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WHAT’S ALL THIS ABOUT? The Silent Signal trend report discusses the digital revolution and the multiplicity of consequences it has for the lives of consumers, companies and media. The report, scheduled to appear three times a year, consists of expert articles by top actors of digitalism, marketing, advertising and communication both from Finland and abroad. The Silent Signal trend report is published by Vapa Media in order to inspire discussion around the central functions of the web and in order to encourage further collective thinking. You are welcome to take part in the conversation on the Facebook page of the report.
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TABLE OF
CONTENTS:
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WHAT’S ALL THIS ABOUT? AUTHORS OF THE SILENT SIGNAL 1|2013
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POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY AMIDST STORMS OF CHANGE
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RULES FOR SOCIETAL BLOGGERS
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FROM ”SAUNA DEALS” TO EVERYDAY LOBBYING
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CITIES OF TOMORROW WILL BE DESIGNED ONLINE
IDA HAKOLA & ILONA HIILA
KATLEENA KORTESUO
JUSSI KEKKONEN & MATTI HIRVOLA
JYRKI VANAMO
WHEN FUTURES TURN BORING ALF REHN
ABOUT THE REPORT AND THE PUBLISHER
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THE AUTHORS OF THE SILENT SIGNAL
1|2013
Ida Hakola & Ilona Hiila are the founding partners of content agency Vapa Media and This duo believes that web contents will play an ever-larger role in the success of the web-oriented everyday life of companies. content strategy book (“Strateginen ote verkkoon�), published in October 2012.
Katleena Kortesuo author and an educator who closely follows the societal discussions in social media. She is also known as the critic of journalism, politics and communications. Her blog (in
Jussi Kekkonen is the Managing director of Miltton Networks. Before his current job at Miltton Networks, he has held several key
instance, he has worked as a Special Adviser for the Prime Minister, for the Minister of Finance and also for the Minister of Transport and Communications. His positions also include the chief of communications of a presidential candidate campaign and a public relations assistant of a parliamentary group.
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Matti Hirvola is a senior advisor and a partner at Miltton Networks. Before joining Miltton he worked as a Special Adviser for the Minister of Finance where his responsibilities included communication and head of the information department of the Social Democratic Party of Finland and as of Education and Culture. In his career, he has been responsible of planning and
Jyrki Vanamo is an architect and a technology expert. He runs his own agency, interaction between people, built environment and computer technology. He has also lectured on computer aided urban planning in Aalto University and worked as the chief planner of product development projects at Tekla. Besides running his agency, he is in charge of maintaining and developing the digital services of the Restaurant Day.
Professor Alf Rehn is an accomplished academic and an internationally ranked thought-leader in innovation and creativity, who is active all over the globe as a keynote speaker and a strategic advisor. His latest book, Dangerous Ideas – When Provocative Thinking Becomes Your Most Valuable Asset is a bestseller that has been translated to eight languages. He is a devoted fan of found at www.alfrehn.com
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POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY AMIDST STORMS OF CHANGE
Ida Hakola & Ilona Hiila Vapa Media Oy
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2013 deals with topics that have kept us all talking in recent years: power more and more people are stepping forth well-prepared and armed with
Both the business and the political world, as well as regular people are now making the best of this. Bloggers, tweeters and other ordinary social media users constantly shape our understanding of how power and its twin sister, responsibility, work. A single Facebook message can spread to tens of thousands of people and create an impact, even on the presidential election level. The web things; however, at the same time it has challenged our preconceptions of what sort of responsibilities we bear in addition to our freedom of opinion.
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For these reasons we chose to focus on power and the various forms it takes in this
1. Points about blogger responsibility – Katleena Kortesuo crafts rules for societal bloggers
you will see in this, our fourth trend report. We brought together authors both from the business scene and from the world of
Basically anyone in Finland with an access to a computer and an internet connection has the opportunity to express their opinions, raise thoughts and be a part of the public debate regarding our society. This freedom has also prompted questions about responsibility. The True Finn party has battled with situations where one member of the party after another has received negative publicity over comments they have made in their blogs. These texts, which many have been interpreted as racist, are explained by party leaders to be just Matti Putkonen described the MP Teuvo Hakkarainen’s blog post suggesting that homosexuals and immigrants should all be sent to live together on the island of Åland.
these articles deal with – ranging from business people and political decision makers – shows how the web has brought permanent shifts to the power relations of the modern world. Power is no more considered something unchanging or a currency hard to acquire: more and more of us have the ability to challenge current perceptions of power and ultimately, change them. We hope that this report will provide you with thoughts and ideas to create this change and actively challenge it.
