Making the impact on research and society : a case study: crowdsourcing solutions developed for the linguistic research and citizen science

Can crowdsourcing solutions serve many masters? Can they be beneficial for both, for the layman or native speakers of minority languages on the one hand and serious linguistic research on the other? How did an infrastructure that was designed to support linguistics turn out to be a solution for raising awareness of native languages? Since 2012 the National Library of Finland has been developing the Digitisation Project for Kindred Languages, in which the key objective is to support a culture of openness and interaction in linguistic research, but also to promote crowdsourcing as a tool for participation of the language community in research. In the course of the project, over 1,200 monographs and nearly 111,000 pages of newspapers in Finno-Ugric languages will be digitised and made available in the Fenno-Ugrica digital collection. This material was published in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, and users have had only sporadic access to the material. The publication of open-access and searchable materials from this period is a goldmine for researchers. Historians, social scientists and laymen with an interest in specific local publications can now find text materials pertinent to their studies. The linguistically-oriented population can also find writings to delight them: (1) lexical items specific to a given publication, and (2) orthographically-documented specifics of phonetics. In addition to the open access collection, we developed an open source code OCR editor that enables the editing of machine-encoded text for the benefit of linguistic research. This tool was necessary since these rare and peripheral prints often include already archaic characters, which are neglected by modern OCR software developers but belong to the historical context of kindred languages, and are thus an essential part of the linguistic heritage. When modelling the OCR editor, it was essential to consider both the needs of researchers and the capabilities of lay citizens, and to have them participate in the planning and execution of the project from the very beginning. By implementing the feedback iteratively from both groups, it was possible to transform the requested changes as tools for research that not only supported the work of linguistics but also encouraged the citizen scientists to face the challenge and work with the crowdsourcing tools for the benefit of research. This presentation will not only deal with the technical aspects, developments and achievements of the infrastructure but will highlight the way in which user groups, researchers and lay citizens were engaged in a process as an active and communicative group of users and how their contributions were made to mutual benefit.

Service oriented archive based on Fedora Commons

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

A museum object repository using LIDO schema

Poster at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Service paradox in a product oriented company: A service business development case

The master´s thesis had three aims; to develop a service portfolio, to support the management of services through the developed portfolio, and evaluate effects of service differentiation strategy on the future selection of services. The product oriented case company in service paradox is Hilti (Suomi) Oy, which is entering systematic service management era, supported by the late strategic change. Low return on service business investments is referred as service paradox. The project was carried out as a case study, where the primary information source was twenty-one conducted interviews. The theory part focuses on marketing logics, service strategies, and categorization of services. The empirical part contributes in solving the aim related research questions. As a result of the case study a service portfolio was created, next further steps in service management were suggested, and the effect on selection of services by service differentiation strategy was evaluated. The main goal of creating service portfolio contributes to systematic management of services, which required revising at the case company.

Digitization Project of Kindred Languages : materials, methods and tools for researchers

Presentation at "Soome-ugri keelte andmebaasid ja e-leksikograafia" at Eesti Keele Instituut (Institution of Estonian Languages) in Tallnn on the 18th of November 2014.

Business-Oriented IT Tool Development For Service Delivery Process

The target of this thesis is to evaluate a bid, project and resource management IT tool for service delivery process via proof-of-concept (POC) project to assess, if the tested software is an appropriate tool for the Case Company’s business requirements. Literature suggests that IT projects implementation is still a grey area in scientific research. Also, IT projects have a notably high rate of failure, one significant reason for this being insufficient planning. To tackle this risk, the Case Company decided to perform a POC project, which involved a hands-on testing period of the assessed system. End users from the business side feel that current, highly tailored project management tool is inflexible, difficult to use, and sets unnecessary limitations for the business. Semi-structured interviews and a survey form are used to collect information about current business practices and business requirements related to the IT tool. For the POC project, a project group involving members from each of the Case Company’s four business divisions was established to perform the hands-on testing. Based on data acquired during the interviews and the hands-on testing period, a target state was defined and a gap analysis was carried out by comparing the features provided by the current tool and the tested tool to the target state, which are, together with the current state description, the most important result of the thesis.

Nichesourcing the Uralic Languages for the Benefit of Research and Societies

Presentation of Jussi-Pekka Hakkarainen, held at the Emtacl15 conference on the 20th of April 2015 in Trondheim, Norway.

