Let’s meet at MatchXR in Helsinki!

This year I was too busy with my daily work to attend AWE Europe (and I was pretty sad about that), but luckily I had an opportunity to do an expected final trip of the year. I’m pretty excited to tell you that I’m flying to Helsinki, Finland to attend MatchXR!

MatchXR is a cool event to connect to the Finnish and northern Europe XR community in general. It happens in the same week as Slush, which is a very famous event for startups (not only XR ones). There are many satellite events that happen around Slush, and MatchXR is one of them. It will be a great opportunity for me to try the products of some Finnish XR startups, connect with people there, and maybe start some interesting collaborations.

There is also a conference where we can discover what is the Finnish metaverse strategy: that will be the moment where I will raise my hand and I will say “But isn’t the metaverse dead?” I’m very thankful to the (super-kind) organizers of the event for having invited me there, and also to my friend Damon for having created the bridge with them.

I have never been to Nordic Europe, so I’m pretty excited about this trip: I’m staying a whole week there, to be able to connect with the biggest number possible of people. There are many events happening around Slush, and I hope to be able to sneak into them and make many new professional friends. The only thing that puzzles me about this awesome opportunity is that I think that there is some kind of sadism in organizing an event in Finland at the end of November. On this side of the world, a cold Winter is coming, so I would have preferred to travel to a warmer part of the world, like Africa, Dubai, or Brazil. Instead, I’m going to a place that is even colder than here. I mean, worse than Finland, I guess there is only the North Pole. This is how I imagine myself while attending MatchXR:

Apart from the cold, it will be interesting to know if I will survive in a country where I don’t speak much of the local language. I just know how to say “Raikkonen”, “look at the sea” (because it is pronounced as an Italian bad word), and “fuck you”. I hope these 3 expressions will be enough to survive for a week there… for sure the last one will be useful in some contexts. In case I have problems, I maybe can ask help to my friends at Varjo… I really hope to be able to visit them at their home, and maybe try some new demos with their XR-3 device. If it happens, of course, you will read my report here in my magazine!

There’s also NOKIA in there, so I hope to get in touch also with some of its employees and talk with them about the good old times of the Nokia 3310.

If you will be in Helsinki between the 28th of November and the 2nd of December, let me know! If you are at MatchXR on the 29th, even better! I would love to meet you, try your XR products, discuss collaborations, or even just have fun together! I will have a busy schedule between MatchXR and my daily work, but I will try to make my best to meet you. Maybe we can eat something together…

… or just have fun in Helsinki, maybe at some parties organized for Slush!

… and if you can’t come, don’t worry, you will read about the most important things I did here on my blog, from the warmth of your home 🙂