New SIMHE Intern Bhavani attended the Nordic Business Forum. This is her report from the event.

Jyväskylä Hosts Live Streaming of Nordic Business Forum: A student perspective

New SIMHE Intern Bhavani attended the Nordic Business Forum. This is her report from the event.

This year again Jyväskylä proudly hosted the live streaming of the Nordic Business Forum 2016 while the live event happened in Helsinki and here locally at the Jyväskylän Paviljonki. This is the place where the story of Nordic Business Forum began in 2010 and where the seminar was held until 2013.

As a student of the university one can avail the opportunity of attending this event and networking with the companies and representatives from key local organizations who attend it. This is supported and organized by the career services unit of the University of Jyväskylä. This year too there was an interesting mix of students from International Business and Marketing, Education and Media and Communication Sciences students. The event hosted an international lounge where the students from different countries present themselves and their eagerness to participate and network with the local companies and organizations. It is also an opportunity to meet the business and marketing students from JAMK Institute of Applied Sciences. The theme for this year was culture and it was apt to present the international students who come from varied parts of the globe and are an active part of the Jyväskylä community.

As a student of educational leadership and also wanting to create meaningful education for children in the world, this event does draw my interest and respect in many ways. Firstly, because it was started by two students from Jyväskylä where I study currently and secondly because they display explicit courage in bringing the best of the speakers even if they are controversial in their thoughts and ideas. Here’s an event with a range of ideas, approaches and perspectives to achieve a dream, though for many in the audience it might be a business idea.

Far from the thought that education is a business, which it is not, a peek in to the world of advertising, marketing and debates around selling interest me primarily because it is about reaching people with a message, conveying an idea, building awareness on a scaffolding of trust. All of which is also true to any business man or marketeer as true as it is for me as an educationist.

As a speaker at this year’s forum, in Seth Godin’s words, one of the biggest issues among marketers is the sense of urgency. It should be about patiently building an asset, giving attention to how people view and understand the world and being authentic. In authenticity lies consistency and this is something people look out for.

For more from him: https://www.nbforum.com/newsroom/videos/seth-godin-on-marketing-storytelling-attention-and-the-future-of-work/

The event highlighted some interesting debates on relevance of advertising through newspapers and television and if they really are dead media in today’s world of e-commerce and digitization. This and more was discussed in an engaging session with Frida Boisen and Pia Kalsta heads of the leading media companies from the Nordic zone who presented very different views on the topic.

In yet another session by Amy Chua a professor at Yale Law School and the author of the book Battle Hymns of the Tiger Mother, interestingly shares a book on parenting at this year’s NBF. It is a book about bringing up a happy, strong and self-reliant child and how we learn lessons on these from many different cultures. She writes this based on her own experiences brought up as child to Chinese immigrant parents in the U.S and in bringing up her own two daughters.

The event to me is about successful people speaking about their many attempts to creating something new, learning from failure, how their allowed their own potential and strength to unfold, about the core of being human and how each one of us has the potential to make things better and far more than we can ever realize. Incidentally this is also the summary of Seth Godin’s book: Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.

Next year, no more live streaming but at the live event for the theme is responsibility, purpose and leadership!

NBF website: https://www.nbforum.com/
Upcoming event in 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kpEiuo6mm0