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”The web has offered us a direct channel of influence but also challenged our preconceptions of what responsibilities we bear with our freedom of opinion.” Jokes and quips – is this what constitutes Don’t societal blogs and their writers According to Katleena Kortesuo, the author of the blog ”Ei oo totta”, a societal blogger is responsible for the channel they publish in – their blog – and what appears in it. She goes on to state that the level of responsibility is directly related to the position of power the blogger is in and how large a readership the blog has. In her article ”Rules for Societal Bloggers”, Kortesuo discusses what the responsibility of the author is as well as
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2. The good, bad lobbying – Miltton Networks’ viewpoints to business and decision maker cooperation number of society’s functions more open; nowadays we also know to demand that information should be shared. Following this new demand for openness, both the business-politics relationships are being transformed into something new. The change has been radical for businesses: information must now be shared and things require faster response times. Various players build their position with the help of the web, the media and also through personal contacts. Your message needs to be repeated across a growing number of channels, one of which is lobbying. Here to show us what is behind the mysterious veil of lobbying are Managing Director Jussi Kekkonen and Senior Advisor Matti Hirvola from Miltton Networks, a communication agency started
considers the major obstacle blocking the rise of blogger expertise and status to be the lack of a common set of rules. In her article Kortesuo steps forth and provides us with nine rules for societal bloggers. These guidelines, including issues like editing, source checking and publishing details, are
communications. These former Special Advisers of Ministers Jyrki Katainen and Jutta Urpilainen claim that our domestic lobbying has needlessly received a bad reputation. They say that the ”sauna deals” of yesteryear have now been replaced with open procedures that result in winwin-situations for both the companies and the society as a whole. The demand for
and claim expertise.
respectable, say Kekkonen and Hirvola.
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messages for themselves to make a social media only serving the interests of
3. City power belongs to city people – case Restaurant Day example of how the web can challenge traditional power settings in real life as
4. Isn’t even this report worth the paper it’s printed on? – Alf Rehn claims trendspotting has become boring and self-evident Power does not rest solely in the hands
carnival held every three months, anyone can start up their own restaurant for one day with no complex permit arrangements to stall them. The phenomenon spread in
surprise. The architect and technology expert responsible for the digital services of Restaurant Day, Jyrki Vanamo,
torrent of complaints and an abhorrence to the bureaucratic machine; this is simply because a better alternative has not been available. The web and social media have made a direct medium like Restaurant Day possible, and it shows not only in the digital form but also in how the physical cityspace is changed: impromptu restaurants pop up and at last there is real, concrete discussion on how to make the city a better place to live in. Restaurant Day is an interesting case from both a consumer and city inhabitant point of view. It also sets a challenge to traditional actors and forces them communication.
Could
the
living our lives; also those who map future trends hold it. Painting a picture of or utopian visions, they set the course for how we go on planning our lives and societies from this point onwards. These the political decisions made today. According to Åbo Akademi professor Alf Rehn, sadly the majority of futurists are churning out nothing but boring predictions. In his article he claims that future visions of China’s rise to an economic superpower or the bliss of open innovation are based real, new insight into the future. They are simply phrases parroting what has already been said and what the readership wants to hear. But so what if someone conjures up a set of lame visions about the future that never clear that making too tame predictions will not help us in planning the future. At worst, they can make us look backwards in a time when we need to be taking bold steps ahead.
restaurant
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Coming up in May: a special issue on Finland and its future The fourth issue of the Silent Signal discusses power. With this publication, we want to raise discussion on the forms of power and its changes in the digital era. Share your opinion and be part of the discussion at facebook.com/ hiljainensignaali. We are always happy to get feedback on this issue as well as ideas and suggestions for future reports. Our next issue will be out in May, focusing on Finland and seeking answers to the nation’s hot topics and society.
