Before retiring from the Finnish Broadcasting Company Dr. Heikki J. Kasari worked as Communications Adviser at the division of Corporate Planning.  Earlier he has been heading audience research departments both at commercial and public service stations.  Currently he works as a free lance consultant on market research, audience research, and TV audience measurement.

One of his life time hobbies is jazz and playing the saxophone.   

His wife Eila – a former movie producer - is a motivational speaker and jazz producer.   The daughter Melissa is a skydiver and studies computer sciences and biology at the University of Helsinki .

On 15th October, 2011 Heikki wrote:

Dear GEAR Collegues,

nice to hear from you all!   I have read all your emails with my mobile phone while in the Finn forests taking care of some forestry business.  Only now, after returning to Helsinki, I’m sitting by a computer. As some of you may recall, my wife is a landowner, and occasionally there is a chance of selling some lumber to the paper mills. In the current economical uncertainty, the prices paid to Finnish foresters have slumped. The cheap Russian lumber has not helped the situation. Working in the woods is, however, excellent physical exercise. It is hard to compensate the forestry work by walking in Manhattan during the winter – even if the distances are greater than in Helsinki, extensive walking on the asphalt is not good news for the feet. As pointed out by Wim, it can be problematic to send information to any internet data bank in which you can not control and update the contents.  This is one of the reasons I have stayed away from the Facebook and other similar databases.  Exchanging the information directly by email saves actually some trouble!
 For the past couple of years I have been busy with my new career as a journalist. Since my full retirement from the YLE in 2006, I have been a columnist for the major newspaper of Northern Finland, Kaleva (published in Oulu).  My specialty (w/ critical view) is still broadcasting, audience research, public service, license fees, etc.
Lately I also became an official journalist for the web Jazz magazine in Finland, Jazzrytmit (copy of my press card above).  We – me and my wife Eila -  wrote jointly an article about Finnish jazz to the Scandinavian Review, published in New York.  You can read the text (this is in English) through the link below.  Unfortunately, the high quality pictures are printed only in the original magazine.
 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3760/is_201007/ai_n56228435/

 I have given up mostly the actual professional work as a research consultant.  Instead, I had great hopes of spending much more time than ever before with saxophone playing.  Unfortunately, there have been several disruptions caused by dental problems. Only now, since last week, I seem not to have any forthcoming appointments with a dentist!
The Finnish winter weather has become very miserable.  There are very few pleasant days for outdoors activities. We have been fortunately to escape the worst months by staying in New York. Even if the weather can be cold there also, there is sunshine almost every day and in a metropolitan city, a lot of cultural activities.  If any of you travel to the US during the winter, it would be nice to meet in NYC. I read my emails almost every day.

 Our daughter studies (PhD candidate) computer sciences at Helsinki University.  She also works there. Last year the university sent her to Hyderabad (India) to give a paper (database management & programming) in an international mathematician’s conference.  She and her boyfriend are world travellers; we met them two years ago in New York, lately they spent ½ year in Shanghai.  He was sent there by his employer (Center for Research in Technology); there is an international exchange programme for young researchers (no such thing existed when I was a young researcher!).  

 Potential GEAR+ meeting

 Matthias raised an interesting idea of meeting each other personally.  After seeing the picture of the new castle it crossed my mind, would the Steinmann-Stiftung Schoss Wyl be able to sponsor such a meeting? 

 As always, there could be many other possibilities…you could give it a thought.     For instance, we could meet in Poland to evaluate the forthcoming TAM audit ?    Or how about a wine tasting competition in Ireland, or a trip to Greece - to evaluate the impact of the current economical climate on the audience measurement?

 I have enclosed a picture of our log cabin and the scenery opening up for the doorstep over the lake in Heinola. As a matter of fact, movie director Elia Kazan told us to build the house on the top of a cliff.  He visited us and the country place in 1977, years back Eila got to know him in New York.  Also, there is a picture of the Rosehill Condominium where we usually stay during our visits to New York.

 Also, enclosed a picture taken in July of Tony Fahy and myself, taken at the Esplanad Park during an outdoors jazz festival in Helsinki.  We meet each other just about every summer while he and Eva are visiting the Scandinavian countries.