By Iina Kuula, student of our International Media Programme (IMP)
(Read all EYA reports)

Before the trip to the EYA festival we started working together with Danish and Spanish students to create a poster and handout for EYA festival’s exhibition. We had meetings online in Skype and chat in facebook about what we wanted to bring up with our presentation. We decided together our main topics and divided them so that each one of us could write completed text to be put in the poster. Our Danish group member Jesper created simple and cool visual style for the poster and A4. Teamwork online went rather well even though finding a suitable time and forum for meetings was a bit tricky.

At train stop after landing in Graz. Iina in the centre

After finishing this task was time to fly to Graz and find the hotel. First actual full day in Graz was cool because we got to see the local university Joanneum, which certainly looks like  nice place to study in (And today at Finlayson I even met one exchange student from there!). Our guide was Joanneums’ own Tuomas called Thomas Radeke. He was showing the different buildings and rooms, their equipment sounded impressive even though we didn’t get to see everything. Im still wondering about the 3D introduction video about Joanneum that Thomas showed us. Guy must be super talented teacher to have students make something so complicated so quickly!

We also had a great tour around the old city. Our guide told briefly about the history behind the buildings and places, for example about the mausoleum and bakery that emperor Franz ordered always cookies from when he came to Graz. We visited the bakery with Caro later on, wish I had bought something from there. From now on I’ll try to find a bit of history behind the old cities when I visit them, they sure hold some interesting stories.

At the festival opening, Town Hall Graz. Iina second from left

The opening of the EYA festival was at the beautiful town hall. 12imps took the whole back row for themselves during the speeches and formalities of the beginning from where we head to another room to enjoy little buffet. People were getting to know each other little bit and enjoying the time.

The following day we had our very first workshop session. I joined Niki Ernst’s workshop about effective pitching and how to make a good presentation. Session was quite short but there was some good advice. Here is some of my notes from the session, how to have a good pitch:

• Be vulnerable, tell the audience a story that shows you are like them. This will have them to listen you when you start the actual topic
• Have just a few most important elements that are easy to understand and refer to
• Presentation should have pictures and a few words. Handout includes the complete information
• Follow the audience’s expressions so that you can see if some topic should be covered more in detail
• Film your presentation beforehand and watch it yourself to point out things to improve in

In the other table Paul Hughes was having his own workshop, a bit bad thing was that it had been placed in the same room. Sometimes his voice and laughing people were distracting our session.

Great thing in the end of Niki’s talk was that he asked the girl from ‘Call for books’ group to present their project, and we got to watch, give feedback and hear what Niki Ernst had to say about it. Great!

Before the workshop I even talked a bit with Paul Hughes, not that I’d know him from before. But he seemed nice and asked what we are studying and how is it going in Graz. Funny thing that he knew about Nylon Beat (as there was some family relation I recall), usually people first bring up Santa and heavy metal. I checked his workshop a bit online, using a ten meter paper as part of storytelling and presenting, clever.

Second workshop I attended was by Kirsten Kasch about team spirit. She was explaining how we all have different aspects of things and how for example working online with an international team could be hard. We shared experiences on team working and what sort of problems we have faced. I think it well reflected eg. to our teamwork with EYA poster. Living in different time zones for example can be problematic when having meetings.

One highlight of EYA was the exhibition. It was the only part of the festival where we got to present something that we had done. I was happy that Mindtrek got its own poster and video because it was my favorite project of the year and results were great. Definitely a thing to show for the others! (See the MindTrek OFF video)

I was standing at the poster that included our feedback for SpunOut.ie with fellow group member Jesper Fromm Jensen. The exhibition was not so well organized as no one seemed to know what we were doing there, but I was super happy that one of the original SpunOut creators came straight to us and was willing to take notes as we told our feedback. He seemed really happy to hear improvements and things to consider with further developing of the website and magazine.

Pic from SpunOut's Twitter stream with the text: "Here with Iina (Finland) and Jesper (Denmark), young EU students, getting great feedback on our site #eya2013 pic.twitter.com/S0D8kxYp6J" John Buckley, SpunOut in centre.

The gala of EYA was placed inside shear rock, it was really cool to see such big space with a bar, stage, lights and all. We got one free drink and got to see the winner of all EYA projects, Our Right. It was nice wrap up for the whole thing and to see all projects on stage once more giving their statements. I had to ask John Buckley, what did they exactly get as a prize from EYA, and it revealed to be a box of cheese. I wish it had been chocolate.

I visited SpunOut.ie once more now, after the trip and noticed one great thing! When you go to the front page, it pops up a survey regarding what kind of content the readers would like to have and why they are coming to the website now. User poll was in fact my suggestion, so I’m thrilled to notice they actually did it and so soon after the festival!

“Interact with others to exchange information and develop professional or social contacts.” This is networking defined by Oxford dictionaries. To be part of this captivating EYA event is to be talking to people from all around the world from various creative fields. EYA gathered us together to celebrate the 13 winning projects and to appreciate their efforts in using digital innovations to making high social impacts in relevant communities.

These project teams are made of people filled with positive energy and passionate vision, determined to make an impact to the society around the world with their knowledge and creativity. Their courage and hard work were much encouraging and inspiring to me. There was a Gala evening happening at Dom im Berg venue to honour the excellent projects. The evening was so much fun voting for the best project statement and I was very glad to have exchanged ideas and thoughts with many great minds in the festival. The evening in Graz was much worthy to be remembered and celebrated for gaining new friendships and networks.