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”POWER IS NO MORE UNCHANGING: MORE AND MORE OF US ARE ABLE TO CHALLENGE CURRENT POWER PERCEPTIONS AND ULTIMATELY, CHANGE THEM.” #silentsignal
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RULES FOR SOCIETAL BLOGGERS
Katleena Kortesuo Katleena Kortesuo Oy
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her blog, aims to inspire discussion about things like the public sector, decision making, communication and the actions of the media. In my blog “Ei oo totta� I often involve myself with questions of public speech such as journalism, public press releases and texts by language. The goal of my blog is clearly stated:
The goal of the EOT-blog is to make public texts understandable so that every one of us would have an equal opportunity in understanding them and thus judging their content. There are of course loads of societal bloggers out there. Several politicians, reporters and business people keep their own blogs to discuss matters of government, decision making or communications. A blog is no more just an online diary or a way of scribbling down thoughts about your the Fifth Estate, the watchdog of the watchdog called journalism.
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“A blog is no more just an online diary. It has become a channel for influencing, the Fifth Estate, the watchdog of the watchdog called journalism.“
Rules create credibility Bloggers can no longer act any way they please since power and responsibility go hand in hand. This is why we need to have proper rules in place; without ethical guidelines, things are bound to remain on an amateurish level. Clear-cut rules will make life easier not only for the bloggers but for the readership as well. First of all: if we have no guidelines, we have no way of judging the quality of what is written. Rules would help us to examine both the texts as well as the people writing them in a fair and clear manner. Secondly, while a rulebook for societal bloggers would ease outside evaluation, it would also further lend credibility to the blogosphere and develop the status of the bloggers as experts. A proper set of rules would improve the position of the bloggers, just like adherence to the journalistic code or medical ethics adds credibility to practicing reporters and doctors.
If there are no rules to follow, neither credibility nor respect for societal blogs will ever reach its full potential. Without rules and guidelines, we are little more than anonymous online hecklers venting our and slinging venom with our keyboards.
No-man’s-land: somewhere between opinions and journalism So how do you set down the guidelines that will help you evaluate and make sense of a medium that no one really controls can look to the Finnish Journalistic Code for ideas. It has clearly set boundaries for honest communication, source checking and equal reporting on issues. The trouble with this code is that the role of the reporter has been left to a backseat position. Reporters do not share their background or
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THE NINE RULES FOR THE SOCIETAL BLOGGER BY KATLEENA KORTESUO: Some parts of the Journalistic Code are still too heavy-handed for bloggers. A blogger and if you are a societal blogger, you are not usually even getting compensated for your work. A blogger cannot make use of the resources of a major media house and is unable to interview all involved parties or diligently check every source. Then again, societal blogs fall more to the genre of the opinion piece, not journalistic or academic text. So while crafting rules for blogging, we can model them based on the rules that guide reader’s opinion pieces in newspapers. For example, Helsingin Sanomat edits the wording of reader letters for clarity and monitors the general quality of reader’s opinion writings. Random outbursts of unfounded hate will not get through to the paper and only rarely are texts published without their writer’s name attached to them.
1. Be aware of your position and readership If the backup councilor of some tiny municipality writes a societal blog and it has is less restricted by ethical guidelines. With little power, responsibility is also of a low level. However, if the blogger is in a major position in society or the blog has a wide readership, you need to set down rules for yourself.
forced me to – in retrospect – update my ethical guidelines to be stricter. My readership increased sort of as a by-product of other things. All of a sudden, I was no longer just an entrepreneur-housemom from a small town somewhere with a blog – I had become a societal blogger. A similar situation could take place when a blogging expert gets elected as a parliament member. Overnight they will see a tenfold increase
When are the rules complete? So where do the rules for societal blogbetween the journalistic guidelines and the instructions for reader’s opinion pieces. There are no readymade rules but I have crafted a set of guidelines that I hope societal bloggers will test and develop further. The thing to remember while bringing these guidelines into practice is that the quire regular updates. So if you think you are worthy of these rules, consider youron them.
