Kerava is a small town of 34,000 residents located in the province of Southern Finland.
In attempts to develop a cultural and economic exchange of information, the town sent four representatives to Boynton Beach to meet with staff members, including City Manager Kurt Bressner and Mayor Jerry Taylor.
It was a meeting of the collective minds and it also included one more person.
The media is crucial in Kerava and I was brought into the fold to compare journalism practices and get the representatives in touch with people here that could help.
Rolf Paqvalin, the equivalent of a city manager in Kerava, said he hoped to bring back more effective business practices to Kerava.
One of the main differences between Boynton and Kerava, pointed out by Bressner, was that the scope of government control there is wider including education and healthcare.
They also have a commission or council of 51 representatives as opposed to the Boynton Beach City Commission of five.
Eero Lehti, a member of national parliament, owner of local newspapers and equivalent of mayor of Kerava, said he was most impressed with America’s construction techniques.
Kerava homes, which cost almost double that of Palm Beach County homes, are built family by family, not one community or apartment building at a time.
As for my involvement, I spoke with Jorma Hamalainen, a managing editor of the local papers, and Erkki Nikkila, a city manager of a northern city of Pihtipudas, where the paper mill is located that prints Kerava’s papers.
Nikkila said his main concern was to create more outlets for media.
“Some info we have is slow, some is fast and some never,” he said of the dissemination of information from government to the residents.
One of the toughest transitions for Kerava has been the switch to the Internet, where in fact this story will be circulated first.
The residents in Kerava rely on a tangible paper, where technology-crazed Americans obtain 80 percent of their information through the Web. For Kerava, that is almost opposite.
The meeting was brief but was the beginning of a relationship between a town if Finland, which is covered in a foot of snow, and Boynton Beach, where it was 75 degrees and sunny.
One idea I contributed to Hamalainen that he will not soon forget was the term 'mojo' or mobile journalist, which he though was quite amusing.
“Mojo, mojo,” he asked. “What is this mojo?”
Well, I guess that’s me.

Read more about this story and see photos in the Feb. 4 issue of the Boynton Forum.
Mike Rothman can be reached at mkrothman@tribune.com.