– my experience organising Create Squared
Reading so many of my classmates blogging about Create Squared makes me extremely happy and makes the work of the past 5 months really worth it! Unlike for my classmates Create Squared for me wasn’t a one weekend long entrepreneurship marathon but a project I have been working on organising since November. I could probably go on and on about what I learned from this experience and what challenges I faced but rather I would like to point 4 + 1 main reasons why I believe everyone should aim to organise this type of event at least once, ideally from scratch. Create Squared was something that the team of 9 people organising it put together bits by bits: it wasn’t part of a hackathon series, it was not based on a framework and guidelines created by a successful organisation – it was the result of students envisioning a weekend of challenge and co-creation.
1. Experiencing how to fake it until you make it (and to keep calm when everything seems to fall apart)
I have to admit, hearing and reading that Create Squared was one of the most organised event some of my classmates attended this year in Sweden makes me smile and makes me understand how important it is to keep up the image “everything is under control” even if the project group is putting together things last minute, and things seem to be falling apart. Without giving away too much details I can just say there were many occasions during the 5 months when in order to acquire sponsors, venues, motivate participants we had to promise big and just have faith that we would be able to deliver. This put us under a lot of pressure but it all worked out in the end and made me understand if you play it too safe and give away too much of your internal worries your making your own job a lot harder!
2. Having a great reason to reach out to the entrepreneurship community in Stockholm
Stockholm has many events for people interested in startups and entrepreneurship and while going to these events you can easily network and meet people I noticed that having a purpose: pitching Create Squared to potential sponsors, mentors and speakers made me a lot more pro-active and made me seek a lot more conversations when attending such networking events. After all it can get very intimidating to just try and speak to new people in a semi-formal setting and having something concrete to begin the conversation with can really help overcome the barrier.
3. Have you ever been asked “tell us about a time you worked in a team where …” in a job interview?
Essentially, getting together with a group of students that come from different schools (and different countries) and have nothing else in common but the drive to organise this event will be a real challenge and will give you a lot of food for thought as well as a lot to talk about if anyone asks you about your experiences with team work and managing working together with others from different background. Because let’s face it even if you make international teams for classwork at KTH the diversity in terms of background won’t be that great: as an engineer studying at an engineering school we do not really get exposed to working with ones studying journalism, philosophy, business and marketing!
4. Giving back to the community
Personally, since I moved to Sweden 8 months ago I have attended 50+ different startup/entrepreneurship or coding events. And as much as students like free food and swag and these can serve as motivators for one to attend such events what I have gained is knowledge, experience and an incredible network of inspiring and talented people in Stockholm. I am extremely grateful for this city being so open and supportive especially when it comes to the tech scene. SUP46, Pink Programming Sundays, Netlight’s CodePub, KTH Innovation and Excitera are just some of the few communities that have helped me become part of this ecosystem. Because of this, being able to be part of organising an event that brought together 70 ambitious students from Sweden and provided them with a platform to create amazing projects made me feel like I could give back at least a little bit to the community
5. my + 1 for international students – make friends outside the university
In a new country it is always easy to get stuck in the bubble of the community you are already part of – in our case the university (KTH/EIT) and it can be hard to meet people and develop friendships outside this circle. Getting involved with projects that help you burst this bubble I think is a great way to get started! At least I can say it for myself – I met people I would have never met otherwise why working on something meaningful and also having fun.
Dora Palfi
doraepalfi@gmail.com
