LEILI M.

Northern Game Summit 2013

The first time I heard about Northern Game Summit was in the summer of 2013 when I was offered a chance to recreate and renew the concept for an international game conference that was born in the Kajaani University of Applied Sciences a year earlier.

Because I trusted that I would not be expected to do anything I am not capable of and because I did not relize that this kind of event normally takes closer to a year to plan and prepare, I took that chance.

The only objectives I was given were the need to have app. 700 participants and national media coverage. If you have ever been in a position to plan an event of this scale you are well aware that these are Not the goals commonly specified by the organizers. Basically I was given free hands to do whatever I wanted with the event as long as it was targeted towards games industry professionals and filled the above criteria.

The actual main goal I came up with sprang from the Day One program of the previous year, namely a meeting point for the novices and veterans of games industry. For game development students it was the part of the event deemed most worthy and memorable. Now it was going to be an underlying guideline for the entire event. Every decision I made after that I checked against the following question: will it make it easier to talk to an industry vet, will it make it easier to network. Starting with an unconventional venue (a movie theatre) and ending with the choice of speakers – it all was a result of that guiding thought.

I had help, a lot. I worked long, long hours. I got lucky, a few times. And in the end I pulled it off. With only previous experience in event management being a wedding with app. 50 attendees I ended up successfully organizing an event which had a tad over 800 participants over two days and was covered by national news agency YLE in less than four months. A crash course in production as I was told later by KooPee Hiltunen, and I survived it.

What I learned from this experience is that there’s always a solution. If the first one does not work you try the second one. And then the next one.

Northern Game Summit 2014

A lot wiser than a year before, the second time for me to lead the preparations for a conference was almost a breeze.

Actually not long ago we were talking about NGS2014 with Janne M. (he was the Technical Manager for the event) and the most memorable for both of us was the nagging feeling of wrongness during the event days. How come there is no crisis requiring our attention; how come there is nothing for us to do but to sit on our hands waiting for minutes to tick by?

It is only now that I am wise enough to recognize this forced idleness as a sign of a well-planned event instead of some kind of phantom menace.

In the end my foreboding that something Must Be Wrong proved to be correct, but not in a way I could have imagined beforehand. Ultimately I learned that there is no detail small enough that an event manager should pass it over without thorough examination. My lack of vigilance cost many nerve-racking hours of concern to many good people.

Northern Game Summit 2015

This was the third time for me to be at the head of the team organizing the Northern Game Summit event. And since the team was substantially larger than before I got a new fancy title. Producer does sound a fair bit nicer than Manager, even though my responsibilities stayed the same and just the scale upgraded.

The event was a success. Better than ever as several attendees took the trouble to put it. Well perhaps that was true from visitor point of view, but...

In my mind NGS2015 will always stand out as an example of a last minute risk management experiment due to the catastrophic failure in communication. I have noticed it before and I noticed it again in this particular case – almost all problems in organizations consisting of two persons or more arise from communication. Whether it is the lack of communication or miscommunication, in the end the problem could have been avoided if all parties concerned would have understood the situation the same way.

Aside the problems guaranteed to give the organizing team premature baldness NGS2015 was remarkable because it introduced us to a new pre-event called NGS Mixer. The idea for the Mixer was to bring together the representatives of two heavily visual commercial art forms – movies and games. Though minute in scale and rather raw in execution Mixer got a lot of positive feedback from attendees. My takeaway is that clearly there is a demand for such a meeting point for two industries.

Café Murunen

Since January 2016 I have been a partner at the Café Murunen in Kajaani. I am not especially good at baking and am more of a tea person myself, but European style coffee shop culture is very close to my heart. So when I heard that the entrepreneur of my most favorite café in Finland was looking to sell the business, together with my friend Elina (who is an excellent baker by the way) we jumped on the possibility to make one of our dreams to come true.

My contribution to the project has been part economic adviser part stylist and part support work force. Working at the café has given me a chance to practice more hands on customer service and also get some experience on face-to-face selling.

I am probably rather biased but I do think Murunen is the best café in the town, so if you happen to be around drop by, I am quite positive you will not be disappointed.