Hi!
I am Manne Laukkanen

I am a Finnish data architect / technical project manager working at my own company DataSommelier.
I like science and have a PhD in psychology.
I am also a published author and a musician.

If you for some strange reason want to know more and don't want to click the links above, read on.

Things I do

Some details.

In brief

Data architect / technical project manager

I started coding and hacking around as a pre-teen and landed my first IT job as soon as it was legal to hire me. I have since coded with various languages (Java, Python, C#, bash, lots of SQL variants...) and their dialects, with emphasis on building something that benefits the customer for over 20 years. See more details of my projects in LinkedIn.

My main work has been in designing and building cloud data storages and data utilization solutions for data Big or small, or helping teams to do so. My time has roughly split between being a technical project manager and a senior data architect, quite often in the same project. I am frequently used to evaluate and give feedback on (cloud) data architectures, fix them or to build them myself.

Behavioural scientist

After being curious about how machines work, I got curious about how minds work. Initially planning to debug brains as a neuropsychologist, I noticed a chance to study criminal minds in the psychology departments of two Universities: Helsinki and Åbo Akademi. I jumped on that train and got a PhD in criminal psychology, developing profiling methods for the police. Last time I checked, my research has been visited some 10000 times and cited over 200 times.

I have since used the data analytics and multivariate statistics skills I learned here to the profiling of criminals, customers, consumers, companies, data, integrations and whatever came my way. After a strange transition period at the start of our current millennia, companies finally realized that fact based decision making beats the alternatives and data has kept me busy ever since.

Musician

My childhood home was not wealthy, but it was a cornucopia of culture. I grew hearing my brothers listen to progressive rock, jazz and multifaceted pop and quickly started practising drum kit and percussion. A lot. At age of 16 I began playing professionally in touring dance and pop bands, then moving to orchestral percussion in e.g. Kaartin Soittokunta and as part of stage orchestra in Puccini La Boheme productions of The Finnish National Opera. I still play kit in orchestras and other groups.

I brought the very technical style of Scottish Pipe Band Snare drumming to Finland and am the only person in the history of Finland to compete in Grade 2 in the RSPBA Scottish and in the World Pipe Band Championships, not once, but twice as a member of the Stockholm Pipe Band. My drumming in bands Helsinki Pipes and Drums and Stockholm Pipe Band (Pipes and Drums of the 1st Royal Engineers) have led me to so many interesting things and places I have lost count - playing and marching along 5th Ave in Manhattan, NYC USA on a St Patrick's Day, Sicily during Christmas, even a celtic festival in The Caribbean.

Author

A love for dark minds and quality literature with COVID-19 limits on social life led me to writing Noir detective books under pen name Mikael Viima. The books were published by WSOY in 2022 and 2023.
My book on cults and cult leader manipulation methods is out from Otava under my own name in 2024.

Writing has been fun and useful in surprising ways also for my IT work and I intend to do more writing, should time permit.