The final week and an awesome feeling

Don't even know how to start. I mean the whole course has been fun, but I never thought it could end like this - our last week at school was so much fun!! On Monday we just planned a little bit of our video that we were about to make for the Final presentation and told about it to our teachers. They were all very excited about us making a video for the final school day and said that they are looking forward to it a lot. We also had a couple creative tasks that we did. We had to plan our digital business course our own way into a piece of paper. We got to use our imaginations as much as we wanted and plan the whole course as if there were no limitations. Another task of ours was to imagine ourselves in 2020 - what would we be doing? How would we be like?

Here's our groups outcome of the tasks:

Our team met on Tuesday and we filmed some clips for the video and edited the whole thing ready for Thursday.

And then on Thursday... That's another story...

I came to school all excited since I knew it was gonna be a good day. But little did I know that there was going to be Star Wars music, festival drinks, chocolate and people all dressed up - I mean, wow! It was both the final presentation day and Ilkka's birthday so the whole day was special in every way. Our team was so excited to present our video that we made for the final presentation and we were also excited to see what others had accomplished.

In addition to only going through what each group had done during the course, we also had some nominations for the best blogs (which I got chosen for?!?!!? Still can't believe it!) etc... and some guests introducing themselves. The digital coaches had also prepared a video for us to show about the course and it was funny to watch clips of moments throughout the course.

Got a drink to my hand right after arriving to school:)

The day was just so full of joy and laughter and we were all taken by surprise by the whole arrangement of the final day. Very, very nice!

Ahh, it feels so good and kind of sad to be writing the last post right now. I don't even know how to end this cause I feel like I have so many emotions and so much to say that even though I have decent writing skills, I just can't express myself enough with words. Anyways, thank you Ilkka, Anna and Marjo for the course, thank you all my fellow students and special thanks to my awesome team 8<3 You guys are awesome and we had so much fun!

Our team<3

Here's our final presentation video, enjoy!:)

-Laura

Week 49

Oh my god, you'll never guess what. I totally thought that I had published a post about this week (the week 49), but it appears that I haven't!! How embarrassing.. Oh well, here I am - better late than never, right?

The second last week of the course was the week for both the exam and some lectures, as usual. On Monday we had a few guest speakers: Mika Aittamäki and Niklas Litmala from Rainmaker, who told us about sales and marketing on a deeper level. Why is being good at selling products so important? Why are salesmen needed?

As Mika Aittamäki said: Digital selling satisfies desires but doesn't fulfill needs. That's where the people come to the picture - they fulfill the customer's needs. Another sentence that I caught from Mika's lecture was that "Things that are relevant in your own world, make you buy what you buy".
After Mika's lecture, Niklas talked to us a little bit about Leijona-Akatemia, in which we could also sign up for during the lecture if we were interested. Leijona-Akatemia is meant for students that are interested or passionate about sales. It's a new way to offer coaching and career opportunities that promises students some extra training and a job. I put my name on the email -list that Niklas gave us and got some information about Leijona-Akatemia to my email. I think these kind of opportunities and chances are very useful, even though I wouldn't need to use the service now, but to know about its existence.



After that our dear Ilkka had a little something to say and held another lecture after a short break. What he talked about was some of his own philosophies. He brought up Aristoteles and his famous rhetoric theory about logos, pathos and ethos. These three forms of essential qualities that your speech or presentation must have so that the audience will accept your message. Logos symbolizes sense, pathos symbolizes emotions and ethos symbolizes credibility.

Ilkka also talked about his way of "giving thanks" by writing a gratitude diary, in which he writes down everything that he is thankful for every night before bed time. He also reminded us to always respect, help and start a conversation with new people that we meet.

I always get so inspired by Ilkka's stories and lectures and it is so great to have a teacher like that. I've never actually got any inspiration out of school but this fall it has only been getting inspired day after day at the school lectures. Here is a great life advice by Ilkka:



On Thursday we had the exam (which I actually haven't done yet!!), so we didn't have school.

-Laura

The wow factor - week 47

Week 47 must have been one of the most fun, inspirational and giving that any week at school has been ever before. We were told that the week is going to be awesome and that we are going to have very inspirational speakers visiting us, but to be honest, I didn't believe it would really be so different than the other weeks. But oh boy was I wrong.

