Meet Emma Halmekoski

When Sweden lost to Finland in a hockey game where the two countries spar off against one another, Emma Halmekoski couldn't resist teasing her colleagues at SF Bio in Stockholm. But the Finnish Halmekoski, who is spending three months at SF Bio as part of the GROW exchange program, had to face her own teasing when Sweden beat Finland at soccer not long after. "My colleagues were giving it all back to me," she says with a smile. "Luckily we are still speaking to each other."

Halmekoski, who normally works at MTV3 in Helsinki as a product manager in digital media, says her co-workers are in fact one of the best things about the exchange. "My colleagues are great professionals and really nice and funny people as well," she says. "The office building is also beautiful here in Gamla Filmstaden. There is even a movie theater inside the office."

What drew Halmekoski to GROW was the chance to see how another company works with digital media - at MTV3 she works as an expert with online and mobile advertising. "In SF Bio I'm involved with mobile and applications projects," she says. "I'm doing, for example, benchmarking of different applications and solutions in applications, comparing ad server providers and looking into different ad formats."

So far, the experience has provided plenty to learn from, and Halmekoski advises anyone contemplating GROW to just apply. "I'll miss most when I go back the people and sunny, summery Stockholm and jogging trails in the seaside," she says. "Not to mention SF Bio's DVD rental room, where you can loan DVDs, and the free movie tickets."