The 4 workshops were as follows:

Join the Community - a discussion of community networking and social media by James Whatley

Join The Journey -  a discussion of geo-technologies and the effect of location on mobility by Glenn Letham (yours truly!)

Join the Fun - a look at mobility and gaming / entertainment by Ann  Toole

Join and Collaborate - a look at new media and mobile collaboration by CT Moore

Nokia OpenLab Videos - A Summary video from Helsinki

Indeed there's tons of images and video that came out of Helsinki at the recently held Nokia OpenLab... almost overwhelming since about 3 dozen attendees and the show planners were all generating content (live) while there. 

SlideShow from Helsinki Finland - Nokia OpenLab 08

 a slideshow of last week's images of Finland... (Images captured by Glenn Letham)



Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

 

So, What Exactly was OpenLab??

There were no correct answers, there were no stupid comments, there were no misfits, etc... there was simply a group of cool people sharing their stories and offering up insights from their own special corner of the social web or geo-social web as I like to call it! This might sound a bit abstract and you may wonder, what the heck was Glenn doing there and what is he talking about? Well, that's how Nokia (sponsor of the event, via their WomWorld extension) likes to roll, that's how they like to get a glimpse of future technologies and the role that the company's solutions will play as the mobile web expands it's reach. NokiaLab was described by some as one big mobile-social experiment!

Obviously, with me being the "Geo" guy, I was providing insight into my thoughts on the geo-social web and other location-aware solutions that users take advantage of to expand their networks and share their experiences. If anything, the event not only enabled us to brainstorm, but we also had a chance to take part in a very interesting social networking test where a group of 35 people were introduced to each other, provided with a mobile device (Nokia E71 in this case) and told to have at er... setting us free in Helsinki to collaborate, socialize and communicate via whatever means we could. At the end of the day, the group Wiki, Twitter, Jaiku, Flickr, Qik, and Ovi proved invaluable in bringing us closer together and enabled us to have a much different experience had these mobille technologies not existed. If this is all too much for you to think about at the moment (I know it's been a load for me as I try to recoup), I can relate... I'm still absorbing a ton of material and media. I have to say thanks to Peter Batty for planting a seed in my head last week and reminding me how combining future location location focused applications more with current location focused applications is where we are headed... I couldn't stop thinking about this and now couldn't agree more! I also couldn't help to wonder while we were there, how crucial the latest social networking tools were to us all to help us enjoy the event and communicate with each other... indeed if we could build on the geo-social web experience we could have benefited even more - there's opportunity a plenty in that space in my mind!

Thanks to the team in Helsinki (along with WOMWORLD and 100Heads) for getting us together and for sharing some media with us via Ovi Share... Nice Job! And a big thanks to my 3 dozen+ new friends who have greatly expanded my social network and given me much to think about regarding the Geo-Social Network and the possibilities that it brings to our lives.

And more videos from the adventure!

• Drinking in Helsinki (CT Moore)
• Workshop #1 (Whatleydude)
• Workshop #3 (Gypsybandito)
• OpenLab workshops on events page
• Environmental workshop - listen to the freaking crash 10 seconds in- wow!

...And the Entertainment during the week was fantastic!

For more about Nokia OpenLab see http://events.nokia.com/openlab/