Helsinki Gang Strut Their Stuff, Again

Public culture in Helsinki

Over on the University of Helsinki webpage, we find this gem of information:

FindSampo Presentation Public Seminar 17-18th May: Programme and Registration Open

The SuALT project by the University of Helsinki, Aalto University and the Finnish Heritage Agency will hold a two-day public seminar discussing the results of the project. The event will present the forthcoming FindSampo cultural heritage data service and online portal for metal-detected and other public finds. Talks on Monday 17th will be held in Finnish and on Tuesday 18th in English. 

Free registration for the event is now open. It calls itself a "public seminar" but asks for your institutional details, just to make sure that you are not, actually, a member of the European public concerned about how the archaeological record is being consumed by collectors. Here is the "event programme" but sadly Eljas Oksanen, the author did not feel it was worth giving the finnish titles in english, no matter Mr Google can do his work for him [in square brackets] All times are in EET.

Maanantai 17.4., 14:00–18:00 (suomeksi)
[14:00 to 16:30 same speakers and topics as the English session the following day, but longer] [plus]
16:30 Löytösammon aineiston käyttö tutkimuksessa [Use of discovery material in research] (Eljas Oksanen, Helsingin yliopisto)
17:00 Metallinetsijän puheenvuoro [Speech by a metal miner] (Jaakko Aarniveräjä, Suomen metallinetsijät ry [Finnish Metalworkers Association])
18:00 Tilaisuus päättyy – Close
Tuesday 18.4., 14:00–18:00 (in English)
14:00 Opening and welcome (Suzie Thomas, University of Helsinki; Eero Hyvönen, Aalto University; Ulla Salmela, Finnish Heritage Agency)
14:15 Presentation of SuALT project and goals, achievements (Suzie Thomas, University of Helsinki)
14:30 User experience (Anna Wessman, University of Bergen, Norway)
14:45 FindSampo: data service, portal and reporter (Eero Hyvönen, Heikki Rantala & Esko Ikkala, Aalto University)
15:15 Access to archaeological finds data and future visions (Ville Rohiola, Finnish Heritage Agency)
15:30 Coffee Break
15:50 European Public Finds Recording schemes (Suzie Thomas)
16:00 DIME (Andres Dobat, Århus University, Denmark)
16:15 MEDEA (Pieterjan Deckers, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
16:30 Portable Antiquities of the Netherlands (Stijn Heeren, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
16:45 Portable Antiquities Scheme (Michael Lewis, British Museum, UK)
17:00 Keynote: On the Joys and Rewards of Archaeologist-Collector Collaboration in the USA (Bonnie Pitblado, University of Oklahoma, USA)
17:30 Discussion 
18:00 Close

Oh, so Great Britain is still in Europe when it comes to grant money, then? Along with the USA? What backwards Finnish tomfoolery is having the keynote paper at the end of the session? It's a shame that Eljas Oksanen is not presenting the only paper here explicitly about archaeology (and not data crunching) in finnish only. Also I think we'd all like to hear the Finnish metal detectorist and see what similarities and differences (that "transnational context" the Helsinki Gang are always banging on about) there are between his views and his typical British counterpart. I really do not see why this cannot have been more professionally organised with a simultaneous translator rather than a double presentation with some bits missed out.