Beco­me a meta­ver­se deve­lo­per — Build a career in Oulu’s ICT sec­tor

I had a pri­vi­le­ge to visit Mobi­le World Congress 2022 (MWC22) sum­mit in Barce­lo­na in the begin­ning of March. MWC is the most impor­tant mobi­le industry sum­mit in the world. It is huge and pac­ked with wow-effects rela­ted to today’s and tomorrow’s applica­tions of con­nec­ti­vi­ty, proces­sing power, mobi­le devices, auto­no­mous mac­hi­nes and so forth. If one is to pick up a single the­me deter­mi­ning this year’s sum­mit, that would be meta­ver­se.

The term meta­ver­se has been gai­ning popu­la­ri­ty and inte­rest during the last few years. It has been around since ear­ly 90’s when it was int­ro­duced in cer­tain sci-fi novels. Still after deca­des, experts have a wide ran­ge of defi­ni­tions and concepts of meta­ver­se. A con­ven­tio­nal simplis­tic defi­ni­tion of a meta­ver­se is a 3D ver­sion of the inter­net and com­pu­ting at lar­ge. One needs to know the deve­lop­men­tal his­to­ry of various tech­no­lo­gies to be able to apprecia­te that defi­ni­tion. When inter­net and com­pu­ting emer­ged, all inte­rac­tions were pri­ma­ri­ly text-based. The­se are very fami­liar to all of us, as all of us have used emails, mes­sa­ges, user­na­mes etc. Then later during the deve­lop­ment the­se inc­re­men­tal­ly beca­me more media-based and sta­ted to inclu­de ele­ments such as pho­tos, videos and even live­strea­ming. At the moment we are get­ting clo­ser of adop­ting user inter­faces and also user expe­rience that inclu­des 3D ele­ments.

Just ima­gi­ne 3D model of the inter­net, a place paral­lel to the phy­sical world whe­re one can spend digi­tal life. A place whe­re people have ava­tars and you can inte­ract and coo­pe­ra­te with them fluent­ly. And tal­king about fluency, meta­ver­se won’t be limi­ted to a sepa­ra­te enti­ty of inter­net. It will be avai­lable also as aug­men­ted ele­ments and intel­li­gence inte­gra­ted in your phy­sical real life. With the help of high qua­li­ty devices we will be able to add and enrich our field of view with end­less varie­ty of ele­ments that are immer­si­ve, ins­tant, and very reac­ti­ve and in that way sup­por­ting the users moti­va­tion to adopt them both in their work and free time.

I per­so­nal­ly belie­ve that meta­ver­se is also an approach of design and tech­no­lo­gy deve­lop­ment. And that is the fact that makes meta­ver­se more than just a new word for vir­tual rea­li­ty. On the one hand the concept sets per­for­mance tar­gets for tech­no­lo­gy that is rough­ly 1000 times more power­ful that cur­rent capa­bi­li­ties when meta­ver­se is lar­ge­ly deplo­yed in the futu­re.  On the other hand, the concept chal­len­ges tra­di­tio­nal pro­duct and ser­vice concepts in eve­ry industry and sec­tor. A com­pa­ny should start their process by unders­tan­ding how it is adding value for the cus­to­mer in the con­text of meta­ver­se. And moreo­ver, com­pa­nies should eva­lua­te how are their proces­ses in the futu­re? Pro­bably the­re are seve­ral ele­ments of crea­ti­vi­ty and coo­pe­ra­tion loca­ted in the work sur­roun­dings that are in meta­ver­se or at least that are in many ways defi­ned by meta­ver­se. The pos­si­bi­li­ties are real­ly end­less and the trans­for­ma­tion is overw­hel­ming for all sta­ke­hol­ders of socie­ty.

