A Quick Visit to Tallinn
I posted the other day that Tartu needs more regular exchanges with our Finnish colleagues. Tallinn seems to enjoy a bit more. Last week I took the bus to Tallinn to spend a few hours with exchange students from the Institute of Strategy and International Business at Helsinki University of Technology. Here is a photo of our conference room (nice room — from the Scandic Hotel site)
BTW, some years ago, this was one of the very first hotels in Tallinn to be rennovated to meet western business travel standards. And it is still very nice.
The participants were from all over the globe, and for most of them, it was their first trip to Estonia.What a nice group! So, what to discuss? I laid out a list of options that looked something like this —
1. Me (Yes, a major ego trip!)
2. Estonian History and Culture
3. The Transition Process
4. Why Estonia has been Successful
5. What has not yet been Done
6. The Current Mess
7. Next Steps
And the group voted on where they wanted the emphasis . it for history, transition and the current mess. The two hours flew by. We talked mostly about our odd Estonian historical perspective. BTW, history has dictated so much of how Estonians think, and you might say we are a country obsessed with our history.
BTW, I would argue that our obsession with our language is a part of this larger obsession
But equally important, can we become a country that is obsessed with developing learning institutions? That should be our calling card!
FOLLOW - Giga has a nice post on the key role of trust building as part of institutional learning. It sounds funny that we have to learn how to maintain our clients’ trust. Think it’s simple? Then take a look at Presentation Zen’s critique of bad design (that fails to respect the user’s perspective). Trivial details to the designer/producer may be critical to the user.