We announced yesterday somewhat 90 exhibitions but it actually doesn’t mean one third of the whole programme. The maths in here is not as simple as it would seem, and that’s something we need to tackle soon in the communications team.

We’ve estimated that the final WDC Helsinki 2012 programme will consist of at least 250 projects (hanke). One project/hanke = one contract. That means that for example one project/hanke (meaning one contract) with Laituri can include several exhibitions.

And as we’ve tried to emphasize, these 90 exhibitions are not all the exhibitions. There are still a couple of international ones that we have to prepare a bit longer before “letting them out”. And exhibitions in Espoo and so on.. Also in some projects that will focus on something totally else, there will be some kind of an exhibition at the end. But that’s something that will develop under the coming months.

Stay tuned, we’ll announce more stuff next Tuesday!

Maarit Kivistö
Senior Communications Officer
WDC Helsinki 2012
(and I’m still not a big fan of titles, thought I should repeat this in this conversation as well, in case we have new readers here)

Being portable, it moves yearly from one city to another and that is reflected in the way it’s organize.

Being global, it embodies and triumphs the ideas of globalization, the movement of ideas, people and goods (and things like international trade and export industries which Finland lives from).

Being a franchise, it is built to adapt to the local climate through different mechanisms of localization.

The so-called “design industry” is fundamentally an industry of bits, not atoms.

And in the world today, there is no architecture without construction industry, no industrial design without manufacturing industry, no digital or interaction design without electronics and software industry, no service design without service industry etc.

Design is only the tip of the iceberg and like with real mountains, you can’t move the mountain from the tip or build a new mountain through starting from the top.

(In this light it’s easy to say that there is no digital design in the program because there is no blossoming software and electronics industry in Finland.)

it’s Maarit from WDC Helsinki 2012 office again. Now there are so many comments that need some kind of a reply that I really do have to take my time during the weekend. I just quickly wanted to say something about the WDC Helsinki 2012 Facebook page. Juha had spotted a comment there and said that it had “mysteriously” disappeared. Somehow this makes people wonder if we, at the WDC Helsinki 2012 office, deleted it. No we didn’t, the person who posted it had deleted it him/herself. All comments are welcome on the page, positive or negative (we’re trying to keep the wall clean from commercial messages, and of course inapproriate content, eg. racist comments).

Best, and happy Friday
Maarit

I think you are absolutely right in pointing out that Helsinki WDC is trying to do something different than previous WDC cities and many other design expos, fairs, etc. They definitely deserve credit for choosing a non-conventional theme for the year and I also believe that the staff is genuinely trying to do as good job as they can.

The theme ‘Open Helsinki – embedding design in life’ has motivated all kinds of cultural actors to submit proposals, not just the usual suspects of the design scene, and this is clearly one source of the difficulties. There is a clash between different organisation cultures and mismatching expectations (some of these were pointed out in previous comments). One could even say that this clash cannot and should not be avoided – that it is bound to happen when vertical meets horisontal, formal meets informal, solid meets precarious.

Hopefully the discussion can continue (here and/or elsewhere) and we can all learn from this.

Here are my experiences:

I submitted our Alternative Party ry’s WDC application on time in February and only in June I got a reply from the WDC (where they said they would be interested in co-operating, but without any financial support). We then met at their office, but it looked like they were interested in completely other things than what the application was about. Of course, that is not a problem as such that we discussed other program ideas – some of them would be very interesting and we got lots of contact suggestions from WDC, which we are grateful – but I would perhaps would also been interested in implementing our own ideas… :)

The main issue here is however that: to get a confirmation from WDC in June or July means that it becomes very difficult or impossible to get financial supporters for the projects. For example, the public sector (e.g. grants) or from corporations etc is simply too late. (You should apply for grants typically even over one year before the program begins.)

Another thing I have been wondering is that I worked hard to get our application ready in time for the February deadline, but soon afterwards the WDC announced that “No problem if you didn’t make it in time. You can still submit your application.” — Somehow I don’t think this is fair and it is at least somewhat annoying that if you did your work in time, you still didn’t get any benefits from it.

Anyway, I look forward to co-operate with WDC and some projects are already being planned and executed very soon. I would also be happy to discuss with the WDC how we could learn about these experiences for the future since I’m most interested in open innovation and collaborative content/design/product/etc creation methods and practices — both via my digital culture producing activities and my work in our research group at the Aalto University.

Regards,
Kim Viljanen
Chairman, Alternative Party ry; Doctoral candidate, Aalto University
some background about me and contact info: http://iki.fi/digikim

It’s very problematic if all the accepted projects have to go through the central board of Helsinki WDC. The Helsinki WDC board is a small group of professional people who have their own daytime jobs and can only spend a limited time on WDC work. And it’s a big problem if the only facilitators involved are the producers who are not experts in production issues, not fields of design, art and urban culture.

It seems that the tight rules of lcsid are one reason why there has to be so strict centralised control in the project. Based on Maarit’s comment, Helsinki WDC foundation has taken the responsibility to oversee every project that has the right to use the Helsinki WDC logo (and if lucky, has received some funding from Helsinki WDC). This is a very heavy responsibility to take for a small organisation like Helsinki WDC, so it’s no wonder if things have not been proceeding very smoothly.

The link to my blog posting was featured in Helsinki WDC Facebook page with a question:

“We are four months from the start of 2012 and it seems we’re not communicating openly enough. What do you think? What could we do better? ”

Someone wrote this comment as a reply:

“erm communicate perhaps? my company tried to communicate (unsuccessfully) with your organisation during a period of 12 months. Our application (which involved a significant amount of effort and work) was submitted on time for the early 2011… deadline. At no point did anyone discuss the proposal with us, discussions should have taken place in order that the proposal had the chance to be altered according to WDC requirements. The first communication (summer 2011) was to tell us we had been unsuccessfull after the producer had spent an hour or so that same day looking at it. There is no transparency as to what is going on in the programme and who and what is involved in the decision making and planning process. Sending the odd news email in Finnish is unacceptable for a project with global relevance and interest.”

This comment has now mysteriously disappeared and unfortunately I don’t remember the name of the writer (I happened to send the text to a friend so I had it in my mailbox). This is the kind of critique that WDC should take seriously – I’ve heard a similar story from many other people. The Helsinki WDC organisation is clearly under-resourced to facilitate and support the amount of open activity that it would wish to happen next year.

From the very beginning there should have been more responsibility given for a wide range of actors in the field. They should be made responsible for every penny of Helsinki WDC funding they use and for the correct use of the logo. This was the way things were arranged for the Helsinki Cultural Capital Year in 2000. Helsinki WDC seems to have borrowed the model of concentrating a lot of control for a central office from the current Turku Cultural Capital (with many of the same problems).

About my comment about the flyer – yes, it’s true that it’s a Helsinki 2012 flyer, not just Helsinki WDC flyer. The problem is that at least in my knowledge, this is the only Helsinki WDC related flyer there is. I don’t have anything against sports events as such, but there should be signs of so many other things already by now, a lot of preparations going on and a lot of noise made about upcoming activities. Maybe there is a lot going on somewhere, behind closed doors, but again this would be strange considering the theme ‘Open Helsinki’.