How might we create a safe space for individual growth fostered by the collective community experience?
A cross-cultural, multilingual event paired with a series of design thinking exercises organized into a program booklet paired with supplemental social warmups
Role
Cultivated a space and social environment that helped attendees consolidate and digest learnings in an interactive/reflective way
Team: 7 speakers who doubled as organizers with Piotr as event lead. Members listed in the "Speaker Mapping" section
3 months of planning
1 day event
This event was built around the residents of a small town in rural Guatemala. Most of the population is indigenous, mixed with some social sector workers and volunteers.
There are three main languages spoken (Spanish, Tzʼutujil, and English). Out of the attendees, there would be at least 10 different nationalities present from almost every continent with professions that range from scientists to non-profit leaders.
Since the majority of the talks were emotionally heavy and diverse in cultures and experiences. It was important to us that we created an environment where people could share.
Alignment Summary
Extend and enhance sense of community
Give people time and space to reflect internally and share if they're comfortable
Create the structure for tangible takeaways to empower themselves by the end of the day
The format of the event would be speakers talking about lessons from their experiences. It was important to order the topics and understand the context in which the audience would be experiencing the event to be able to map the user journey fully. I had to understand how to manage and tailor exercises for each topic, as well as a wrap up for a wider takeaway.
This was especially interesting as the team was diverse in both profession and country of orgin, making the talks just as diverse
Topics
"Maya Cosmovision in agricultural practices," David Sacach & Andrés Muñoz
"Intuition through connection to one's body," Leandra Wortham
"Respecting your body & overcoming an eating disorder," Mia
"Cultural identity," Marissa Loterina
"Lessons from experiencing grief," Serena Frasconá
"Climate change & hope," Jessica Kind
"Cultivating your inner child to reach your future goals," Piotr Juisk
Mapping out steps and emotions helped to see where my design thinking activities would be able to point out their own problems in reflection so that they may ideate on solving them later. This is balanced with the other user group (speakers) and easing their pain points surrounded around organizing and speaking
User Needs
Guidance through cognitively and emotionally heavy processing
A safe and supportive space that allows for both sharing and failure without pressure
Infrastructure for a positive feeling for accomplishment
1. An interactive event full of play, reflection, and growth. Event link
2. A booklet containing activities that addressed every part of the pain point in the journeys. Example activity: "Create a magazine cover featuring you in the future when you've achieved your goals"
3. Positive feedback from attendees that they walked away with actionable insights that helped them realize and progress towards their goals. This event was so successful, it sprouted more events with different themes within growth and learning
Takeaways
Guide more. This was the first workshop that I ran after leaving my job in Silicon Valley. There was some confusion as to what these exercises were and how to go about them
Break this down into a shorter event or two events in a series. Even though people wanted to be there, it was a lot to digest and attendee attentions spans were short. A shorter event would have increased the accessibility for those who had to work
Success in bilingual & multicultural integration. We did a great job at integrating cultures and languages (Spanish, Tzʼutujil, English). This was in part that the existing community was familiar with such integration, but I also thought about activities that spanned across the attendees' various backgrounds and cultural contexts, which were understood well