Friends of Monkey Business
Friends of Monkey Business
Legendary letters to Inspiring people: Esa Saarinen
Jan 19th
In Monkey Business we have been playing with idea about having a Board for Enthusiasm. That board would be responsible for encouraging us to go even further to areas where we haven´t been yet. Board for thinking with heart, for families and humanity. And at least I think that philosopher Esa Saarinen would be the MAN for Managing (firing up) that board. Who else should be in?
From Esa I have learned most about interaction, systems thinking and systems intelligence. Esas week long seminars in Cyprus are astounding experience. He is a master of storytelling. Storyes that make normal people like me to understand philosophy. “Good life is born from better thoughts. You are allways more than any of your own expectations. There is allways more good in us than what you can see.”
I send the letter to thank Esa about making my life more rich and meaningful. And to thank about Conspiracy of Positive Force which we in Monkey Business really meet at unexpected places. Esas Queen, Pipsa, has named us Monkey Babes.
ESA – keep it yellow!
Tantourist.
(Monkey Business reserves the right to change the world.)
What´s cooking Linus?
Jan 19th
Our campaign for January is wild as a Jungle and beating like a drum. Order one monkey now – and get second for free! Two monkeys for the price of one! Double amount of action, chaos and mistakes means at least six times more of learning. Maybe? Choose your Monkeys here: MonkeyBusiness_pres (Great profiles made by Nic. THANKS!)
We are supporters of fundamental freedom. Everyone is able to achieve what ever in the world – if you don´t mind who gets the honour. Pekka Himanen´s book, The Hacker Ethic, has had a lot influence to our Ideology. Passion and dedication to that, building on enthusiasm will carry on. So how can we encourage people on that? More listening to heart than rational mind? How do we help people to join enriching communities? How do we help people to find out who they really are? And what are they really passionate obout? And what is their strenght, superpower that they should build on? How do we help individuals to lead theirselves?
Linus Thorvalds created source code of Linux and story goes on. What is source code of Monkey Business? The DNA that people monkeying around are sharing? Do you feel the call?
Tantourist.
First reply to our legendary letters!
Dec 11th
YES! I got a letter yesterday. Chritmas card in an envelope, with printed address sticker. Text was written by hand. And I was sooo exited to realize it was from Jaana Venkula. I wrote to her 14th of September – it´s also in our blog, here.
Jaana thanks me for the splendid letter which she got and wellcomes us to be in contact with her later. And all the best for 2010.
Jaana – this was really uplifting! THANKS!
Tantourist.
X-mas Calendar Day 24th
Dec 10th
Don´t hesitate – don´t open it yet! Oh you did it allready. Is everyday like Christmas eve for you? Life as a gift?
We got a suberb surprise yesterday: we were kicked out from our office. Gotta be out until March. How can they kick us out? We don´t have any rent agreement made. We have been squatting here. What do we do now?
We give you a present. Order us to your office. For a week – month – year? To work with you. To help you. To boost you. What? Like office nomad. All we need is your kind invitation.
Or buy us to collaborate with you. We could:
*make a promotour to Lappland with cyclable electrical cars to work as an instant helpdesk for entrepreneurs(LeTim loves this idea)
*clean your carage
*organize a week long adventure for children of your employees
*?
“Life is like a banana – the longer you wait the sweeter it gets. Until it turns brown.” -Forrest Gump
Tantourist.
Day 4 – for meetings with people you know but don’t expect to see on the places you go – magic of networks
Dec 4th
Have you ever found a bunch of old friends when participating in an event with an interesting topic but unfamiliar organization? Or going to visit a place from where you know only one person, but while being there meet many other old friends too?
This kind of coincidences happen more and more in this small earth! And I think it’s an uplifting issue because “intelligently accidental” human meetings bring extra joy in life. It just happened to me when I googled Survival Academy, an event I decided to participate to because the topic calls me to go, even though I don’t know the organization. However, by discovering better this http://survivalacademy.ning.com/ I got to know that +15 of my friends are connected in that event and we’ll potentially meet up in there. Today the same phenomenon came when I met a friend called Oliver Saarinen with whom we participated http://www.tulenkantajat.com/, and while visiting his school http://www.hse.fi/en/mikkeli I randomly met there a friend called Joonas Kallankari who was my team mate at http://www.emaxnordic.com/ in 2007. Long time, no see, but it’s definetely good to follow the curious path and choose to go in places where these good old friends can be found.
Try it today: google an event you are interested in, for example this: http://survivalacademy.ning.com/events?page=4 and see who you know out of the participants even though you might not know the organizers. Or make a date with a person you know for some cool reason but haven’t seen for a while, and see how many common friends / actions you have now. You will be surprised!
A Christmas Calender: Day 1. Vote!
Dec 1st
Today is 1st of December and this is a Christmas calender of Monkey Business. It´s only 23 day and then Santa Claus is coming! Exciting! Remember to be a good girl or boy 
We want to give Monkey Business awards and now you can also vote! You can vote who ever you want, just tell us why she or he should have an award. You can make a comment in here or send your proposal to johanna@banana.fi.
