Lisäase yleisöjahtiin : yleisötyön mahdollisuudet Kettupäivät-elokuvafestivaalin yleisöpohjan kehittämisessä

Työskentelin vuonna 2005 kotimaisen lyhyt- ja dokumenttielokuvan festivaalilla Kettupäivillä tiedottajana. Festivaalia järjestävän Suomen elokuvakontakti ry:n toiminnan tavoitteina on mm. edistää elokuvantekijöiden ja yleisön välisiä kontakteja ja lisätä kiinnostusta elokuvan eri muotoihin. Tavoitteensa saavuttamiseksi se järjestää vuosittain Kettupäiviä. Työskennellessäni Kettupäivillä huomasin, että suuri yleisö ei ole ottanut tapahtumaa Suomen elokuvakontakti ry:n tavoitteen mukaisesti omakseen. Festivaali käyttää yleisön tavoittamiseen perinteisiä keinoja eli tiedottamista ja markkinointia. Tiedotuksen ja markkinoinnin ohella yleisön tavoittamiskeinoksi on Suomessakin nousemassa yleisötyö. Yleisötyötä voidaan pitää keinona kulttuuritapahtuman helpompaan saavuttamiseen. Kulttuuritapahtuma on saavutettava silloin, kun erilaiset yleisöt voivat osallistua siihen mahdollisimman helposti ja esteettömästi. Kulttuuritapahtuman saavutettavuutta voidaan parantaa poistamalla osallistumisen esteitä. Esteet voivat olla fyysisiä, aisteihin liittyviä, taloudellisia, asenteellisia/henkisiä, tiedollisia tai tiedottamiseen liittyviä tai päätöksen teon puutteellisuudesta johtuvia. Yleisötyö toimii lähinnä asenteellisten ja tiedollisten esteiden poistamisen keinona. Työn tavoitteena on löytää konkreettisia esimerkkejä Kettupäivien yleisötyöhön ja sitä kautta laajemman yleisön tavoittamiseen festivaalille. Tutkin yleisötyötä kolmen erilaisen helsinkiläisen kulttuuriorganisaation tekemän yleisötyön kautta. Haastattelut tein vuosien 2005 ja 2006 vaihteessa, jonka jälkeen kirjoitin työn seuraavan vuoden aikana. Yleisötyön merkitys markkinoinnin ja tiedotuksen ohella kulttuurituotteen ulkoisen viestinnän ja yleisön saavuttamisen kannalta on oleellinen etenkin pienissä tai muulla tapaa marginaalissa toimivissa kulttuuriorganisaatioissa. Tärkeää pienen tai keskisuuren taideorganisaation yleisötyössä on resurssien laskeminen siten, ettei yleisötyö syö voimavaroja päätoimintamuodosta, mutta että yleisötyöllä on oma vahva merkityksensä yleisöjen liikuttamisessa ja kulttuurituotteen tunnettuuden lisäämisessä.

Software Development Process Modeling. Developers Perspective to Contemporary Modeling Techniques

Formal software development processes and well-defined development methodologies are nowadays seen as the definite way to produce high-quality software within time-limits and budgets. The variety of such high-level methodologies is huge ranging from rigorous process frameworks like CMMI and RUP to more lightweight agile methodologies. The need for managing this variety and the fact that practically every software development organization has its own unique set of development processes and methods have created a profession of software process engineers. Different kinds of informal and formal software process modeling languages are essential tools for process engineers. These are used to define processes in a way which allows easy management of processes, for example process dissemination, process tailoring and process enactment. The process modeling languages are usually used as a tool for process engineering where the main focus is on the processes themselves. This dissertation has a different emphasis. The dissertation analyses modern software development process modeling from the software developers’ point of view. The goal of the dissertation is to investigate whether the software process modeling and the software process models aid software developers in their day-to-day work and what are the main mechanisms for this. The focus of the work is on the Software Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM) framework which is currently one of the most influential process modeling notations in software engineering. The research theme is elaborated through six scientific articles which represent the dissertation research done with process modeling during an approximately five year period. The research follows the classical engineering research discipline where the current situation is analyzed, a potentially better solution is developed and finally its implications are analyzed. The research applies a variety of different research techniques ranging from literature surveys to qualitative studies done amongst software practitioners. The key finding of the dissertation is that software process modeling notations and techniques are usually developed in process engineering terms. As a consequence the connection between the process models and actual development work is loose. In addition, the modeling standards like SPEM are partially incomplete when it comes to pragmatic process modeling needs, like light-weight modeling and combining pre-defined process components. This leads to a situation, where the full potential of process modeling techniques for aiding the daily development activities can not be achieved. Despite these difficulties the dissertation shows that it is possible to use modeling standards like SPEM to aid software developers in their work. The dissertation presents a light-weight modeling technique, which software development teams can use to quickly analyze their work practices in a more objective manner. The dissertation also shows how process modeling can be used to more easily compare different software development situations and to analyze their differences in a systematic way. Models also help to share this knowledge with others. A qualitative study done amongst Finnish software practitioners verifies the conclusions of other studies in the dissertation. Although processes and development methodologies are seen as an essential part of software development, the process modeling techniques are rarely used during the daily development work. However, the potential of these techniques intrigues the practitioners. As a conclusion the dissertation shows that process modeling techniques, most commonly used as tools for process engineers, can also be used as tools for organizing the daily software development work. This work presents theoretical solutions for bringing the process modeling closer to the ground-level software development activities. These theories are proven feasible by presenting several case studies where the modeling techniques are used e.g. to find differences in the work methods of the members of a software team and to share the process knowledge to a wider audience.

