Our project in Namibia makes progress: the first solar cookers are on the way to test use! Blossom and Faith are in charge for the trials in villages. The aim is to save rare firewood, promote health and make use of the free resource: solar energy. TCA member Alberto got the funding to travel to Namibia early February to meet with our partners!

Johannes is committed to start a leather business. The leading special leather company in Finland has promised to advise and has invited TCA members to visit the tannery.

City of Tampere is prepared to build a million-euro design building in Vuores for a joint TCA and TAMK social and health project. Hannamari, Nooran and Pipsa are in charge of the venture.

The Leather Heaven team shot trial catalogue pictures for the client in TAMK unit of Art and Media. Besides the team members, a professional photographer and models were involved.

Visio 2010 is an annually held national innovation contest with approximately 30 teams competing on two categories: for Finnmatkat and Veikkaus. It was held on Sappee during 3rd to 5th November. Niilo, Johannes, Pipsa and Judyta formed a team called Mestar1nerot! and won the assignment given by Finnmatkat. The teams had only 20 hrs time to complete the assignment given, which was only introduced in 5 minutes. The assignment was to innovate new marketing strategies to acquire more and younger customers for Temamatkat, a Finnmatkat subsidiary. Mestar1nerot! decided to create a complete marketing campaign in order to beat the other contestants: "The other teams had good ideas, but Mestar1nerot was ahead of them, since we made a complete marketing campaign which consisted of many smaller ideas", the team leader, Niilo Ristmeri decribes. "We took small risks, because the idea of ours was so extraordinary which meant that there might be two distinctive outcomes, rejection or victory." Communication, good team spirit and good nights of sleep helped Mestar1nerot! to form the winning idea: "Communication within our team was honest, straight forward and fluent and a good team spirit was among us. Also the team had a strong feeling of being, if not winning, among the top three. A mindset of winner obviously facilitated our success ", Niilo describes.

TCA was invited to support the promotion of Tampere Housing Fair 2012 in Vuores.

Aamulehti: a survey among young subscribers/potential subscribers gives interesting results. The TCA research also sheds light on young people's attitudes on social media and micropayment for the online newspaper articles.

R&D breakthrough in School's chemistry lab: our product development team, Jussi the Chemist with TCA's Fanny, Julia and Tiina succeeded to develop a new formula for health active body shampoo. A test panel will decide for the best scent out of 4 options on Monday.

The Poland - Gateway to Europe seminar on Tuesday was very successful. More than 30 companies participated and the feed-back was very positive. Thanks Karolina, Jonna and Judyta: excellent work, indeed! The Chamber of Commerce was pleased, too, and will continue to work with TCA. In the picture Counsellor Stefan Kot from the Polish Embassy.

We got a South African Sangoma doll to protect our Trust & Competence project. Sangoma is a local shaman and a practioner of white magic who can reveal the will of ancestral spirits. Her opinion and judgement are highly valued throughout the society.

Here is the Social Media survey which Mikko and I have put together and sent: https://lomake.tamk.fi/v3/lomakkeet/2543/lomake.html. So if you haven't filled it out yet.. please do so!

Adesoji and myself visited today the Ramtec factory in Lahti. Soji got a complete info package to start a preliminary market survey in Africa.

We have now got a positive reply to our inquiry for a partner School in Africa. The research phase -coordinated by Saara, Tiina and Julia- will begin after holidays. Whom ever is interested in a project like this may join the team.

Some potential clients have challenged TCA to find ways to make commercial use of social media. One excellent example is Stella's fashion blog that became the most popular in Finland. She sold it to a womens' magazine thatnow cashes from the ads and Stella writes the stories. I know Stella and we can interview her if needed. Blog of Stella Harasek..

The "new" projects main page is finally up on the TCA website! Remember to send me information regarding your project so I can upload it onto it's profile page. The more the better (photos, websites, documents, etc)!

Heini and Anniina have succeeded in getting a huge response to the survey questionnaire and now have begun to analyze the answers. We aim to organize a seminar to introduce the results at the end of April.

Kristin and Mikko had today an extremely interesting meeting with one of our core advertising agencies, Adsek. The brainstorming was about social media where both Kristin and Mikko are our specialists. Our suggestion was to start with the mapping of the current practices on this field. The famous Open Source research of Osterloh-Rota may be a good start: http://www.crema-research.ch/papers/2005-11.pdf

Entrepreneur Seminar in Tallinn: we participated a two day brainstorming to improve the Tampere region business. We were among a delegation of 100 people. Jopi was active in work groups and Mikko held an interesting presentation about social media.

The last planning phase for the "Poland - Gateway to Europe" begins. The team in charge, Judyta, Jonna and Karolina will meet at the Chamber of Commerce by tomorrow to finalize the program and the practical arrangements.

Kristin has made a terrific work with our TCA pages! Some minor parts are still under construction but you all can use the site as a reference for our work.

Next week Thursday, the 11th a Namibian Polytechnic delegation will visit us at TCA. We'll introduce them our preliminary thoughts for a partnership banking activity.