I went to school on Monday feeling a little tired, like any person would on a Monday morning. Anyhow, I came in a little late and was so embarrassed to walk in 10 minutes behind the schedule, so I just sneaked into the back row quietly and sat down by myself. Before I even had set my focus on the speaker, I was already mesmerized. The way he spoke, the words he said, the stories he told - they all glued my bottom into the chair and my eyes towards the front of the room even more. I was so focused, so inspired and totally taken by surprise. Who was this guy? I had missed the beginning of the class where had most definitely introduced himself and all I knew was the stories he was telling and the encouraging words he was speaking to us.

I made a lot of notes to my phone during the lecture and now that I reviewed them again, I want to share some with you:

- Have the courage to dream, people that dream are happier and more successful

- Write your dreams down, that's the first step in making them come true

- Value and cherish love, because everyone wants to be loved. If people are not loved, they want to be respected, if they're not respected they want to be feared, if they're not feared they want to be hated

- Be brave, don't be afraid of anything and be brave to become better, wiser and stronger

- Muhammad Ali maintained his braveness by repeating the mantra "I am the greatest" to himself everyday

After the lecture I went to introduce myself to the speaker and to thank him for the great, inspirational lecture. I learned that his name was Jaakko Alasaarela and he was the CEO of a company called ZEF. He was also going to take part in the national pull-up competition and according to our teacher he is very good at doing pull-ups. So, an awesome guy! He inspired me and made me think about my dreams and what could I do to make them come true.

After our short conversation after the lecture, it was Jaakko's time to leave and the next speaker to take the stage. Now it was Camilla Tuominen, who was going to talk to us about emotions and also a little about her company Emotion tracker.



Camilla's bubbly and quick-witted personality caught my attention immediately. She smiled and made big gestures with her hands while she spoke to us and was very easy to listen to. Camilla told us her story about how she had quit her job in a company she didn't feel herself comfortable working in and started to pursue her own dreams and interests. She had always felt that it is important to be able to recognize emotions and to process them. That is why she had begun to speak more publicly about emotions to people and why she had little by little developed the idea for her own business.

She pointed out some very important things about emotions, that I wrote down:

- Due to digitalization, recognizing emotions is hard nowadays

- It is important to understand your own feelings in your body, so that you can learn to interpret emotions in others

- Find the things that give you the feeling of fulfillment, don't go after accomplishments, go after things that you are passionate about

- Wish the feelings you experience welcome and process them with curiosity. "It's just a feeling", like Camilla said.

- The most of poor and crappy feelings come from comparing yourself to others and suffering in general is 80-90% caused by your own thinking

One of Camilla's slides - she had drawn all of them by herself!!

I also went to say hi to Camilla, since she was - also - such a positive and inspirational human being. We talked about dreams, feelings, meditation and her lecture and bonded immediately. I gave her my blog address and she promised to check it out, since she grew a little interest towards it while we talked. We didn't have much time to have a conversation, but even the little moment after the lecture talking with her made me very happy. I thanked her for her inspirational words and for her positive personality and took her business card.

On Thursday I wasn't in school, because I was filming a video for another school project. I had let our teacher, Ilkka, know about this and he had given me permission to be absent.

Anyway, such a great week. Wow.

-Laura

Law week

When it comes to law-related issues, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. Yes, I find them interesting and it's necessary to know even a little bit about different laws and regulations, but - to be honest - I find studying law a little boring and maybe too pedantic. I guess it's my personality that reflects on my opinion of law, because I'm more of a "something like that" kind of person. In other words, not so precise.

But despite this little personality description above, I'm not underestimating the need of knowing even a little about law. When it comes to business and especially marketing, it's urgent to know what you can and what you cannot do. That's why it was super nice that last week we had Marjaana (one of the teacher's in our school) teaching us a little more about law. We had tasks related to social media law issues and marketing issues, that each team completed in a group and returned to Marjaana on Thursday. The tasks weren't the easiest ones, but we completed them quite well I think - we used the "Markkinointijuridiikka" book as a little help, since the tasks required it.

The week was different and maybe a little more boring to me than the weeks before, but also very necessary. I think it's nice that we have different divisions during this course and not only lectures about digital marketing or such.

According to Ilkka, this week is going to be very interesting and we are apparently going to have phenomenal speakers visiting us in the class so I'm looking forward to it.

And yes, that's me doing yoga - totally non-related to this blog post, but I unfortunately didn't take any pictures at school this week. Instead, I did a lot of yoga. So I decided to post this pic just so that this post would have a picture in it. Hah.

