Tekes/INKA Kickoff

Hey you, lovely people!

AES was invited to Tampere to attend the INKA (inovatiiviset kaupungit/innovative cities) Kickoff event last Thursday. It was a really nice opportunity and we thank Tekes for it. Representatives of our AESome Entrepreneurship Society this time were Jessica Blechingberg and me – Stefani Kirilova.

The event was mainly oriented around the idea of making cities more sustainable, innovative and better for the communities. There were quite a few folks talking about Tampere, Vaasa and Jyväskylä in particular, even though we had a speaker from as far away as Pudasjärvi! Almost all of Finland’s geography was covered. We heard some really good presentations and ideas on how to make cities a better place to live in, and we had a few bites and drinks in between, as well.

We also met representatives of ESes from all over the country! MikkeliES, BoostTurku, OuluES, LUTES, folks from Jyväskylä and the new up and coming TampereES (sorry if I’m missing someone), all of them lovely people. We bonded over a workshop session of how can Entrepreneurship Societies help cities become more innovative and sustainable. It was a great discussion and we came up with a great presentation to give out to all the INKA Kickoff guests, which essentially won them over and we won an award for it. Thanks a lot, people! Also, if you, reading this, can come up with one good suggestion of how we can help cities develop in a good direction, just post a comment and let us know!

Anyway, the rest of the day went really nicely, big thanks to the organizers of the event and to everyone we met (for being so cool)! AES had a good time with good people discussing good and important topics. Check out INKA’s website here is you would like to know more about what they do.

And if you want to check how the program went speaker by speaker, head to our Twitter, where we tried our best to keep you updated in real time.

That’s it from me, hope you all have a great day!

//Stef