Hello everybody! This post is aimed to those who could not attend the Networking Day held in Leppävaara the end of August, but also to those who did attend (thank you for coming!) and want to keep record of it. It is a brief summary of what happened there and what will happen on the future.
The day started around 9:30, when coffee was served and name labels and the programme of the day was given to the attendants. We welcomed all our partners from different Universities of Applied Sciences in Finland and from Aalto University and Finland Futures Research Center (based in Turku). Then the project leader Teemu Santonen together with Iiro Uusitalo from Satakunta presented all the development work that is taking place at the moment. The most remarkable thing is perhaps the change of environment from the old wikipage to Github. The development team has found this site more flexible and suitable to work on the project. From now on, the documentation related to the project will be found there. As this project is completely open source, everyone can join the development team! You can see what the guys are working on through Github, so I will only mention here few forthcoming things that captured my attention during the presentation: the possibility of implementing third-party applications in the site, a game based on popularity of the user’s content, the use of twitter and some functionalities that are already implemented (in beta phase) such as groups, campaigns, and even this blog. It seems that we are closer than ever to be not only functional, but also a revolutionary site. Keep in mind that the development team is at the moment a bit small, and integrated by students. I found awesome what these guys have achieved in few months.
After all the news, we went for lunch and keep the discussion going on.
The second part of the day was booked for our partners. They have been doing great in their respective units. For example, Päivi Timonen from Humak has been able to implement Massidea.org as a part of the curriculum studies. The students will use our platform to do their course assigments. This is just the beginning and will set the reference point for following courses and subjects. Also, we got reporting from two of the more active writers in the Massidea.org site: Beghosa and Tutu-VJL, from Kokkola and Turku respectively. Together they have written almost 200 articles concerning different topics. They explained ways to do research and how to write quality content. Tampere UAS (TAMK) was reporting too. Their amount of work within the project had decreased, but they were still happy to be participants of the development.
After these presentations, we had a conference with two developers based in India via Skype. They talked about their University and compared the Finnish work environment and education system to those in India. Having a real-time discussion with microphone and webcam between Finland and India was a nice experience for everybody.
After the conference, the interns from Laurea Leppävaara explained the performed jobs and tasks during the summer. Collaboration with some teachers and projects was one of the biggest achievements: we convinced teachers and researchers to use our platform in their projects. One of the new functionalities of the site, the possibility to create groups, was crucial for them to choose us. We also published an article in the Leppävaara Viikot magazine, aimed to the neighborhood of Leppävaara. The recently interest from many African students in Massidea.org led us to plan an African Day for them, roughly by the end of October.
But being active in Massidea.org does not mean neccessarily writing articles in the site. Senior lecturer Sari Jääskelainen went through all the Massidea/OIBS related thesis mde by students. All the thesis are listed in this blog.
Two developers from Aalto University joined us too. They are working on a geolocalization feature that will enable the users to see where the articles have been written among other things… but let’s keep the secret and wait for the new release of Massidea.org.
The final discussion took place while we enjoyed snacks and cocktail. Thank you to everyone who attend, and for those who did not, I hope this summary will encourage you to come to the next one.
Stay tuned!
Massidea Team.
