ESPOO, Finland – The folks at Nokia Singapore had a little issue. They wanted to have a round table discussion with journalists to discuss the environmental activities we have at Nokia. One problem: all the people they wanted to talk to were in Espoo. It seemed silly to make a special event and have the speakers fly down. While the event would have been good, the flights, time, and money spent would not have been proper.
We do have this amazing HALO system for really good video conferencing. And we have a HALO room in Espoo and Singapore, so it made sense to invite the journalists in Singapore to connect to the people in Espoo via HALO.* We sat in on the round table discussion and took some video of what it was like (see below). Also, there were some great things said and some choice presentations. But we’ll hold off on those because we’re possibly having another round table in the near future.
So, read on to see what it was like and to see some video of the round table event.
Event summary
Using HALO, were were able to give Singapore journalists exposure to Nokia eco experts in an innovative and environmentally sensitive way. We invited mainstream as well as independent journalists based in Singapore. The main presentations were by Markus Terho, on Nokia’s environmental strategy; Francis Cheong, giving an update on activities Nokia has in Southeast Asia; Tiina Karhu, talking about environmental considerations in Design; and Ulla Uimonen, showing some cool things about package design.
There were 11 visitors cramming into the HALO room in Singapore (not counting the Nokia hosts). But that didn’t dampen the interest. The feedback we got was that while there were many global activities, it was nice also to hear about local initiatives, making the discussion more relevant. As usual, the visitors commented on how they weren’t aware of Nokia’s extensive environmental practices (we’re working on changing that). And everyone thought it was cool that we used HALO.
Bernard Leong told us that it was “a valuable session, in which I learned a lot.” He goes on to write on his site:
“The whole roundtable featured how Nokia as a corporation has navigated in making small changes through several eco-friendly initiatives – recycling, materials used for manufacturing and energy consumption. In fact, I am surprised that I did not know some interesting facts about how they are doing on sustainability and development in Southeast Asia.”
Nicholas Aaron, CNET Asia, wrote:
“This geek managed to join Nokia’s Virtual Eco-Roundtable this week where we video-conferenced via HP Halo into Finland and got a pretty good idea of Nokia’s green strategy, which includes their environmental programs in South East Asia Pacific (SEAP), environmental design, as well as packaging design.”
Repeat performance
It goes without saying, we were really happy with how it went. And like we said, there will be at least one more of these in the near future, but in the mean time, check out a compilation of the event below.
*By the way, we also have a HALO room in London and the Nokia Conversations team uses it every week. We use it so much that when we do come face to face, it takes us a moment to realize why it feels weird to be in the same physical location. That’s how good HALO is. Heh.