-Laura

Lecture about blogging

Last week on Monday we had a guest speaker, Ilpo Kärkkäinen, who actually was Ilkka's (our teacher's) friend. Ilpo is a blogger and a DJ and he was there at our school to talk about blogging.
The lesson was mostly something I already knew, since I have written a blog for many years now, but there were some important points, that I wrote down from Ilpo's lecture.

• Keep the momentum going in blogging - just write, it doesn't even have to be public, blogging helps to clarify your thoughts.
• The biggest ways of earning money as a blogger are advertising and selling products
• Show your vulnerability - nobody's perfect.
• Writing about your passion is a great way to achieve your goals

On Thursday we had the first exam and to our surprise, we were able to do it at home. We were provided a link to the exam at the Facebook group of our course and from 10 to 12 o'clock, we were able to do the exam. I was a little nervous about it, but it turned out to be very easy and I thought I did quite well.

Now off to start a new week! This week our team is going to go to the vintage interior shop that we are collaborating in this project with and take some video clips and pictures of the place. We are going to start designing a website for the shop and start to compose some ideas for the social media channels of it.

Inspired

It's Sunday again - damn these weeks go by so fast! This week we had lectures on Monday and Thursday, just like every week.



On Monday there were two guest speakers in our class, first was Terhi Aho from Tulos and second Joanna Puro from Mynnin & Markkinoinnin ammattilaiset. Terhi told us about different kinds of ways of marketing and creating content to the internet. We talked about search tools like Google and also social media and mobile searching. Terhi pointed out that Google is still the most used in desktop searches but mobile searching is growing all the time. And as I think about it, yes, I always google stuff on my phone if I wanna know something or figure things out.

Our other guest speaker Joanna was a former student of our school Laurea. There were 3 key points in her lecture, since she wanted to tell us something that she would've wanted to know as a student. Here's what she pointed out:

1. Network - talk to people, say hello and make contacts.

2. Digitalization - well, yes. Just yes. This is the future.

3. This is only a start



On Thursday our dear teacher Ilkka gave a phenomenal presentation, which was actually streaming live to 70 watchers all around the world through the Periscope app. Ilkka talked about digital strategy and we also discussed some things together, like what is the most important thing in business and who are the people that inspire us. I made a lot of notes and found the lecture very inspiring and useful considering my dreams about starting my own business one day.

One point that Ilkka himself also named as one of the most important was "The moment of truth" in business. He said that it is the moment, when a customer makes the decision about his/her purchase. What is the customer thinking at that moment and how can you use the information about the decision making in developing your business. I found that very important and will definitely think about "the moment of truth" when I develop my own business idea/ideas.

It was so touching to see how excited and also happy Ilkka was about the lecture he held. It clearly meant a lot to him and as he said, it was a dream come true for him, since he had always wanted to hold a presentation/lecture that would be streamed online.

Ilkka's lecture kept me so busy listening that I didn't even take pictures of him, which is too bad... But atleast you have proof that I really listened haha:'D

I also took a look at some of my class mates blogs and read them through. Here are some, that I found very interesting and pleasant to read.

Hannah's Digitalia

Hannah updates very often and writes long, thoughtful posts. I like that she uses a lot of pictures and that you can see her personality through the texts, that she writes. She is also in the same team as I am in the project that we are working on at the moment.

Road To Digitalisation

Otto uses a lot of pictures and writes widely about our school weeks and lectures. I like the layout of his blog - it's very simple and visually pleasing.

Digital Business

Kata is one of my best friends and this was actually the first time I went to read her blog. She - as like myself - writes a blog of her own in addition to this "school blog", so she has skills in blogging, which you can clearly see from her posts. Her posts are distinct, deliberate and pleasant to read.

Digitall

Ohh, Essi's blog is so cute! The pink banner and the background pattern makes the blog stand out from the crowd. She also blogs often (as we are supposed to, hehe) and uses nice pictures to support her writing.

On the way to digital

Nelli's blog is pleasant to read and browse through. You can even see pictures of her dog there, haha. She writes quite long posts and updates often. Thumbs up!

-Laura

A little update about the past weeks

It's been a while. And a little too long of a while to be honest... But, I'm here now!
Instead of writing down every single detail about our lessons at school, I'd rather just update in general - related to our studies, of course.

