The first weekend in Helsinki consisted pretty much of work and more work. I woke up on Saturday and headed straight to Appcademy right after I stopped by the Lidl market to get a case of beer and things for the grill. Saturday night was two of the Appcademy member’s birthdays and it was the Champions League Final match between Dortmund and Bayern.

I also had the goal of getting Game Day (I’m 99% sure we’re dropping the ‘Go’ at this point) to a point where I could follow the game in the app. What better test subject then a huge soccer match.

And it was a success! I was able to follow along the match-specific Twitter action. The Instagram photos were a litte slow in coming in though, so I need to figure out how to solve that. One thing I noticed was at least two other people were following the action via actual Twitter. So it of course got me thinking how to get the discussion moved from Twitter along to Game Day. Twitter will always be there, but it covers everything…when the event starts I want to have Game Day that place people go to. Give them the benefit and value of solving the problem of following sports as it happens live, either as a thing in itself if they can’t be at the game or watch it on TV, or as a companion to the game taking place. There’s definitely an opportunity here.

The soccer party was a blast and it turned into a semi-dance party after. One of the German teams made a cake for each of the members who was celebrating a birthday and a big pitcher of Pinga (brazilian liquor) and soda. They were playing mostly some sort of french gypsy dance music hybrid which sounded fine, but when I played The Knife it was all crickets…

AppCademy Soccer Party

Since I always work late, I’m always out late. By the time I get back to the town center pretty much all the restaurants are closed and the bars soon after. So while I’m having a quick beer or two before bed the rest of Finland is in crazy party mode. Its like there’s 2 Finlands: the day Finland where people think you’re crazy (or American) if you make eye contact and have a shy friendliness to them, and the night Finland where people are partying like its a college town.

Finland 3AM

Sunday I slept in a bit then spent most of the first part of the day walking around. The sad irony is that the day that I most want to relax and maybe sit down for a lunch or dinner is the same day pretty much everything is closed. I must have walked past three or four places on my list only to find them not open Sundays. Damn.

Rounded out the night getting the updated pitch and business plan ready for tomorrow.

I must say, this week has been much more intense and rewarding then I thought, and I thought it would be pretty intense and rewarding as it was. The ability to sit and focus on one specific thing, Game Day, along with being in an environment where everyone else is doing the same thing has been highly fortunate for me. I can’t believe just over a month ago I was going back and forth about my decision to come here. I can’t wait for next week, it feels like I’ve been here a month and rate at which Game Day’s identity and purpose has progressed so far over just five days is hard to believe.

Today’s focus was on design. Specifically how design should be approached and what your product’s identity needs to be. Was a really good continuation of the brand work we did the day before.

You hear about the concept of getting it out there and in front of people as soon as possible and distilling your core functionality to only one or two things, but its really, really easy to sway from that and drop your focus. You have no idea in the beginning how people are really going to use your app, especially one like Game Day Go (or Game Day…). Why give them eight features when they are probably only going to respond to one or two? Its so easy to kill yourself with the whole death by a thousand cuts / feature set scope spiral. Its hard to see it happening when you’re in the middle of it.

So the main takeaway was:

FOCUS ON THE MVP

When you look at what you’re building you have to constantly say ‘how does this add value to my core product?’. That’s been my internal mantra all day. Strip off everything that doesn’t really matter. I know I have it there in the designs of Game Day Go…I just have to find it. I have to simplify, then simplify more.

In the afternoon we created a set of mood boards. Basically we rummaged through magazines and had to figure out our primary customer then our secondary customers. Who do we want to market the product to? What are they like? What do they do for a living? Where do they live? What are their aspirations? I started pretty vague but as I started working more and more I figured it out. I’m going back and forth of two different user groups:

John – Male 34yrs old
Tech-savy
Attends a few games a year
Likes to follow and discuss games on Twitter
Likes to share about sports with his social circle
Most of his commentary is about the game.

