32 Events. 16 Countries. 5 conclusions from the OuiShare Europe Tour

par Francesca Pick

32 events in 16 European countries, concluding with our 4th OuiShare Summit in Brussels, that was the OuiShare Europe Tour. In the last 3 months we met over 2 000 entrepreneurs, researchers and Collaborative Economy enthusiasts and learned a lot - about you, us, and where we want to go.

As one of our OuiShare connectors concluded after the tour “We come from different backgrounds and parts of the world, we have different opinions on many things - but we always dance!” Yes, we always dance. And here are some things we learned:

1. Every place is unique: no matter whether you compare different countries or cities within one country, the differences between them are impressive! Even in going from Munich to Cologne there was a big change from a business to a grassroots audience, so one might only imagine what the differences would have between events in Cluj-Napoca, Cordoba, Lille and Wuppertal. In the Scandinavian tour we met both dreadlocks and suits, both sitting on pillows on the floor and with straight backs on chairs. When meeting up in Brussels for our final summit, after three months on the road, we concluded that Europe is a whole and we’re very, very close to each other.

2. Have more webinars! They are a great tool to reach many people around the globe interested in a topic. Thank to Pawel’s experience in doing webinars for his community Cohabitat in Poland, we were able to host our first OuiShare Webinar about the Collaborative Economy with Alastair Parvin, Elf Pavlik, Antonin Léonard and Francesca, with over 80 listeners!. Much like an online panel discussion where people can comment in a chat thread (which is very entertaining to watch), we held this webinar before our Warsaw event to teach people in Poland about the Collaborative Economy, where the concept is still very unknown. Watch the webinar.

3. Do more things collaboratively. The whole idea of a Europetour emerged out of an online discussion between Rio de Janeiro and Paris, when we realized that we were all planning events in Europe at a similar time. Combining many individual events into one tour made it much easier for us to find supporters, have an impact and “take Europe by storm”, as Shareable puts it. But not only should you collaborate more with people within our own community, but also with other organizations - as we did at events in Nord-Rhein-Westfalen (CSCP),and Warsaw (Cohabitat).

Another great example of collaboration gone (really) well: when Shareable announced their Shareable cities #MapJam, a several week long global event calling for people to host local events to map initiatives in their city, we decided to join forces and host MapJams at many of our Europe Tour events, with great results.

As peers and people caring for each other, our OuiShare Connector Mattias from Sweden took it even further and many of us crowdfunded his trip to Brussels as an parable of the Sharing Economy, and what collaboration means for us as a movement. This way of looking at collaboration on many levels, on the personal as well as the organizational and community level, has encouraged us a lot.

[mudslide:flickr,0,OuiShare,72157637562176693]

4. Challenging but rewarding: unlocking your city! The first event in Hamburg not only brought together more than 50 people and 11 startups and collaborative initiatives that pitched, but immediately sparked the founding of a OuiShare Hamburg group the same evening by several dedicated newbies. Having already reached 30+ members within a few weeks, several members of the group joined us in Brussels and have already planned their own OuiShare Hamburg meetup on November 27th. Similarly the community in Poland and Romania exploded after the events there and is very active on Facebook thanks to the great effort of our connectors there Mircea, Justyna and Dalma. Not to mention OuiShare London has also become very active and is cooking up some events for next year such as International Collaboration Day.

This has opened our eyes even more for what collaboration really means; one can initiate, another can fill in and yet others do. We’re looking forward to more of these ripple effects.

The Europe Tour let us share moments with friends we had not met yet- Spanish member of the Ulule team

5. The new up and coming region? Eastern and Central Europe! Our Connector for the region Dalma Berkovics has some impressive stories to tell about the events she coordinated with local organizers from Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Poland. Read more about the state of the Collaborative Economy in Eastern and Central Europe in this recap.

One thing that struck me was that building a community is sometimes more important than building a tool - participant in Stockholm

The closing highlight: OuiShare Summit Barcamps & Unconference

Our 4th(!) OuiShare Summit in Brussels finally brought this adventure to a close, and we were thrilled to see the growth and internationalization of our attendees: even though Brussels is a lot colder than Barcelona in the summer (where we held our last summit), 100 people from 15 countries embarked on a journey to join us. Hear for yourself whether they thought it was worth it:

What were the results?

In our Barcamp on Friday with sessions about developing the OuiShare organization, as well as our Unconference on Saturday with sessions related to the Collaborative Economy, lots of topics were discussed and new ideas for projects were born, such as

Click on each link to see a video summary of what it was about. If you'd like to get involved in any of them, don't hesitate to get in touch with the contact person mentioned with each project. >> See all pictures from the summit

[caption id="attachment_10287" align="aligncenter" width="896"]

OuiShare Stockholm drinks....in a former church![/caption]

Stay tuned for an upcoming article about how the OuiShare governance and organizational structure are evolving!

A big thank you to all our partners, who made this tour possible:

MangoPay, Carpooling, BlaBlaCar, Ulule, KissKissBankBank, Lendstar , Autobleue

And now, what’s next? OuiShare Fest round 2 !

Cowritten by Francesca Pick & Mattias Jägerskog, with experiences from all OuiShare Connectors across Europe.