Digital Humanities For Everyone’s Benefit?: interplay in social media with the great audience, high-esteemed researcher and self-conscious library

The National Library of Finland realizes the Digitization Project of Kindred Languages in 2012–15. The project is financially supported by the Kone Foundation. During this project the National Library of Finland has digitized and made available approximately 1200 monograph and more than 100 newspaper titles in several Uralic languages. The materials are available to both researchers and citizens in the National Library’s Fenno-Ugrica collection. The project will produce digitized materials in the Uralic languages as well as their development tools to support linguistic research and citizen science. The resulting materials will constitute the largest resource for the Uralic languages in the world. Through this project, researchers will gain access to corpora which they have not been able to study before and to which all users will have open access regardless of their place of residence. In my presentation, I will discuss 1) how we utilized the social media (Facebook, Twitter, VKontakte etc) to gain audience for our collection and 2) how the needs of researchers and laymen were met in crowdsourcing.

Inviting the Audience – Interactive, Participatory, and Social Television in Finland

The television and the ways it has invited the audience to take part have been changing during the last decade. Today’s interaction, or rather participation, comes from multiplatform formats, such as TV spectacles that combine TV and web platforms in order to create a wider TV experience. Multiplatform phenomena have spread television consumption and traditional coffee table discussions to several different devices and environments. Television has become a part of the bigger puzzle of interconnected devices that operates on several platforms instead of just one. This thesis examines the Finnish television (2004–2014) through the notion of audience participation and introduces the technical, thematic, and social linkages as three different phases, interactive, participatory, social, and their most characteristic features in terms of audience participation. The aim of the study is also to focus on the idea of a possible change by addressing the possible and subtler variations that have taken place through the concept of digital television. Firstly, Finnish television history has gone through numerous trials, exploring the interactive potential of television formats. Finnish SMS-based iTV had its golden era around 2005, when nearly 50% of the television formats were to some extent interactive. Nowadays, interactive television formats have vanished due to their negative reputation and this important part of recent history is mainly been neglected in the academic scope. The dissertation focuses also on the present situation and the ways television content invites the audience to take part. “TV meets the Internet” is a global expression that characterises digital TV, and the use of the Web combined with television content is also examined. Also the linkages between television and social media are identified. Since television can nowadays be described multifaceted, the research approaches are also versatile. The research is based on qualitative content analysis, media observation, and Internet inquiry. The research material also varies. It consists of primary data: taped iTV formats, website material, and social media traces both from Twitter and Facebook and secondary data: discussion forums, observations from the media and Internet inquiry data. To sum up the results, the iTV phase represented, through its content, a new possibility for audiences to take part in a TV show (through gameful and textual features) in real-time. In participatory phase, the most characteristic features from TV-related content view, is the fact that online platform(s) were used to immerse the audience with additional material and, due to this, to extend the TV watching enjoyment beyond the actual broadcast. During the Social (media) phase, both of these features, real-timeness, and extended enjoyment through additional material, are combined and Facebook & Twitter, for example, are used to immerse people in live events (in real-time) via broadcast-related tweets and extra-material offered on a Facebook page. This thesis fills in the gap in Finnish television research by examining the rapid changes taken place on the field within the last ten years. The main results is that the development of Finnish digital television has been much more diverse and subtle than has been anticipated by following only the news, media, and contemporary discourses on the subject of television. The results will benefit both practitioners and academics by identifying the recent history of Finnish television.

Consumer-led new product development. Case: Dairy Industry

This thesis focuses on consolidation the recommendations on the integration of consumer in new product development (NPD) given in the academic literature, and on the example of the three NPD projects in the case company. The empirical findings advocate that the case company fulfills the principles of consumer-led NPD, and it is only one-step away of the full consumer empowerment strategy. Therefore, its NPD can be seen as an example of consumer-led NPD implementation. The findings also suggest that the product can be developed in consumer-led way regardless of the source of an idea (product- or need-driven), the target audience and resources assigned, in case when consumer mindset is integrated on all levels of organisation: strategic, cultural, operational and process. It is possible with top-management commitment, internal consumer research group, and the sophisticated consumer research methods. The specific managerial recommendations are given on developing consumer-led culture, strategy, NPD process and the appropriate consumer research methods and techniques.