For five months now, we have had our headquarters in uptown Jyväskylä, on Vaasankatu 12 on the ground floor. Welcome to visit us! I found a little reflection from my computer about our old space, which was great. But it also had it’s downsides. This new space feels good!

Letter to the Yellow Office – Written on June 19th 2013

This week we have cleared up our office for the past 3,5 years, located in old industrial building in the suburbs of Jyväskylä. This is an end of an era, and a start of something new.

We painted the walls back to yellow, I mean white. We threw away or recycled many things. Brought two boxes of books to Tiimiakatemia. About all the cups and dishes went to Red Cross flea market. I saved two boxes and a suitcase full of stuff. Books, papers, post-it notes, couple of files with notes in them etc. Monkey Labs kind of things.

We used to like our office a lot. It had a great sauna, and that was the reason we took it in the first place. ”Here is an office with a Sauna”, I remember Janne shouting from the computer over three and half years ago. Our office was cheap for it’s size. I had thought that I would like an office that is either rough like garage or sleek as ad agencies’ office. This one was both. Downstairs had this garage type of feeling and upstairs had nice windows and a new floor, and white walls. And the sauna.

We had tremendous views and a huge rooftop terrace. Just outside the office there was a huge park. It was a nice work out to bike there in the mornings. We had very good lunch place downstairs with lovely Raija running the restaurant. We got internet connectivity from our neighbor Seltimil, the CEO Pertti was our man who came personally to help anytime we had a problem with our network.

Other neighbor was Seripiste, where Hanna and Musti were always happy to help us with any needs with had regarding to printing materials or marketing stuff. And with a super tight timetable, usually. That was really helpful. Sauli from Sisä-Suomi was also a kind janitor for us, without any obligation to do that. Had we forgotten a key, he opened the door to us with a smile. Thanks also to Sauli. Our office had plenty of parking place, and in the winter one could heat up the car engine, too. That’s very important keeping in mind the cold winters we have over here.

The office was a perfect for hosting a party. We would bring in a sound system, invite couple of DJ’s and heat up the sauna. And party til morning. No need to worry about neighbors complaining about noise, because nobody was there at night, as the office was at industrial building.

There were some downsides to this place, too. First, it was far away. 30mins by public transport from the center. Or 40 mins with a bike. Or 12 minutes with a car. Only very few people just popped in to say hi at it wasn’t really on the way to anywhere. (Thanks Jussi and Saku!).

Second issue was the noise – Our office was noisy. Industrial neighbors and their machines do make some noise. Constant noise and no peace. Sometimes when the machines were not running one could hear the silence.

Third, some of our industrial neighbors used strong chemicals, and for the first two years we used to keep our door open. Also, we didn’t have much of an air condition or natural flow of air. Especially if there were more people in the office, that became a problem. We had thought initially to use the office more for workshops etc. but I didn’t really want to sell it for that because of the air quality.

And also there was only very little natural light. Only upstairs, which was kind of cold in the winter. If you worked downstairs, you wouldn’t see the sun at all. Well, in the winter you don’t see the sun in Finland any case.

So it was nice for a while, but it is time to move on. Now I have two dreams for a new office. Either it would be a coffee house type of spot in the uptown of Jyväskylä, or a mobile fab lab type of office in a sea container or at the back a bus. Let’s see what we come up with!

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