all the participants in order for them to find their way around the venue. Our previous customer journey mapping exercise proved to be useful if for nothing else, for sketching this guide! One of the very practical challenges right now for us is to figure out where in our office we will place all the material going to the conference after they are sent to us and before we can take them to the conference venue. My guess is that we will be working in middle of that material for the next few weeks.



This moment in the process is actually very exciting! You start to get phone calls and e-mails from people asking all the different questions and you suddenly realise they ARE actually coming to Helsinki! For such a long time planning of this event has been like planning something abstract which does not yet exist. Now it is becoming real and we all here are very much looking forward to it!



Johanna.