Tallinn: City of the Future

With a history in Soviet cybernetics and a population of early adopters, Tallinn is an ideal home for some of the world's most exciting technology companies

Featured February 11 Words by Si Hawkins
PHOTO: JUHO KUVA
Tallinn: City of the Future

This was never in the script. Having travelled to Tallinn to explore its hi-tech activities, I am now being driven through what looks like a location for the upcoming movie of le Carr�'s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Gloomy Communist-era apartments whistle past my taxi, while above us looms the ominous Tallinn TV tower, an edifice that still gives one a shudder of Big Brother two decades after the Berlin Wall fell.

The confusion is understandable. Estonia is still a mystery to many - a small nation of only 1.3m people, it has undergone a quiet technological revolution since independence in 1991. Early adopters of the internet, Estonian computer buffs have manipulated the web in ways much larger countries still can't manage, while capital city Tallinn has been awash with free Wi-fisince the early noughties. As, indeed, are its trains, buses and even the airport.

A new generation of technology businesses is now utilising this cloud of connectivity, the most successful of which is my first destination on a snowy winter morning. Skype - the web-based communication service - is ubiquitous in Tallinn and is clearly a major inspiration for the other businesses that have made their home in the city. Even my room at the Nordic Hotel Forum features one of the company's clever videophones.

Skype's largest office is in the city's creative hub, the Technopol science park, home to the University of Technology, as well as numerous other cutting-edge companies, encouraging much cross- pollination between businesses. The area has a proven track record - it once housed the USSR's cybernetics research facility, and in fact the first Soviet computer was built in an office that Skype eventually took over.

It probably wasn't quite so jolly back then. In the company games room - all pool tables and consoles - I meet Skype's "chief evangelist", Andres K�tt, who knows more than most about Estonia's technological evolution. He previously ran the country's tax and customs IT system and was in banking during the post-independence shake-up, when the government replaced "a gazillion" state-run branches with a more manageable internet service. "The same happened to effectively all the state agencies," he explains.

K�tt, like many Tallinn-based techies I meet, marries a proud determination with an appealingly quirky streak, and concludes our chat by blurting out that, "there are no other countries that have both the highest Wi-fipenetration and the highest number of bears per capita." I must look bewildered. Bears? "I'm just pointing it out," he says. "It's a place of contrasts."

That fact is apparent in Tallinn's inventive recycling of old buildings, with many an Eastern Bloc factory now augmented with a modern glass apartment block on top. A similar meeting of old and new is seen in the city's bars and coffee shops, situated mostly in the Old Town, which pack their medieval buildings with laptop-wielding creatives. Tallinn's glorious pink parliament building - once the Royal Palace - is also well connected, with both MPs and the public able to vote online.

But the government's enthusiastic embrace of technology appeared to backfire in June 2007, when a cyberterrorism attack left much of the country's infrastructure disabled. From the finance sector to the military, the country was completely helpless. Estonia blamed Russia.

Based in Delta Plaza, a hi-tech building that looks like a giant robot head, Tarvi Martens has been an IT security expert "almost all of my sober life" and is the brains behind Estonian e-voting. His unofficial co-op with the nation's e-security experts enabled a quick recovery from the 2007 attack, but one wonders if the public would prefer a return to chequebooks and ballot boxes? "I think that confidence was not affected," he says. "There was no panic."

Indeed, Martens insists that these technological breakthroughs are "good for the image of the country," and this year should further enhance that image. On New Year's Day, Estonia joined the Eurozone, while Tallinn became a Capital of Culture, an accolade that has already helped Martens bring "the biggest e-Identity conference in Europe" to the city. "Let them come to the cradle of e-ID!" he barks, proudly.

My own tour of Tallinn ends in a good old-fashioned pub crawl, as I'm led around several favoured Wi-fihotspots by the man chiefly responsible for establishing the concept here. An eccentric rural character, Veljo Haamer first experienced Wi-Fi "in Bryant Park, on Broadway," in 2002, and was soon spreading the word back home. "New York gave me power," he says, gesturing with a flagon of ale, "and now it's changed Tallinn and Estonia as well."

Perhaps New York provided a spark, but this city's hi-tech achievements are really home-grown and people-powered, driven by eccentrics with mighty brains and a passion for IT and wireless telecoms. All hail Estonia's unlikely revolutionaries.

TALLINN'S TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTIONARIES

THE TELECOMS EVANGELIST

ANDRES K�TT
CHIEF EVANGELIST OF SKYPE

IT architect K�tt once turned down an invitation to join the start-up then called Skyper, because he "didn't know what the hell it was". Now he travels the world spreading the word, hence the curious job title. The seven-year- old company - which enables users to make free web-based voice and video calls - has become a global phenomenon, but its roots are very much in Tallinn. K�tt can tell you scores of "awesome stories" about people babysitting via the service, and distanced couples leaving it on all night. "The people aspect of Skype comes very deeply from Estonia," he concludes. "Underneath that fairly cold and reserved outer layer, Estonians are very much about family."

THE CAB CONNOISSEUR

RAOUL JARVIS
FOUNDER AND CEO OF TAXIPAL

Founded in 2009, Taxipal is a devilishly simple mobile phone app that uses GPS to locate and rate local cab companies anywhere in the world; it also features a one- click ordering service so you can avoid calling them, too. Jarvis came up with the idea because he found ordering taxis "inconvenient and cumbersome" on his travels, and though he admits his award-winning company is now "very much global," Tallinn will remain its creative base. Why is the city so fertile? "Over here, start-ups are forced to think global from the very beginning," he concludes, "since Estonia is just too small a market for most kinds of ideas."

THE HOME CONTROL FREAK

PRIIT VIMBERG
FOUNDER AND CEO OF YOGA INTELLIGENT BUILDING (IB)

Vimberg was trying to link mobile phones and vending machines when he realised that the technology would work equally well with entire buildings. Utilising internet and mobile telecom signals, Yoga's system allows customers to control their home or office - including lights, temperature, doors and refrigerators - from a computer, smartphone or TV. And users can even keep tabs on the energy being used by each device. "When we started it," he recalls, "everyone said, 'You guys are nuts, nobody can look to this sort of system that does everything.' And we said, 'Yes we can.'" There are now deals in place with several global telecom companies. So, yes, it seems they can.