So many things happened this week; it feels like a month! And I didn’t blog about anything!
Let me catch up on at least something.
My last post was about Suomenlinna, and how I took one of my co-workers on a tour there. Other people started to arrive on Sunday afternoon, and everybody was asking me about the “nice place for dinner.” All Vlad’s suggestions wee somewhere further away from the city center. A couple of weeks before the conference, I suggested Harald for the company dinner, and then I thought that we could also go there on Sunday, and if we don’t like it, we will change the EDB dinner reservation.
We liked it, although I am sure it is not really a “Viking food,” but rather a tourist version of it, it was a good food anyway.
And we also when there on Tuesday after the conference for our company dinner. Usually, when you are at the conference, you try to socialize more with people from other organizations, but since my company is so distributed, we do not meet in person often, so everybody is eager to see each other.
On Monday, I was trying to work, and then meeting with people and showing a little bit of Helsinki again, and then there was a speaker’s dinner in the evening in a different place.
***
Both days, there were lots of talks about the war. I argued with one of my co-workers, who was saying that “we need to support our community in Russia.” We need to make a clear distinction between individuals and organizations. Several IT organizations made statements condemning the war, and nobody destroyed them. On the other hand, multiple organizations received money from the Russian government, not necessarily in contracts, but often as direct financing of their work and research, grants, etc. And now they say nothing.
Many ordinary people are braver than these companies. And to be honest, I do not think they are “afraid.” Nobody would destroy them, they just won’t receive money from the government…
P.S. I know that some would be outraged with the way I combine the pictures from the fancy dinner with the talks about the war, but I am being honest. It was as it was: I live event after COVID, which everybody was anticipating, meeting with great people, having a great time – and talking about the war, and thinking about the war – all that time.
Hettie's Reflections 