Last week we actually had a lecture break, which meant that our team didn't meet or do school tasks at all. It was nice to have a little break once in a while - at least for me it boosts motivation and gives some time to rest between going to school, working and becoming a personal trainer at the same time.

Anyways, lately, we've had a lot of companies presenting themselves to us in class. We've had guest speakers talking about their companies/the companies they work for and their own journey in business life. The lectures have been very interesting and inspiring - at least some of them have really made me think and have really inspired me.



3 weeks ago (can't believe it has really been that long since I've updated, I'm truly so very sorry about that!!!) we had a week full of guest speakers. On Monday there were atleast four different people from different companies presenting themselves and their companies to us and on Thursday we had a couple guest speakers more. Actually one of the guest speakers was very unforgettable and sticked to my mind specifically - his name is Jyri Rasinmäki (pictured above) and he works for Vapamedia, a company that focuses on digital communication, social media and content marketing. Jyri talked to us about problem solving and about how it would be important to remember to "think outside the box". Actually, a couple of his propositions sticked to my mind specifically that I would also like to share here:

1) "When you are trying to solve a problem or creating a whole new solution for it, don't automatically go through the door that says "the solution" - instead, go through the door that is blank. By doing that, the process will probably not be as easy as it would if you went through "the solution door", but it will most likely develop something better and something more creative.

2) "You just need to find your own way to think. And keep on thinking."



Also, here are some pictures of some of the other lectures we had, that were held by various people from companies like Urakkamaailma, Seniori365, Taivas + Helvetti.



After that week - a week before the lecture break - was the "Network to get work" event at Laurea Leppävaara campus on Thursday (October 8th). There were a lot of different companies presenting themselves and promoting available jobs, trainee positions etc. In addition to that, the students had an opportunity to take part in various lectures that were related to our studies - there were lectures about entrepreneurship, business, marketing... Almost anything you could think of. Inspirational stories and useful strategies related to our studies.



That same week our class did have a lecture on Monday, but I didn't make it to school that day. Although, my friends told me that one of our mentor students - Faysal - had given an interesting lecture that day, in which he showed pictures that he had taken and talked about photographing. I wish I could've been there.

Anyways, that's what up right now. I will update about this week soon enough - there's not gonna be another 3 week break here in the future. Again, sorry about that.

Until the next time,

Laura

Favourite

This week must have been my favourite, because our group finally got to present our work in front of the class on Thursday. We had gotten a task to come up with some topic that we would teach to our classmates and we decided to create a lesson about blogging, since it's a current topic for us considering this digi marketing course that we have going on.
But before I get into our presentation on Thursday, let me just say a few words about Monday's class. On Monday we had another guest speaker Tomasz Odrobinski, who told us a little bit about his career and the company that he has. I thought it was interesting to hear his story, since he was originally from Poland, but had worked a long career in Finland.






And on Thursday was the time to hold some presentations. Our team was very excited about it, since we had promised to present our "lesson about blogging" to the class. We had prepared an 8 minute long video (which we had filmed and edited on Tuesday) and a concise prezi slide show to go with it and sum up some of the main points of our topic - blogging. We had so much fun presenting and were really proud of our work with the video and the whole outcome of the presentation. Anna, Ilkka and Marjo all seemed to like our work and it felt really good to hear some positive and encouraging feedback, since we had really put our heart and soul into the whole thing. Here's a link to the video we made (click!).

Some of the other teams also presented on Thursday and I thought it was nice to see others work too. First Pate and Otto showed a slide show and a long video about their proejct with the sports clothing brand Puma. The guys had been on a Puma tour all around Finland promoting Puma's new football shoes, that people got to try on during the tour. The video the guys showed us was really great and it visualized alot of things for me after hearing the story of the tour through the slide show.

We also got to see how to create a Linked In -profile, when one of the teams held a little "guidance tour" through a video they had created. I thought it was a nice idea to go through the steps of creating an account to Linked In, because it's a very important channel to i.e. network with people in business life.





