Make Meaning by Contributing to Improve the Quality of Your (Business) Life

Finnish word 'talkoot' means an event that collected the neighbours and friends together to help someone to build or renovate something so big that one couldn't handle it alone. Sort of more generic barn raising event.

The benefits of talkoot were both that the target was accomplished and also the people worked side by side for a common good goal, belonging to something bigger than themselves alone - local community. As the world has specialised and fragmented, there are less and less talkoot events. There are less local communities and most of the houses are built nowadays by people focusing solely on building houses, and so forth. This has reduced the feeling of belonging and the importance of the local community.

But the word lives on, and is used now to describe events needing combined strength and unity, such as talkoot for creating reducing unemployment. Unfortunately, most of these are marketing gimmicks and they do not touch people profoundly. Yet there are numerous projects that build virtual stuff, for example, open source endeavours that have communities around them. In my session I will explore how you can make more meaning to your life by participating in open source talkoot.

For business leaders, this session gives excellent insight how to motivate both Generation X and Generation Y - people born between 1960 and 2000, in other words, almost the current workforce in total - while keeping your top and bottom lines in a great shape.