I don’t travel for business that often, mostly because most of my clients are located in Waterloo, Toronto and Montreal. I also find business travel to be gruelling, which is why I wonder about people who proclaim to enjoy the lifestyle.

My resolve to avoid business travel if at all possible disappeared a couple of weeks ago when Nokia invited me to attend its “The Way We Live Next 3.0″ conference at its global headquarters in Espoo, Finland, which is located just outside Helsinki.

The two-day conference features a number of Nokia senior executives, who will provide insight about the company’s strategic direction and how it’s “connecting and building the communities of the future”.

I’m looking forward to to meeting Oskar Korkman, head of “opportunity identification” for Nokia’s consumer and consumer insights unit. Korkman is responsible for “consumer insights, and supports the business in translating consumer understanding into business decision-making.”

I’m hoping he can provide some insight into what consumers are demanding in terms of hardware and software, including how the fast-growing smartphone market is going to evolve.

To be honest, I’ve had very little experience with Nokia smartphones, which is not that surprising given Nokia’s low profile in North American compared with the iPhone and Blackberry. I played with a Nokia smartphone several months ago that looked really slick but I found the UI and usability to be too complicated and somewhat frustrating.

It will be interesting to learn more about Nokia’s smartphones plans given the market is exploding, and smartphones have higher profit margins for hardware makers and carriers.

I’m also hoping to take in the sights of Helsinki and maybe catch a hockey game.