If we had to sum up 2019 in a word, sustainability might be it. With Greta Thunberg’s recognition as Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, the unprecedented participation in the September Global Climate Strike, and the multiple extreme weather events that wreaked havoc across the world, the urgency to act has reached a boiling point.
With our responsibility to create positive social and environmental impact in mind, we closed out the year with a very special Product Crunch event: The Good Cause Edition. Held at our Berlin Studio on Thursday, December 12, we were beyond excited to invite ProjectTogether, Tomorrow Bank and SPACE10 to the stage.
In the spirit of the event theme, giving back for a better world, we charged our Product Crunch community a 5 € donation for event registration. 100% of all donations went directly to #TeamTrees, supporting the Arbor Day Foundation’s mission to plant 20 million trees by 2020.
All ticket donations were matched by Goodpatch Europe, doubling the amount contributed. This, coupled with the 160 trees donated privately by the Goodpatch team, allowed us to donate a total of 1240 trees to the #TeamTrees initiative. While quite an accomplishment, we’re far from over — 2020 will be full of opportunities for us to have a positive impact on the world.
Kicking off the evening, Henrike Schlottmann, Co-Managing Director at ProjectTogether spoke to us about Project Together’s work and how we can make change on an individual level.
Project Together is a non-profit that has supported more than 850 social initiatives and impact startups. In her role at ProjectTogether, Henrike builds a digital and scalable platform that allows social initiatives to get the support they need at the time that they need it — be it coaching, expertise, financial or non-financial resources with the ultimate aim to solve societal challenges, together.
Next up, we had two speakers from Tomorrow Bank’s headquarters in Hamburg: Lilli Staak, Communications Manager, and Maria Mondry, Product Owner. Tomorrow is a sustainable bank account made for smartphones. Only one year old, Lilli and Maria gave us a behind the scenes glimpse into life at a green, impact-driven mobile-first bank and how the changes we make today, contribute to a better tomorrow.
Unlike traditional banks, at Tomorrow, not a single cent goes into armaments, coal-fired power or genetic engineering — they only finance sustainable projects, a fact made visible on their Impact Board, where you can see in real time what ecological, social and economic impact the Tomorrow community is achieving.
Closing out the evening, Mikkel Christopher, Lead Creative Producer at SPACE10, IKEA’s design and innovation lab, gave us a very in-depth and exclusive look at the inner workings of SPACE10 and his role working on bringing ideas and concepts into reality.
Mikkel has been part of SPACE10 since it opened up its doors back in 2015. The multidisciplinary team researches and designs innovative solutions to some of the major societal changes expected to affect people in the years to come. Based on these insights and learnings, they strive to create better and more sustainable ways of living, crafting truly holistic design. These projects have included a complete rethinking of autonomous driving, research into blockchain and its application in the local trade of energy, and the development of hydroponic farms and aquaponics.
Need we say…another great event for the books. A HUGE thank you to our speakers and everyone who makes Product Crunch possible!
An initiative by Goodpatch, Product Crunch is a learning platform and community for passionate product people: project managers, designers, engineers, researchers, founders, and everyone in between. If you’re tired of missing the fun, make sure to join a Product Crunch meetup group:
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