About next week: First, we have the board of Maalaiskunnan Yrittäjät meeting at our office on Tuesday evening. Chairman of the board is our neighbour and friend Jouko aka Musti from Seripiste. Little birds are saying we may get a seat on the board, too. Also, a little after that there’ll be a group of people interested in Organizational Development coming all way from France and Canada to see where we dwell. In fact, the visit to our place is part of their learning expedition to Team Academy organized by SoL France. I heard from my friend that one of the participants have a blog called La nature d’une nouvelle entreprise. It seems to be all in French but Pascal said it’s good and I believe him so if you understand, check it out!

This past week our office has been occupied by people from Team Academy taking intense course of marketing coached by Heikki Toivanen. See the picture above. We are very happy to have people at our place, for a meeting in a creative environment or to experience the sauna.

Furthermore, Samuli Karjalainen dropped by for the first time in our office few weeks ago, and with him we explored the idea of a business sauna. It would be an event for local people interested in learning and meeting new people. First start with a short story or a presentation by someone followed by dialogue and sauna. Who is in for that?

Here are three videos that you may already have seen at MonkeyTV at Qik or Youtube. First two are in English and third one in Finnish. We also took plenty of pictures but those will come later. Enjoy!

Has anybody read the book We Think by Charles Leadbeater? What do you think about it? Yellow mellow, Ville

Anyways, it was about time to hear some negative comments because Tom Peters on his book Project50 says something like this: “Think sometimes if you have pissed off people lately, because if you haven’t, then you are either not working hard enough or not being radical enough.”

And this is what also Jari Parantainen says in his Finnish blog that we need not to be afraid to divide people into two groups because if we get haters then we also got lovers.

Furthermore, practically the same thing from Guy Kawasaki: Do not be afraid to polarize people (point no. 4 in his post about the Art of Innovation).

The third similar minded comment is in this excellent and inspiring TED video by Richard St. John. This is actually what I wanted to share in the beginning. See the video below.

He says that one secret of success is persistence. He says that if we want to succeed we need to persist CRAP – which stands for Critisism, Rejection, Assholes and Pressure.

And this is what we say when people ask us about the marketing: Be brave, dare to make marketing that may piss off people. But I have to admit, that when the guy calls you and tells you to delete your website and get some more experience, it doesn’t feel good and kind of it puts me down. Anyways, I am happy to know we got loads of supporters out there and this is probably just one guy, who didn’t get what this Monkey Business is all about, maybe?

Keep it yellow everyone! Peace, Ville

As part of our Social Media strategy – “you have to give chance an opportunity” again inspired by Matti Nykänen and made famous by E.Saarinen – we have started a MonkeyTV. It’s an online TV Channel that will have for example monkeying around, short interviews, book reviews, live reporting from events and parties and so on what ever we find fresh and worthy being online. We have been online for a month or so, but until now I wasn’t sure if we had got the real essence of the MonkeyTV recorded. But here we are, ladies and gentlemen, see the video below!

You will know us from the following logo:

It is drawn by Pernan Goni, an illustrator and inspiring entrepreneur from Bilbao. He’s got a blog, too. I met him over in Bilbao last October and I am very happy he promised to co-operate with us for the MonkeyTV and also in future. Moreover, he is an excellent cartoonist – see a MonkeyTV video here where he explains one quick cartoon about creativity in Basque Country. Thanks a lot Pernan for the great work!

Currently we operate MonkeyTV with Qik. It’s linked to our Youtube channel, so if you are there feel free to connect with us.

Have a yellow week everyone! Ville

sometimes when you hear a good song it brings back good memories. July 2008 I had an oppurtunity to see Bruce Springsteen & E Street Band live in Olympic Stadium, Helsinki. When Max Weinberg hit the drums for the first time and Bruce let his guitar sing, I felt right away, that this is the show I had been waiting for.

The gick was in late july and it was a beautiful summernight. At the end of show, after three hours head blowing rockin, Bruce and the Band had one more suprise. Even though it was hot and sweaty, everybody had strenght rock just that one more song. Below you can check the video and please, sing along: Santa Claus is coming to Town!

With Yellow Regards,
Janne Monkey

Quite amazing, isn’t it?

Nic also taught me (Ville) a little about how to sing blues, and we got into a deep dialogue about creativity, courage and coffee. Those three C’s are Nic’s thing. Aki of Spym was challenged about his thing and Petrus was encouraged to play his own songs. I think that’s what we should all do. Just as William Isaacs in his book Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together tells a story about one piano playing consultant who is being asked: “Who plays your music if you don’t do it yourself?”