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You need to be aware of how many people are reading your blog and you need to react to it in time. As your power grows, so does your responsibility.
2. Write under your own name and let people know who you are A societal blogger must write under her own identity and face. He or she also needs to tell of whatever connections he or she portfolio, holdings they have, investments they have made, memberships they hold.
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see in the Journalistic Code as well. The only reliable way to judge the objectivity of a reporter is when you know their background.
3. Offer the chance for feedback A blogger needs to have their contact information available for the readers. The blog
This is not, however, societal blogging but a repugnant way to use your power. It does not develop society further to bring down a
but do so without revealing who they are. It would be irresponsible to destroy someone’s way of making a living based on one random observation. Same guidelines should be followed when it comes to politicians. Personally, I
on your text immediately and in one place. your text a chance for rebuttal. It is in the blogger’s discretion if they wish to allow anonymous commenting. If the blog requires users to log in to comment, discussions tend to stay within the boundaries of good taste – but this will also mean there will be less of it.
4. Warn the party in question one, inform them immediately after posting the text. This allows them to form a speedy reply and tell their side of the story. It would be tempting to let controversy stir and spread through the social media. Soon reporters would get wind of things and the responsible party would be caught red-handed. This sort of action, however, only increases anger and is not proper behavior on the part of a societal blogger. Surely we agree that the goal is not to rile up an angry mob but to bring clarity to where wrongs have been committed or confusion abounds.
5. Have mercy on the small fish the power to destroy the livelihood of a small business. One gritty review detailing poor service or a single photo showing bad hygiene in the establishment can be enough to do this.
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ple who are known on a national level.
6. Do not criticize your competitors mercial business, never interfere with what competing companies do. Even if you see a genuine disconnect in their actions, do not write about it. the second he or she begins to level criticisms towards the competition. It will seem like your motive is to knock down your opponents, not to bring forth the truth. In the case of politicians, it is of course cians as long as they keep it to a professional level.
7. Be neutral when moderating comments A blogger holds the right to moderate the discussion before publishing it in any way ments from my EOT-blog that try to advertise things, have profanity in them or are somehow against the law. The key to the moderation process is to be fair. If you do not allow your opponents to badmouth those who take your side, you should not allow your fans to badmouth your opponents, either.
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Also remember to be fair and equal when you comment yourself. Do not ridicule those who are opposed to you and do not allow others to act like that, either.
8. Keep the ads to the sidebar – and hidden advertising away from your blog A societal blogger has no use for ads in their blog. If you, however, insist on having them, place them in the sidebar or the bottom of the page. Advertisements should not grab all the attention as this is debilitating to your credibility. Take special care not to have hidden advertising in your posts or texts. Journalistic ethic holds that editorial content should be distinctly separate from advertisements, a separation that we should also enforce in societal blogs.
9. Do not alter your posts afterwards A societal blogger should never alter or delete their texts after writing them – unens of links elsewhere in the web may be directing people to what you posted; these links become useless if your text is no longer there or has been edited to say the opposite of what it originally stated. If you receive further information after posting a text and these new revelations make you change your opinion on the matter, you can of course write an additional note to the end of your text, including the date and time of the editing. You can correct minor typos and dead hyperlinks without making additional notes of it. These sort of corrections improve readability and work to make your text more useful without changing its meaning.
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”RULES ESTABLISH SOCIETAL BLOGGERS AS EXPERTS AND INCREASE THEIR CREDIBILITY.”
