The origin of #YOLOSWAG and the first assignment

So where does the name #YOLOULUSWAG come from?

We came up with the name after a few of sleepless nights pondering upon a catchy name for our team. We ended up with #YOLOULUSWAG not only because it’s awesome and catchy, but because it truly describes us as a team. Not only are we true believers of the YOLO chant, we also have quite a lot of swag. We wanted to incorporate our location into the name as well, hence the OULU in the middle of the name. The hash tag is there for additional sex appeal.

There it is. Catchy, right?

The other option was Lazer Focus...

Now that we have explained our awesome name, it’s time to move on to actual business. Firstly, on 10th of september we all got our confirmations of being accepted to the programme. We were all excited to hear that our first webinar, the pre-kick off webinar would be held the next day! We all tuned in on 11th of september for the first webinar. It was a new experience for all of us as we hadn’t ever been in a video conference with hundreds of other students from all over Europe. The pre-kick off went well, and we all enjoyed the webinar and the enthusiasm it sprung in us.

Playing mobile games..

The kick-off itself was on 18th of september. It was attended by almost all of the Demola Oulu students. Unfortunately due to work, our team’s Janne could not make it. As it was still kick-off, we hadn’t formed our teams yet. We, who attended the kick off, enjoyed it very much. The Oulu teams all shared quite interesting ideas and thoughts, which was probably the most lubricative part of the whole kick off. We got to meet and know each other a little bit better, and discuss possible ideas. The feedback and thoughts spun from this session was immeasurable and helped us immensely when doing our first assignment.  We had snacks and drinks offered by the Demola, and according to Antti he holds the proud title of drinking the most beer on that night.

Musing on better ideas

After that we were to form teams. As we were all still starting up on this project, we didn’t quite realize how fast those teams were to be formed. Our first assignment was due on monday, which left very few days to decide on a team and work out ideas. Janne was the only one out of our team, who reacted quickly enough and send his recommendations for a team to our Demola facilitator. Jasmin was first assigned to another group, which fell to pieces. After deciding to form the team we are now, we had only two days to ideate (yes it IS a verb) and birth the awesome ideas we had in our head. It was a tight fit, but we made it. The best ideas we had were formed in a “free-dialogue” meeting where we discussed the everyday problems and what problems we hoped would be solved and to what extend. The utilization of the validation board and how the problem hypothesis is formed was quite unclear to us, as we had never done anything similar before.

Janne, the God behind establishing our blog

On Monday, we all met by coincidence in the library and sat down for a talk. We discussed our ideas, and the trouble in getting our ideas from our head to paper. Also Jasmin and Janne met for the first time, as previously we had interacted through skype and whatsapp only. We also discussed the upcoming reflection meeting and the webinar 2.

First post: What is #YOLOULUSWAG??

Sanoma Accelerator

Kick-Off

The very first post - What the hell is #YOLOULUSWAG?

I bet you have no idea what this blog is about and what exactly is its purpose. All this started in autumn 2013 when three university students in Oulu joined in Demola. We all came across this project through the Demola stand in the university. Janne and Antti stopped, mesmerized by the cake that was offered as Demola Oulu celebrated its first birthday. Along with the cake, the boys were briefed about Demola’s function and the projects going on. Among them was the Sanoma Accelerator Programme, which had an application period going on. Janne had a special interest in this project as he had been working at Sanoma before. Jasmin on the other hand, did not stop to have a chat but kept the website in mind, and one evening logged on and applied to the programme as it seemed quite interesting. 

We had the idea of creating a blog, as a diary to document our road in this programme. We wanted to shed some light on this programme, share our experience and its functions as well as gain some publicity for our ideas:) We also wanted to share the experience of innovating as students for those interested in innovating through students. The blog became a concrete idea in the first innovation meeting. This blog will be written by the three of us and hopefully will inspire you to try Demola projects in future and find out what you're capable of in sense of innovation and lean start-ups.

So who are behind #YOLOULUSWAG? Myself and Janne have known each other for about 4 years now, since Janne drove me home from some 50's theme party on my freshman year. After getting to know each other we found out that we both study marketing at Oulu Business School. I met Jasmin for the first time in demola's pre-kick-off event, and later on she joined our team. Jasmin is studying environmental engineering and minoring in finance. We all have some similar interests, such as playing video games, reading interesting books, and eating chips with sweet chili dips.