Update From Finland
Man, jet lag is fun. My brain started working today again after a couple of days of thinking through fog. I'm not sure if I'm quite up to blog-quality conciousness, but I figured I'd throw a quick post up online to update my readers on our trip to Helsinki for the Mobile Monday meetup.
It's been a great few days. We got here early on Sunday, checked in to our hotel, had a few hours to nap before meeting up for dinner with everyone from the Mobile Mondays around the world, including the founders here in Finland and the others from Japan, Italy, France, Russia and journalists from Hong Kong and Norway. Then yesterday we attended the Mobile Enterprise conference during the day (though I fell asleep during a large portion of the afternoon) and then last night there was a bit of mingling (Christian, Henrikki and Tero showed up to say hi) and a dinner. Then today we attended a bit more of the conference, and had lunch with Chrstian and Charlie, then one last meeting to talk about some of the cool stuff we're going to be doing to coordinate the Mobile Monday meetups and now Mike and I are sitting in the hotel lobby with our PowerBooks checking the web and email. Whew!
Actually, we're wondering whether we should take the opportunity to explore a bit of Helsinki since we're leaving tomorrow morning back for California... but we're both a bit wrecked, so we'll see if we gather up our reserves and head out or not. Helsinki is a cute little city! The Spring here is definitely what I would call a Californian Winter as the leaves aren't on the trees yet and from what I've heard, the ice melted in the harbor just a few weeks ago. Wow! The city is a classic European city, and the Finnish people are all very nice and not nearly as dour as their reputation leads you to believe. It's incredible, actually, how everyone speaks English, even the taxi drivers. Try giving directions to some random restaurant across town to a Madrid taxista in English and you won't get very far, believe me. I wish the EU would get around to banning smoking across Europe, but beyond that it's been a great time here. Helsinki seems like a cozy little city, I bet it's a fantastic place to visit in July and August.
Okay, we're fading fast just sitting here. We're going to fall asleep on our Powerbooks... so we're heading out.
See you in Cali!
-Russ