#silentsignal
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FROM ”SAUNA DEALS” TO EVERYDAY LOBBYING Jussi Kekkonen & Matti Hirvola Miltton Networks
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interaction between the business world and political decision
and media are becoming increasingly international and changing faster. Information is more readily available for more and more people and everything can be easily fact-checked. As people are increasingly aware world, actions need to become more open, too. The demand for openness also entails that the mysterious lobbying of yesteryear is generally seen as a negative phenomenon. The image of secret societies in which people underhandedly work for their own gain can, however, be broken by acting in broad daylight and fairly in places For these reasons, our society is beginning to seek more transparent deals” (making deals with your buddies secretly in saunas, away from the public eye). The central tenets of this new sort of interaction are a high level of expertise, broad networking and the excellent ability to
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Lobbying: a part of the democratic system Lobbying has always been a part of the democratic use of power: for example, it is
like public services or building of new parking lots is decided. Similarly lobbying in Finland has been accepted for NGO’s and interest groups. They have traditionally had a strong role in our political system: in forming the big picture on a given issue. This sort of activity takes place daily on the European Union level as well: depending a bit on who you ask, you will hear that there are more than ten thousand
Certain fears persist, however, when it comes to lobbying and how it is perceived to move the power and decision making process behind closed doors. This mode of thinking has its roots in our experiences from the world of yesterday. In reality, modern communication works the other way around and is a force that opens up the process. It adds pluralism opinions at the same table. Companies bring along their own expertise and points of view just like other interest groups basis of the democratic system: creating
EU decision making. In the wider world, company lobbying is part and parcel of businesses and there are no needless mysteries surrounding the phenomenon.
having an opportunity to tell how they feel a political decision ought to be made.
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As the possibilities and channels for
When it comes to the message, it should clearly convey a company’s priorities.
common interests are also served. The and more varied when companies are for keeping in touch with decision makers openly and in a natural manner. This interaction has the potential to evolve into a strong learning process and and the world of business. In some ways, successful lobbying is always a process of seeking win-win-situations where both the companies and society walk away having gained something. Lobbying expertise situations. With lobbying, it is possible to bridge that gap between political actors and
and transnational decision making processes; indeed, legitimacy problems have tended to form whenever legislation is considered strange, hard to comprehend and bureaucratic.
mastered not only the right people but also details and – most importantly – on what sort of schedules they work. When dealing with actors in economy or politics, it is essential that the messages come across and are understood both opportunities of modern communications will strive to connect with
”Herein lies the basis of the democratic system: creating opportunities to influence and everyone having an opportunity to tell how they feel a political decision ought to be made.“
Know your target group, processes and goals From a company point of view, it is essential to be able to communicate your and openness, various ”good ol’ boy” networks have become relics of the past and companies now need to make society and its decision making. They earn
practicing fair communication regarding their goals. The ones to make the most out of these circumstances will be those who can frame their message well and cultivate their societal brand.
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have varied content available and present the decision makers with concrete ways to reach their goals. When you have these things under control, it is time to start
Shooting with a scattergun will make you miss your target; this also applies to communications. Therefore the understanding of communications as a set of targets as well as a whole – and how this whole should be targeted – requires not only knowing the traditional logic of the marketplace but a broad expertise of how society works as well. There is also often a need for politicians and business people do not always speak in words that both would understand and relate to. The goal is to give answers to the problems the rapid changes and developments in communication have set for various societal actors. Our goal will not be to build new backrooms and closed doors but to provide companies with 21st century ways of looking after their interests, public image and right ways of networking.
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” INSTEAD OF SECRET UNDERHAND ACTIONS MODERN LOBBYING IS BASED ON OPENNESS AND WIN-WINSITUATIONS. #silentsignal
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CITIES OF TOMORROW WILL BE DESIGNED ONLINE
Jyrki Vanamo Steep Interactive
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rban environments, whether in the sense of their physical attributes or the experience they aim to create, have traditionally been built based on the notions of experts. The inhabitants are left without a chance to take part in developing of the central processes that shape the structure and character of a city. for an area, deciding how many buildings will be constructed there and determining architects or outside experts. In the hearing stage land owners, inhabitants and plan gets the approval of the city board or other such a deciding group.