This was very visible in Barce­lo­na. Com­pa­nies varying from glo­bal giants to small star­tups pre­do­mi­nant­ly pre­sen­ted their tech­no­lo­gy and ser­vices from the meta­ver­se point of view. The key con­tents were rela­ted to con­nec­ti­vi­ty and wire­less networks’ per­for­mance, inte­gra­ting mac­hi­ne lear­ning softwa­re ele­ments into cont­rol­ling the networks efficient­ly and in a sus­tai­nable way, brin­ging more focused proces­sing power into various proces­ses, adop­ting hea­vi­ly arti­ficial intel­li­gence tech­no­lo­gy into count­less applica­tions of softwa­re based applica­tions that will deve­lop the user expe­rience subs­tan­tial­ly. Meta­ver­se was also a key the­me in dozens of pre­sen­ta­tions and deba­tes that were orga­nized in the event.

Oulu and Oulu-based com­pa­nies are in a very rea­dy posi­tion to go forward in various tech­no­lo­gical key domains rela­ted to meta­ver­se. Our com­pa­nies are actual­ly very visible actors glo­bal­ly in cel­lu­lar con­nec­ti­vi­ty. Clo­se and well inte­gra­ted coo­pe­ra­tion wit­hin the local eco­sys­tem inclu­ding also Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu and natu­ral­ly the 6G Flags­hip, Oulu uni­ver­si­ty of applied sciences and VTT is the cor­ners­to­ne of next gene­ra­tions’ wire­less networks with amazing per­for­mance enabling meta­ver­se applica­tions. We have hundreds of com­pa­nies ope­ra­ting in the field of softwa­re deve­lop­ment. The­re is a well for­med subclus­ter of cyber secu­ri­ty, dozens and dozens of com­pa­nies deve­lo­ping sta­te of the art inter­net of things applica­tions. NFT is defi­ni­te­ly a rising the­me that is being adop­ted by seve­ral Oulu-based actors. And let’s not for­get local hardwa­re clus­ter, in many ways unique com­po­si­tion of capa­bi­li­ties in Fin­land, eit­her.

One thing is clear though in Oulu. Because of a steep and long las­ting posi­ti­ve deve­lop­ment of our local ICT industry, we are facing a shor­ta­ge of skil­led work­force. We have mul­tiple ongoing acti­vi­ties and inter­ven­tions that we are deplo­ying to ease the work mar­ket situa­tion. The mar­ket deve­lop­ment and applica­tion pos­si­bi­li­ties rela­ted the meta­ver­se – both the ser­vices and the tech­no­lo­gy, are at the same time crea­ting more long las­ting growth to Oulu-based com­pa­nies.

You may be a foreign degree or exc­han­ge stu­dent in the field of ICT e.g. at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu or at OAMK, or may­be some other Fin­nish uni­ver­si­ty, cer­tain tech­no­lo­gical domain speci­fic pro­fes­sio­nal con­si­de­ring career buil­ding pos­si­bi­li­ties furt­her and living cur­rent­ly out­si­de of Fin­land. Or may­be you are a new talent to be, con­si­de­ring your alter­na­ti­ves in terms of dif­fe­rent stu­dy fields. I strongly recom­mend and that you would take a dee­per look at Oulu’s ICT sec­tor. First­ly, we have got the clus­ter that is wide and high enabling your career buil­ding local­ly. Second­ly, the­re is a world class research and deve­lop­ment eco­sys­tem ope­ra­ting in a very inte­gra­ted way with local busi­nes­ses. Last­ly, we are very inter­na­tio­nal loca­tion. The­re are well establis­hed coo­pe­ra­tion con­nec­tions with most of the lea­ding tech­no­lo­gy hubs around the world and Oulu is inter­na­tio­nal­ly known for its ICT deve­lop­ment stack.

And we have lost of open posi­tions rela­ted to tech­no­lo­gies making the meta­ver­se clo­ser to rea­li­ty. They are easy to find onli­ne, but you can abso­lu­te­ly con­tact us in Business­Oulu as well.

Let’s meet in Oulu’s cor­ner of the meta­ver­se!

Jus­si Lepo­nie­mi