Team "case garage" told us about LaureaES and Nordic Business Forum, that were - to be honest - not so familiar to me. I mean, yes I had heard of them, but didn't really know that much more. So thanks to this team, I learned some new things for sure! They told us about Entrepreneur Tuesdays that are held usually in Laurea Leppävaara campus, Pitch & Beer sessions that you can pitch your business ideas in and the live stream session of Nordic Business Forum event, that will be held on Laurea Tikkurila's campus. We also got to hear some information of some of the great names that will be speaking in Nordic Business Forum event, that will take place in Messukeskus in a couple of weeks. For example Mette Lykke, Simon Sinek, Björn "Nalle" Wahlroos, John C. Maxwell and Garry Kasparov will be speaking there. I didn't know that Laurea arranges the possibility to go see and hear the speakers live from one of our campuses - that is so great and - considering the student budget - a lot cheaper way than to buy a ticket to the actual event. Wow, I gotta say.

All in all, a great week to end the first part of the course. As I understood, next week we will start collaboration with some companies that have been selected to each team. Although our team will do the collaboration with a company that is one of our team mates, Hannah's, friends company. Or actually I think it is her aunts or something like that, but anyways. I'm excited for the new things to come. Let's see what the new week has to offer!

-Laura

Feelings about the 3rd week

picture: Faysal Hasan

On third week we talked about international marketing and cultural differences. We were shown the iceberg model, which demonstrates that every person has something underneath, that others don't know. Same applies to cultures - there are always things that us, externals, don't know. During the lectures, Anna emphasized on how we shouldn't assume that people from other cultures think and act the same way as we do. For example people in Japan greet each other very differently than we do over here in Finland. That is why in marketing, it is very important to take the cultural differences in notion.

On Monday we also had a guest speaker, Lynn-Marie Sederlöf-Airisto, who was an original Finn, but had lived in America for almost her whole life. She told us about marketing and her journey with it - she had worked in multiple positions that had something to do with marketing. I thought it was so interesting to hear about her work experience and to have a lecture from someone who speaks very good, native English.

picture: Faysal Hasan

For Thursday we had a couple of group tasks, that we were supposed to prepare. The other one was for our guest speaker, who wanted out help to develop her business. The other one was to prepare a presentation of some culture that we got to choose as groups. On Thursday we spent time on viewing the presentations that the groups had prepared and in the end of the day some groups went to do the "Digi Small Talk".

It was an interesting week and I think the next one will be as interesting and nice as this one. Or maybe even better...

-Laura

My cultural baggage

Here is my cultural baggage. Some things that are important to me and some background information of where I come from and what I appreciate.

-Laura

Pitch

A week has passed and this time I'm here to post a video of my elevator pitch. The job I'm applying in the video is to be a wellness coach, that coaches people to exercise, make healthier choices every day and overall to be more aware of their well-being.

My dream would be to combine business studies with my personal trainer degree and start my own business, that would focus on both physical and mental wellness, one day.


Th second week we talked about personal branding and what things should be taken into consideration when branding yourself. "It's not what you know, not even who you know, but who knows you and what Google says about you", that really matters. It is important to create a good brand of yourself by i.e. putting up nice pictures, talking nicely about others and yourself.

We also talked about social marketing and marketing communication. The lesson emphasized on how it's important to remember that it's usually not about WHAT you say, but actually, HOW you say it. You can say nice things and sound angry, when the message to the other person is totally different compared to if you said nice things with a gentle voice. It is so very important - especially when doing business - that you remember to use the right tone when communicating and that you know how to behave. What also links to this is that you remember to use the right body language. The non-verbal language is something that actually messages more information about you than the verbal language.

Off to start the third week now!

-Laura

First week of digital marketing course

Excitement and enthusiasm. That's what I felt after coming back to school from a long summer break on Monday. To be honest, I didn't know what to expect from this starting school year - or to be precise, this starting digital marketing course - but after the first lecture, I knew it was gonna be a good one.

When Ilkka started lecturing in English, I was a little confused, but really excited at the same time. "Would we really be speaking English throughout this whole course?" I thought. And luckily, the answer was: yes, we would.



The digital marketing course focuses on digitalization and it's current issues that we are and will be facing in the future. Based on the couple of lectures we've had so far, the course seems very interesting and useful, as the world keeps changing and becoming more and more digital every day. I am excited about everything that's about to come and all the tasks we're about to do. I think it's a great idea for the students to write a blog during the course, because blogs are a very big part of our life today, and they are becoming more effective when it comes to making decisions of for example purchasing a product or reserving a table from a restaurant etc.



So all in all, I am excited about all that's about to come. I have a great team with me, and I'm sure we will do some great things together and make the most out of this course.

-Laura