On Friday, when I arrived to Laurea Leppävaara campus, my first thought was “What I’m doing here?!, Am I crazy to spend whole weekend here?, What if I end up as a part of terrible group?, Am I smart enough?”. This feeling grew stronger when we were in an auditorium and I should have been creative and invent a brilliant problem which is related to THE sound. My mind was blank, I mean really blank. Everyone else were writing something on the paper but not me. “Oh my god, what should I write?” THE sound sounded just a splash and now I should write some awesome idea. Nothing, nothing came to my mind. I just wrote something. Fortunately we didn’t sign the papers so no one could know which was mine.

We gave scores for the problems which were invented and 7 best scored problems were chosen. I met my group: three other women and two men. First thought was that they are nice and this could work. Maybe this was a good idea to participate to the Jam. My first appearance was right, no not right because they were more than nice, they were awesome! They had great sense of humor and co-operation was seamless, we were at the same wavelength. We laughed a lot but we also were hard working and we had the same goal -> new experiences, networking and fun.

The whole weekend was all of that! Well on Sunday, when our group coolW, presented our work, we ended up at the bottom of the wave. What happened? Let’s say it this way: It seemed that no one understood (especially two judges out of three) our presentation and the product which we had created. The third one, fortunately, praised the product and presentation. But, at least I, felt like poleaxed: “Were we really that bad?” Judges went to the hall, after all presentations were presented, to discuss which group should win. We were still disappointed and astonished what happened and why it did happen. We had a great time so that’s the main point, but it would have been nice to win. Well, not this time.

The judges came back and after few minutes they said: “The winner is group number 5”. I almost said out loud that now they are in error but luckily I didn’t have the time to say anything. “The winner is group coolW!”

“WHAT?!” and then we looked at each other with round-eyed expressions on our faces and burst into laugh. Now we were really astonished, but this time in a good way. We won because we had created great service and a product which also paid attention to environment and human health. The weekend was great and worth of experience (also without winning)!