Like many Finns who came of age in the early 00s, my connection to Nokia has been a long and multi-faceted one. One of my parents worked for Nokia in the mid-1990s, and I was far from being the only kid in that position at school. I lived in Espoo, after all, the promised land for telecoms engineers back in the day.
Author: nokiapeople Page 2 of 5
My first entrance to Nokia was Oulu’s Special Products unit in 1997, which was a great place to learn the spirit of handcrafted product making.
It was one of those Nokia R&D units full of hackers and makers.
What was it about working at Nokia that stuck with so many of us long after we left the company? Why are 27 356 of us posting our musings and memories of our time at Nokia on the alumni group on Facebook? These are some of the questions I asked myself after Verena asked me to write something for this blog after I posted this?on the “Beyond Nokia” group earlier this month.
I wrote this from my client’s office in Johannesburg after I had just walked in and heard a colleague chatting to a customer on the phone in Portuguese. It reminded me so much of my days at Nokia.
Now, before I go any further, let me just say I’m a total Nokia fangirl.
My love affair with Nokia began when I was 15 years old, when my first mobile phone was a Motorola V2288, and my school friends at the time had the Nokia 5110 
and later Nokia 3310. Truth be told, I was jealous at the features and games that they had. Fast forward a few years later, when I finally managed to acquire the Nokia 3350. This was a great little phone, and one of the best things about it was that it had Snake. Awesome, right?
After commencing my first year in university, I went on a phone-spending binge
Life after Nokia
It’s been seven years since I left what I still consider the best company I’ve ever worked for. Spending so many years working for Nokia definitely made a mark that is still with me to this day.
I’m
sure many of you would agree that the excitement and sense of accomplishment we all felt just before we released a new product was out of this world. From the first time you held a proto in your hands and got to play with the latest tech, to the first pictures taken with an N95 8GB, to the amazing music coming out of the 5800 or the fashion sense of the L’amour collection: these are things that will be embedded in our personalities for the rest of our lives.
With all these in mind, three years ago, I decided to leave the comfort of a steady job to pursue a long-held dream of mine: launching a company.
Nokia has been part of my life for many years now and still is today even through the transition I have supported Nokia throughout and now that we are back once more with Mobile Phone I think the relationship will last for many more years to come.
My Journey began with the Nokia 5110 from what I recall and from there on it was just a matter of learning, progression then loyalty.
I then began to collect Nokia devices for some unknown reason but I just recall their simplicity and how well they looked with the changeable fascias which was cool back then. I then noticed the phones where getting better year by year and said “HEY” I have quite a few of these devices sure why not keep going.
My career started in Nokia in 2002. However, I used to work in Nokia club on the agency side whilst I was in Morpace International who used to have the Nokia 
account back in 2000. At the time I worked on the customer satisfaction surveys of Nokia Club and also used to program and assess the NEW release of Nokia phone(a) for its features and UX (User Experience). Unfortunately, whilst I was on maternity leave something had gone wrong
For the most part of my career I worked on the business side of things building up alliances and partnerships with globally leading brands. I was on the mobile phones side of things and collaborated very closely with my OVI friends.
Connecting People has always been one of my favorite slogans. So when I got a job at Nokia, first as contractor and a year later as full time employee, those two words became part of my daily practice, part of my life. As an extreme extrovert, the first time I saw Nokia San Diego campus, aka The Club Med, I felt like a kid in a candy store: tons of phones (sorry, I should say devices!) to play with and to…
It was the summer of 2009, just a few weeks after the launch of “Ovi Store”, on which I’d been working on for months. I was working on a presentation for an MT (management team) meeting the next day when I started to get phone calls from my husband about our oldest daughter – he was home with her because she wasn’t feeling well. She was getting worse and worse and he was taking her to the doctor, the doctor sent them to the hospital for more tests. At the end of the day I went straight to the hospital from the office.