Brand Identity of an Ecological Oriented SME

Tämän eksploratiivisen tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on tutkia yrittäjän persoonallisuuden roolia ekologisesti suuntautuneen brändin identiteetin ja assosiaatioiden rakentamisessa. Tutkimus on tehty yrittäjän näkökulmasta, jonka kontekstina ovat pienet ja keskisuuret yritykset. Tämä tutkimus pyrkii laajentamaan ja saamaan ymmärrystä keskeisistä käsitteistä, ja samalla edistämään PK-yrityksiin liittyvää kirjallisuutta. Tämän lisäksi tutkimus tarkastelee mitä assosiaatioita ekologisesti suuntautunut brändi korostaa identiteetissään. Tutkimus suoritettiin tapaustutkimuksena. Laadullista primääridataa kerättiin teemahaastattelemalla yrittäjää, havainnoimalla yhtä case-yrityksen messuosastoa, sekä keräämällä yrittäjän persoonallisuusattribuutteja. Jotta tutkimus saavuttaisi myös datan triangulaation, sekundääristä dataa kerättiin vahvistamaan aiempaa tutkimusta. Yhtenä sekundäärilähteenä toimivat kaksi artikkelia, jotka auttoivat vahvistamaan aiemmin esiin nostetut yrittäjän persoonallisuusattribuutit. Persoonallisuusattribuutteja verrattiin case-yrityksen brändin identiteettiin, jotta yrittäjän persoonallisuuden rooli brändin identiteetin rakentamisessa saataisiin selville. Tulokset osoittivat yhteyden brändin identiteetin ja yrittäjän persoonallisuuden välillä ekologisesti suuntautuneessa case-yrityksessä. Tulokset paljastivat myös joitakin yleisiä assosiaatioita joita luodaan ja vahvistetaan brändin identiteetin eri osa-alueiden avulla.

Kirkkoherrojen osaamisen johtamisen kehittäminen. Case: Lappeenrannan seurakuntayhtymä

Tässä pro gradu -tutkielmassa tarkastellaan osaamisen johtamista Lappeenrannan seurakuntayhtymässä kirkkoherrojen näkökulmasta. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on selvittää, miten kirkkoherrojen osaamisen johtamista voidaan kehittää. Tutkielmassa tarkastellaan kirkkoherrojen roolia ja tehtäviä sekä käytössä olevia osaamisen kehittämisen menetelmiä. Lisäksi paneudutaan osaamisen johtamisen haasteisiin ja hengellisen työn erityispiirteisiin. Tutkimus toteutettiin kvalitatiivisena tapaustutkimuksena. Tutkimuksen empiirinen aineisto kerättiin haastattelemalla Lappeenrannan seurakuntayhtymän kaikkia viittä kirkkoherraa. Tutkimuksen tulosten perusteella voidaan havaita, että osaamisen johtaminen ei seurakuntayhtymässä ole kovin suunnitelmallista tai pitkäjänteistä. Tulevaisuuden haasteina nähdään etenkin kirkon yhteiskunnallisen aseman muuttuminen ja jäsenmäärän väheneminen. Suurimpana osaamisen johtamiseen liittyvänä haasteena kirkkoherrat kokevat ajan puutteen. Kirkkoherrojen näkemyksissä omasta roolistaan osaamisen johtamisessa korostuvat kokonaisuuksien hallinta, yleisten suuntaviivojen määrittely ja yhteisen suunnan selkiyttäminen. Osaamisen kehittämisen menetelmiä on käytössä monia, mutta pääpaino on keskusteluissa ja palavereissa sekä koulutuksissa. Hengellisen työn erityispiirteinä nähdään kirkon erityinen arvomaailma sekä uskon henkilökohtainen ja intiimi olemus. Osaaminen tulisi seurakuntayhtymässä ottaa tietoiseksi johtamisen kohteeksi. Kirkkoherrat voivat kehittää omaa osaamisen johtamistaan parantamalla tietoisuutta esimiehen eri rooleista ja tehtäväkentistä. Erityisesti yksilöiden oppimisen tukemiseen ja oppimista edistävän ilmapiirin luomiseen tulisi tulevaisuudessa kiinnittää huomiota. Osaamisen kehittämisen menetelmistä suositeltavia ovat etenkin erilaiset työssä oppimisen keinot.