Here are the awards:
Jane Porter Award for braveness, supportive stand by, open mindness and stamina
Tupsu Award for curious discovering and new foundings
King Kong Award for the biggest monkey on earth!
Tornado Award for creating chaos all over and causing a lot of innovations
Funky Monkey Award for yellow attitude and spreading joy around
Green Monkey Award for sustainable acting
Banana Award for feeding community with good idea and actions
Cafe Award for revolutional thinking and having great conversations
Bananamarama Award for best party spirit ever!
Big Wave Award for learning a new skill
Golden Screw Up Award for the biggest mistake ever!
So vote, vote, vote! YEAH!
Thesis about Team Academy by Esa Saarinen
Nov 26th
We still are squatting in the premises of Team Academy, and today when I came from the surprisingly close-by grocery store I thought once again: “Team Academy is great because in here it is ok and encouraged to be excited.” Why did I think that? Well, I had just seen one Teampreneur painting graffiti related to the 24hr birth-giving of Team Company Dilectio. He was enjoying and laughing while doing the painting. And then Kaisu of Dilectio saw the graffiti, and she clearly was very excited about that.
That reminded me of the 7 thesis our friend, the explosively insightful philosopher Esa Saarinen has coined about Team Academy. He introduced these in the Team Academy’s 15th anniversary seminar in January 2008 where me and Tatu were the MC’s. I thought I should post them here to remind people who have seen them before, and maybe there are some to whom these are new.
The Core Reasons to the Success of the Team Academy: Esa Saarinen, the Famed Finnish Philosopher speaking
- Thesis 1 In the Hall of Fame of Experience-Based Learning Team Academy is # 1
- Thesis 2 Some People Speak, Team Academy Acts.
- Thesis 3 Team Academy Brings Dreaming Back to Professional Education.
- Thesis 4 Team Academy Calls Out to Young People to Express their Sincerity and Joy, apparently as the Only
Educational Institution in Finland. - Thesis 5 In the Endless Fight Between Stick-Disciplinary-Narrow-Mindedness and Breaking Out from Barriers, Team Academy Chooses Excitement.
- Thesis 6 The Core of Team Academy is Based on the Most Sustainable and Solid Foundation of Finnish Basic Values: Robust Pragmatism and the Spirit of Equality.
- Thesis 7 Team Academy is Based on the Power of Community and the Human In-Between, but behind it All is an Individual Who is Willing to Give Out His Everything for the Cause that Matters.
My favorite is maybe number 7 phrasing very nicely the connection and relationship between the individual teampreneur and the team/community. What are yours?
Ps. We are planning to organize an after party for all times Paphos-meeting in January together with Esa and the Paphos Alumni of Design Factory.
Nathaniel the Kaospilot taught us Graphic Facilitation
Nov 23rd
Finally on Friday last week we put the graphics on our offices wall but read below what happened before that.
Last week we got a great surprise guest to our office. He is a friend of a friend of a friend of ours and he was visiting Jyväskylä and then he popped up into our office. And now he is a friend of ours as well. His name is Nathaniel, and he is probably the first ever Kaospilot to actually visit Team Academy. Kaospilots are cool, they have a strong sustainability value to their education, and also they have eye for design. Besides, they do learn about process facilitation, team work and entrepreneurship. The goal is to educate social innovators, I think. Be sure to check them out if you didn’t know about them yet. I also wrote earlier about Kaospilot’s good marketing.
Anyways, we got along very well with Nathaniel, and he taught us some cool tricks about Graphic Facilitation. After having some coffee and talking about various things Nathaniel showed us a video he had done. And, you maybe guessed, we wanted to do the same kind of things about our own products. We picked up our new product called Kick Ass Event Facilitation and here are the results. First Nathaniel himself and third one is Tatu in Finnish. We also got a small making of/behind the scenes video on Youtube and we got pitches by Henna, Hugo, myself and Johanna waiting to be published shortly. Tatu kinds of comes to this video shooting from the bushes; he wasn’t told beforehands what product he was supposed to explain about. The idea was to keep the video presentations authentic and alive, kind of the jazzy style improvization. Any questions, ideas or similar? Please share them through comments or get in touch with us directly. We are ready to rock with you!
edit: Henna wasn’t happy with her video being online so I took it out. Sorry for that – both Henna (for putting it here in the first place) and the world (that it’s not online anymore).
Letter to Erlend Loe
Nov 19th
Hi fellows!
All the Monkeys read couple months ago Erlend Loes books Supernaiiv and Doppler. Somehow those books started a deep and really various conversations among us. Some one were a repressed and someones were really exited about those books. We got a good conversations about that why everybody react the way they did. Because of that we all know each others better and also ourselves, I think. We got a bunch of encouraging of what we are doing, we are the right way about our yellow business and our values are worthy to take care of.
Yellow, playful and sincere,
Johanna
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