2020, The Year of the Community
It is common practice in many organizations to share what has been accomplished as the year ends. You know, that typical exercise of checking items off the list, and then do the planning for the coming year, right?
Well, we didn’t do it.
Moreover, we’ve been quite silent, but, at least, in our case, it does not mean a lack of activity, quite the opposite. So, let me share with you what has happened and some exciting updates.
2019 was our first year… and, what a ride!!
First of all, we met you :)
Yes, we met on social media and at any of the 10 events, we put together through the year, including some happening overseas to connect with peers living outside Portugal.
We held meetings with different renowned Portuguese Universities to create dedicated training programs on Service Design. We nurtured relations with key organizations to showcase the value of Service Design to the business. We created the Welcome Kit to explain who we are, what do we ambition to do, what values do we hold dearly and, how you can have a leading role as part of these plans. This document, available in Portuguese and in English, has been downloaded almost 700 times!! Most exciting and unexpected, the SDN distinguished this initiative with the Innovation Award.
Yet, all this came to a cost. Susana Branco left the Chapter at the beginning of 2019, Carlos Moreira in September, and Kasper van der Knaap, Daniel Santos and Sofia Peres in December. We learned in the hard way that pro-bono work and a long-term commitment demands lots of energy and time, actually over 500 hours in 2019. This is the reason that explains the internal moves. But wait!! We didn’t stop.
Please join us to welcome Luísa Pessoa, Artur Poluektov and Ana Pité as new members of the Service Design Network Portugal. They join the old crew formed by the founding members' Laura Lorenzo and Mauro Bastos, to make 2020 the year of the community.
Yes, we want the Portuguese-speaking Service Design community to have a leading voice this year!!
We want you to go public.
We want you to share your journey towards Service Design, your work, the tools you use so we can all learn from you and with you. So, this week we will launch a project that we have been working for the last two months: Lusofonia.
Lusofonia is our effort to make sure that the Service Design Network Portugal is the hub for all Portuguese-speaking Service Designers wherever they are. You will get to know many peers that leave abroad and share their stories, their journey with you. We hope you enjoy this project as much as we have.
So stay tuned. On that, you can find us on our website, but also in any of our available social media channels: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or slack, our channel is #chapter-Portugal.
Talk to you soon!