What's going on in Bolder World.

Petri Vilén, co-founder of Bolder Helsinki returns to CEO position. As of June, the current CEO Pekka Hartikainen will concentrate full-time to finish his second Master’s degree, this time at the Media Lab of the Aalto University School of Art and Design. Pekka will remain as a board member during his leave. The change will not affect any ongoing projects and the actions to make the change as smooth as possible have already been started earlier in this spring.

“Pekka has really pushed things forward during the year and I am very excited to get back to work. We at Bolder try to take into account our personnel’s life situations, the same worked for me when I was fulfilling my military service duty at Public Information Division of the Defence Command this winter”, says Petri.

“These are very exciting times at Bolder, a lot of good things are happening and I’m 100% sure Petri will make an impact as returning CEO. For me this is the right time to finish my Master’s and I really appreciate how well people have taken this at Bolder”, Pekka comments on his decision.

Despite of the opportunity Pekka didn’t accept the much discussed post of Chief Evangelist, which now remains unfilled.

Because of the volcanic eruption in Iceland the flights between USA and Northern Europe have been cancelled. Petri and Lauri from Bolder were visiting the Behance’s 99% conference in New York and got stranded in the city.

They decided to take advantage of the situation and founded a temporary office in the hotel. You can follow their experiment on temporary offices in the Bolder New York blog.

Last year we bought a school in Africa and this year we decided to support fellow entrepreneurs in need. We gave out two micro loans, worth a total of 350 USD to potential female entrepreneurs in Asia. We feel this is a great way to contribute to the development of third world countries by encouraging entrepreneurship. Please join our effort at www.kiva.org; you can start off with as low as 25 usd and you can really make the difference -plus, you get your money back as the entrepreneurs are successful!

Our two micro loans were given to Chim Hean in Cambodia and Darlene Gay Conol in Philippines.

Who’s dream are you helping to come true?

Thanks for all who joined our housewarming party, including the policemen! My friend and a true gentleman Eino Joas took some photos of the event – they can found be from our FB Page. And yes, it is a page, not a group, we just had the group first because FB introduced pages later.

After the party it is time to get back to work again. Here’s Lauri, our creative force, working hard as usual!

There have been rumors circling middle-earth about our future. Yes, it is true - an alliance has been created between two kingdoms. This autumn Bolder Helsinki and Kisko Labs will join forces under the same roof.

The new joint-office is located in the peaceful seaside of Kamppi and it’s over twice the size of our previous residence in Töölö. We also just found out that Bolder’s “role model” Reaktor Innovations used to reside on the same street. Hopefully we will be able to catch some of the same magic and spirit that has made them one of the best places to work in Europe.

The new deeper collaboration naturally expands the service offering for both companies. Our combined expertise and know-how will be available as a single entity for all current and new customers. Through this collaboration we hope to better answer the needs and requirements of our growing client base.

We wish all the best to everyone and welcome you to come and visit our new office in November!

We are more than happy to announce that we have a new member in Bolder. Kasper Stenbäck is joining the company as a sales manager in August. Kasper is a Master of Science in economics, who has gained wide experience working for NGOs in various tasks for nearly a decade.

The members Petri Vilén and Vladimir Abramov are going to fulfill their civil duty in the military service – starting from July 2009. They will be serving the country from 6 to 12 months and will return to Bolder after that.

From now on, the post of CEO will be held by Pekka Hartikainen. This will not affect any ongoing projects and all the preparatory actions for these transitions have been started this spring.

With this information, Bolder wishes everyone a joyful summer!