The only difference is that they do it out of nature and not for the badges/pins. Nevertheless, I think in all its lack of academic studies to back it up, is a great discovery :)

The question remains though, are there many other behavioral acts that us humans could build web services on? I’m sure there are, we just haven’t discovered them yet.

By the way, you can find me in Gowalla.

I’m in Jyväskylä in the snow rugby tournament, great day out. Buggered I can’t play though. Warriors doing well.

The weather’s treating us well today. The sun’s shining and the skies are blue. It seems we’re well on our way towards spring.

Dock workers are a crucial logistic bottle neck in many economies that rely on sea based transportation to export and import goods. If they stop working, nothing moves through our borders – in an industrial context. Therefore, they are the key to a nation’s wellbeing – in a sense. The situation now is that Finland’s dock workers are on strike, putting our whole country to a stand still.

To some, very little degree I understand the concept of being on strike. In my previous post I argued that it has been a major part of the wellbeing of our society as workers have been able to stand up and defend their rights to make working conditions civil. However, in today’s society I have very little understanding for being on strike – very little.

The current strike we’re experiencing isn’t only stirring up disgust in the society, but it’s damaging our slow economic recovery in a very harmful way. Helsingin Sanomat, in their online version, had a poll whether the right to be on strike should be limited – 50% of people supported this move and another 50% were against it. This clearly divides our society. In another poll by Ilta-Sanomat, 73% of the readers did not justify being on strike during recession and times of economic diffuculty. By no means are these polls academic or show any scientific relevance on any level, but I do believe they cast the voices of the public to some degree.

Many people relate the AKT strike to the Paper Union strike a few years back when they put the paper industry to a halt, causing millions of euros of lost revenues each day. The situation these days is that the paper union has lost thousands of jobs in Finland, partly or should I say mostly, due to those strikes. A two week strike easily wiped out the possibility to keep the year profitable which would have meant more investments and possibilities to survive in the future.

I’m guessing AKT is signing its contract to follow in the foot steps of the Paper Union. They will inevitably face the more extreme actions of the employers in keeping the industry profitable and somewhat running. This in essence will mean that the employer’s side of the table will begin to take every possible step to renew the labor force with more motivated workers. I’m not even going to go through the demands the union is on strike for, there simply cannot be any understanding for their actions – whatsoever.

Another interesting reaction to this strike has been the temporary shut down of the UPM Kymmene Rauma paper factory. They’re running very lean processes there and the factory lacks storage for its products, meaning everything they manufacture is immediately taken to the docks. Now that the docks are at stand still, the paper factory has been forced to shut down for the duration of the strike. UPM Kymmene has also stated that they have the right to stop paying wages to the workers after 7 days due to an external strike that has caused their business to halt. This, in the end will make those paper union workers dig into their union savings. A nasty outcome, that I somehow secretly enjoy watching.

My only recommendation is that someone in our government step up and start discussions on the right to strike. When a 3000 strong group is able to bring the country to a stand still and harm the economic wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of people – no one can understand a cause that would justify this. We need to begin to renew the way these negotiations are handled, our wellbeing cannot be harmed by any selfish group of people only looking to improve their own work conditions above others’ for a short period (because the markets will always right them in long term).

I have no understanding of whatsoever for the current AKT strike. Actually their strike disgusts me in how they show no respect for the wellbeing of our society.

Update @ 11.17pm on March 4th, 2010: Reminded by a friend, Finland is actually nearing the top position of lost workdays due to strikes in the EU. Two countries remain to be overtaken by the unions, they are Spain and Italy. There’s a well written post about strikes in Finland by Harri Nummila on the Statistics Finland website.

Furthermore, these statistics compare the amount of lost work days we endure in relation to other European countries.

PubSubHubbub is a new protocol, an extension built on Atom and RSS. The major difference is that instead of polling the source for updates, the source itself pings subscribers that there’s new content available. It’s one of the key technologies behind the realtime web of instant updates across services. That said, my update to this is more symbolic – supporting the movement.

You too can add compliance to your WordPress blog by installing the PuSHPress -plugin. Just install it, it does the rest.

Last month I gave an interview to Suomen Yrittäjät paper YrittäjäSanomat. I talk about the meaning of success and how I see it. I also touch on issues of politics as well as what we’re up to with ArcticStartup.

Please click on the picture to see a readable version of it.

I knew the Swedes were good in digital marketing but this was a bit too much. “How the hell do they know my name?”, I went around thinking.

It seems there’s no dynamic content in the video and she just keeps on saying that. Nevertheless, haven’t felt this impressed and scared in a while. Have a look for yourself.

Read his post to learn more.

I think I’ve mentioned it a few times before in my blog as well that I’m not a big fan of labor unions and bureaucracy when it comes to employment. However, in the last year or so when we’ve had a very difficult economic situation in our country (everywhere globally to be honest) we’ve also managed to see some of the most outrageous strikes or intentions of strike as well. I’m mainly talking about Finland, but unrest regarding employment probably has picked up else where as well.

To rational and reasonable people these two things don’t go well together. When the economy is facing tough times I’d be very happy to have a job and do a little extra just to keep it. However, labor unions in my opinion don’t really allow employees to make that choice.

The main reason I dislike unions is the self prophecy that they create. They have been created in the first place to defend workers’ rights and drive improvements in working conditions generally. These days, their functions have changed dramatically from that why they were first set up to be. When the original reasons of the unions have slowly diminished as countries have become more civilised, they have had to come up with more extreme reasons to justify their existence.

Becoming more extreme of course does not help any situation, whatever it may be. Secondly, these situations are usually in the manner of either/or rather than finding a solution half way. While I don’t want to sound extreme myself, I believe a lot of the stiffness of our economy is due to the labor unions and hence in bad times, many people indirectly suffer in the form of unemployment.

There seems to be a very deeply knit (false) truth somewhere in the Finnish society that workers and entrepreneurs have to watch out for their rights at all times as both parties are constantly trying to take advantage of each other. This couldn’t be more false. At least in the more creative industries, if you are good – nobody wants to let go of you. Companies try to hang on to their talent, ie. people, as hard as possible because they know they are the key to success.

In many of the more traditional industries employment is still, sadly, taken for granted. I believe that being able to work, while it is everyone’s right, has to be earned. Why? Companies don’t take their business for granted, they have to earn loyalty and trust from consumers to be able to charge for things they sell. This earning of trust and loyalty should be passed down to employees as well to some degree.

To conclude, I understand there are a lot of people that would criticise my view of life on this matter. All I can really offer to them is that there are always two ways to employ yourself, find someone to pay you salary or earn your own salary in the form of an entrepreneur. Nobody is stopping you from starting your own company and being your own boss.