Member Spotlight: Oliver James - Seppo.IO

We met up with our member Oliver James and discussed a bit about how he ended up in Finland, what is Seppo.IO, and why he chose Epicenter Helsinki as his office location. Seppo.io is a gamification solutions company, whose service is ideal for any HR Manager, L&D Professional, Team Leader, Training Provider, or teacher who wants to share knowledge in an attention-capturing way while challenging the participants to think themselves.

Seppo’s Sales Manager Oliver James is a Plymouth native from England, who came to Finland via the ERASMUS study program but fell in love here, and now the Epicenter Community has the privilege to enjoy his sunny personality, great sense of humor, and intelligent discussions. If you happen to see this well-mannered English man in our Helsinki house, then do not hesitate to come up and say “How's tricks mate?”.

So then Oliver, what brought you to Finland?

“Well, that’s a good question. I did an ERASMUS project with Stadin AO and made some friends, out of those friends then one turned into a relationship and now we are married. Fast-forward four years and we decided to move here because I really love this country.”

You were studying in England, right?

“Yeah, so I was studying at City College Plymouth and we were in Finland doing a mini production for their gaming development department, which was a 2-week project, where we were doing film-making around that project. So it started with that, I fell in love with this country, culture, and atmosphere, and yeah kind of crazy found my wife here.”

Did I understand correctly that you speak Finnish too?

“Joo kyll? m? puhun v?h?n suomea. Olen opiskellut suomen kielt? kuusi vuotta ja asunut t??ll? kaksi vuotta. On tosi vaikea kieli, en puhu t?ydellist? suomen kielt? mutta yrit?n.” Oliver replies in almost native Finnish saying that he has studied Finnish for 6 years and that he understands it better than he speaks. Not too surprisingly, he says that the up north dialects and capitol area slang are the ones that are the hardest to understand when he speaks with other Finns.

Can you walk us through then, what is Seppo IO all about?

“So Seppo is a company that provides a gamification for training and learning. Whether the training is education like university all the way to corporate training such as company onboarding, but even strategy implementation. Our idea, the way we set ourselves apart from others, is that we break things into smaller chunks and add things that resonate with the audience on a human level like leaderboards. It is all about engagement as we believe that when your audience is engaged, they retain more knowledge and it saves you time so you don’t have to go through the same things with your audience over and over again.”

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In Oliver’s role, his responsibility is to find the best solutions for his clients that create the most value for them. As an example, he says that back in the day company training would mean that management showcased the employee’s slideshows and expected they would listen and learn. With Seppo’s product solutions, these sort of situations are more human to human-like where everyone is involved and the learning process or the value is created together.

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We all know that the human being’s attention is decreasing all the time. For example, it is said that Millenials have an attention span of 12 seconds and Gen Z around 8 seconds. So with your product, the attention span of the audience can be prolonged?

“Well, like you said the attention span is tied to age a lot. What we are seeing more is the so-called “TikTok brains” amongst Gen Z and Gen Alpha, these generations are already in the workforce or have started to think about their careers and what they want to do in the future. Moreover, they are used to “endless scrolling” and the way we present information at Seppo is at chunks instead of pages and pages of information so we are able to capture the attention of these people. In other words, our solution gives a quick task or multiple quick tasks that are based on that one project or piece of information, and with this actionable and engaging small-chunk model the information then sticks in the participant’s head. As such, it is a much more manageable way of teaching and learning than just having someone talk to you”.

In a nutshell, Seppo’s solutions can be used in various ways to engage people to learn and as such it is a very useful tool for anyone who wants to educate their audience in a meaningful way. A few examples are listed below:

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• Education: Seppo games combine creativity and collaboration that turn lessons into learning games that require skills and knowledge.
• Recruitment: Great way to introduce your company to prospective applicants and test the selected ones’ skills while adding engagement and joy to the recruitment process.
• Onboarding: Engaging, fun, and effective way to get your new employees acquainted with your organization.
• Corporate Training: Compliance, product, or safety training can be made into a memorable, active, and effective learning experience that is not tied to time or place.
• Change Management: Bringing people together after a merger or when implementing a new strategy or company values can be done more effectively when everyone feels involved through gamification.

Why Epicenter, why did you choose Epicenter as your office location?

“For me, Epicenter is a huge hub of innovation where everybody is in the same boat where they want to network, they want to collaborate. Epicenter is right in the center of Helsinki surrounded by other businesses. What I love about it most though, is how they care about us and what we need as members. There is never a dull moment, there are these events and as Seppo is not the biggest company yet, so we need more friends. Epicenter is loaded with companies from start-ups to corporates so you can learn from each other as well as help each other. So, it’s a no-brainer.”

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If you want to connect with Oliver James , just hit him up on LinkedIn.