Social Entrepreneurship with Onnistamo 2011
It’s been a while since we’ve been posting on this blog. Reasons have been many, including my own megalomanic side project, The Travelling Salesman, where I travelled to every single Nordic university city to talk to startups and write about them. It resulted in over 13000 kilometres of driving a Land Rover Defender, for 50 days, through 5 countries, over a week at sea, and in the winter, with temperatures lower than -20C. Many thanks to our main sponsors, Microsoft and Nokia Qt for making this a reality, as well as the many other companies, people and organisations that helped! And yes, the finances were tracked with Scred.
Many things have been taking place with Scred. We are working on a complete rehaul of the service, based on prior experience, and that is just simply taking a lot of time, but the result will be pretty damn amazing.
Naturally Scred, and our sister product, the Finnish ticketing service Fläbät, are still running while we do this work. Last year we grew past 3000 groups, started the process of our first government grant (from TEKES) and with Fläbät had tens of thousands of euros move through in ticket sales.
So it’s great to mention we are kicking off the year with another cool event using Fläbät, Onnistamo 2011. It’s a combined conference and unconference on social entrepreneurship. It’s put together by HUB Helsinki and Syy. On Friday guests include Anni Sinnemäki, from the Ministry of Employment & Economy, and representatives from the main parties taking part in a panel discussion. The unconference is held at the lovely Hanasaari location.
If you’re in Finland and social entrepreneurship is your thing, definitely check it out. And don’t forget to get your tickets 
The new kid on the block
Daring, impuslive and a little bit crazy Punajuuri block party is bound to be a hit. It’s always refreshing to see active people in Finland who have vision and ambition to do something different. This time an independent group of enthusiasts put together a line-up of well-known Finnish bands to play for free this Saturday 21st August 17-21 in Punavuori, Helsinki. And all that was arranged in a space of a week!
The concept behind the party is to offer free music to the public, reinvigorate the community and deliver a powerful message that seems to be at the core of the project – not all good things have to cost money. Though the party is free for the participants, the organizers welcome donations to reward some of the helpers and fund future events. Sum of donations varies from 1 to 100 euros and when you send the money you can attach a message that will be put on group’s twitter page @Five_Corners. The payment system is powered by fläbät, the new ticketing service developed by Scred.
The party should be a great addition to other activities of the Helsinki juhlaviikot. So if you happen to walk past Viiskulma or the corner of Kankuri and Pursimiehenkatu on Saturday evening, you’d be treated with a free performance by K-X-P, MANNA, 22-PISTEPIRKKO and UUSI FANTASIA. The event will also be livestreamed on Punajuuri’s webpage.
What’s most intriguing, however, is what will come out of the initiative – the party this weekend is just the beginning of a larger project that aims to promote mutual help as an alternative to money. How far that would go remains to be seen.
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