Between 14 and 16 September 2021 a long-awaited event for the SIBdev Network took place in Voru, Estonia and in the online space at the same time: the first hybrid transnational event in the partnership’s history. The meeting was the 5th since the launch of the 2nd phase of the project, following a series of online sessions that started with the Activation meeting on 8-10 September 2020.
Estonia is famous for its advanced digital technologies, according to e-estonia.com 99% of governmental services are online and numerous digital solutions were designed as an answer to the Covid pandemic, which was a promising start to organise the first hybrid meeting is Voru. 15 participants appeared personally at the event, including participants from 6 partner cities, Masterclass presenters, LP external expert and LE, while 7 people from 2 partner cities and the Urbact Secretariat joined online.
During the meeting participants could learn more about measuring impact and enabling the SIB ecosystem for small enterprises and organisations and SIB development from a financial perspective in the framework of the 4th Masterclass. Further thematic highlights were the online Study visits presenting good practices at local levels in Estonia and Hungary, related to the Estonian social hackathon methodology. Hackathon, originating from the area of computer coding is a joint event that brings together professionals for a joint brainstorming. The first presenter, Mai Timmi founder of an adult training enterprise called Kasvulava summarized the main milestones of organising a social hackathon icluding the sytem of mentor support and measures needed to innovate the hackathon itself to adopt to Covid circumstances. She emphasized the importance of integrating diverse team members to a guided teamwork with professional mentors and the openness for innovation. The second presenter, Margus Timmo form Mahe and Muhe has shown how the hackathon works in pratice by outlining the case of creating sustainable school catering through the method. The dissemination of hackathon experiences was continued during the second part of the site visit, when a joint project of Estonia, Hungary and Romania was presented. The project was realized in the framework of the Erasmus plus programme between November 2019 and 2021 with the aim of adopting the Estonian model for social hackathon in the field of rural development.
The Voru meeting was not only interesting contentwise, but it has offered a great opportunity as well to test the hybrid meeting format which is gaining more and more importance due to the persistence of the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on participants’ feedbacks the method worked more effectively for SIBdev family than the fully online events, however, some challenges had to be faced during the implementation that can be shared as lessons learned with a wider audience.
These were the extra time needed for the elimination of technical difficulties that might occur despite all precautions during the preparation face, the difficulties of ice-breaking sessions where the equal treatment of online participants could not be fully realized and the extra staff need for the facilitation of the event in person and online at the same time. Above all, the most challenging part was the site visits, where only the full online format seemed to be feasible for the whole partnership.
In spite of all difficulties, for the SIBdev family it was worth the effort. And what would be a better evidence for that than their movie, Back to nature, which we are happy to share with you now:
