Jamming In Amsterdam

[August 21st, 2017]

More out of personal interest than professional interest, I attended the second edition of the Global Goals Jam last week. This is a two-day event in which designers, developers, students and others from a local community work together on coming up with short term solutions to support the Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs). This event was hosted simultaneously in 40+ cities around the world and I visited the Amsterdam edition, which was held in the Amsterdam Venture Studios in cooperation with MediaLAB Amsterdam.

Global Goals Jam

While there are 17 SDGs in total, this year’s Global Goals Jam focused on designing realistic, actionable interventions for five of them:

• #1 — No poverty
• #2 — Zero hunger
• #3 — Good health and well-being
• #4 — Quality education
• #11 — Sustainable cities and communities

Local partners, such as Lemonaid+, FRISSR and the Municipality of Amsterdam, were invited to provide relevant challenges for the present teams. After introducing all challenges, teams were randomly divided and guided through design thinking (models provided by MediaLAB Amsterdam) and a tailored toolkit.

Staying passive was no option

At first I wanted to remain passive and report on the general process and the progress teams were making. Take the role of an outsider and see light bulbs switching on and off, while sharing my findings with the TIS public via Twitter. Well, that was an unrealistic notion, because the minute I started listening to the problem posted by the Municipality of Amsterdam, I was hooked. The challenge from the city of Amsterdam read as follows:

Find a smart solution to counter food wastage by Amsterdam households, while taking a wider societal impact in consideration.

Luckily we had a good coach from the Global Goals Jam team, because our enthusiastic team immediately started shouting possible solutions. She got us to focus on the WHY first, before moving on to the WHAT and eventually the HOW. We were first asked to identify stakeholders and explore the problem in detail, before going over possible solutions. And very patiently, our coach reminded us about this approach several times during the day.

Process / progress

We made some huge leaps several times during the day. One of our first leaps came when we identified our main stakeholder: students. We imagined students to be a big ‘waster’, as they make many spontaneous (dinner) plans, never knows when they’ll be eating at home, buys and cooks in bulk and might not know how to properly deal with left-over meals and produce. And, these is an assumptions that they might find it easier to order online and throw away left-overs instead. Makes sense right?

Some ideas that we came up with to address food wastage among students:

• a Tinder-like app, which connects people in your vicinity with left-overs from dinner to people looking for a meal. Swipe between pictures of lasagne, curries and quiches and pay in euros or crypto-currency.
• a smart fridge, that tells users via an app that food is about to go bad. Including an in-app option to share food with your housemates. Just swipe any produce that you’re not planning to eat in the ‘free-to-use’-folder to prevent it from going bad.
• a general collection point, which allows anyone with left-over produce to put it to good use. Are you really going to eat all of that 1kg of potatoes or apples before they go bad? Bring it to the collection point manned by people with poor job prospects, where students and others can pick it up for free or for some ‘food credits’.

Then came insight number two. One of our team mates said ‘let’s write down all the food that you’ve thrown out in the last week’. As it turned out, our own team wasn’t doing so well in preventing food waste either. Which led us to the next question, have we chosen the right stakeholder to craft a solution for? And more importantly, is it even realistic for us to come up with a solution in 48 hours that stops ALL the students of Amsterdam throwing away food?! Shouldn’t we focus on a smaller group and a realistic target?

Back to the WHY

Again, we went back to the WHY and the drawing table. Sadly, we reached this point at the end of day 1. You can imagine, this was a major setback. However, over (mouth-watering) dinner arranged by the Amsterdam team, we came up with two new ideas to start with the next morning:

• shared meals + community proposals, served in a community center where people bring their left-over food, which is made into a meal for all present. During dinner, entrepreneurs and community members are invited on stage to voice proposals to make the community better. After dinner, people discuss the ideas and vote for the best idea which receives a donation existing of all the entry-fees people paid. (inspired by Detroit Soup)
• left-over food festival, people are invited to bring all the left-over food to fixed collection points. Every week, this food will be the main ingredient for free meals at a food festival aimed to attract low-income households.

Day 2: pivoting

Unfortunately, I wasn’t there for the second day due to other engagements. Really unfortunately, because day 2 was all about getting your hands dirty. The team had full access to the HvA Makerslab with a 3D-printer, laser cutter and other creative materials. And of course, I was dying to know what my team came up with.

I have learnt our team has totally moved away from making an app and addressing students in their lifestyle. Actually, I was most surprised to hear that they have decided to aim at a different stage in the food circle: compost. After all, food doesn’t lose its value after it has become rotten, it still has a value as compost.

The final idea: compost for community gardens

It might be hard to gather from the drawings above, but what the team came up with is as follows:

• Amsterdam households will be given free biodegradable bags in which they can collect all their biodegradable food waste. The waste bags will be collected in several dumpsters throughout the city, so that a vast amount of valuable compost is collected all year long.
• The compost will be used to grow vegetables, fruits and flowers in the community gardens which will be taken care of by locals. The compost can also be given out to households for free when there is enough compost.
• Afterwards, the produce gained from the community gardens can be used in meals shared at events where people cook together, talk about food, food wastage and other community issues.

Final reflections

Why — What — How. I won’t forget that lesson anymore. Besides that, it was great fun to be part of an international team comprised of people from The Netherlands, Bulgaria, China, Belgium and America; people who brought in different insights from different backgrounds and cultures (‘In Japan they don’t waste food’). It was incredible to focus on solving a local problem, while ultimately contributing to solving a global problem. Knowing that in 40+ other cities around the world people were doing exactly the same, that’s just mind-boggling!

As a communication professional I sometimes regret that I haven’t specialized myself in a subject (e.g. healthcare, finance or even learnt a craft like making furniture) and acquired in-depth knowledge and specific skills. However, during this event it became clear to me that through my 18 months of work for TIS, I have gained a vast knowledge of global technologies, initiatives and approaches that work towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals. My added value as an enabler is guiding people towards the videos on our website and providing relevant examples that inspire and guide makers in the process. I would even go as far as saying that future ‘jam’ or hackathon events should consider contacting us to make a selection or compilation of inspiring videos relevant for the themes being discussed. After all, there are many promising innovations out there, that most of us in the Western World haven’t even heard of. Our task at TIS HQ is sharing that with you.

Questions? Remarks? Ideas? hello@tis.tv is the address!