How do you measure magic?
Last Tuesday we celebrated The Shortcut Lab’s first anniversary: a great excuse to gather the community in a joyful environment, but also to reflect on what has happened in the past year.
Phew! Time flies when you are having fun, and also when you are working hard. To commemorate the anniversary, the team joined forces in order to release The Shortcut yearbook and it turned out to be an exciting exercise. One of the first questions that we had to answer was: How do we measure what we do? We have the concrete numbers: events, participants, visits, etc. but the question is also, how do we measure what The Shortcut means to us and what it has meant for the community? How do you measure those micro-encounters which might have made someone’s day, those sparks of inspiration? How do you measure magic? Sometimes is good to stop for a minute and get a good perspective of what is that the team has been creating. It is heartwarming to realize that the hard work of more than 50 people is paying off and that ultimately, it is thanks to all of us that we have had thousands of visits at The Lab, and a massive amount of training hours.
So we have many reasons to celebrate, our anniversary is a perfect occasion to get many of us together. This year 313 people registered to attend the party and that represented 69 nationalities. We had Mia and Sharbel, two of our dearest community members acting as MCs and the speeches of Moaffak Ahmed, Founder and Chairman of the Board and Anne Badan, Founder and CEO. Moaffak talked about the beginnings of The Shortcut and how what was being perceived as a problem, was identified as an opportunity. The opportunity of supporting eager and talented people into finding their place in the society. Anne then focused on acknowledging the community and the team highlighting how it is their hard work and ideas that keep The Shortcut’s engine running through designing content and creating an environment that is welcoming to anyone curious to get familiar with the startup ecosystem.
We want to thank our sponsors and supporters for making the occasion so memorable: Ravintola Brasileria, Palms and Berries, Singa, Pull, DJ Rö Dör and the delicious food from Kansleri. But certainly the biggest thank you of all goes today as always to the volunteers, what would we ever do without you? Be proud of yourselves. You are something else!
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