Ideas make events
Events need a concept, marketing, materials to work with and sponsors. All of these things are nice and good, but you'll also need to consider the little things like catering to avoid grumbling stomachs, which could put an end to all service design thinking by midday. It took six weeks of planning to come up with a well-organized jam.
Having a close relationship to everyday work at Insight Innovation facilitated the concept. The consulting guys jam with their regular customers. Founder Tim Schikora’s network was useful for finding the sponsors. For example, it gained Immowelt AG as a sponsor, and they support numerous events across all of Germany. Shirtracer sponsored the jam t-shirts for the participants, which are great souvenirs and also create a sense of group dynamic. Existing network connections experience a revival and new connections are a necessary side effect of event organization.
Conversations with the founders of the Coworking Space Nuremberg got the location question out of the way during regular workdays. “The service we offer our coworkers during the week is ready for events during the weekends”, said Michael Stingl, cofounder of the Coworking Space Nuremberg. “Besides, our technical infrastructure is made for hosting events with many participants, a firm couldn’t necessarily offer that service in their regular office. Our wireless LAN is stable enough for a large number of foreign devices. Regular event locations don’t offer that kind of flexibility.” And then there’s the atmosphere of the coworking space, like the café, which is made for casual get-togethers, lectures and speeches. The desks, unoccupied during the weekends, can be used for creative work places and fresh faces seeing the inside of the coworking space for the first time means new ideas from outside.
And last, but not least, there's always the altruistic coworker or two who offered a helping hand for free.
Would we do that again?
Would the participants make the jam experience more than once? It seems very likely that they would. The jam topic will be announced on today, the 1st March 2013 and the last tickets for the NorisCityJam are being sold.
“We look forward to gathering experience for our jams with customers and being inspired by what our participants come up with”, says Tim Schikora. The Global Service Jam topic will be announced on the first evening of the jam, which definitely makes things exciting. Jammers are free in interpretation and their results differ from year to year. Ideas born and bred at events such as the Startup Weekends have proven in the past that they need not stay mere ideas. Who’s going to bring all those ideas to life? It could be the participants, or it could also be a firm that was ready for inspiration from outside. Ideas are there for all.
“Our communication does have some impact – but then you hit a plateau and you’ve reached a certain number of people. The organizer brings their network into our coworking space with their event and helps us reach new customers too”, says cofounder Michael Stingl in regards to why to offer the space as an event location. Newcomers to the coworking space will ask questions, whether during the NorisCityJam, a Startup Weekend, or any other event format. What is this office, who works here, and would it be the right place for me? What an excellent moment for coworking space enthusiasts to draw new members on board!
The NorisCityJam takes place between 1st-3rd March 2013 in the Coworking Space Nuremberg, and there are still a few tickets left. The Global Service Jam is a worldwide event taking place at the same time in various cities across the world.
