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I have to say, looking back at the previous two years of my career, that I’ve been incredibly privileged to have been able to work on the ventures I’ve worked on. I co-founded Gyllene Skor with some very talented and awarded people from the digital marketing industry back in September 2007. Around that time I also founded ArcticStartup and it has grown to become the most followed startup media site in Northern Europe. Needless to say, this couldn’t have been done with the great team of enthusiasts and determined professionals we have on board. Thank you Ville, Miikka, Karri, Paula and Päivi for your efforts.

I’ve also had some wonderful changes in my personal life as well. I’ve met the love of my life, Noora, and fallen deeply for her. We moved in after few months of dating and things have gone perfectly ever since. However, as I spent my summer holidays with her, I realised that there are more important issues in life than simply work (yes, even I think so). Those that have known me for longer know that I’ve been working relatively hard, to say the least, for the loves of my career life – Gyllene Skor and ArcticStartup. 12- or 14-hour days weren’t much of an exception, taking weekends off from work were. With these changes in my life at hand, I’ve decided to put aside more time for Noora, myself and the people around me.

I’ve had to do some serious thinking over my summer holidays to come to a solution regarding this dilemma. The solution was not an easy one, but it does achieve my goal. A few weeks ago, I resigned from Gyllene Skor. The task of letting go of a company you’ve helped to build and create what it is today – is an incredibly tough one.

As of October 1st, I’ll start working full time on ArcticStartup.

Before finishing though, I’d like to thank all the talented people at Gyllene Skor and my clients for making the ride a very enjoyable one. Things weren’t always easy, but I have nothing but good memories of my time there. I’m sure the company has a great future ahead.

I’ll be posting more of my thoughts on ArcticStartup and its plans in the near future, stay tuned.

Andrew Dubber has an excellent blog post on the state of EMI, the record label, and on the departure of their latest top executive Douglas Merrill. Douglas Merrill used to be the CIO of Google, then the Head of Digital for EMI. Andrew has gotten his hands on the internal letter of EMI through the All Things Digital website and analyzes the restructuring in the company – which I have to agree fully with, it is scary.

In short, EMI has done some restructuring in the company (it is not clear from the letter if it was before hands or after Merrill left the company, but I’m guessing its the latter). The person replacing Merrill, Cory Ondrejka, will be titled as the Executive Vice President of Digital Marketing. Even though in the start of the mail EMI CEO Elio Leoni-Sceti states very clearly that “with digital now comprising over 20 per cent of our revenues and growing fast, and with the progress we have made in integrating all of our digital operations fully into the business, we will no longer operate a standalone digital function”.

When you have that large a stake coming in from digital channels – it’s ludicrous to have the top position in the company in charge of that business area titled VP of Digital Marketing. How about someone take care of business development or are the models flawless? I feel very passionate about this topic (as you may have noticed), due to the fact that this is something very close to heart. When I launched the “Olen Rikollinen?” -campaign a few years back, our mission was to stop the government making short sighted laws that would not do anybody any good. Since then, if you look at the large music companies – more or less everyone is selling DRM-free music, something which we thought would be the dominating way to share files in the future (hence making the law unnecessary).

I hope the title does not serve the man’s position justice. I just cannot see anyone in as shaky industry as the music industry, only referring to marketing when they are perhaps facing the biggest issues in their corporate lifecycle. These are much larger issues and go extremely deep into the core business model – where is the value from their practice created for the end user?

This is something we think about on a daily basis at Gyllene Skor for our clients. This is also one of the reasons we are very careful not to talk of us as a digital marketing agency – there is so much more we do and corporations should look at, when they do business in the digital channels (and with the help of). Corporations should consider marketing as an enzyme – it speeds up what you’re set out to do in the first place. If your business model is not on the spot – you’re losing more money from daily business by increasing your marketing budget.

Photo by Darren Hester

I wrote a column for Talousel?§m?§, a finnish magazine read by thousands of people each week. In the column I argued that companies still do not realise the potential of the internet. They also lack understanding of the new medium and vision to see it as a viable place to do business. I will upload the story scanned tomorrow, but here is the column on their website. Feedback is always appreciated.

I wrote an article on social media to HETKY’s (Helsingin tietojenk?§sittely-yhdistys) magazine. The article in itself is quite light and doesn’t dig that much into the possibilities, but shines light on some possibilities and ways how companies have used internet in creating competitive advantage. The image is available in real size scan over here.

My friend and partner, Hannu Ripatti, has been writing a blog for sometime now, called Garbage is an analog concept. He has a lot of good entries there already, but I especially like the “Dinner in the cave“.

He writes about his blog (which I agree with 100%):

I believe that the ongoing digital revolution is going to be one of the landmark moments in history. It will not only change the way we do business and communicate. It will change every aspect of society from education to privacy and beyond. There will be many challenges, both technical and intellectual, but in the end I truly believe that we will all benefit from the revolution.