This Tuesday we held our 5th ArcticEvening event in the cozy premises of Dubrovnik Lounge & Lobby in the heart of Helsinki.  The events are slowly becoming the corner stone of the community or the ‘social network’ of entrepreneurs we are so eager to bring together across the Nordic and Baltic countries. In effect, they are the offline part of an online community. I believe this is essential for the community to find each other and get to know each other on a more concrete level, so that it will eventually result in more partnerships, more co-operation, more startups, and eventually more success stories. Here’s the spiel I wrote about the event over at ArcticStartup:

ArcticEvening is where everybody at the local startup scene meets each other.

Its aim is to bring everybody together to discuss new ideas, experiences, challenges and developments and above all share knowledge in the Nordic and Baltic startup community.

Come and enjoy a laid-back evening with an entrepreneurial group of people. An event for those interested in startups be you an entrepreneur, technologist, lawyer, angel, VC, accountant, salesman.

The crux is on the first sentence: where everybody at the local startup scene meets each other. Here by local I mean the whole of Nordic and Baltic countries. We have still quite a ways to go but I think we’re well on our way and are already bringing people from Finland to Estonia, people from Sweden to Finland.

ArcticEvening – 3rd March 2009 from CityVice on Vimeo.

Here’s a post on the first OpenCoffee evening that I organized in Helsinki right after I had moved back to Helsinki. Little after I met Antti and Miikka who had already the ArcticStartup blog up and running. This is where it all started and as Bart told to the audience last Tuesday at Dubrovnik: He met his co-founder at Cafe Luft, a small bar in Kallio where the event was held, and now Bart & Co. are well on their way building the next big thing. What goes without much attention, but what I believe is an important part of the event is its context. It’s woven deep into the urban setting and always held in one of the comparatively small bars and cafes of a given city. This has always been the case here in Helsinki, it was the case in Tallinn and it will be the case also in Stockholm when we go there next month. I believe this is imporant.

Having the event in the heart of the city in comparatively small venue gives it a familiar and easy to access context. By not having it in an a bigger arena is central to the culture* we are trying to build: Entrepreneurial mindset, or more concretely ideas on building something new that will change the world for better, should be part of a normal night out with friends at a bar for a given group of people. Entrepeneurs should know where to find the like minded people and where, if you’d eaves drop, you’d constantly here new ideas to build something great. Big ideas, dreams, and road maps to start building on them should be the constant back ground noise in these venues. This is what eventually makes the entrepreneurial culture what it is. Not only that, it will also contribute to building a more lively city.

A healthy city is a lively and buzzing city. I hope and believe ArcticEvenings are a building block, even if just one, building such cities around the Northern Europe by bringing together this lively community**: The urban entrepreneurs. Ideally these people see their city as part of the ecosystem that they can build their organisms on. Here by organisms I mean the businesses that are successful because they add value to the ecosystem and are thus sustainable. This sustainability is also called being profitable. Even if their business is global, the people and the day to day running it, especially in the early days, have a physical location that ideally makes those long working days bearable. I hope this is where ArcticEvenings can come in and find their place: Be the local (Helsinki – Stockholm – Tallinn – and more) network of friends and peers, before the team is strong enough and the venture is mature enough to take on the world.

*By entrepreneurial culture and mindset I don’t mean just building a business in a narrow sense, but creating something new regardless of what you’re passionate about, be it music, food, books or design.

**I want to emphasize that I don’t want everybody starting businesses. Entrepreneurial community should be just one of many groups of like minded people that are constantly active in the city space. It’s the variety that make a lively and great cities.

Posted in branding, cities, design, economics, education, startups
Tags: arcticevening, arcticstartup