The ninth edition of the Interactive Media Programme made the IMP 2008 DVD premiere. This attractive DVD with a hilarious user interface presents the shortfilms, interactive movies and other art work made by the students over four months of hard work and intense learning.

This year the 17 students came from Austria, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the UK.

The Interactive

Demola is an open innovation environment for university students and ICT and media companies operating in the Tampere Region. It is a service provided jointly by TAMK University of Applied Sciences, Tampere University of Technology, Tampere University and Technology Centre Hermia Ltd.

Demola provides students with business relevant and challenging topics for project courses. For the execution

What are the trends in the business of games? What did the panel at Mindtrek's "Business of playing together" track have to say about virtual vs. real and the government of virtual worlds?

Read more at Jussi Laakkonen's blog on the death of PC single player games and the opportunities is social and casual games: http://bit.ly/2kNvrc

Read more about the panel discussion:  http://bit.ly/3dRtpG

Social Media - one of the main themes at the MindTrek Conference earlier this week - was dominant also at the MindTrek Awards Price Ceremony.

The winner of MindTrek €20 008 Grand Prix is Wreck-A-Movie, the movie production community by Star Wreck Studios Oy.

Second price in the only international competition, the Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards, was given to TreasureHunter, the social game

The first-ever Startup Launchpad competition was held today at Mindtrek conference in Tampere, Finland. There were eight Finnish startups pitching their idea to a group of experienced jury.

Highlights from Mindtrek conference - day3:

Panel: The social media side of mainstream
Timo Vuorensola & Atte Joutsen (Star Wreck Studios Ltd.), Jouni Kantonen (Red Tail Media), Antti Seppänen (Intervisio), Damien Marchi (Fremantle).

The panel was running around new media & mainstream media. It was interesting but I would have rather pushed the conversation a bit further, trying to brake the line of common topics about which we daily discuss online.

The MindTrek Awards Ceremony yesterday wittnessed the success of Interactive Media Programme students in MyTampere Video Competition.

"Tampere – A Truly British Guide" by Dan Castro and Nick Rowley won the first price. Dan and Nick are students of Edinburgh College of Art.

"That’s our Tampere" by Franziska Embart and Kathrin Muessigmann, Hochschule Ulm, won a honorary mention.

MindTrek Awards

I asked Tero Sarkkinen, the CEO of Futuremark, what the 11-year-old Finnish startup is all about while visiting at MindTrek, Finland.

Tero spoke to me about Futuremark’s work, which is centered on 3D graphics. He also shared his thoughts how the company went through the previous dot-com bubble and on the current gloomy economic situation and how it might resonate for the startups.

Highlights from Mindtrek conference - day 2:

Marc Davis (Yahoo) - World 2.0

Terrific keynote. I also recorded an episode with him for VMC + I took some video snippets of his slides so I’ll publish everything as soon as I finish the editing. Interesting slides here.

MindTrek Conference started today with the workshop day. As always, MindTrek brings also this time international visitors to TAMK School of Art and Media.

Today MindTrek Conference paricipants, lecturers Theo Zweers and Eva Graven paid a visit. They are from the Hague University of Applied Sciences, Academy of ICT and Media, the Bachelors Degree Programme for Communications and Multimediadesign

Highlights from Mindtrek conference - day 1:

Open source - Fully integrated with business

The five nominees for the €20 008 MindTrek Grand Prix have been announced. The nominations are made by the MindTrek Grand Prix jury. The winner will be selected by the Grand Juror Matti Apunen, Editor-in-Chief of Aamulehti, and awarded at the MindTrek Awards Ceremony October 8th at Hotel Rosendahl.

The nominees are:
Operation Hurricane
Operation Hurricane is a television series and web

The nominees of the 2nd international NOKIA Ubimedia MindTrek Award are:

• Babbage Cabbage Empathetic Living Media: Adrian David Cheok, National University of Singapore, Singapore and Keio University, Japan;
• Point-to-Discover: Peter Frohlich, Rainer Simon, Erwin Wittowetz, Gerhard Obernberger, Matthias Baldauf, Telecommunication Research Centre, Austria;
• TreasureHunter: Remco

As part of the MindTrek Party (of the MindTrek Conference) Greenpeace provides Climate Change Mobile Experience. In the party you can be part of the climate solution by joining the Energy [R]evolution. You will learn more about the climate change by meeting Greenpeace representatives and using your mobile.

The MindTrek Party is on October 8th, starting at 9pm in Yo-talo, Tampere. More about the MindTrek Conference, Competition, and the MindTrek Startup Launchpad: http://www.mindtrek.org/conference

MindTrek Conference 2008 is just around the corner, so if you’re a startup make sure to apply to the  Startup Launchpad competition if you haven’t already. It’s worth it.

EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards is a contest in nine categories for young talents (under 30) who create digital contents. EUROPRIX has been arranged since 1998 and has had participants from 34 European countries.

Nokia Ubimedia Awards deadline Friday 12.9. Other MindTrek awards and MindTrek Startup Launchpad deadlines extended.

MindTrek is the biggest annual Nordic digital media event and award. MindTrek has also been one of the biggest efforts of the School of Art and Media since 1997, when the first Tampere Multimedia Festival and Award were arranged.

MindTrek has three main activities:

We sp