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I take part, therefore I am opposed The Legislation on Land Use and the Construction, that was last updated in Finnish legislation in 1999, aimed to One of the central goals of the change was to expand the possibilities of the environments are developed. Now, over a decade later, many of the the public hearings. The hearings always generate complaints, which will lead to extra work for the planners, over and over again. Every little detail seems to lead to a disagreement – the most glaring of these issues leading to legal processes. Worst
all levels of the Finnish court. It is easy to see public participation as nothing but resistance. There is, however, a very simple resistance: there is little to no systems or channels for presenting shared public views or for people to submit their own initiatives. The model of participation is based on the traditional legal process: someone the defendant is given the opportunity to
A factor that further perpetuates this culture of resistance is the diversity and
agencies: there is one to oversee the infrastructure, another for industrial politics, a third for produce hygiene, and so on and so forth. Very few people can construct a proper and whole picture out of all of this and whenever complaints do arise, the easiest way to keep your own desk free of trouble is to come up with bans of the arduousness of the complaints process, it is simpler for the authorities to facts on the situation. Zoning is just one of many urban landscape shaping processes where
cities are traditionally thought of as being the buildings that make up the landscape, more and more of a city’s character is nowadays manifested through other things than just its physical constructs. New phenomena of urban culture are as much a part of city design and development as building houses. For example, there have been hardfought battles recently over what to do about urban festivals: a small number of people living in nearby areas have lodged complaints regarding noise and other disturbances. Another sad example of a well-meant project turning sour is when the city of Helsinki removed a strip of asphalt from around a sculpture meant for skateboarding, simply because of a few complaints about the noise made by the skateboarders.
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Don’t you need a permit for this? Restaurant Day is an exception to the rule of resistance. There is not a single regional,
is culture created by city people for city people, bypassing the system entirely – a food carnival where anyone can host their own restaurant for a day. unteers in Finland, later spreading to other countries. The idea of Restaurant Day began to move through social media in AprilMay 2011. ”We started thinking about it since we were frustrated with the bureaucracy revolving around alcohol and food in Finland”, explains Antti Tuomola, one of the primus motors of Restaurant Day. ”A co-worker of mine once said how great it would be to have a day without having adhere to all the ridiculous regulations.” Word started spreading and within a few weeks almost 40 restaurants from Helsinki Restaurant Day ever. Now, less than two years down the line, the phenomenon has brought together hundreds of thousands of connoisseurs around the world. Held every three months, the event has seen over countries. Restaurant Day is a concrete example of city people’s frustration to how limited The event has brought forth a new kind of urban culture and form of communality that people are enthusiastic to get on board with. If opportunities are given, people seem to have genuine will to change things. In Finland Restaurant Day has received praise from various directions, ranging from culture circles to the tech industry
the event. Time and time again restaurant owners seem unsure of the phenomenon
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surprising how many initial reactions are linked to the issue of having a permit for this sort of action. Somewhere deep down there still reigns a way of thinking that says anything taking place within the city limits must be licensed and blessed by some mindset but similar messages have been heard worldwide. The permit dilemma puts the people in a weird position. It is as if they are being treated as lodgers in their own urban area. Why couldn’t the people who dwell the city and live in it together shape the place to
Going from ideas to phenomena As the example of Restaurant Day clearly shows, digital channels are changing how the traditional designer-deciderparticipant process works and how power is shared within it. Taking part no more equals merely either invisibly going with participants have morphed into active initiative makers and opinionated users of power. In the case of the skateboarding sculpture mentioned above, the asphalt that was stripped got re-paved when the masses voiced their opinion online and in social media. It became clear that far more people were for the idea of skateboarding in the area than there were people against their actions. Restaurant Day is a textbook example of the power shifts. Although it was initially about standing up against strict food compared to the traditional model of ”an expert presents the topic – people voice their objections – the council comes up with a decision”. The idea born in the minds
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and grew into a carnival that united and activated a whole nation even before the
sition to have it later rejected by the people. Reaching shared opinions and creating own initiatives are both very much possibilities as long as we have the right policies in place.
