Dmitry Tolonen - Office & Tech

Education Sector

Edexcel, the examination board, London - Subject Co-ordinator/Leader (acting)

Hired in this full-time position after temping for a month. An incredible introduction to education, and the business behind education.

Responsible for 39 coursework units (ELC, GCSE and GCE), and the work of both Subject Co-ordinator and the managerial position of Subject Leader in the absence of one; for organising and running, with a team to delegate work to, of 20-30 training events for 200-300 Examiners; for liaising with senior management, public relations and senior examiners about results and dealing with a variety of operational issues.

Rose Bruford College, London - Marketing Assistant

'Working directly with the Marketing Manager' Experience and responsibilities in small, busy Marketing Dept. include bookings, taking committee minutes, liaison with theatres and agents, database maintenance and mail-outs.

Rose Bruford College, London - Library Assistant

Learning about the intricacies and developing an appreciation for the hard graft of library work.

The Open Cabin Workshops, Rose Bruford College, London - Team Member

Series of physical theatre workshops at Rose Bruford College run by post-graduates.

Turku Vocational School for the Deaf, Finland

Civil national service at a secondary school for the deaf and hearing impaired as counsellor, night-watchman and general mr. fix-it while studying art history at Turku University. A real eye- opener to the world of sign language, the deaf and the hearing.

Private English Lessons

Summer job teaching English in Porvoo, Finland

Circus Media / Theatre Venture, London - 25th Anniversary Videos

Editor for Arts Organisation on their 25th anniversary videos, compiling past productions. Also some personal tutoring , teaching Final Cut Pro editing.

Other Work & Experience

Riihimaki Signal Regiment Finnish Armed Forces, Finland

Military national service in the Signal Regiment. A good experience, doing moderately well, learning Morse codel.

Transferring from the army to civil service just as you’ve been told you will be 'promoted' to non-commissioned officer school, is also a true lesson in group psychology and that the path less travelled often yields greater insight for inquisitive minds.

Studio 123 cinema, Porvoo, Finland

A teenage job working as a projectionist at the local cinema.

Coffee Republic, St. Paul’s, London

Straight up barista work. An introduction to real coffee but also to the Starbucksification of the world. Additionally, an interesting boss character who enjoyed the prospect of yogis burning in hell (which actually sounds funnier than the sincerity of said boss).

Cineworld, London

Cinema worker

Gate theatre, Notting Hill, London

East Goes West festival office and studio worker and Russian interpreter. Recuited from Drama and Russian depts looking for Russian speaker

Temping, London

Countless other temping jobs e.g. at Edexcel, Catch22, Stepahead, Central Saint Martins (University of Arts) and others, with their incredible cast of characters - truth is truly often stranger than fiction.

Entrepreurship

Graduating from freelance work, Dmitry spent years as an entrepreneur, mostly offering translation/localisation, writing and media services, collaborating with clients around the globe. At the same time, he served on the boards of SET, the Finnish Film and Television union, and Audiovisual Finland, which worked towards a Finnish production incentive for film, television and animation.

He has recently joined the ranks of the esteemed Finnish creative cooperative, Lilith, which serves as the home of freelance talents from music, writing and design to journalism and producing.

Dmitry's work has been recognised by funding from AVEK, Taike and his past employers and end clients include: Canon, Pearson, Aalto University, the European Commission, Visit Finland, Triumph motorcycles, Garmin, Wilder Films, YLE / Fiilin Good Films, Zodiak Television, Konecranes, Finnwind

Startup Sector & Code Experience

Although not a programmer, Dmitry is fairly technical and has persisted in educating himself in various tech and startup related skills, from technical writing, UX design and app prototyping to various kinds of programming.

In particular, he has been impressed with the open mindedness and diversity of backgrounds, cultural and vocational, within the various internationally minded startup communities he has joined. The creativity and problem solving skills of these people greatly match the imagination of his background in the creative industries.

Basic Programming and Data

42 / Hive Helsinki 'Piscine' - one month intensive bootcamp in Bash and C funded by Supercell

Dmitry was accepted from around 8000 people to be among the first batch of students to attend Hive Helsinki's inaugural 'Piscine,' or a four week long, 15 hour a day, monday-to-friday bootcamp into programming. At the time, the program was way too technically intense, but the spirit of determination and collaboration determination between everyone there left a mark on him. It is the genesis of all the other startup and tech related activities below.

