Going West

Eventually, Finnish summer came to an end.  

In late August I welcomed American friends to Helsinki.  

Caleigh, Garrett and I strolled the sunny, windy green streets of Helsinki and visited plenty of seaside cafes where we always picked patios with the best views of the archipelago.  Angry skies signaled the changing season.

Competence Mapping : Read About it on HuffPost

My latest article on Huffington Post is out. This one describes an incredible Finnish innovation - a third paradigm of investment technology that allows us to map the competencies of investors in the stock market and to rank them. It's not a cross-sectional view of current market performance, but rather a longitudinal, historical track record of each investor's performance with each of their stocks.

Competence mapping (or competence analysis) is a means of pinpointing expertise and holds great promise for efficient models of resource allocation.  Key to the further development of this system is market transparency, a topic which just received a lot of attention at the G8 summit last month, where a revolutionary declaration was made:

The leaders recognised that transparency has to cut across all aspects of government – and it will only really make a difference if all countries sign up to it. The Lough Erne Declaration could hardly be bigger picture: “Governments should publish information on laws, budgets, spending, national statistics, elections and government contracts in a way that is easy to use and re-use, so that citizens can hold them to account.” ... 

The Declaration was accompanied by the Open Data Charter – an extraordinarily impressive document that commits G8 members to make all data open by default and sets out ways to improve its quality, quantity and – above all – its usability.  [read more]

This is being heralded as the beginning of the Open Data revolution.  Exciting times!

My Huffington Post article describes how nonprofit cooperative Robin Hood Asset Management has applied the innovation to their own social goals. This application to the stock market is just the beginning for competence mapping technology. Keep your eyes open for more on this as the technology becomes known globally.

Scheduling a date with the washing machine

It's completely logical but still kind of funny to me that Finnish apartment buildings have a datebook for the laundry machines in their basements.  Each family signs the book for when they plan to launder their clothes that week, and this helps ensure that the machines are free when they saunter into the basement loaded down with bags of soiled garments.

It makes sense, doesn't it? I was disappointed several times during my undergrad housing days, when I'd sort my laundry and haul it all into the clubhouse laundry room, only to get there and remember that Saturday at noon was peak laundering hour.

Even so...how silly will I sound when I have to turn down a spontaneous coffee date with this excuse: "Sorry, I have an appointment with a washing machine."