MY 2020 IN REVIEW
As we are getting close to the end of the year, a lot of companies will start to share their “Year in Reviews” showcasing what they / their community have accomplished in 2020 (Don´t know what is a YIR?).
Sooooo… I decided to do the same, but with achievements not only from my full time position, but also accounting with all the projects and communities I am engaged with.
OVERVIEW
This year I have co-organized +150 events through these communities: 351- The Portuguese Startup Community, Startup Weekend Lisbon Travel Tech, Le Wagon Lisbon, Made of Lisboa, CMX Connect Portugal, CreativeMornings Lisbon, Startup Grind Lisbon and Coworking Thursdays creating meaningful projects that have impacted the whole country.
Bônus: at the end, I will also talk about my startup!
Following the main projects that I have either led or co-organized this year (more info on my linkedin).
LISBON ENTREPRENEURIAL WEEK (LEW)
LEW is decentralized festival promoted by the Lisbon City Council in which all the events are organized by the entrepreneurial community, aiming to help their communities to grow and also to positioning Lisbon as currently one of most competitive, innovative and creative cities at the European level.
In this year we made it 3x bigger than the previous edition, having for the first time curators & verticals, which allowed us to go from regular workshop events to meaningful discussions, accounting with 52 founders, 41 C-levels, 39 Community Leaders, 22 policy makers, 15 researchers, 13 investors as speakers / panelists at LEW’s events.
This was only possible as we had engaged with +100 ecosystem players, who have organized all these events. We also introduced experiences around town & perks for entrepreneurs allowing us to reach new audiences.
Despite being featured in all the main portuguese media outlets (ECO, Sapo, Observador, NiT and many more) we had +40K page views and also reached 1MM on social media.
DIGITALIZA JÁ
In the pandemic context where people stop visiting shops in person (either because of the lock down or the new rules for remote work), small and medium business, which represents 99% of all the companies in Portugal couldn’t reach their clients anymore, as 46% of SMBs do not have an established online presence, like an website.
To support those business to reach their customers immediately, instead of pushing them to create their own website (which would take long and they also would need to invest in communication), the best strategy was to register them into the platforms their customers already are and drive traffic to their business there.
So we created “digitaliza já”, a project in which big tech companies, such as Airbnb, Google, OLX, SheerMe, Zomato, Zaask support SMBs to be digitized and also offer advertising credits to be used on their platforms to generate demand for their businesses.
We created a series of webinars that were live on the Lisbon’s City Council and on Partner’s channels (live 1, live 2 and live 3) to inspire those merchants and also have partnered with 12 public / private institutions such as the Portuguese Entrepreneurial Agency, the Secretary for Digital Transformation, The Secretary for Tourism and many more to spread the word about the project and made it reach possibly all the SMBs in the country.
Despite being communicated by all the partners, we also had a national media coverage by the main media outlets.
STAY HOME KEEP GROWING
Due to the Emergency State, many coworkings / innovation hubs had to close and/or cancel their events, leaving the community alone and without content.
To supply the need to keep people updated, with an active network and
even creating new business and development opportunities, we got together along side Startup Portugal to lead a movement in the country: Stay Home, Keep Growing. Through webinars, workshops, and lectures taking place remotely, we provided entrepreneurs and startups continuous tools that allow them to make their businesses work in times of isolation.
In this way we could help community leaders to still being able to connect with their members, proving all the necessary structure to go live and also helping coworking / innovation hubs to keep their own communities engaged taking all the events that were happening in their spaces, online.
We created a network of 326k followers, gathering the main 19 coworkings / innovation hubs together, so, as soon a community content was going live, all the 19 pages would broadcast this content on their pages at the same time. We have reached than 22k unique viewers and we also were featured by the main media outlets (Eco, Observador)
This project inspired Le Wagon Global, Le Wagon Oslo and many other Le Wagon locations to run similar projects with the same name.
PROGRAMMING FOR EVERYBODY
Due to COVID impact on businesses a lot of people were being fired / put on lay off. In the other hand, there were still a massive shortage of skilled people in the tech industries and a lot of companies were still struggling to hire.
Programming for Everybody was created to address this issue. Through 11 online classes provided during lunchtime, we wanted to give basic coding skills and also a taste on what programming looks like, what are the tech careers and how to get a job in this area.
