So long, and thanks for all the fish.
They say that all good things must come to an end. Today we’re announcing that after six wonderful years, Jam is closing down.
To this day, we have thoroughly enjoyed everything we’ve done together. Our events were fun, different, and a pleasure to organise and run. You brought them to life and we couldn't be more grateful for all the great moments we enjoyed in your company.
In this announcement, we’d like to share the rationale behind this decision.
2020 has had a disastrous impact on society and the economy as a whole. From a business standpoint, companies operating in the events industry have been hit particularly hard.
Our revenues crashed, and we lost a considerable amount of money in deposits paid to venues – including Hawker House, who we were saddened to hear, are also in the process of closing down.
We successfully ran several online events throughout the year, but it quickly became clear to us that it was going to be impossible to recreate the experiences we'd created in the past, online.
But we didn't throw in the towel. At the end of the year, we attempted a pivot, and launched – Jam Club – an online community for our most committed members.
Our vision was to build a thriving space for growth-minded product leaders, offering intimate virtual workshops every month.
Pivoting from an in-person events company to an online community has proven significantly harder than we’d originally hoped, and the losses we accumulated in 2020 have proven too significant for us to overcome. And so now we’d rather stop here, celebrate the journey, and say a proper goodbye.
What now?
We’ll keep Jam Club open for the next six months. We won’t be moderating it or running any workshops, but you'll be able to access all workshop recordings, discussions, and member profiles. We hope you’ll be able to use it to reconnect with friends made at past events.
To claim your free invite just drop us a note at hello@makingjam.io.
You can also find all past talk videos on our YouTube channel.
Thank you
A huge thank you to our amazing team of staff and volunteers; Marta, Sunil, Jessie, Maria, Francesca, Stephen, Joan, Monica, Ecem, Steve, David, Michael, Mahtab, Eva, Gizem, Antoine, Jeff and all those that helped run our events every year. We’re deeply grateful for the friendship, shared memories, and support you’ve shown us over the years. We couldn’t have achieved everything we did without you.
Thank you to Doug and Chris at Intelligent People. You supported us from day one, and have always been a pleasure to work with.
Thank you to all our speakers and workshop instructors for all the brilliant content you’ve delivered over the years.
And thank you, for the good times we created together.
Seb & Mathilde
About
Blog
Cards for Humanity: How to Design More Customers into Your Business
Access to digital products and services is a growing need, and this year it’s proved to be critical. But most of us are still only designing for an imaginary ‘average’ user. Inclusive design seeks to involve underrepresented voices in the design process with the aim of designing better solutions for everyone.
Summary
In this session, you’ll confront your own biases and experiment with some of our inclusive design tools to welcome more perspectives into your design process.
You’ll go home with a new mindset about the value of designing inclusively, and some tools to embed inclusive design into your day to day work.
You’ll understand how inclusive design will make your products and services better for everyone. You’ll be able to convince your stakeholders and business leaders that inclusive design isn’t simply an added expense or an accessibility checklist, it’s better for business and better for society.
Who it's for
This workshop is for anyone involved in designing, building and managing digital products and services who cares about great design that works for everyone. You strive for positive customer outcomes and sustainable success for the products and services you design.
You’ve probably heard about inclusive design but don’t yet know how to put it into practice or how to get the rest of your organisation on board.
Key takeaways
What we'll cover:
A brief intro into inclusive design and why we think it’s important.
A hands on Cards for Humanity exercise to demonstrate how to use the tool to build empathy for your users
How to create a business case for inclusive design
How to embed inclusive design in your organisation
You'll walk away with:
Confidence in using Cards for Humanity to help you to design more inclusively.
A process for working out and articulating the business case for inclusive design
A collection of ideas about how you might introduce more inclusive design methods in your workflows
About the instructors
Katie thrives on delivering strategy and transformation projects for complex organisations. She has launch whiskey brands into South America, luxury hotel loyalty programmers in China and new financial products into Europe, working with clients such as Diageo, InterContinental Hotel Group, Barclays, SAntander and Centrica . At Idean, Katie’s focus is on helping clients work out where they should focus to best meet the needs of their –– with a special interest in helping large customer organisations, and financial services providers in particular, to better serve their more vulnerable customers.
Charlotte’s career started in children's TV before moving into data driven marketing and then digital product strategy. She has worked with brands including Barclays, Pearson, O2, The Design Museum, Santander and Public Health England. As a business design director at Idean, Charlotte's focus is on designing inclusive products, services and businesses that will thrive in the real world. She's also passionate about improving team performance, both internally and within client organisations.