Introducing Kipinä's Turku office
04 | 2024 Sanna Valkeejärvi & Tuomas Nokkala, Software Architect
Kipinä's experts in Turku joined forces a few months ago, and the office spars across project boundaries with skilled colleagues. Customers are also welcome to visit the Turku office to talk to the experts, welcome to Tykistökatu 4!
Tuomas Nokkala, the most frequent user of Kipinä's Turku office, sees only good things about the new office. 6 of Kipinä's experts live in the Turku area, so it's not just a one-man office. "We've had an office here in Turku since December 2023, and the idea started in discussions among Kipinä's Turku team back in the autumn. Some of us already knew each other, so we knew that a shared office would be fun to work together," says Tuomas.
Customers are also welcome to visit the Turku office to talk to the experts. So if you are in Turku and need help with digitalisation, software development or even data issues, head to Tykistökökatu 4 and Kipinä's experts will be happy to talk to you about how we can help.
The office is in active use and the mood is good. With such a small sample, at least in Kipinä, the ratio of hybrid work at home to work in the office is very individual. There is no one model that works for everyone. At best there have been 5 people in the office, but there are days when Tuomas is alone in the office. "The whole spectrum is well covered in our team. From one day to five days a week. Everyone's own life situation has a big impact."
Kipinä supports workspaces and their use beyond the headquarters in Helsinki. As with all decisions at Kipinä, the decision to establish the Turku branch and the division of responsibilities was taken jointly. "It's really nice how Kipinä as a company supports this kind of community work. We've often shared the pleasure of working together in the same place."
"This Turku office is a mini version of the Kipinä model. Although I have been in charge of the practical arrangements, everyone has been involved in the decision-making process as a team. We take responsibility for everything here together."
A relaxed attitude and good vibes
"The limit of working at home was already starting to be reached, at least for me. Before the corona, I was already working remotely a lot, and then around the corona I was working remotely completely. During this long period of telecommuting, you found yourself longing for community and contact with your colleagues and the work community. It's that community and the little things that make me want to go to the office every day to work."
The little things are lunch breaks and coffee breaks as a group, having a nice chat about things outside work, sparring about work issues easily and quickly, getting to know each other better and making the boundary between work and home clearer.
"While I am passionate about my work and could do it anywhere, I also want to maintain a clear separation between work and life. Too blurred a line between work and life is not good for anyone. And it's great when you get to know people much better in real encounters, rather than just through Teams, for example."
Spending time at the office has inspired the Turku team in many ways.
"We have a broad range of expertise and focus on different technologies. It's valuable to have experts nearby who have a lot more expertise in something you don't have. When we also spar across project boundaries on technical issues, we always get better end results for customers. Being in the office enables these discussions in a completely different way, for example, you can sketch ideas on a drawing board during a discussion with a low threshold. There's no remote equivalent to this."
"The Turku office also enabled us to sponsor the local Turku Frontend community's "Code In The Dark" event. This was the first time we participated as Kipinä in Turku's active coding community. It was a great opportunity to promote Kipinä and make Turku residents more aware of us. The best way to raise awareness is to get involved in a local scene."
Code in the Dark event included some blind coding.
About the community and its birth
Kipinä's strong and exceptional community has been featured often. The community has been built mostly remotely, Tuomas listed the things he thinks have contributed to the success of the community:
Kipinä is built around transparency and openness
Decisions are taken together
Action is participatory by nature, with power and responsibility for common issues to drive investment and commitment
Similar ideas and values
Trust among Kipinä people; everyone is on the same page
It has been possible to maintain a group atmosphere where interaction is natural
Encouraging people to do things together
A united desire to take Kipinä forward and in an even better direction.
The desire to discuss together what Kipinä is like and what everyone wants it to be
Joint meetings of Kipinä, such as Kipinä Symposium
There is certainly something to do together, as both the Turku and Helsinki new office parties have yet to be organised.