I am Finnish and this is the end (Björn Rost).

The OUGF Harmony 2014 has ended. Sad:( It was such a fun event. I already miss all our great speakers and attendees….

We started on Wednesday with a legendary sightseeing tour by yours truly. My husband could not stop laughing: you do not remember anything and you always get lost, how can YOU run a tour! But I did and I am sure most of the attendees (if not all) will remember this tour for a long time. We started with lunch at Hietalahden Kauppahalli (market hall), saw one mandatory church (Temppeliaukio), several interesting buildings (including National Museum, Parliament House, Finlandia House (“do they make vodka there?”), Kiasma etc) and we stopped very many times for beer (it was a hot day!). I ordered some swans on the Töölönlahti bay and some smaller birds to the water at Kiasma to entertain our guests:) We even experienced the interesting echo at Fazer cafe (my kids love it!). And finally we ended up to the speakers’ dinner in a Viking restaurant Harald. There was plenty of food and plenty of drinks….and plenty of VIKINGS….

 

 

 

The conference officially started on Thursday morning. The busses were waiting for speakers and attendees in the centre of Helsinki to drive them to the Finnish forest. The conference venue is called Haltia in a middle of a nature park of Nuuksio.

The content of the conference was amazing! We had THE C.J. Date explaining temporal data…

And so many other excellent speakers. The audience was really listening…

The speaker of the first day was voted to be James Morle with his excellent keynote presentation. I am very sorry if you missed it:( Second and third place were Tom Kyte and Kent Graziano with several excellent presentations. On the second day speaker of the day was awarded to Graham Wood, second position to Kent Graziano and third place was shared with many of the speakers (it was too difficult to nominate just one).

We had RACAttack…

The first ever SE HA roundtable…

Oaktable World…

DW/BI roundtable with Dan Linstedt…

6 streams, 3 tents…

For two days…

We even needed to ask the trees to help us to guide people to right places…

The venue was beautiful and the weather was sunny and hot. Some of the speakers and attendees decided to have sauna and swim to cool down…

The dinner was served outside and we had a pleasure to enjoy the music by Oracle band.

After the dinner and sauna the busses took people to Helsinki and some brave speakers stayed in the forest to camp with mosquitos…

Just to shock you maybe a little bit more, these pictures have been taken around midnight.

After a looong and good sleep, some very brave men took a swim in a cold lake…

 

During the conference people had two things to do: learn and make friends. In the end of the conference I asked if they did what I told them to do and YES: 100% of attendees learned new things and made new friends during the conference. SUCCESS!

 

The conferences was ended with these words (inspired by Björn Rost): I am Finnish and this is the end. And with this picture:

..Thank you and goodbye! See you next year again!