Aalto on Tracks is taking around 100 people from the Aalto University community with a private train from Helsinki to Shanghai World Expo, China, on May 2010. That's over 10 000 kilometers and a week on tracks!
Our goals are to take Aalto University, Finland and Finnish education to the world. We want to unite Aalto people and create an unforgettable learning experience for around a hundred Aalto people and guests.
Follow us on the map and via Talky!
One of the aspects of the train trip that participants weren’t expecting was that we would lose an hour every day as we changed time zones. The time that doesn’t exist on the train is 8:30 – 9:30pm, right after we are done eating dinner. This was quite troubling for me, because I quite like 8:30 – 9:30pm, it is a time to be social, relax, and start having fun. But going straight to 9:30 after lunch makes us robbed of one of the most important parts of the day. For instance, there would have been a possibility for me to get into a deep conversation with another one of the participants at 8:47pm, which might not be possible at 9:47pm. Moreover, when we are all having a good time, it gets later much quicker.
However, there is a solution to this problem. We just need to be innovative and creative with the time. Nothing about this trip has conformed to societal norms (seriously, what group of students rent a train from Helsinki to Shanghai) so we decided that we will make up our own Aalto on Tracks time zone, and 8:30 – 9:30pm will play a central role in the Aalto on Track time zone. In fact, at our sitsit party tonight, we will be commemorating 8:30 – 9:30pm with a song or two. We may even decide that is should be 8:30 – 9:30pm for the rest of the night. If we can develop ideas about how society should work better, why not develop ideas that make time better too?
- Colum Grove-White
Our TEDxAaltoUniversityOnTracks was a huge success. Almost one hundred inspired people gathered into a conference car of the Trans-Siberian express to share and listen to ideas worth spreading. Five of us had a very unique opportunity to share our ideas:
- Markus Heimonen: Perceptions from nature
- Jukka Liukkonen: Editing, resampling, redoing future human body
- Senja Svahn: Innovation networks – How to actively facilitate innovations
- Heikki Hirvonen: Organizational Philosophy – Key factor to maintain success
- Markus Grönholm: Terahertz Imagin – Mankind’s new eyeballs
Speeches will be available in YouTube as soon as possible probably after we are back in Finland. We also watched three TED Videos:
- TED Video: Thomas Dolby: “Love Is a Loaded Pistol”
- TED Video: Rod Savage: Why I am rowing across the Pacific
- TED Video: Tom Vujec: Build a tower, build a team
Stay tuned, we’ll be posting people’s feelings and comments very soon!
- Olli
Short stop somewhere. Reino shoes rock!
Second day and lot of work done on the private train!
The day was started with breakfast 8 am. Our cruise mother Saara and Santeri hosted the morning meeting for everybody in conference car. Together with Riikka they form the trio to keep people informed about the program during lunch and dinner. We went quickly through the program of the week and upcoming activities.
Aalto University communications workshopping.
In afternoon, Kalevi started with Design Emotions workshop. Idea was to design a product (by drawing or making a prototype) based on certain criterias. For example, we had a task with Saara to design a shoe shiner machine with two attributes: 1) made for women 2) environment friendly. You can see the result here. Amazingly creative and outside of the box workshop.
Also the eReader case was started by Miikka and Ville. Workshop arrangers have four different kind of eReader devices on board which people can lend and test.
Heikki started project management case by introducing the material to read beforehand. After reading people are discussing differencies between Western and Chinese in project management. The case also includes an excursion in Shanghai hosted by Chinese expo organizers.
On late afternoon we thanked the train captain Viktor and other personnel for the great service and help. On our behalf, we now also hope to get some understanding for the sitsi party we are going to have tomorrow.
The last official program was TEDx hosted by Olli Laine, Juhani Polkko and rest of the team. The presentations were amazing! It was very mind-opening to hear presentations from Travelling to Body modifications and Terahertz devices.
Phew, this was just grasp of the program today. In addition to these sport activities fox example have been quite popular. There has been circuit training, yoga and diabolo training for example. It’s difficult to keep track of every program.
After dinner late evening there was random free time activities like band playing and singing + unofficial farewell party of Kalevi (he is already leaving in Novosibirsk).
So far this trip has been the most awesome one ever, and it keeps getting better and better, as we are continuously improving, decorating and tweaking the traing. One thing we are missing is proper internet connection and all the social services online. To compensate that, we have started to build the essential parts of the Internet inside the train, such as The Facewall.
At the eastern part of the train, there’s one car with a wall covered with profile pictures of everyone. The idea is, that people can use post-it’s to update their statuses, comment on others and so on. It’s a great way to share feelings and express oneself: coming up with new features and ways to use it is strongly encouraged.
One emerging phenomenon has been fan- and group pages, which are sheets of paper attached on the wall, where users can then join with good old post-it’s. For example our wonderful train personnel already has almost ten fans and there’s a group for those who hate the fact that they’re not allowed to use toilets during the stops.
The usage is already quite active and I’m eagerly waiting to see, what it’s going to be like after two more days. We might have to expand the capacity by opening a second wall on another car, if the growth keeps at the same pace.
Now we’re just waiting for an acquisition offer from the Facebook-people. 
Apparently you can do quite a lot with just pieces of paper, post-it’s and a group of crazy people.
Cheers,
Lauri
With the train full of innovators, geeks and communication enthusiasts, there’s nowhere to hide – not even in Siberia.
The environment is pretty hostile, as our external communications rely on GSM/EDGE/3G network and we don’t have a satellite phone with us. The data network coverage is good enough only within the cities and the data costs are quite high, so constant IRC-chatting(*), Facebooking or Twittering are not viable options.