But what I really want is the casual fan. I want to create an app that connects people with life events. Sure the main use of the app will be regional sporting events, but what about the Superbowl or the Kentucky Derby? How can I get millions of people opening up Game Day Go on the final match of the US Open and becoming fully engaged as a supplement to the live action? People who would never use an ESPN app or any other of the stats-heavy app around there. What if you stripped all that noise away and just offered connection? Would my wife and her friends use this? If so what kinds of things would they want in an app to supplement the experience of being part of something big like these things?

Game Day Go mood board

We closed the night off by heading to Startup Sauna to meet the participants there and have some pizza and beer. There again were good groups of people working hard on their idea. I can see how startup culture becomes addicting for people.

My suitcase arrived at 9am and it was like reuniting with a lost family member. I spent last night running around trying to buy clothes since I didn’t know at the time that they had found it. I pretty much had a shopping spree, just grabbing stuff since I was going to head back to Appcampus to keep working. Attention Travelers: Be sure to enroll in the Amex Preferred Baggage Program. Because it was (well) over 3 hours late I got up to $500 to buy replacement items. Lets just say I got pretty close to that in my swag grab.

Today we worked with Michiel Maandag of monday brand advisory. We went through concepts like our brand’s naming, positioning, and messaging. Michiel’s a lively, good-natured guy so was a good contrast to the pitch session mini boot camp the day before.

After mumbling to Michele that my brand was about ‘Experiencing Events’ and watching his eyes glaze over a light bulb went off. Sure it about experiencing events but what does that mean when you say that to someone? Its far too general. I needed more specifics to get the message through.

What I ended up with was something like this:

Proposition Live the game from your device
Benefit Real-time sporting event interaction with friends and other fans
Proof Points A game discussion feed to watch the event unfold as it occurs in real-time

That makes more sense I think. That’s what it does, we connect the user to other users and user’s friends to share in the Full Sporting Event Experience. Sure the same words I started are there but not in better context. It seems subtle typing this now but at the time it felt like a revelation.

Also I was running my app name by some people here, writing out ‘Game Day Go’ and one guy just abruptly said “too long, what’s the purpose of the Go at the end?”. And he. may. be. right. I couldn’t give him one immediately (red flag), so I’m really thinking hard about this. Why the ‘Go’. I always liked the call to action aspect of it and the way it rolls off the tongue but why not just Game Day. I’ll be kicking this around for a bit.

Ended up working really late, its very inspiring here by the way. Something about the combination of Finland’s extended daylight and the vibe of Appcademy and the energy from the others make you want to stay and work and work and work. Supremely motivating to see so many people so intent on getting one thing out the door.

Well after midnight I finally left but was still wired. So I walked around and poped into a cocktail bar I read about called Liberty or Death. They made me a fantastic Boulevardier and the bartender and I spent a fair amount of time talking about the NYC cocktail scene. His favorite was Death & Co. and he was so inspired by a drink from Clover Club that he’s using it as a starting point for his next menu. If its one thing I can bond with a person over (besides well-made coffee) its a perfect cocktail.

Boulevardier at Liberty or Death

Today was the first day of AppCampus. Once thing I remarked on right away was just how international the whole crew was. Off the top of my head I’d say that Russia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Vietnam, China, USA, Lithuania, The Czech Republic, and South Africa where all represented.

Locker View

Today was primarily general info about the program then a pitching session. It was interesting to hear the pitches of the rest of the applicants and they ran the gamut of what you’d expect with everyone in vastly different stages of development.

It was the first time I’ve pitched the concept of Game Day Go to a group of people. I’ve pitched Location Star a few times but Game Day Go felt different, its a much more specific, concentrated thing. I still need to work on articulating exactly what it does. I get the emotion out regarding the problem I’d like to solve, but also still figuring out how to explain the feature set without completely rambling. Things like:

Game Day Go – The sports app for the casual fan
Game Day Go – Experience the game from anywhere

And a bunch of other things that sound equally vague and uninspired.

The pitch session was led by Juha Ruohonen. The main takeaway was ‘pitch like an American’. That of course comes easy for me but it dawned on me that for most of the people here English isn’t their first language. And the sort of self-assertive concepts that have been hammered into me at other startup events needed to be double-reinforced here for those who’s culture goes against those mannerisms.

