Interview with the initiators on the Global Service Jam

The very first worldwide Global Service Jam was an impressive success with more than 60 cities worldwide and 2000 people taking part in it. It showed the high potential of “Service Design Innovation”. We are pleased to being able to talk to both initiators, Markus Hormeß and Adam Lawrence from Work|Play|Experience about the background, dynamics and realisation of this event:

 

How did the idea of a service jam come up and did you already think about a global event at this point in time?

Adam Lawrence: One of our main tools in our Service Design work is a rule of "doing, not talking". We go to great events where lots of talking happens - and we would rather be doing stuff. Markus is involved in the Global Game Jam movement, and he suggested it would be a great format for service design - high energy, intense, and "doing, not talking".

Markus Hormeß: There were a couple of reasons why we think it was important to have a global event right from the start: Building awareness for service design is part of it, certainly, but we have very practical interests too. Prototyping in service design is sometimes a challenge, and this event is building a good library of several hundred service prototypes.  Some great designs are coming out of it, and we have seen that it is building global friendships and business links already. Also, the bigger it gets, the more fun it is!

 

What was the critical point of success to initiate a global resonance?

Adam Lawrence: That's hard to say, but I think it had a lot to do with the freedom of format.  We gave people a timeslot, a deadline and a theme, but let local groups decide how to organise and work. It was an invitation to work, but it felt like an invitation to play.

 

When did you notice a global involvement and self-sustaining dynamics?

Adam Lawrence: We officially launched the Jam at a service design conference in Linköping. There were a few minutes to go, and we thought now or never. So we asked the organisers for two minutes and got up on stage with a flipchart. We'd prepared the webpage and Twitter, so as soon as people saw the name they could go online and sign up.

Markus Hormeß: But the story starts a few weeks earlier at the Service Design Network conference in Berlin, where we released the Jam meme. We made a flipchart and walked around the conference. People were writing their e-mail addresses on Post-It's and sticking them on. Colombia, Italy, Japan, Holland, Singapore... In ten minutes we had ten countries and we thought, "This might work".

Adam Lawrence: It started to grow for itself as the website was up, and Twitter started rolling, but I think without that initial face-to-face contact, it would have been much harder.

 

What were your personal high- and low-lights during the weekend?

Adam Lawrence: I had great fun just interacting with these brilliant people around the world. We laughed a lot. There was late-night karaoke on Skype, people were making fun videos and posting them  - when I saw the Antwerp guys doing totally straight interviews in Superhero costumes I laughed so much that it hurt. And I loved the moment when the guys in New Zealand woke up on Monday morning, went straight on line and tweeted "does anybody still Jamming need help?"

 

What were the most impressive results and what have been your most valuable learnings?

Markus Hormeß: Before the Jam, it was great to shape ideas with the local hosts and our wonderful Global Council. However, seeing creativity, the fun and the energy that all the people around the world put into this simply blew me away. I'm still amazed about all the stories, large and small, turning up before, during and after the weekend.

Adam Lawrence: What we learned during the whole process was that people are really happy to join in if something is open, flexible and fun. We find in our work that putting people on the spot seldom works, but creating an environment where they feel free to play always does.

 

Markus Hormeß: We knew from the start that this was going to be a first try, and it certainly had some rough edges. We'd simplify the submission process, and find more ways to link the jams so people feel the global buzz while they are working.

Adam Lawrence: And I think we'd enlarge the Global team. People are surprised when we tell them that everything - the recruitment, the organisation, the filming and editing, the social media and the entire website construction was done by just two guys parallel to our regular jobs. It was a bit much at times - but we loved it!

 

How did the communication across cultures, countries and languages work out and what communication channels did you decide on?

 

Adam Lawrence: We worked in English internationally, and usually in national languages locally. There were two levels of communication - one between the local organisers, and one between the Jammers.  A Basecamp site and some IRC chats let the local hosts exchange questions, ideas and concrete help like graphics and event designs. The Jammers linked up over Facebook and mostly Twitter, though some "non-Twitter" folks seemed to miss out on some of this buzz. That was a big learning - not everyone is on Twitter, and although we declared it the official channel, some people were unwilling to try it.

Markus Hormeß: The actual working platform for the weekend (in terms of sharing the results) was a Drupal page which we built, linked to a Dropbox file vault. Oh, and Skype was really valuable for quick personal conferences of up to about six people - like the discussions about the Theme. We didn't really feel cultural differences between the countries - more personal differences in leadership styles between different locations.  Service designers (and all the non-designers who joined us) are a very international set, it seems.

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