Price shared these insights and more with the Washington design community in a sauna evening held at the Embassy of Finland in May 2009. Kari Korkman, originator of Helsinki Design Week and Travis’s Helsinki host, was on hand to take the audience further into Finland’s burgeoning design world.

Going forward, Price is at work on the 2010 Helsinki Spirit of Place project, a program of Spirit of Place-Spirit of Design, the non-profit educational organization Price founded to explore the design and construction of architectural forms that successfully respond to natural and cultural settings in a contemporary language of design. American students from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC and Finnish architecture and design students from the Helsinki University of Technology, and Aalto University will design and build a meeting house inspired by the enduring metaphors of the Kalevala on Seurasaari, an open-air museum of traditional Finnish architecture featuring cottages, farmsteads and manors of the past four centuries that have been relocated from around the country. For the first time in conjunction with this project Spirit of Place plans a number of related events and programs in conjunction with the installation, including major film, web, and print documentation in collaboration with National Geographic Traveler, as well as a larger series of multi-disciplinary arts events to celebrate and interpret the themes of the Kalevala. The dedication events will coincide with the Helsinki Festival in August 2010 and will be the opening event for 2010 Helsinki Design Week.

Price is also exploring the development of product designs that celebrate the Kalevala with such Finnish companies as Iittala and Marimekko. “For ten years I’ve wanted to do Spirit of Place fabrics and now I have the opportunity to take these philosophies into the different arts.” Price calls the opportunity to work in Finland in this holistic way the model he has been planning for eight years that finally found its nest to incubate. My Helsinki experience allowed this vision to finally land, like a bird in a tree. And the egg will crack open in August. How Kalevala is that?”

Pouillon found that strategies employed in promoting local organic food in the States were applicable to the pair’s current undertakings. Poised to launch Maatilatori – Eat&Joy Farmers market Shop, she recommended they diversify their organic and artisanal food offerings so customers could make the store a one-stop shopping destination. “They needed vegetables, grains, dairy, milk and cheese, and different types of milk, like goat and cow, a bakery with bread and pastries, meats, sausages, venison and reindeer.

Opened in June 2009 and offering over 1000 products from 150 local producers, the Helsinki store has become a prototype that will soon be expanded throughout Finland. “Other communities are already asking them to come to their towns,” says Pouillon. “They brought in a great baker from Miami, a Finnish- American woman who has introduced sourdough bread to Helsinki and everyone loves it. I think they are very happy with the outcome.”

Hosting her Helsinki counterparts in May, Pouillon introduced them to Restaurant Nora’s local suppliers, including New Morning Farm in Amish Pennsylvania. A trip to the Eastern shore included visits to various farmers’ markets, and lunch at a private house where they swam in the river and dived for oysters enjoyed at lunch. A tour of the White House garden and house with White House chef Sam Kass led to an unexpected opportunity to meet and talk with President Obama.

Pouillon hosted a group of colleagues and the press for “A taste of Finland,” an event at the Embassy of Finland showcasing the organic kitchen at Restaurant Ilmatar, Klaus K Hotel, its chef Markus Maulavirta, and the many flavors and ingredients Pouillon discovered on her Helsinki trip. “The event was an incredible introduction to Finnish food. People couldn’t stop coming to me and telling me how much they liked the flavors, that they never had them before, that they had no idea Finland had such a cuisine. I’m ready to help audiences—Americans and Finns alike-discover more.”

Visiting Käpylä Comprehensive School serving grades 1 through 9, she was impressed, for example, by the teachers’ lounge. “This was not our idea of a place where you go for lunch, or to warm up food and then go back to your classroom to eat. Here was a professional room, a community center, really, set up with a big table with chairs, technology, a small kitchen, and all arranged to encourage talking and collaboration. Here teachers met and discussed lesson plans. I want that kind of hub in my school; I’m pressing for that. “Palacios may see her Helsinki-inspired dream come true. She is now working with District of Columbia education officials on the plans for the new Bruce-Monroe facility. “Collaborating together and doing interactive meetings in the mornings across the grade levels, these are ideas instilled by my Helsinki trip.”

Comparisons such as this fueled the culminating interactive education seminar hosted by the Embassy of Finland in May 2009. Aspects of the Finnish educational system were presented by Helsinki colleagues from the Helsinki Department of Education, Early Childhood Section, and Dr. Palacios’s Helsinki hosts Ms Sirpa Kopsa, Principal of Käpylä Comprehensive School and Virve Vakiala, the school’s Spanish education coordinator, and the staff of Bruce-Monroe compared and contrasted these shared insights with American educational models. “It was such a great opportunity not only for us, but also for the Finnish people to introduce, discuss, and reflect on their educational system.”

Looking ahead, Dr. Palacios would welcome the opportunity to send a teacher to Helsinki to “look, see, and come back with ideas,” so the influence extends beyond the administration. “I’d like also to host a Helsinki teacher here,” adds Dr. Palacios. “That’s one idea I’m trying to follow up.”

Dr. Palacios also credits the MYHelsinki program for broadening Bruce-Monroe’s connections on the local front. New relationships formed with other MYHelsinki guests continue to blossom and enrich programming at Bruce-Monroe. The school just worked with Casey Trees in a program that engaged Bruce-Monroe students in planting trees on the school grounds. The Embassy of Finland continues to play a strong role with the school, with Embassy staff, for example, recently participating in a school performance with the students. “MYHelsinki, it’s like it’s my family,” says Dr. Palacios.

In his May event hosted at the Embassy of Finland for Washington’s art community– artists, gallery and museum professionals, collectors, and critics—Okunseinde presented along with Yoko K, a collaborative partner with whom he performs as ayyoko confidential, a multimedia-scape of Helsinki, an immersive environment with sound, video, and images that introduced Washington audiences to his Helsinki experience.

Inspired to share his experience of Finnish culture with a greater audience, Okunseinde set about forming FINUS: Finland/United States Cultural Alliance, a non-profit organization supporting and promoting creative cultural activities between the two countries with a focus on Helsinki/Washington, DC relationships and their artists. Okunseinde travels back to Helsinki in November 2009 for meetings to present a proposal-in-progress to the Helsinki cultural office, the Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum, gallerists, and artists for collaborative input on developing programs between the US and Finland.

At present, FINUS will sponsor three major events a year: an annual benefit, an artist exchange program, and an art expo. Sixteen artists–eight from DC and eight from Helsinki—will be selected by the FINUS Board of Directors to live and work for a month in the respective city. FINUS event programming launches in December 2009 when it brings electronic artists from Finland to perform at the Embassy of Finland in Washington, DC.

“Helsinki was just so magical and amazing, everybody was just so open to ideas,” says Okunseinde. “The notion of being given the opportunity to present ideas and having them well-received gave me that confidence to say I can create this cultural exchange and actually go ahead and do it. I’ve been to other places and have had other ideas for projects, but I’ve never received this level of support. Everybody I met was like ‘yes yes yes, you can do it, we believe in you, we’re interested in this.’ Helsinki has become a sort of the touchstone where everything refers back to the city and goes back out where I think about how I can shape, experience, or create through that lens.”

And they continue to inspire Medearis on his home ground. He applied ideas gleaned from the Helsinki transit system to a county-wide comprehensive study of transportation alternatives. In November 2009 he returned to Helsinki, leading, along with his executive director, G. Mark Gibb, a Northern Virginia delegation of thirteen. The mayors of every region and county chairmen, including Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Prince William and Loudoun counties, met with regional and city leaders to experience firsthand Helsinki’s lessons of sustainable climate and energy policy.

Going forward, Medearis plans to continue applying innovations seen in Helsinki and throughout Scandinavia—be it in transportation, energy efficiency, or building efficiency and design. “Helsinki has a 30-year head start on us; they got their act together after the first oil shock. The hope is we continue to apply these lessons. It’s not going to happen overnight, cities don’t get built overnight. Systems don’t get constructed overnight. It’s a multi-year, decade-long activity and my expectation that as we move forward, we will keep our own conversation on sustainable climate and energy policy informed by Helsinki’s work.”

While Goodstein notes he didn’t travel to Helsinki to become the country’s PR person, he now finds himself citing statistics in his lectures and presentations garnered, for example, during his meetings with Nokia. “The company is now the largest camera manufacturer in the world. Not because they wanted to be the largest camera manufacturer in the world, but because they put a camera in every cell phone. That shocks a lot of people in the U.S., because Nokia is not really in the U.S. market anymore. But as a world leader, they are dominant. They are also poised to become the largest GPS provider in the world, because again, they are going to put GPS in every phone and once they have completed that, you’ll have no reason to go out and buy little GPS devices for your car. And most interestingly, Nokia is actually doing more on English translation than a lot of the American companies. The inexpensive Nokia phones exported to Africa and India include English language tutorials. They are helping indigenous people sell goods and services through the phone by knowing what the English definitions. They are saying, this is the language, and they realize they should be training the world in it. And they’re taking this proactive stance not with the $500 phone but with the $40 phone.”

On the social media front vis-à-vis Finland’s election process, Scott found himself thinking about things happening in Finland a very different way. “The election process is so different in a smaller country. You have a very conservative party that is probably better on women’s rights issues, one of the first bodies in government from that leadership and party to elect women. The number of women elected into Finnish parliament and running top positions in Finnish parliament is pretty amazing. It was educational to look at those as models in contrast to the political machine system we have in the United States where people actually work for a living in politics. I make reference to the political system all the time now.”

Goodstein remains in touch with his friends at Nokia, and has compared and written about the company’s new phones that have come out since his trip to Helsinki. “It’s been fun and exciting to be able to cite statistics and information that are new for the majority of my audiences.” He is in discussions with Matti Makkonen’s new mobile startup and his team that developed text messaging to explore how they can work together trying out some of their new technology. “There’s so much Finland has to offer on the social media front. I’m interested in seeing what will be next from this innovative country.”

At the point of Gilliland’s visit, HePo was debating whether to become a formal organization with paid staff to better represent the interests of cyclists, a bridge WABA crossed after its tenth anniversary. With eight full time staff, offices, a dynamic membership program, and electronic advocacy efforts, Gilliland was able to share timely insights with Sipilä on organization building. Conversely, Gilliland learned from Sipilä on the transportation side about how the logistics the Finnish bike network, from planning, construction process, to implementation for accommodating bikes on all roads, a major goal for WABA.

Gilliland discovered a developing trend in Finland toward putting the bike facilities on the road, resembling bike lanes in the States, contrasting with the Complete Streets strategy the US is moving toward, based on the existing European model of separate facilities. “It was interesting in that way, we’re trying to emulate them and they’re trying to emulate us.”

Back in Washington during May—National Bike Month—and the MyHelsinki exhibition and Invitation to Helsinki programming at the Embassy of Finland, WABA provided portable event parking racks, and promoted programming through the WABA website and email list. Gilliland lectured at the Embassy to cycling groups and the interested public about his Helsinki experience and provided resources to those interested in bike touring in Finland.

Gilliland hopes to see his Helsinki counterparts in Copenhagen in June at Velo-City Global 2010, a conference bringing together cycle experts and professionals from all over the world for the first time. “I’d also love to bring a couple of our Helsinki friends over and show them around DC for the week. I doubt we could show them as good of a time as they showed us, they really outdid themselves. But we’d love to have a shot.”

Now a columnist for Bisnow, an online magazine for local business communities, Dowd writes all the site’s legal content, publishing four or five times a week. He credits his trip to Finland and journaling for the MYHelsinki website as his first experience with online media and blogging, one that directly influenced –and helped him land– his first job right out of school.

Continuing his passion for global affairs, and India in particular, Dowd has applied for a Fulbright grant to study electronic waste in India. Televisions, computer monitors, cell phones, this is the fastest growing stream of waste in the world; it’s sort of the flip side of technological innovation. The more you innovate and create new technology, the faster the pace that existing technologies become obsolete and just get thrown away. Most people don’t know where those go. It turns out that a lot of the world’s e-waste goes to poor countries and increasingly to India. I want to create an online virtual tour of this e-waste stream so that people can see what happens in the end life of computer technology.”

Dowd plans to develop a nonprofit, community-based cooperative with a scalable entrepreneurial solution, and notes influences from Finland. “Nokia has the most advanced e-waste take-back system in India, and is a leader in the reverse supply-chain management processes that are the focus of my Fulbright research. At Nokia outlets in India, they accept any cell phone and make sure that it’s either recycled or disposed of in an environmentally responsible way. That’s potentially lucrative business, but definitely an environmentally conscious one.” If awarded a Fulbright, Dowd plans to explore the possibility of engaging Nokia or other Finnish technology companies as potential stakeholders for his community-based cooperatives. “Whether I’m awarded a Fulbright or not, I would very much like to explore the possibility of working for Nokia in India, and becoming involved in their strategic approach to e-waste management.”

From their side, the Finns were intrigued with Corbett’s groundbreaking work around open government data with projects such as Apps for Democracy, a project sourced innovation directly from talented citizen coders for the Washington, DC government, and data.gov with the Federal government “The possibilities for global impact with data.gov are immense. If we can show countries around the world that the U.S. federal government can open up their data, other countries probably can too.” Corbett was thrilled to learn that in the month after he left Helsinki, the team at Forum Virium began working with the city CTO to create an Apps for Finland innovation contest. “It was really gratifying to see Finland creating programs focused on changing the way government procures IT. “

Traveling to Helsinki, Corbett was looking for opportunities to take what his company iStrategy Labs does in DC, New York, and San Francisco and bring that innovation to Helsinki. “I’d love to create a very lightweight lab basically in Helsinki and it’s a matter of having a client first out there and I know there are certainly some right people I met who could be those people.” To that end, he hopes to explore possible collaborations with Jarmo Eskelinen and Forum Virium to form that bridge to Helsinki, and create iStrategy’s first reach beyond the U.S. “I would love Helsinki to be our first international location.”

In May the Embassy of Finland hosted Corbett and a group of 300 from Washington’s new technology community to meet with key Helsinki innovators. “We totally filled the place, you could say. We saw presentations about what’s going on in Helsinki and I spoke about my experience there. The event was such an interesting way for me to bring the DC technology community into the fold with regard to how I think Finnish innovation works. “

In such staff of the City of Helsinki Public Works Department as project manager Elina Nummi and field arborist Sami Kiema, Buscaino experienced a ready curiosity about non-profit programming and Casey Tree’s educational outreach. “There’s strong interest in our community engagement, our communications and comprehensive mapping (Casey Trees maps and documents all its tree plantings). Helsinki doesn’t currently program much in the way of public activities, but when they do, they’ve experienced enormous response.”

The May 2009 seminar hosted by the Embassy of Finland presented Helsinki/Washington viewpoints on raising environmental awareness to an audience of District government representatives, Casey Trees citizen foresters, a volunteer group of 750 citizens trained in urban forestry techniques. Elina Nummi from the Public Works Department of Helsinki and Kaisa Pajanen and Johanna Joutsiniemi, from Helsinki’s Environment Center spoke and engaged the audience in discussion, as did key staff from Casey Trees. “It was wonderful to have an opportunity to involve our volunteers and show them firsthand the breadth and depth of our resources and global engagement. They plant trees but don’t get to often see the broader view. The most important effective tool is the exchange of people; you have to get people working together, it’s very powerful.”

To that end, Armi Koskela, a student studying communication and community engagement, and Sami Kiema will be coming to DC for 3 months in spring 2010 to work with Casey Trees to better understand the nonprofit’s approach. Armi will work with Casey Tree’s education department which promotes urban forestry awareness and education through a diverse collection of lectures, workshops, demonstrations, celebrations, and tree walks. Sami will be working directly with field crews.

In the future Buscaino would like to see select staff go to Helsinki to further share ideas on how Casey Tree activities can be modified to bring the Helsinki community in and heighten awareness of the Public Works Department’s urban forestry activities. “Non-profits hire young idealistic folks, and when you have an organization built of people like that, you can make an incredible difference. We’ve got a 10- year road map of successes and failures to share, and I look forward to more.”