Jyväskylä Game Day

Jyväskylä Game Day banner ad with 3 main speakers.

Developers in Jyväskylä are clearly not superstitious, organizing their Jyväskylä Game Day - event on Friday the 13th. Despite the ominous date, the event ran smoothly and spirit of the event was very positive.

The event was arranged by EXPA cooperative (a Jyväskylä game industry hub) together with University of Jyväskylä, which has recently added more game-specific study programs into its curriculum. It took place at the university campus, with a big lecture hall reserved for the presentations, accompanied by a spacious entry hall full of stands by local companies presenting themselves and their products.

The three featured speakers were myself, Juhani Honkala, VP of Technology from Rovio and Harri Myllylä, CEO of Star Arcade, which is the biggest of the local companies.  Harri had plenty of interesting (and sometimes funny) stories to tell of their start-up journey, Juhani described his personal path from University of Jyväskylä to Korea, then back to Finland and finally landing at Rovio, with plenty of learnings to draw from his experiences. I was asked to speak about how Jyväskylä could grow into one of Finland's most important game development hubs.

I also met some people from JAMK, Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences, who also have game-specific courses in their curriculum as well as interesting IT start-ups that are not working on games directly, but which are trying to include gamification elements in their apps.

Event was a success for the local scene and it even made nationwide TV news  in Finland (in Finnish only). Watch the first 3 minutes. 

My turn to talk.