Thanks to Mauri we finally got permission and access to post the new TCA website! The v1.0 will be up hopefully today and will be worked on continuously everday to make it even better! :) *Remember* if you have any documents, websites, photos you would like to add to your project's profile, please send them to my school email.. preferably the sooner the better (unless you have an on going project of course).

If any of you are interested in this potential project, you get the basics by watching this 10 min introduction. We can then discuss it tomorrow during our usual TCA meeting. Here is the link: http://nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=146&view=4

The new website is just about complete and will hopefully be up by the end of the week for viewers to see! The only things I have left to do are finish the individual project portfolios (which I'm missing a few group's still *hint hint*), news updates and also a new photo page called "Sneak Peeks".. Should be interesting!

The barrel of bamboo tar arrived finally from Shenzhen, China last week and Jussi got the samples for the chemistry lab. The tests will be a fierce fight against time because the lab will be closed from mid-March because the merger with PIRAMK causes a move to the lab. However, the battle has now started. Fanny and Tiina are in charge!

We now have an interesting contact to Namibia. It's a similar TCA of a local Polytechnic. They would be keen to start a joint project with us.

In addition to Mr. Kot, the counselor of the Polish Embassy, Jonna has succeeded to get an additional four high class speakers to our "Poland - Gateway to Europe" seminar which is to be held on March, 16th. The Chamber of Commerce will invite the seminar guests and take care of the advertising and press releases.

I'm basically done with the new website.. I'll be handing out sheets to each TCA member on Tuesday to gain more insight on them as an individual.. as well as projects sheets. So be prepared. Lastly, a few more pictures need to be taken.. See you then!

On Monday I'll meet with the whole Ensimetri staff. The aim is to brainstorm ideas on how our TCA could help fresh startups. Whoever is interested in entrepreneurship could consider Ensimetri as the next project. Please let me know whoever has interest in this!

As we know, the first try usually goes on the rocks! We ordered bamboo extract from China to produce shampoo. But, instead of the base substance we got ready made shampoo. The producer promised to replace the delivery a.s.a.p.

We have an idea to redesign the TCA web pages, so that every member has an individual project portfolio. The idea is to advertise TCA and provide the members with valuable stuff for their future CV's. Kristin has already begun to collect material.

We have a highly interesting program in Tallinn with Fanny and Jopi. The first stop February the 8th is at Patent Administration in Helsinki where we'll hear the latest economical forecast from Mr. Sixten Korkman the head of ETLA, Economic Research Institute of Finland.

Glaston, an international glass machine manufacturer in Tampere is offering several internships and thesis projects for our students. Thus, if you or any of your friends are interested in an internship in Tampere, have a look on the openings in Moodle "News".

We're back from a very eventful and productive week in London; be ready to hear lots about it and hopefully gain some knowledge which you too can apply to your projects.

Mikko and I were thinking that we would have the presentation next week, regarding the Catella project. On what we have learned etc..

The project is 80% done, but we have a good overall view about the whole project and basically we have reached the goals we set for the project. The whole project will be finished completely by 16.12. We suspect that major occurrences will not happen with the last companies we are about to call. If you think that we should have the presentation on 16.12, it is possible.

Ms. Elina Aro of Estonian Tourism project contacted us and told that the project will continue in January. She will even provide us with a 1000 EUR travel chest to cover the expense of joining a meeting there.

The Bamboo R&D team (Fanny and Tiina) has been in touch with a supplier of high quality bamboo extract in Zhejiang, a sleepy village about 160 km from Shanghai and 1000 km from Canton. The samples arrive on 22 December.

The "Poland - Gateway to Europe" - team (Karolina, Jonna, Judyta) has got the first speakers to the February 23 seminar: Besides the Counselor of the Embassy Mr. Kot, the Head of the Internationalization Dept. of TE-keskus, Mr. Ala-Korpi and Chairman of SWOT Consulting, Mr. Sjöholm will attend. Read more: http://www.swotconsulting.fi/

We managed to arrange an interview with Mr. Pekka Järvinen, the leading specialist in organizational training in Finland. We trust this will be very helpful as we now begin to design a survey and training package for the Women Entrepreneurs. Mr. Järvinen happened to have one free hour in his calendar for Thursday. The next space is in January.

Our BBA in Business program won the national "Top Quality Unit 2010-2012" award! Our teaching methods, TCA and other hands-on concepts granted us this rare prize. Besides some money, the Department of Business gets a lot of honor throughout the whole university field in Finland. We all have reason to be proud of ourselves!

Hello everyone! Here is some latest news about the London trip.

• We met Janne Hopeela today to discuss the budget. He thought it looked very good and reasonable and agreed with it.
• I'm going to write the report about the London trip. I will take notes during the trip and then write a document for Mauri and the rest of TCA to see. Maybe a powerpoint presentation as well?
• Julia is going to continue taking care of the financial things: taking care of receipts and other documents and then informing back to Janne.
• Janne told us that there is a blog for international studies, and he was hoping that someone could do a small story about the trip with a few pictures included. This task is going to be done by Kristin.