Github page for the Piscine code (#workinprogress)

The Shortcut Helsinki - Python for Data Analysis

This program took place at The Shortcut, a talent accelerator at the heart of Maria 01, the largest startup hub in the Nordic countries. Funded by the Startup Foundation and linked to Slush and Junction, the program covered the basics of Python, Numpy, Pandas, Matplotlib and SQL.

Course projects included small scale data analysis of The Google Play Store and Johns Hopkins University's early Covid-19 data using Python. The final team project analysed Nordic startup investment from publicly available sources. Dmitry took on a project writer / managerial role as the other team members were more advanced in their programming skills.

dmitrytolonen.com

Github page for the Python code (#workinprogress)
Final team project: Nordic startup investment

HTML & CSS courses by Javier Usobiaga Ferrer

Two courses on HTML and CSS basics, with a one page website project for each.

Introduction to Responsive Web Development with HTML and CSS by Javier Usobiaga Ferrer: Github code here and the results here: Cafe Oslo one page website
Web Layout with CSS Grid, Flexbox and other Modern Techniques by Javier Usobiaga Ferrer: Github code here and the results here: The race to the South Pole one page website

Creative and Interactive Programming (Python and Javascript)

Rhode Island School of Design: Computing Form and Shape - Python Programming with the Rhinoscript Library course

This course from the RISD Architecture department was an introduction to combining the 3D application Rhinoceros with the Python library Rhinoscript to develop parametric designs and analysis e.g. for architecture, furniture and industrial design.

The course began by using code to create shapes using points (dots), then lines and finally joining these into three-dimensional surfaces e.g. for roofs, walls. The final project involved the computational construction of perspective and projection techniques of points onto secondary surfaces. For more architecture related items, see the Creative page.

Above, you can click on the arrows to see the results of the course. The fullscreen button will enlarge the images.
Github page for the Python code (#workinprogress)

Getting Started with Processing for Py book - exercises

(Book by Allison Parrish, Casey Reas and Ben Fry)

Processing is the result of several MIT projects to enable people with non-engineer backgrounds - e.g. writers, design and creative people - to learn to build and modify their own tools instead of being bound by corporations or the limitations of existing technologies. If programming books were traditionally very long and theoretical, Processing aims to teach through creating smaller, audiovisual projects. These exercises were done as prep for the UCLA course below.

Here's an official description of the MIT history of the Processing project:

"When we started Processing in spring 2001 we were both graduate students at the MIT Media Lab within John Maeda's Aesthetics and Computation research group. Development continued in our free time while Casey pursued his art and teaching career and Ben pursued a Ph.D. and founded Fathom Information Design. Many of the ideas in Processing go back to Muriel Cooper's Visual Language Workshop, and it grew directly out of Maeda's Design By Numbers project, developed at the Media Lab and released in 1999. We welcome you to read our longer history of Processing on Medium.

— Ben Fry and Casey Reas, updated 14 September 2022"

Github page for code
Results here

UCLA, Dept of Arts - Introduction to Programming for the Visual Arts with p5.js

A visual introduction to the field and to programming using not Python as above, but the p5.js Javascript library. The course's exercises covered: variables and loops, flow, functions, objects, arrays, randomness, input, creating and moving shapes, loading media and typography, data visualisation, timers, nonlinear narrative and simple games. Although still pretty basic, the results include a rudimentary painting tool, interactive and generative work, games and storytelling work.

On this page, you can preview a few of the 11 'code sketches.' Please accept the cookies and click on the </> icon to see the code and the circular refresh icon to run the code again.

You can find all 11 of the (#workinprogress) exercises on: (#workinprogress) exercises on:

The Openprocessing site (fullscreen and interactive)
Github (code only)

Interactive piece exploring conditionals and input.

Simple game using p5.js. Use mouse and up/down arrow keys to capture the white balls and avoid the red ones.

Rudimentary painting tool exploring variables and functions. Move mouse around for dark paint, click for light paint.

Nonlinear narrative using events and transitions. Read on-screen instructions and press buttons to make choices and proceed in the 'story.'

Prototyping and Writing

App Design: Figma Prototyping for Beginners course by Filippos Protogeridis

Conceived, researched and designed a mobile application prototype using Figma. Below, you can find images of the brainstorming and design phase and a video walkthrough of using the app prototype itself.