If you like, you can find our position on a map though a stand-alone GPS transponder. That’s basically a small, orange box taped on a window facing south. It receives our location and sends it back through a communications satellite, and the locations are then plotted on Google Maps.
We also use a new “voice microblogging” service called Talky, which allows us to post short messages on the website with a phone call – it doesn’t require data network. Talky helps us to be more connected, but still requires us to have GSM connection, which is not available everywhere along the tracks, although a satellite phone would solve that as well. However, using Talky is a fun experiment, and everyone in the world can actually hear voices from the train in real time (good and bad).
You can find both the location map and the latest Talkys at www.aaltoontracks.com/talky
- Juhani
(*) We actually are using IRC on the train, it’s just not connected to a server…
17.5.2010 Somewhere in between Barabinsk and Novosibirsk
Yesterday we started with the Espoo case study. Approximately 30 people were developing ideas about the service concepts and the online services of the city of Espoo as well as discussing how to improve the city’s employer image in the eyes of students and young professionals. Several ideas popped up during the case workshop. How about if Espoo had an online service for group commuting? “Kimppakyyti” could ease traffic jams as well as make the city greener.
Another idea was that Espoo would announce a competition where anyone could suggest their dream job in the city’s employment. The winner would of course win this unique and personalized job opportunity!
These were just a few of the thoughts from the first workshop and tomorrow we will meet up again and continue the fruitful discussions.
- Ylva
There has already been two Aalto communications workshops – with the third one coming up tomorrow. The focus has been on how to develop communications related to studies and how to make students feel part of the Aalto community.
In the first workshop we discussed about contents and channels of current student communications and how they could be developed. Creating a student service where Oodi and Noppa could be in one was proposed as well as a better tool for planning studies. In the second workshop we developed creative ideas about “what is your dream-come-true way of getting and sharing information about/with the Aalto community. Social media had a strong role in these wonderful sketches.
Ideas collected on Tracks will be used back home to develop student communications and the new student intranet. If you wish to comment on these issues, please write an email to hanna.p.korhonen@aaltouniversity.fi.
- Hanna
Privjet! The Act On Tracks session was an improvisational theatre lesson. We started last night (Sunday) in the restaurant car. The first games and plays were all about listening to each other, pushing ourselves to let go of norms, and letting our imaginations flow as freely as possible. I directed the session, but really, the participants did all the hard work. After all, it is the actors who make the stories spring to life! The duration of the session was 90 minutes, and we had 8 actors performing. People found the action fun, and requested for more lessons afterwards. Unfortunately, we haven’t got much space in the train, so no extraordinary parkour moves could be integrated into the play. The group was pleasingly small, and we had the most fun with the basics of improv acting. We saw three scenes, multiple games, and loads of funny and great situation comedy. The Improv is powered by the imagination of the human mind, thus, we visited places like the Himalayas, Stockholm City, old folks home, blueberry fields of Siberia, and much more during the session without leaving the train. The most unforgettable rule was: to say ‘yes’ to everything that others propose. It is always interesting to see how some situations that never can happen in real life, jump to life when there is no option to opt out or say no.
Cheers!
sincerely yours, Erkka
Moscow is now back from us! We hopped into our private train in Kazan train station.
We got the train!
Placement for the people was already done beforehand and we could just put our stuff in to cabins and have first lunch 2 pm. The food on the train is very delicious. There is two starters, main course, desert and tea served every time on lunch and dinner.
We had first meeting with the train staff and restaurant car personnel in the beginning of the trip.
The staff were very polite and helpful. It is somehow very suprising to get smile and helpful hand always when you were setting up something. I mean, this is not very normal in Russia. You can also be pretty relaxed as there is no scare of getting things stolen.
After lunch, first program was the introduction to each other – get to know moment. We have photobook printed out of every participant for everybody. We also set up “manual Facebook” on the train – participants’ photos are printed on the wall of one corridor and you can post a comment by adding a post-it paper under them!
Morning meetings and some of the workshops are organized in the conference car.
Atso and Hanna from the publication and communication team also instructed people to start working on the articles and preparations for the magazine.
During the evening Markus and Oona kick-started Aalto University Campus workshop – There was preparations and planning material presented to participants of the current state of campus work in the university. Task was to sketch solution for the map, scenery and basic arguments for Aalto campus. Winning team will be chosen on Wednesday by voting after they have presented their solutions. Material will be provided to Aalto University directors and the winning team present their solution to Aalto University vice-rector Jorma Kyyrä, who is in responsible for infrastructure of the university.
Kalevi is preparing Design Emotions workshop for tomorrow.
The clock is around 23:00 at the moment of writing this blog entry. Around half of the people are watching Russian movie Admiral in the conference car and some smaller group is playing banjo drums, guitar and singing Mamba in the cabin next to me. There is different kind of program going on when you just walk by the cabins and have a look inside.
It’s good to have some sleep now to be able to wake before 8 am! Because the train is moving all the time through Russian time zones, there is only 23 hours in a day!
PS. Also have a look at our Voice blogs from the trip through Talky.se service and photos from Flickr.
- Mikko
Strastuits! We’ve arrived to Moscow 8:25 local time!
The trip was quite an experience already. Tight 4-person cabins in the Tolstoy train made it feel like we were in Russia all the time even though half the route was in Finland. We are having around 4 hour stop in Moscow now, people go to eat lunch and have some snacks and drinks to the next part of the journey.
On 12:50 our private train departs from Kazan station. There are 4 sleeping cars, a conference car, restaurant car, shower car and personnel car in our private train. The next longer stop is in Ulan Bator, the capital city of Mongolia.
So it’s 5 days in a row on the train now, and the activities are really starting. We have lots of company and university workshops and activities organized during our journey in Siberia.
- Mikko
