Hi, I’m Tiia and I just started an internship at FinnAgora. I am a cultural production student from a Finnish University of Applied Sciences HUMAK and I’m finishing my studies working for FinnAgora. I’m more than grateful that I found FinnAgora and decided to approach the team with my plan. Event industry has been struggling a lot this year and finding an organization that would be a good fit for me at these times was definitely not guaranteed.
In addition to the internship, I am working on my thesis about FinnAgora’s events. The goal of my thesis is to help the staff to organize their events even more efficiently in the future. I’m going to create a guidebook that includes reminder lists of things that should be taken care of, routines on how each event has usually been planned and just general information about the events – all in one place. Why I chose this as a topic is simple: like in most organizations, people in projects change and all the information is usually scattered in different files and folders. Worst case scenario is that the important information is only in someone else’s head. This kind of silent information is hard to find and use, so it is extremely important to document different phases of the project on the way. To develop events better and better the process of organizing should be made as smooth as possible, and that is what I’m trying to do with my thesis. If you don’t have to spend a lot of time looking for a small piece of information or the procedure for how something was handled before you can focus on making the event the best it has ever been.
During the pandemic a lot of events have had to be cancelled or transformed into online events. This year has given us a great chance to explore new ways to organize events and participate in them. Some things that I’m including in my thesis is what has been proved working already and what are still the challenges in online events. How to include your audience and make the event interactive, what are the technical limitations and how to make the event interesting enough are themes that need to be studied more.
So now I’ve started my internship and will be working with the team until the end of February. I get to be a part of organizing the 10th Finn FilmNapok which gives me insights on that specific event. After the internship period I will continue working on my thesis and become a graduated cultural producer.
Written by
Tiia Heikkilä