Hello dear Finnish and foreigner friends, welcome to this blog post!
Firstly, let us introduce ourselves! We’re business students studying in Laurea, in the campus of Hyvinkää.
To fulfill our study credits, we need to work on a Team project, related to business. There are projects in Finnish and in English.
We’re an international project team composed of eight students. Five of us are Finnish, and three of us are international students. We are monitored by the lecturer, Katriina Reponen.
Our project is related to Sustainable Tourism. We have one client, Ilkka Lariola, who owns three companies: Natura Viva, Bookingpoint.fi and Johku. In his websites, he offers natural and cultural activities in Southern Finland. The activities on the websites are both his and products from other companies.
Presentation of the team
Now let’s move on to our team members. As mentioned earlier, the team has five Finnish students and three foreigners. These three foreigners are Borja, Jorge and Nathan. Borja is our Project Manager, he is from Spain. Jorge is a Mexican guy, in this team his role is Deputy Project Manager. Nathan is the Social Media Manager of this team and he comes from France.
Our five Finnish students are Ada, Anna, Kalle, Timo and Tea. Ada is our Well-Being Manager, her role is to make sure that everyone is feeling good in the team, and to take care of all the members. Anna’s role is Social Media Manager. With Nathan, she will create Instagram posts and Blog articles. Kalle is the team’s Deputy Secretary, he will support and help the secretary in her tasks when she is not in the meeting. Timo, as for him, is our Experience Manager, that will help us to involve customer interaction and services.Tea is the Secretary, she will have to write the memos, the agendas, and to remember the other team’s members the upcoming deadlines.
Main tasks of the project
For this project, we have two main things to do: The first one, which is related to the theme of our project, is to write two Theory Bases. Their subjects are linked to Sustainable Tourism or Marketing, it can be for example Segmentation or Green Tourism. The second thing is related to our client, we need to do work for him.
In our case, for Ilkka, we have to improve or upgrade some products of his website Bookingpoint.fi.
Since Johku is a complex platform to understand that only professionals of Tourism can master, Ilkka gave us two lessons so that we’ll be able to create products. The team calls these lessons “Johku Training”. During the Johku training, we learnt basic stuff about this platform such as how to add pictures to a product, how to put different ranges of prices, how to write a nice description of it, how to upload it on the website…
After the first Johku training, we had almost one month to get ready and upload the products to the website. Once it was ready, we had a meeting with Ilkka, in which we presented our work. The team created a PowerPoint presentation with all the products we created. Each group had one or two products.
We are also going to do a brainstorming soon, in order to work the whole Team on Ilkka’s products. It will be easier in this way to improve the products and find better ideas. Every group will have to prepare five products that they have improved, and then the whole team is going to work on these products.
Travelling to Southern Finland
As we’re a part of the Sustainable Tourism Project, and there are international students in our team, we went on some travels in the Helsinki region. The aims of these travels were to spend time in the beautiful Finnish nature, and that the exchange students discover some nice places of Southern Finland.
The first trip took place in the last days of September. We went to Vaalisaari (Island of Vaali in English), a little island at the south of Helsinki. On this island was held the Helsinki Biennali, a cultural event organized every two years by the Helsinki municipality. It consists of about fifty artworks made by Finnish and foreigners artists, that are spread out all around the island. We went there during the last week of the exhibition. We all liked our time outside, walking all over the forests and the beaches. Everyone was very happy about this visit, especially our Mexican guy Jorge, because it was the first time that he was travelling with a boat.
Our second trip was during the middle of October. We went to Suomenlinna, a little archipelago composed of four islands, linked to each other with bridges. It is just next door to Vallisaari Island. Unlike the latter, who was kind of little, the four islands of Suomenlinna were quite big.
The first item on the agenda of Suomenlinna was the study time. We did our skills demonstration presentations. We didn’t have our computers, so Katriina and Ada suggested us to replace the slides of the PowerPoint with some Post-It. Even though it was a little bit difficult, we managed it and did a great skills demonstration. It was very nice to present in a new way, without a regular presentation material. It made us get out of our comfort zone, and we had to adapt ourselves. The whole team really likes it and thought that it was a very instructive experience. After this enriching study time, we went for a walk on the island. We had a nice discovery time.
Written by Nathan Robin
Suurin osa Showcasen blogeista on toteutettu osana Laurean opintojaksoja. Koko koulutustarjontaamme voi tutustua nettisivuillamme. Tarjoamme kymmenien tutkintoon johtavien koulutuksien lisäksi myös paljon täydennys- ja erikoistumiskoulutuksia sekä yksittäisiä opintojaksoja avoimen AMK:n kautta!