05/01/2024
On this very same date 20 years ago, I signed an employment contract with Citius Imaging Ltd Oy - or we didn't sign anything, we agreed!!! The job was defined as a sales manager, but in a four-person start-up hi-tech company, right from the first days, I was closely involved in product development, production - and what's best, visiting customers to solve various production and product development problems by high-speed imaging.
It has been an unimaginably great fortune to work with inspiring, interesting and intelligent people and revolutionary technology. Every day has been an interesting adventure with this special small company and all of our countless customers.
These years have accommodated the entire spectrum of business and human life; technical, production and financial challenges, incredible experiences of success and countless applications at the forefront of completely new and revolutionary technologies. At the same time, a family has been founded, a home has been built and even the firstborn has had time to change diapers for military service.
To the feeling that comes from it - when you see a picture taken with your own camera in the music video chosen as the best of the year, in the Tesla explosion video that received more than 7 million views, when you read the news about a cancer surgical instrument developed by a Finnish university with the help of a camera, or when you see the relief on a customer's face when a production problem that has been bothering them for a long time is solved by a slow motion video – I never get tired of it.
However, the best of all in this journey have been our customers, partners and principals. Every customer encounter has always been the most important to us. Even though we have been the equipment manufacturer or the seller of the service/product, we have always wanted to stand on the customer's side of the table with our hands covered in grease and our boots deep in the mud. We've never sold just a camera or software – we've always sold a tool or a solution that enables the customer to achieve the results they want.
A huge number of domestic and international contacts have arisen from these meetings. I feel very grateful that the customer relationships, some of which were created even before our company had manufactured its first product, still exist. Very important personal friendships have also been born from these customer relationships over the years.
Over the years, our company has changed from a high-speed camera manufacturer to an importer and service provider of these devices, and me personally from an employee to an entrepreneur. Despite the change, high-speed cameras and the video analysis software supporting their use have always been at the center of the work. The number of our principals is intentionally small and each of them represents the undisputed top of their field.
Someone wise once said that the journey is more important than the destination - and this is precisely why the journey continues. I hope I can do this most interesting job in the world for at least another 20 years.
Regards,
Mikko, the High Speed Camera Dude
