Posts tagged Monkey Philosophy
Welcome to the Jungle Matti Nykänen & people!
Jan 21st
Yes! “Life is human beings best time.”(Quote by Matti Nykaenen) We have spent the morning by cleaning our new Yellow Office. All five monkeys swinging with mops around floors, walls and toilet. Fun together! Maybe not the core substance of Monkey Business – but we found the life line from sauna.
It was really exiting to open the door to the new world which our friends Jerri&co had painted during Wednesday night. They are graffiti painters and we had not seen any sketch before hand. You step in and turn on the lights. It takes a moment and WOW! A lot of colors and amazing two different worlds at the back wall of training space (and sauna upstairs). Jungle, see, shark, huge Gorilla, VERY cool Monkey Business piece and a lot more. Easier to change aspect, maybe. Experience Economys E as Escapism and E as Esthetics starts to match. We don´t want office - we want inspiring surroundings to live and meet friends/strangers. To make world more fun and yellow. When are you coming?
Picture above is drawn by Juhis, Tupsu -a really talented young gun from the Valley of Creativity. We need to save some space on walls for him also. Facinated about cartoons & drawings? Order your own comic strip now from Juha Matti Kinnunen, Cheerful Monkey.
Tantourist.
ps. Really living mind expanding times. New office and my younger son Paavo starts to crawl at any moment…
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.
How to become a superhero?
Jan 12th
Year 2010 and new decade has started rolling really fast. And it feels good. Monkey Business coreteam has had good dialogues around issue of each player role. Henna answered to question about responsibilities that she would like to be a superstar.
That ignited my thinking – how to became a superstar? We all have super powers, I am sure. But we need help to find them, to feel secured enough learning to use them. And that is where we need communities, loving and caring surroundings. And that is why I feel so good about being in Monkey Business.
What kind of history you want to create? What is your superpower?
“God won´t ask me why I wasn´t Moses. He will ask me why I wasn´t Susya.” -Rabbie Susya-
Tantourist. In flames!
X-mas Calender day 13 – What is this Monkey Business?
Dec 16th
That´s THE question. Here are some quotes from people whom we have met while chewing bananas:
*Experienced Business Coach, woman: “Monkey Business is formed around easy customers who buy what ever these Monkeys sell.”
*Senior Business Coach, man: ” Monkey Business is nothing, it´s just a tribe of fifty people or so.”
*Manager for International Affairs, man: ” Do these people know what Monkey Business means? How can their thinking be that low?”
*Innovation Manager, man:” You can´t be the best in the world. It is not possible.”
So, what do you think? What is this Monkey Business?
Tantourist -giving big warm hug to our supporters around the world. THANK YOU!
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.
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.
Ten Steps on Tribe Marketing Offline
Nov 16th
Hey all and especially Jaana,
this morning when I biked to our yellow office I saw a vision of a blog post with then steps or principles about marketing to your tribe. This list is about building your tribe outside the internet and web 2.0. That list will come a little later on. So here we go!
1. Make meaning. (Guy Kawasaki)
2. Come up with a good name. (Guy Kawasaki)
3. Find a good slogan. (Like a core promise a la Thomas Gad)
4. Print the slogan on an ecological and fair trade T-Shirt.
5. Find a cool artist to draw a logo for you.
6. Print the slogan and logo on a notebook and distribute notebooks to your friends and customers.
7. Make cool stickers and hit them on the streets.
8. Make pins.
9. Get busy meeting (new) people.
10. Have fun doing all the above.
This is what we have done. Well, we also bought yellow jeans. Did I forget something?
Monkey Business Top Salary Limit
Nov 3rd
Greetings from Tulimyrsky. Me and Tatu are here on stage today. Very exciting experiment coming up in less than two hours: Dialogue with Keränen. It’s a talkshow Conan O’Brien style with four guests: Antti Kettunen from Solidi, Juha Kauppinen from SiteFactory, Karoliina Luoto from Sitra and The Office Nomad, Janne Saarikko.
