behind the scenes... (Patreon)

We briefly parked Lumi in Whittier, Alaska to join the Arctic Encounter Symposium in Anchorage. There Dr you-might-know-who Sohvi Kangasluoma moderated a panel discussion on the topic of Northwest Passage, with the speakers being her, myself, Petteri Vuorimäki (Ambassador for Arctic Affairs, Finland) and Ethan Berkowitz (Former Mayor of Anchorage, now part of the Far North Digital that plan to run a fiber optic cable through the Passage).
Really interesting conference and very far from my usual comfort zone. Sohvi is more of a natural in this setting ;)
Arctic Encounter has around 1000 attendants, there were a lot of high level NATO officials, leaders from Arctic countries, and a lot of talk quite vague talk about policies and cooperation in the Arctic regions. But more interesting and important for me were the local indigenous communities and the youth who offered powerful and interesting perspectives.
This kind of a symposium might seem far from the video work that I normally do but offered so many interesting views to the regions that we are sailing through, and those are something that I can use in my videos. There's so much happening right now with geopolitics, indigenous rights, nature and climate change, extractive industries... I really try to get the big picture of these areas and offer that as insights in the videos as well.
Another super cool thing as a Finn in the event was that with the Finnish "delegation" being so small, we could walk up and talk to all the Finnish representatives in great detail, we shared many conversations with Ambassador Vuorimäki and Military Attaché Helle, getting a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes decision making.
Anyway, we stocked up in the Anchorage Costco (first time in Costco for us!) and are now back on Lumi and getting ready to head out again. We have a haul out scheduled next month in Seward and after that we will start sailing north towards Greenland...