Community Crossover Day: “What makes a good community?”

On Thursday, March 12, the first Impact Hub Vienna Community Crossover Day took place at the Education Lab. The community members of all four Impact Hub Vienna locations were invited: Impact Hub Vienna, Future Health Lab, Climate Lab and Education Lab. The day was all about collaboration, exchange and mutual inspiration.

A diverse community
Around 30 people were registered for the day. The diversity of the Impact Hub Vienna Group community was demonstrated by the members who attended this special day:

Lukas is an energy systems architect and joined the Climate Lab at the beginning of the year. “To build collaborations and get new ideas,” he says. He came here on this day because a wide variety of labs come together here. “And that’s why the community is even bigger!”

Edina was also at the Community Crossover Day to expand her network. She is the managing director of Everyone Codes, a non-profit programming school that offers training in software development primarily to people who are currently registered with AMS Vienna. It was her first time in an Impact Hub Vienna Lab that day. “Because I was curious to see who was part of the community,” she says.

Tina had come all the way from Linz that day. There she runs the start-up “Neuromaps”, at the interface between education and health, and is a member of the Future Health Lab through a “Founders Pass” membership. For her, the most important thing on this day was networking. “Getting to know projects, exchanging ideas,” she says.

For Giulia, Welcome Host and Knowledge Manager in the Education Lab, this day was a great opportunity to create synergies. “I believe that the individual topics we have here, with health, climate and education, always overlap somewhere. Let’s network and think further, think bigger, think outside the box,” says Giulia.

Exchanging ideas and making contacts
After a guided tour of the Education Lab by Giulia, the Impact Hub Vienna community got even closer over lunch:

For Edina, it was a great opportunity to get to know different people from different industries, projects and companies. “And simply to find out what else is out there, what people are working on, what keeps them busy and what drives them,” she says. She wants to make contacts, but also broaden her horizons: “People might tell me about their work or their project and I might find out things I didn’t even know about. It might also inspire me to come up with new ideas for my company.”

Making contacts is something Tina has already done after the first half of the day. After lunch, she reports: “I actually had a closer exchange with a colleague from the Future Health Lab today and we realized that we might be able to work together.”

“Working together” for each other
During the meeting, the question arose: What actually makes a good community?

Lukas explains: “For me, a good community is an exchange at eye level. No matter which corner someone comes from, no matter what their background. Everyone has something to contribute, everyone is part of the solutions that are needed in the world. Nowadays, solutions are no longer one-dimensional, but multidimensional. That means you need something from every direction”

And for Tina, a good community is: “Mutual appreciation. It has so many aspects. It’s so multi-layered. But appreciation also means helping each other. And that you also “make an effort” for each other. So to speak: you want something good, I want something good. Where can we support each other? Where can we empower each other?”

Skills instead of role models
How the community can best complement each other was discovered during the afternoon program. Instead of just exchanging ideas with individuals, the members all got to know each other at this point with a task: with 10,000 fictitious euros, they were to pool their skills in small groups and design a joint project.

A lot came together: from screenwriting and acting to financial knowledge. It wasn’t about job titles, but about skills. They really got to know each other, including for possible future collaboration.

Targeted matchmaking as a wish for the future
Drinks and cake were served at the end. A poster invited people to share their skills and express their wishes. One wish immediately stood out: more frequent and targeted matchmaking.

Edina’s statement fits in with this: “What would be super nice, of course, would be a kind of more targeted matching, i.e.: Hey, I know so and so many people who could be a good match for you. Would you like us to network with each other?”

Lukas also emphasizes something similar: “I just want to invite you to use this community to build collaborations, to be strong together, to make the world a better place and to create real impact.”

And what did the others take away from this day, in a word? Ideas, inspiration and more inspiration.