As Impact Hub progresses on its membership upgrade, leveraging more and more the power of the globally connected community, the time has finally come to launch a global event series. The Impact Hub Mash Up event, which took place simultaneously across eight Impact Hubs on November 26, was the first such opportunity for our members to get together and get inspired on a global scale. Impact Hubs in Vienna, Kings Cross London, Zurich, Sao Paolo, Stockholm, Prague, Bucharest and Berlin got together and shared a (almost) real time event experience, setting the seed for a truly collaborative, global event. Virtual windows into each of the Impact Hubs were set up so that participants could see events unfolding elsewhere; stories and reactions were collected as they happened on the #impacthubmashup tagboard; things were kept moving forward using a prescribed pecha kucha presentation format and opportunities for meaningful connections were created with a networking and Apero round to close the evening. The presentation topics varied from Open Data to Cultural Integration, from Management 3.0 to Prototyping the Future of Business, and from Conscious, Slow, Intentional Technology to topics of every other sort in between.
A Snapshot of Events
Impact Hub Prague:
They have been running successful Mash Up events for some time now and this was proved by a whopping one hundred and sixty five attendees. As you can imagine the atmosphere was simply amazing, the talks were inspiring, and multiple,meaningful connections were made throughout the evening. There was something for everyone including presentations from Prectime on how to learn a new language in three months, from Zonky on revolutionising the Czech loan market and from Capasitty on solar powered public benches. We could go on but the round of applause at the end of the evening speaks for itself. 
(photo by: Jan Hromadko)
Impact Hub Zurich:
The topic was Open Data. Can Open Data be sexy? Well, one of the speakers, Flurin Conradin of Boonea AG, managed to link Open Data to Knightrider and The Hoff, so things got very interesting, very quickly. All this after thought provoking presentations by André Golliez, the president of Open Data Switzerland, and Stefan Oderbolz, Open Data activist and software engineer at Liip. If Open Data is all about making data public, freely available and useful for increased transparency, innovation and efficiency, then yes, we think data is sexy.
(photo by: Katherina Giese)
Impact Hub London-Kings Cross:
The focus was on Management 3.0. How can founders share the drive and values that initially led to the startup, with a team of directors and employees as the startup organisation grows? Orfeuo Lionor, founder of Kuorom, an application to connect politicians with constituents, compared a start up business to a baby. Orfeuo said we need to nurture and raise that baby to be ready for society at large. He was joined by speakers Tobin May of Digital Unite, a company committed to supporting people to have good digital skills to enjoy and exploit, and Anna Luise Laycock of Finance Innovation Lab, whose mission is to empower positive disruptors in finance.
Impact Hub Berlin:
Mash Up participants were urged to slow down and to think about technology in a humancentric way. What’s slow technology you might ask? Well, Ben Wagner, from the Centre for Internet & Human Rights got everybody thinking about ‘The Ethics of Algorithms’ that lie behind technological advancements. And Ajantha Suriyanarayanan whose Culture& project, an online ideas salon, and collaborator on a recent Berlin Peace Innovation Lab initiative asked Mash Up participants to consider what would happen if they said ‘I will’ instead of ‘I wish’. All this in the frame of a presentation on how we can use technology to create a better world by rediscovering values such as freedom and righteousness, from Danilo Kamrad, the man behind Tech For Good. Clearly a thought provoking Mash Up evening.
Impact Hub Vienna:
The crowd was future gazing and getting inspired to prototype the future of business. There it seems that openness is the key. Mash Up participant Elodie Broussard, Community Journalist, shared her thoughts: “…during this Mash up, I understood thatopenness was the key to prototype the future of business. Openness to people, existing systems and innovative approaches.” She heard inspiring presentations by Gabriela Sonn Leitner from Magdas Hotel, the first refugee run hotel in Europe, Nikolaus Hutter, from the Investment Ready Program, a collaboration platform for investors and entrepreneurs and Stefan FaatzFerstl of Dwarfs and Giants, an innovative organization design and strategy consultant.
(photo by: Katherina Giese)
Be a Part of Mash Up: If you can, join us for the next global Mash Up, which will take place on March 3 2016 and will be dedicated to the topic of Tech For Good.
