Business Camp II – Murmansk, Russia (Dec 2014)

 After the successful Business Camp May 2014, "Young Innovative Entrepreneurs" project continued its cross-border cooperation with Business Camp II. The event was organized and taken place from 03/12 to 09/12/2014 in Murmansk, Russia.

With the participation of YIE members from Lapland University of Applied Sciences, InnoBarentsLab, Jo- Jo the dog films and Urbanid companies, we looked forward to having a productive week.

Thursday (04/12/2014) was full of meetings. Anzelika Krastina, the leader of InnoBarentsLab in Rovaniemi and MIBO partners Larisa Bilous, Elena Skiotis, Elena Zubrickaya had a discussion about planning future cooperation that resulted in signed cooperation agreement. Among few activities agreed for the future is organisation of a winter school also in the form of a business camp, creating joint publications and exchange of expertise through on-line or on-campus lectures.

Jo- Jo the dog films visited their Russian partners: Mr. Pink and Roxy. Joonas and his team planned to film “The 100 Hour Film Race 2014” in Murmansk and they were looking for great location as well as support from local film producers.

Zoltan and Duong had a meeting with IT- centre “Fu2rama” in the afternoon. It went well and promises cooperation in the future.

Next day, on Friday, we had a successful Innovation and InnoBarents – 3DLab training at MIBO. In total there were about 40 participants that were very excited and active during the training and SCAMPER workshop. All feedbacks were very positive from both Russian students as well as MIBO partners.

Later in the evening, we all participated in a networking event organized by Finnish Consulate General in Murmansk to celebrate Finnish Independence Day.

On Saturday, the filming crew continued its work on the film, while Anzelika has a meeting and presentation at Murmansk International Lyceum. Also Russian media was very interested to hear about the cooperation possibilities within the region and with Lapland UAS in the future.

After shooting, Sunday was a chance for me to see and have a better view about Murmansk as this is my first time visiting. The city is undoubtedly great! People here are pretty kind and friendly and I had an awesome enjoyable time with my new friends.

We continued working on Monday with a visit to Star Dome. It was exciting to watch 3D movies in “Dome” and see Mariya explaining sciences in simplest way. We had discussion and planned about future cooperation.

We left Murmansk that afternoon in order to attend Kolarctic final seminar next day in Rovaniemi while the filming group stayed for another day as planned.

I would definitely come back to this lovely city again. Спасибо! See you soon Murmansk! 

   

Text and photos: Duong Nguyen