Attendants also had access to mentoring sessions with Le Wagon alumni and to a slack workspace where they could network with other people who joined Programming for Everybody, sharing their experiences and journey.
To increase the impact of this project, we partnered with other 12 ecosystem institutions, from accelerators & incubators, till the Lisbon City Council and even the European Space agency to promote this action, getting a lot of media coverage (Dinheiro Vivo, Exame Informática)
This project started aiming to train 100 people, but it has grown quickly and now it has inspired other Le Wagons around the globe (such as Brasil) to do the same. Now, many Le Wagons around the world run quite regular editions of it with local ecosystem partners.
MADE OF LISBOA @ WEB SUMMIT
As Lisbon City Council is one of the main Web Summit’s partners, we asked for 100 tickets in order to take at least 1 person from each innovation hub / cowork / community from Lisbon to attend the conference.
The idea was to showcase Lisbon ecosystem and to help these players to provide value for their members.
All these players could communicate to their communities that in partnership with Made of Lisboa, they were taking people to participate @ Web Summit. In only one week, many spots in town have communicated this project, and without paid media, we reached +1000 page views and had +100 applications. We were also hightlighted by ECO, a main media outlet.
ZERO GRAVITY
This project is led by Startup Portugal (and Le Wagon was one of the main partners) and also aims to help society to face COVID-19 issues, in this specific case, people that were.
The idea is to gather all the amazing tech talent which was displaced from their positions and get them hired by a company overseas, as cost of living in Portugal is bellow the average in other european cities, which makes the portuguese talent really competitive if compared to other nations. As this is a quite impactful project, it was also highlighted by the media (ECO, Observador, Link To Leaders)
351 — THE PORTUGUESE STARTUP COMMUNITY
With the goal of creating a startup scene that’s more connected, inclusive and wise, we gathered a group of people who came together to foster the Portuguese Startup Community.
Today called 351, on our slack space we have +400 startup founders, community managers, investors, journalists and talents. There, people can find a curated feed of events, news, job listings and startup content updated every day by people who work on them. In one year, almost 30k messages were already exchanged on our community and many business contacts were done.
If you want to get to know or keep up to date with the ever growing startup scene or get settled in Portugal, 351 might be a good first door for you! Our arms are open and every member is reachable without a middle person.
COWORKING THURSDAYS
Coworking Thursdays is a community initiative to showcase coworkings that are struggling due COVID-19 and also to support people who are working from home, providing a nice place to work, allowing them to focus on some projects and have a better infrastructure to work.
Each Thursday we will showcase a different coworking in many locations around Portugal. Despite getting to know somewhere new for free, this is also a nice opportunity to network with the community.
This initiative is supported by 11 ecosystem communities and 17 coworkings were already highlighted, creating a very engaged community of people that gathers together all Thursdays to meet each other and to support the coworking industry.
CMX CONNECT PORTUGAL
CMX Connect Portugal is where all the community professionals meet to share their passion, exchange knowledge, experience and ideas. We welcome all the community builders to get to know each other and create amazing things together!
In September, the chapter completed 1 year, and being 4 co-hosts we showcased the community managers from: Unbabel, Outsystems, Volkswagen SDC, Startup Lisboa, Startup Portugal, Farfetch Dream Assembly, Adobe XD & Adobe Live, Linkedin Sales Navigator, Speak, CMX Summit, The Institute for the Future and HER and our last edition Web Summit .
STARTUP WEEKEND LISBON TRAVEL TECH
With the goal to create new community leaders in the Travel Tech industry, we partnered with NEST to organize the Startup Weekend Lisbon Travel Tech.
Several bootcamps around the country were delivered, discussing what were the problems the Portuguese Tourism Industry was facing and what could be the possible solutions for them.
Despite having delivered some bootcamps and also engaged with several accelerators, incubators, investors, tourism specialists, partners and mentors, the Hackaton which was going to take 54 hours to be completed, was postponed due to COVID-19, as it was going to happen at the Lisbon´s Airport and we were at the peak of the first COVID wave.
TRIPR: MY STARTUP
A Travel Tech Startup aiming to help tour providers to communicate and distribute their activities at the same time as we help solo travellers to find all inclusive weekend trips.
Last year I found a new partner (Isaac, our CTO), we got +1500 organic leads and we have developed 2 new versions of the platform.
