Global Service Jam Glasgow 2015
For the second year running I took part in the Global Service Jam.
Again this was held in the Whisky Bond in their excellent co-working space.
The difference this year was in the numbers who showed up, about double that of 2014.
For the uninitiated, the aim is to design & prototype a new service within 48 hours based around a secret theme that is only revealed to your timezone at 1800 hours.
The theme this year was an image of the instructions of how to build one of those little paper fortune teller things.
Everyone writes ideas based on what the theme image means to them onto post its and sticks them to the wall.
From that broader themes develop.
You can then group those themes to develop them further.
It is at this point that we arrange ourselves into groups based on whatever interests or inspires us.
What I learned?
Find a problem then build a solution.
Last year we developed our ideas and then asked members of the public what they thought.
Nobody liked what we'd proposed.
This year I made sure that we did it the other way around.
Ideas are cheap.
I had some long twitter conversations with members of other jams, especially San Francisco as their team's project in the initial stages looked identical to ours.
Somehow we'd both ended up with notes about mental health.
To be honest on that topic we bottled it. It was too big a subject in the time frame.
We took that idea down the road of helping people & connecting people to make them feel better.
They developed a gifting experience for a depressed friend.
Think about the users
We made user profiles based on the people we asked and then built our services around them.
It also helped to have a persona to be able to demonstrate our prototype.
Never underestimate the progress that a group can make.
As a freelancer this always hurts.
It is tiring and hard to make progress all the time on your own
Isolation is the death knell of the freelancer.
On the flip side it is amazing what five people can accomplish over a weekend.
Glasgow > NYC
GS Jam New York Challenged us to a dance off and lost.
That'll learn 'em!
#DoingNotTalking
Make something, make a mark, write down those ideas.
They really take shape quite quickly.
The Jam is a great way to spend a weekend.
Great experience to share with people and I always learn something new..
Big thanks to Snook, the Whisky Bond, Butterfly & Pig, Tunnocks and Bakery 47 for looking after us all weekend.
You can see all the projects on the Glasgow Service Jam site.
As a funny little footnote.
My team members are going to be actually using our service for real.
I Make Photographs that Tell Stories.
10 å¹´Yes, checking out the finished projects is always fascinating. This year there was a lot of complimentary ideas/services. Apart from the fun element and the getting to know new folk part, I'd like to make this type of thing, this type of working more normal. It was ultra productive.
Director of Conventions & Events for Visit Haugesund/DHH
10 å¹´The global service jam is a lot of fun. I was there last year too (couldn't make it this year unfortunately) and it forced me to do things very differently then what I have been used to. We went out with our problem talking to people and asking them to do drawings for us but not presenting possible concepts. AFTER talking to all these people we went back to the Whiskey Bond and came up with our concept based on the conversations. It amazed me how many, and how very different, great ideas and concepts had been created in just a few days all inspired by the same little image.