EYA 2013 selfie at the Gala, Dom im Berg (Photo taken from EYA 2013)

Me interviewing Niki Ernst at Gala evening, 3 minutes turned into 20 minutes! (Photo taken from EYA 2013)

Traveling and Graz
As a student of TAMK, I am eternal grateful for the learning opportunities given to attending this festival despite the long traveling journey involving 4 connecting flights in 3 airports, 2 midnight bus rides, train and tram and our two feet walking in the beautiful Unesco city of design and human rights. EYA festival even arranged a dedicated city guide who did his job wonderfully showing the best of Graz to EYA participants. I am glad that we were able to have time visiting the beautiful city with a castle on the mountain and chill out at the Xmas market, too!

City guide showing us Old Town of Graz and great stories about Johannes Kepler and Graz

Conclusion: Everyone is a leader, or at least everyone should learn to be a leader
It’s always not easy to sum up my learning experience after an event and reflect upon it with my own progress. What was repeated over and over again is the word, change. Not changing within the same system, but rather transform. To always keep alternatives as an option, in my own words, to be versatile in problem solving or even problem seeking. And this process is done learning by doing. It happens all the time, every day, every moment and hence, lifelong learning. 

A group of us 12IMP from Networked Media Culture class were given the opportunity to attend European Youth Award Festival 2013 (EYA 2013) held in Graz, Austria. 5-day trip felt like a lifetime journey. For detailed coverage of the event and trip, read Cai’s posts here.

Virtual Project Collaboration
Way before the event started, we were already given tasks for making understanding about EYA 2013 and its 13 winner projects under the United Nation Millenium Development Goals. The fun started with Google Hangout: We are to interact with students from EAL Denmark, FH Kiel Germany and UVIC Spain depending on the assigned project and members. The task is to choose one project from the winning 13, and discuss with team members to give feedback on that project.

#Tweeting report
Our course tutor, Cai Melakoski has embraced the EYA 2013 theme “Young Digital Transformation” very much and urged us students to make report of this event via social media Twitter. This indeed is very effective way to challenge students’ summarizing skills: writing report each time with only 140 words. The interaction of such reporting method are fun and lively, both online and offline. Retweeting, following each other’s report among classmates brings much joy to the experience. #tweetisthenewreport

FH Joanneum
During this trip, we are glad to have visited the only university in Graz that has a fighter jet in their campus! Lecturer Thomas Radeke gave us a warm welcome and toured us around the campus after presenting a fantastic introduction video about FH Joanneum alongside with the many tips of best local bars to visit in Graz!

Tweet about FH Joanneum visit

EYA Festival: Keynotes, Workshops and World Cafe
First day of conference started with one of the highlights of this event Ten meters of Thinking by Paul Hughes. The morning got everyone’s attention on Paul’s 10 meters of wallpaper, rolling as he was speaking, drawing and telling stories. The storytelling has great interaction with the group as Paul was rolling his wallpaper, and even more interestingly, he would reverse rolling the paper and do quick summary of his presentation. It’s hard not to make this the topic of the day as it has one of the most creative way of making a presentation! The content, Circle of Innovation has made its way to my notebook as I was especially interested with the 3 degrees of changes. A video of Paul’s EYA presentation can be found on YouTube, thanks to Niki Ernst.

“Living on the learning edge” quoted by Mark Greenspan, another inspiring keynote “Bringing the World's Next 2 Billion People Online" that encouraged open source community, that everyone can be a maker using digital tools readily available. The stresses here resonance with Paul Hughes’ keynote of WHY. This also reminded me of Simon Sinek’s Start with Why. Everyone can be a maker, and everyone shall find out WHY to be a maker.

All eyes on Paul Hughes and his wallpaper (Photo taken from EYA 2013)

A good way to meet and learn from each other in the conference was via workshop and EYA world cafe. Round table discussions with international experts rotated among groups, based on topics surrounding ‘New Innovation Landscapes’. The first day conference ended with workshops which I attended to Paul Hughes’ “The three stages of transformation”.

Second day of conference was equally exciting. The morning started with red and green cards: audience are asked to show the cards to the presenters Matthias Haas ( SuperSocial), Niki Ernst, (planetsisa) and Adam Montandon (EAL University) if they agree with them or not. The discussion was facilitated by Prof. Dr. Peter A. Bruck on the topics of business experiences and adventures. Conference followed by World Cafe session 2 and another workshop with Kerstin Kollmann about Coding Literacy. I now learnt how to hack my own Google search button with javascript!

Student Projects Presentation
After lunch, EYA conference continued with students presenting their feedback project as well as other projects using various media including posters, tablet devices, handouts and videos. The presentation methods was in a beautiful chaos which students verbally presenting their work all in the same space and within limited time. I was glad to be giving feedback to one of the winning project under Go Green category: Jerry Do It Together. It was great learning experience understanding about the project and I had good conversations with the project’s team, Justine and Emilien!

Happy Photo Tweets with Jerry DIT team and student group: (clockwise: Justine Hannequin @haniju, Nil Grau Cirera @Neel_reraura, Teppo Nieminen @marginaalivirhe, Joanne nh Wong @jojojoannewong, Emilien Ah-Kiem @Em_hack )

...to be continued

Stories by 12IMP student Joanne nh Wong