sped up the circulation of the message and the phenomenon began to feed itself. The amount and location of registered restaurants could be checked anytime in This is fundamentally a question of how the web. The threshold to involve oneself in various actors see their own role and powthe event became lower as new impromptu er in developing the city. Architects and derestaurants started to appear on the map. signers have grown accustomed to being Digital communication has become active and creative players here, wherea bottom-to-top way to enable and facilitate development the polar opposite, even Even though cities are and improvement of a distraction of sorts. On cities. When an idea traditionally thought of as has its own webpage itiatives have been seen being the buildings that and representation as the opposite of ofmake up the landscape, on social networking sites, it can easily grow more and more of a city’s without formal permits, character is nowadays any new activity in citysinto a phenomenon – without the use of maps, manifested through other folders of shared photos things than just its physical ance of the existing sysand other such things, tem, whether it broke any constructs. Restaurant Day would rules and laws or not. probably have remained a local and isolated When developing new design- and event. Thanks to digital documentation, decision making policies, interactional it became a concrete and permanent phenomenon: its development is tracked through the number of restaurants and cities it is held in, the number of website phenomena. It harnesses the power of visitors and other such methods. the masses and changes the city both as a social and physical space. First and Going from phenomena to practices foremost, it turns the traditional power According to a column piece by Tep- relations upside down and breaks up po Moisio (Helsingin Sanomat 19.2.2012), familiar processes: people become the mayor of Helsinki Jussi Pajunen stat- producers of information and city planners take on the role of interpreting and making from the Restaurant Day”. What he exactly use of this information. City planning is meant by this is not made clear. It is clear, no longer just placing a building here and however, that there is no need anymore another there – it is the understanding for the interaction between a city and its and controlling of the environment, digital people to be based on the current mod- systems and human interaction.
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”DIGITALIZATION CHANGES POWER RELATIONS AND ENABLES THE RESIDENTS OF CITIES TO TAKE PART IN DEVELOPING THE AREAS THEY LIVE IN.” #silentsignal
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800
TOTAL AMOUNT OF RESTAURANTS Restaurant information
0 150
AMOUNT OF CITIES/ MUNICIPALITIES INVOLVED Restaurant information
0 25
AMOUNT OF COUNTRIES INVOLVED Restaurant information
0 15
AMOUNT OF WEBSITE TRANSLATIONS (restaurantday.org)
0 65000
INDIVIDUAL WEBSITE VISITS DURING THE RESTAURANT DAY (google analytics)
0 40000
MOBILE APPS DOWNLOADED (the download and update statistics of the apps)
0 40000
NUMBER OF FACEBOOK FANS (fb.com/restaurantday and fb.com/ravintolapaiva statistics)
0 21.5 21.8 2011 2011
AMOUNT
19.11 4.2 19.5 17.11 2011 2012 2012 2012 DATE
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WHEN FUTURES TURN BORING
Alf Rehn Åbo Akademi
t has become something of a cliché to state that business today is conducted in a situation of ever-accelerating change, and that the business world itself is in a state of radical uncertainty. With Nassim Taleb warning us of black swans, and business gurus stating that the revolutions of tomorrow will make the changes of
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like an almost impossible thing to talk about. As Yogi Berra, baseball icon extraordinaire, famously quipped: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” It seems that saying anything about the future is a fool’s errand, as we can all see the massive changes that have
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the last ten – and we’re aware this might only have been the calm before the storm. At the same time, if the future is so unknowable, why are predictions about the future usually trendspotters we have, how come most of them business world is caught in a perfect storm of radical change, innovation mania and the creativity imperative (as all studies of CEO’s tend to show), why is so much of contemporary strategy so
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Thus the mystery of futures thinking doesn’t
Nor can people who have as their sole job
practitioners are. The mystery is the exact opposite. If we look to the predictions made about the future in scenario workshops or in white papers purporting to screen the future, they do obviously present a number of more unlikely outcomes. At the same time, they tend to present a much larger number of things that aren’t very surprising. In fact, the usual predictions presented by futurists are often quite obvious, continuations of what is discussed in the papers, on the news, and in policy debates. This also means that a lot of futures thinking misses its mark, as it spends too much time on the futures we’re already seeing, and not enough on the futures that we’re currently blind to.
right really often, without considering that such a high hit rate might actually mean he didn’t truly make very risky guesses. As another example we could take 40 For -
Smart People Making Safe Bets? For instance, some time ago noted of his own predictions over the last 10-20 years. The remarkable thing is that he pegs that he’s been right an astonishing 86% of the time. Consider this for a moment: What does it take for you to be right almost nine cannot do this. Nor can meteorologists.
