From the Secretary General's Desk
October 2008
All presentations at the InformNorden conference in Helsinki are now available to all registered members of InformNorden, just click here. If you have not registered before you can easily do this here.
According to the evaluation this is our most successful conference ever. All attendants were satisfied with our arrangements and all speaker presentations can be found on the positive part of the ranking scale.
InformNorden IT Award 2008
The InformNorden IT Award 2008 was given to Johannes Sloth, CEO of Movia, Denmark. Here the Award Statue is handed over to Johannes by the InformNorden secretary general Anders Kåbjörn with the InformNorden steering committee members in the background viz Mogens Buch-Larsen, Movia (holding the InformNorden IT Award Diploma), Åke Lindström, SL Sweden, Jarl Eliassen, Trafikanten Norway and the local host and InformNorden Chair 2008 Kerkko Vanhanen, HKL Helsinki.
Statement from the Award Jury:
As CEO of Movia for the past 15 years, Johannes Sloth has been in a position where he could promote the use of IT - and he has done that. He was quick to recognize the potential of IT, and throughout his long career he has focused on utilizing this IT potential to help set new goals in the organizations that he has worked with. Not all projects have been "easy wins", but Johannes has been able to withstand the sometimes strong winds, and maintain his faith in the winning potential of IT. Many of the difficult projects have been implemented; however Johannes has not been afraid of shutting down projects, which he has deemed non-sustainable. Johannes Sloth has been a strong spokesman for cooperation and close relations in general between the public transport authorities in the Nordic capitals. His positive attitude and strong support for InformNorden through many years has been important for the success of our organization.
InformNorden Scholarship 2008
The InformNorden Scholarship 2008 amounting to EUR 1000 was awarded Lauri Lahdensuo (holding the InformNorden Scholarship Diploma together with Kerkko Vanhanen and Anders Kåbjörn), University of Jyväskylä, Faculty of Information Technology. In his Master thesis he has studied Viral Marketing in Web Communities focusing on Community campaign in Irc-galleria.
Statement from the Award Jury:
In order to promote the interest of research and development within the field of public transport passenger information systems, InformNorden has established a scholarship rewarding one or several students/researchers belonging to a university in the Nordic countries. Lauri Lahdensuo´s presentation on “Viral Marketing - a possibility to reach new customer groups?” presented at the InformNorden conference 2008 has raised the question how the public transport sector should be seen in media like MSN Messenger, Chat Robot and Google. The topic of Lauri Lahdensuo's thesis handles issues that are not studied much yet. The need to understand the most effective ways of marketing services in a way that produces good results in the long term is essential for the public transport sector.
Anders Kåbjörn