I went first (very ‘American’ of me) which turned out to be good and bad. Good because I got it over with, bad because after I stumbled through it Juha outlined the key points to make when pitching. Its actually a pretty valuable hierarchy so I’ll spell it out here:

Punchline (opening intro to get their attention)
Problem (framing the problem you’re trying to solve for users)
Solution (providing the unique way you are solving the above problem)
Value (what exactly you offer to the user in providing a solution to their problem)
Money (your business model or how you plan to be profitable)
Team (who is working with you and why will they make it successful)
Traction (at what stage in the market is your product/service at)
The Ask (what you’re asking the group you are addressing for: money, testers, feedback, new hires, etc…)

Say you have 2 minutes to do a pitch. The above gives you an outline to frame the time you spend around each point. You’d have about 10-20 seconds to hit each one. This is good in that its super easy to get stuck on one section and the next thing you know your minutes are up and you never got to ask for what you wanted (the reason for your pitch!) or you have to race through it. Both of which are not ideal scenarios. My downfall was asking too many questions from the audience in the beginning, then struggling through the specifics of how I was going to solve my problem. Not to mention I missed even bringing up a few of the points.

I’ve always skewed to the emotional side of pitching. I believe in core concepts and figure that will get me through. I was mistaken in this case. Having the system gives me a structure to work around and ensures I hammer home all of my points. With practice I should definitely be able to interject the proper emotion for each point.

After the pitches we broke up into groups and went over what changes we made having been exposed to the outline and given our first pitch. Everyone was pretty good with feedback and you could start to see them already think differently about how to get these concepts across.

In other news, Finnair lost my suitcase! I couldn’t believe it. It was one flight, no connections. They were really nice about it and gave me a Finnair travel bag. Was great considering it was a courtesy travel bag from an airline. Had socks, a tshirt, and other things I needed pretty bad if I wasn’t going to get it for a day.

On Sunday I spent most of the day walking my jet lag off around Helsinki. When I first arrived it was a little overwhelming finding my bearings and locating the hotel, but after walking it for a few hours it made more sense. Whenever I head to a new city I beeline for examples of their regional cuisine, so I had a Hunter’s Sandwich (open faced steak sandwich w/ mushroom sauce) lunch at the art-deco vibed Sea Horse restaurant. It was just what I wanted, some comforting Finnish fare. Then I had more comforting Finnish fare for dinner (sauteed Reindeer w/ lingonberry and gherkin) at Zetor. So needless to say I can wait a while until I have more.

The Hunter’s Sandwich at the Sea Horse

Looking forward to tomorrow, hope I get my luggage.

Putting together my supplies for Helsinki.

Location Star has been selected as one of the groups in the AppCampus AppCademy program. What that means is for the next four weeks I’ll be with other developers from all over the world as we convene in Espoo, Finland to go through intensive courses on designing, building, submitting, and marketing a Windows Store app.

We started our app (under the AppCampus side of the program) Game Gay Go in February with the hopes of doing it in JS/CSS/HTML5 with the Sencha and Cordova framworks. It turned into pretty much a nightmare of trying to get basic functionality to work, things that came right out of the box by programming in Windows natively.

So I took a deep breath and pulled the plug on over two months of development effort. It wasn’t a fun decision but one I felt I had to make if I really wanted Game Day Go to be successful. Around the same time we were contacted about being a potential candidate for their AppCademy so we decided it was a sign we did the right thing and accepted.

I’m also using this time to really think about how Game Day Go fits into the Location Star plan going forward. I’ve been frustrated trying to get these services created with nothing tangible to put them around. I really think Game Day Go and subsequent apps we create that can show off what Location Star can do is the way forward. Then the apps become our conduit into the user’s world and we can start to see what works and what doesn’t.

Having a month to get Game Day Go out the door and work with Windows phone experts is a great way to go for this. I can hopefully merge their platform expertise with my thoughts and plans for enhancing event experience for a user, wether they are physically at the event or not.

I’ll be trying to write down exactly what I’m getting out of this program and how I’m able to apply it to both Game Day Go the app and Location Star the company. Näkemiin for now!