Alvin and , who gained early prominence as futurists with Alvin’s bestselling Future Shock and numerous additional books. This is purportedly “a sampling of the drivers of change that will shape our world between now and 2050”, us being “in the midst of an accelerating, revolutionary transformation”. It goes on to state that we are still prey to the future shock that Alvin predicted, where “the pace of environmental change was rapidly accelerating and threatened to overwhelm the relatively slow pace of human response”. Now, the report suggests, with the full gravitas of being one of the prena, they were going to look even further across the decades towards 2050, focusing “on the convergence and interdependence of seemingly orthogonal aspects to connect the dots and develop strategies
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for future success.” With an opening such
it seems that the Middle East will continue to be a problem, that rogue nations are kinda scary, that open innovation is cool,
to fall in to the same thinking traps as any one of us. There is something about the mundane, the safe, the comfortable that gets to us. There is a disconnect at play here, where the new and the old manage to get mixed up, and where we cannot seem to let go of the obvious.
things. Medical technologies will advance rather than go backwards (Whew!), cities The Lure Of The Mundane will grow bigger, and demographic changes There is thus a fundamental disconnect will put new demands on nations – the in much of business thinking today. There is latter of which is one of the single most a lauding of innovation, but the innovation obvious statement made by intelligent we talk about are usually the ones people ever. (One waits in rapt attention for everyone else is talking about. We talk of stunners such as “People will dislike taxes/ the need for creativity, yet our predictions politicians” and “Food about the future are and water will be kinda ”At the same time, if the timid, pale, careful, as important”.) Instead, we future is so unknowable, are the strategies of our are being informed that why are predictions about corporations. We talk people will get older the future usually so dull, and then continuously even pedestrian?” consumers will still be use the same companies important, and (I wish I was kidding) that “China will continue to position itself as a Something’s wrong with this picture. long-term economic power-player around At the same time, it is an understandable the globe”. Also, “knowledge will be a picture. In fact, it is a well-known one. As major source of capital”. Oh, and climate and ecology will be important too. Not continuously looking for legitimacy. This the most revolutionary insights, you might is achieved by things such as “saying think, regardless of what the introduction the right things”, “agreeing with the right promised. people” and “behaving in accordance Now, I may be a little unfair to the with the rules”. If we’re unsure of what the right things or the rules are, we do what point here lies in the fact that these are people do when they’re trying to learn – exceptionally smart people who have the future as their job, and still they manage research, this is sometimes called mimetic
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come into the world fully formed. Instead, they emerge organically, and as they do so, they (or, to be precise, the people in
acceptable form of marketing is in their mimesis) and through this start to take on very similar forms (which is called isomorphism). like humans. Both look around the world, and imitate behaviors. Through this, both similar than dissimilar – while we may be unique, the remarkable thing is that we are so very good at being similar. Immigrants quickly pick up behavioral patterns, the new kid in school quickly learns what is cool. This, the everyday of being, is attractive because it helps us not stand out, to gain legitimacy among our peers.
least not disagree too violently with. We don’t want to seem like cranks, so we scale back. We want to be taken seriously, so we stick to the things we know. In most forms of human behavior this is sensible, even laudable. But when we’re talking about the future, this kind of additional restriction is deadly – futures reward futurists who say things we like to hear, prefer weak signals that have The Economist, and generally celebrate the same futures over and over again – insert cliché about sustainability and coconstruction here. It becomes boring as we don’t dare to boring as we accept it as such, and do not make demands on the people delivering the same truths over and over again. In short, it becomes boring if we let it, for we will always get the futures we deserve.
Everything. Think about it, if people learn date and behave at a funeral by observing other people and calibrating their behaviors accordingly, why would the way we talk examples above show is that even as they talk about the future, people are caught by the mimesis-bug. As you try to seem legitimate, you (unconsciously) pick things that you know people will agree with, or at
[1] A concept that was introduced in DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell (1983), “The iron cage revisited: institutional isomorphism and collective reality in American Sociological Review 48: 147-160.
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“IF WE ON PLATITUDES DARE TO MAK PREDICTIONS, UP IN A BORI
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NLY REPEAT S AND DON’T KE REAL, RISKY , WE WILL END ING FUTURE.” #silentsignal
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