Anniina and Heini are currently trying to find a strategic partner for LuonnonHyvä and Caressa. Today they had a meeting with The Association of Women Entrepreneurs in Tampere. As a result TCA can make an electronic survey among the members aiming to find out their training needs. Then, a training package will be designed to meet the expectations.

Hi all of you!!! Saara, Kristin and I are/will be adding some book reviews to the Amazon book review discussion and we hope that you all will give some constructive criticism. These reviews will be published on Amazon for the Krem Trekker Diaries project- so they should be GOOD. Thanks!

We had a meeting at the Chamber of Commerce with Karolina and Judyta. Obviously, we made a good impression and they promised to start to plan an "Invest in Poland" seminar with us!

I have just updated our "discussion" on the KTD on the forum. Check it out!

We received school funding for a research trip to London for Julia, Kristin and Saara (aka Team Krem Trekker). The aim is to meet with our web-design partner and return home full of new ideas and solutions of how to promote our projects over the Internet. The participation requires a lot of homework before the trip and we'll hear in the next weeks TCA meeting what the team is planning.

Fanny and Tiina volunteered to the Greenstone Inc. cosmetics project. We already had a preliminary meeting and will tell more on Wednesday in TCA. The school's chemistry lab is involved as well and we'll see the lab supervisor on Friday.

We might be given a very interesting new project. Greenstone Inc. is a Finnish company that imports natural textiles made of bamboo for day spas and special shops. Now, the company aims to expand the business to body care products. They intend to make use of the bamboo basics substance (tar) to produce cosmetic substances, such as shampoo, day cream, facial scrub and so on.

TCA needs 2 (two) members to take care of this project. An interest in cosmetics and cooperation with laboratories and beauty parlors will be a benefit. Make sure to contact me if you have any more questions.

I was in contact with Anna Lehtisalo, who was a TCA member, and is now in charge of business training at the Tampere Chamber of Commerce. She might be interested and willing to consider a project concerning the organization of a seminar about Poland with us (and the Polish embassy). We can meet with Anna at the Chamber of Commerce and discuss more about this project.

The Employment and Economic Development Centre (TE-keskus) has asked if TCA is interested to help SME's on making business openings to Central Europe, i.e. Poland and Germany.

I have been in contact with Dr. Olli Niemi, who was for several years been in charge for Hermia and now manages NCC Business Park. He agreed to meet with the Vuores team to give advice about business space promotion and how to find superior clients.

After today?s meeting with Mauri, Jonna, Judyta and I, have decided the aim of our project. Since more and more companies are investing in Poland, we would like to help them by offering the marketing services of possible investments. At the moment, we?re trying to find proper governmental intuit...ions or other authorities that we could cooperate with.

The project is pretty big and we will definitely need a few months to complete it. Here?s the link with article telling about the investment climate in Poland at the moment: http://www.spcc.pl/strona.aspx?id=3257,368,372,1 . As we can see, some attempts have already been made if the Scandinavian-Polish Chamber of Commerce was created.

Heini, Mikko and I met with the project director, Mr. Pertti Tamminen of the Vuores project. He'll prepare a complete documentation about the project for us until next week. I'll pick it up and we can discuss about it in our first TCA meeting on Wed. 21st. Our aim will be to brainstorm of how to help the city to create a living mix of people, companies and services to Vuores.

Mikko and Jopi are the coordinators of this project. As soon as they find out what is Catella's support and input, they'll work out a plan and show it to us in our first meeting at TCA Wednesday, the 21st at 13:15 in Room B5-30.

Heini and Anniina coordinate this project. The next steps are a) to meet with LuonnonHyvä, too, and find out if these two companies could work together (because for us the business ideas are very close), b) to find out what they already have done and get names of references if possible and c) try to work out with them what is their "unique selling proposals", i.e. what differentiates them from the competitors?p>

Meanwhile I try to think if we could find a representative partner to this project. Then we'll work out a plan and present it to the client(s).

If Karolina (and Judyta) are still interested to start a project to help Tampere region SME's (small and medium-sized enterprises) to get a start in Poland, I'll suggest that we try to get Chamber of Commerce involved in project. A former TCA member, Anna, is the Corporate Training Manager there. I'm sure she'l...l give a helping hand to us. As a next step Karolina could consider where we could get help on the Polish side. Is there a Chamber of commerce in Gdansk-Gdynia area, a government agency to help foreign investors, etc.?

See: Tampere Chamber of Commerce

The Krem Trekker project has so far (more than 3 years) employed a web design studio in Helsinki, Kulomaa. However, they have been lagging more and more technically behind and we just switched to a London-based agency, Vinternet Solutions Ltd. that is situated only 15 minutes of Stanstead... airport where Ryanair flies from Tampere. The Vinternet logo (looking like a martian green creature) is below.

Vinternet made us today a PayPal and a credit card payment system at www.kremtrekker.net and is now prepared to suggest us a Google-advertising concept. Whoever is interested in this project can count on visiting the agency in London. Look: Krem Trekker Diaries

This is just a test post to see if the news section is working properly. :)