The Nature of Object of Perception and Its Role in the Knowledge Concerning the External World

Questions concerning perception are as old as the field of philosophy itself. Using the first-person perspective as a starting point and philosophical documents, the study examines the relationship between knowledge and perception. The problem is that of how one knows what one immediately perceives. The everyday belief that an object of perception is known to be a material object on grounds of perception is demonstrated as unreliable. It is possible that directly perceived sensible particulars are mind-internal images, shapes, sounds, touches, tastes and smells. According to the appearance/reality distinction, the world of perception is the apparent realm, not the real external world. However, the distinction does not necessarily refute the existence of the external world. We have a causal connection with the external world via mind-internal particulars, and therefore we have indirect knowledge about the external world through perceptual experience. The research especially concerns the reasons for George Berkeley’s claim that material things are mind-dependent ideas that really are perceived. The necessity of a perceiver’s own qualities for perceptual experience, such as mind, consciousness, and the brain, supports the causal theory of perception. Finally, it is asked why mind-internal entities are present when perceiving an object. Perception would not directly discern material objects without the presupposition of extra entities located between a perceiver and the external world. Nevertheless, the results show that perception is not sufficient to know what a perceptual object is, and that the existence of appearances is necessary to know that the external world is being perceived. However, the impossibility of matter does not follow from Berkeley’s theory. The main result of the research is that singular knowledge claims about the external world never refer directly and immediately to the objects of the external world. A perceiver’s own qualities affect how perceptual objects appear in a perceptual situation.

Development of an Ecology-Oriented Software-Defined Networking Framework

ICT contributed to about 0.83 GtCO2 emissions where the 37% comes from the telecoms infrastructures. At the same time, the increasing cost of energy has been hindering the industry in providing more affordable services for the users. One of the sources of these problems is said to be the rigidity of the current network infrastructures which limits innovations in the network. SDN (Software Defined Network) has emerged as one of the prominent solutions with its idea of abstraction, visibility, and programmability in the network. Nevertheless, there are still significant efforts needed to actually utilize it to create a more energy and environmentally friendly network. In this paper, we suggested and developed a platform for developing ecology-related SDN applications. The main approach we take in realizing this goal is by maximizing the abstractions provided by OpenFlow and to expose RESTful interfaces to modules which enable energy saving in the network. While OpenFlow is made to be the standard for SDN protocol, there are still some mechanisms not defined in its specification such as settings related to Quality of Service (QoS). To solve this, we created REST interfaces for setting of QoS in the switches which can maximize network utilization. We also created a module for minimizing the required network resources in delivering packets across the network. This is achieved by utilizing redundant links when it is needed, but disabling them when the load in the network decreases. The usage of multi paths in a network is also evaluated for its benefit in terms of transfer rate improvement and energy savings. Hopefully, the developed framework can be beneficial for developers in creating applications for supporting environmentally friendly network infrastructures.

CORPORATE GRASSROOTS LOBBYING IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

The European Union has gone through significant changes in the past 20 years. The importance of public opinion in politics has increased and the new technologies are empowering the wider public to express its opinions. The purpose of this study is to explore how corporations use the tactic of grassroots lobbying in the European Union environment. The research objectives were addressed through qualitative research methods. Six expert interviews were conducted to find new perspectives and to deepen the understanding of the research objectives. Following the data collection, the research material was transcribed and analysed. In the analysis, the data was organized based on concepts and themes found from the literature review. The empirical findings on grassroots lobbying in the EU were presented. It was found that when a company is selecting grassroots lobbying tactic, the familiarity of the tactic, organizational culture, financial resources and amount of stakeholders seem to have an impact to the selection. The issues that are successfully lobbied through the grassroots-lobbying tactic were seen to be those, which have high and direct impact on lives of people, arouse strong feelings and are not very complex. Furthermore, when deciding on the timing of a campaign, in the EU it was found that a company should take into account the long policy process and limited capabilities to mobilise people. Targeting the object of the campaign and selecting the channels used in a grassroots- lobbying campaign were seen to be in function of identifying the key decision-makers on the issue. The decisions of who to mobilise and the mobilisation channels were considered to be dependant on who the campaign is trying to influence. Also, it was found that when the implementing a grassroots lobbying campaign in the EU environment, the special features such as multiple cultures and languages should be taken into account. This study has provided novel practical insights for corporate grassroots lobbying in the EU environment and furthermore successfully contributed to the academic research in the field.