Day 2 of camp was full of activities - an incredible opening ceremony, project work, the Amazing Race of Science, and Startup Sauna. Since it is almost midnight here and we have to be at breakfast at 7:00, I'll just talk about the last of these, which probably is the strangest sounding of them all.

I'll just be honest and say sthat I thought that Startup Sauna was an actual sauna at first, which made me really confused as to why we had to drive to Aalto University for it. As I found out on the bus ride there, Startup Sauna is actually a program to encourage entrepreneurship in Finland. They take applications from people all around the world with unique ideas for startup companies and choose just a few (there were 17 teams this time) to come to Finland to receive mentorship. 

We were there for the "graduation" of the teams, where they each presented their startup in an exciting manner. There was so much enthusiasm that it was more like a party, even when we were listening to seventeen presentations straight (I'm not even joking). It was even more like a party afterwords, when MY Campers enjoyed the bounce house (yes, they had one). Every presenter was amazing at being enthusiastic and effectively pitching their idea. The ideas were really diverse and ranged from improved voice recognition to a better way to keep house plants fertilized.

Personally, I have never been that into entrepreneurship before, but this gave me a really good idea of what considerations there are in starting a company. This even really highlighted one of the things that makes MY Camp a unique science camp - it also covers the business/industry side of science. Even if you just want to go into a research position at a university, it is really useful and interesting experience. Another great example of this is tomorrow's day-long event, where each group visits their sponsor. or the Applied Math team, that means Rovio! So excited! 

(As a side note, for anyone who read my last post, I received my bag this evening! Shout out to the camp staff for being very helpful with that situation. Advice to future campers: The staff members are amazing, you can talk to them about anything, so do it! :)