Kaisa Spilling (MSc. Econ) works as a Development Manager at Forum Virium Helsinki, a city owned innovation company. She is an innovation accelerator with + 10 years experience with cities, digitalisation & urban innovation. Her expertise lies in public-private-people collaboration and business development. She has been driving innovation platform development in Helsinki’s Innovation Districts, contributing to the national city network 6Aika and the Nordic Smart Cities Network.

Minna Koskelo is a pioneer of futures design in Finland with almost 20 years of working history. Futures design is a new participatory, human-centric domain, which includes business, design and foresight approaches all rooted in systems thinking. 

Koskelo is also a co-founder and leader of Futures Finland Association, which promotes futures thinking in Finland, develops the industry further and builds community for futurists. Additionally Koskelo is a co-founder of Futures Day, which promotes futures awareness and is targeted for everyone: citizens, companies and municipalities. Futures day got a National foresight award in 2019. 

Currently Koskelo is writing a book about futures design in decision making that will be published later this year.

Kerkko Vanhanen is the Programme Director for Smart City Kalasatama Helsinki. He works for Forum Virium Helsinki, an innovation company owned by the City of Helsinki. Before Kerkko has worked as CEO for Traficon Ltd – A traffic planning and consulting company – and for Helsinki Region Transport (public transport authority) as the Head of Information Systems Group leading all development projects around digital passenger information and open data.

Kerkko’s special competence is in smart mobility and digital service design around mobility. He has strong interest also in smart energy solutions and generally in any innovation that makes urban life easier and causes less negative impacts on nature. Kerkko has M.Sc. in Civil Engineering (Aalto University, former Helsinki University of Technology) and he has also studied minor in the department of architecture about Urban Planning.

Janne Rinne works as a project manager at Forum Virium Helsinki, the innovation company of the city of Helsinki. Currently, his main project is Jätkäsaari Mobility Lab, which promotes smooth, safe and sustainable urban mobility through piloting and experimentation. He coordinates co-creation and living lab activities, agile piloting programme, and stakeholder co-operation with companies, planners, local residents and other stakeholders. Before diving into hands-on innovation projects, he worked several years as a researcher in Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), focusing on environmental policy and governance.

Francisco works as an Innovation Manager for Granlund where he leads the development of different digital solutions in the Innovation team. His education is in civil engineering/construction and for the last 10+ years he has been working in different innovation projects in Finland and internationally. He has lived and worked in Bolivia, USA, Norway, Spain and Finland. His main interest is in developing digital solutions that can provide real value for the built environment and change the way we design, build and operate city infrastructures. Additionally, he is the representative for Granlund in Latin America and strongly believes in the fusion of the Nordics and LATAM. 

Gunnar Edwin Crawford is head of Stavanger Smart City, innovating across public-private boundaries, co-creating the smart city of the future.

Gunnar has extensive hands-on experience with innovation and development within the fields of welfare technology, smart homes and smart cities.

He believes strongly in citizen involvement and uses the power of the smart city team to challenge and evolve the democratic processes of today.

He is a patent holder, and winner of a CES Innovation award. He has contributed in several EU projects, including two Horizon 2020 projects – Triangulum (www.triangulum-project.eu) and Invade (http://h2020invade.eu/).

Crawford’s professional background is within ICT, energy and innovation. Gunnar is co-author of the book “Creating Disruptive Ecosystems” (2016 – http://www.disruptiveecosystems.com/ ), about the importance of understanding new digital business models when innovating digital systems and services.

Elisa Lähde is Assistant Professor of Landscape architecture and also a practicing landscape architect. Her interest lies especially in green infrastructure and urban sustainability and she is eager to pilot new solutions and tools to optimize the benefits provided by natural processes in the built environment. As a researcher and designer, Elisa can quickly see the big picture and she is able to combine effortlessly abstract frameworks into practical solutions in an innovative way.

Janne Rinne works as a project manager at Forum Virium Helsinki, the innovation company of the city of Helsinki. Currently, his main project is Jätkäsaari Mobility Lab, which promotes smooth, safe and sustainable urban mobility through piloting and experimentation. He coordinates co-creation and living lab activities, agile piloting programme, and stakeholder co-operation with companies, planners, local residents and other stakeholders. Before diving into hands-on innovation projects, he worked several years as a researcher in Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), focusing on environmental policy and governance.