Anyways, before our show we had a key note by Sami Salmenkivi from N2 Laundry. More about all this later, but in our table talk I got encouraged to push more content to our blog. With the philosophy of bringing value (hopefully), but more experiments rather than pursuit of perfection. So here we go, a post written about month ago. Idea has been around for 1 year or so. Keep it yellow!
We have been thinking about making a volunteeringly a top limit to the salaries in our company which would equal to the average Finnish salary that currently is about 2870 euros.
I think this one way to be a sustainable company. Firstly, we don’t pay ourselves out of the market. Secondly, I think often the ones who earn most also consume more than those with less resources.
It is said that we need to dramatically decrease the amount of the Greenhouse gases. Still I am writing this post at the Airport in Paris on my way to Bilbao. Peter Senge says we need to innovate new ways of living, nobody planned the industrial revolution and it was not centrally governed. It was more like thousands of small initiatives that made it happen. And that is going to be same with the new sustainable lifestyle revolution. It is not centrally governed and it will not be televised, although YouTube and Twitter and other social media will surely play a big role. World is flat and a member of The Hub here in Jyvaskyla can easily go and work in The Hub in Madrid, Sao Paulo or London, just to mention few. We will start with little monkeys a sustainable coffee house here in Jyväskylä and it is going to be a great success!
It is also maybe related to the transparency of our business. We want to make the world better by making it more fun and yellow. We are in the business of encouraging people. We work only with nice customers (our friends) but we are ready to take on joyful challenges. We work on projects that make the world better. We work with people who share this mission. Because the drove towards your dream is the biggest driver in this world.
Monkey Business Design Philosophy
Oct 30th
We are working on building a new lay out for our blog (and there’s a blog in Finnish coming up too!) and for that process I wrote out some of the design philosophy down. This is version 0.5 BETA but I thought I should still drop it out for you. Here’s the classic banana with classes drawn by Lady My of MyJok back in late 2007.
1. Our mission is to make the world more fun and yellow. Our design are also fun and colorful.
1. Things are as they look and feel to a person. Not as somebody intents them to be but as someone experiences them.
1. All yellow is good. Our graphics don’t need to follow one clearly defined pattern or a set of rules, but part of our brand is that the visuals change a lot.
2. A Banana drawn by Lady My is the banana for us. We will stick to that until something totally explosive comes to our way.
3. All monkeys and bananas are part of our design strategy.
4. Our graphics should be aligned with our style. That is yellow, playful and sincere. Our Graphics and Designs should enhance the same message.
6. We like skateboarders, clothing designers, surfers, musicians and other party people in general. The idea is to enjoy life and have fun. Our designs should also follow that ideology. We search for ideas and inspiration everywhere but nature and pop culture especially.
7. We like to promote a wide range of designs and designers. We work with people we like and think are cool. We want to have loads of different designs.
Have a yellow weekend everyone!
Ps. The book recommendation of this week is by Hugh MacLeod and is called “Ignore Everybody – and 39 other keys to creativity.” I read it over the summer and is a quick read and gave me quite a few insights. There loads of good quotes and even more insightful drawings. Some of the things he writes and draws seems a bit cynical to me but he cleared it all by saying this: “Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle i.e. being human.” That’s the spirit I guess. You can read plenty of samples of the book at Hugh’s website.
“Laugh, play and fart!”
Oct 20th
One of the best things in life are friends who support you by little things. Like Heikkis father Antti who has original Monkey Business sticker on back of his phone. And it´s worn out badly, so he ordered me a new one when we last time met. Antti is a carpenter, he teaches it also in vocational school, appreciates real hand work & traditions. And we have had many adventures together. Maybe someday we´ll do miracles together. And I am proud Godfather of Anttis first son. This is my first letter to four month old Heikki. “…And don´t believe everything what that old dude tells you.” Thanks Antti for supporting me! Maybe there is something for you in the letter also.
With Love: Tatu, Godfather
Ps. Last week I wanted to write a letter to Dee Hock. But I couldn´t found his home address. Can you help me?
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