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
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Learn Sketch in a Day
Over the last few years, Bohemian Sketch 3 has become one of the most popular tools for digital product design, used by teams all over the world. In this workshop, you’ll learn all the essentials for designing your own web and mobile interfaces, through a hands-on, task-based approach.
Who it's for
This course is aimed at beginners so no prior experience in design or using design software is needed. If you’ve dabbled with Sketch before, this course may still be of interest as we’ll be covering a range of more advanced topics, such as how to organise your files, work collaboratively, plugins and more.
Key takeaways
Add Sketch to your toolbox: By the end of the day, you’ll have learnt all the essentials for designing in Sketch. Remember though – practice makes perfect!
Learn by doing: This workshop isn’t going to be one, boring lecture – we’ll cover all the basics, and very quickly you’ll be rolling up your sleeves and trying things out for yourself.
Turn your ideas into reality: With your new found knowledge, you'll be able to design your own apps and websites.
Timing & schedule
Morning
Drawing and laying out your work, organising your files work using pages, artboards, symbols, text styles and colour palettes, learning the main keyboard shortcuts to help speed up your workflow.
An introduction to Sketch Library and how to use symbols to build shared design systems.
An introduction to Sketch plugins and those recommended to help with commonly performed tasks.
Learn how to use the Magic Mirror and Auto Layout plugins to quickly create designs for a range of screen sizes.
Use the Sketch Mirror and Cloud feature to preview your designs on your phone and share them with others.
Afternoon
This will be the hands-on part of the day. You will be tasked to use your new found knowledge to replicate an existing mobile app UI. Copying an existing design will allow you to shift your thinking from a conceptual mindset to that of how to use the available tools to get the job done.
Requirements
Sketch is only available on Mac OSX, so you'll need a Mac laptop with the latest version of OSX installed.
About the instructor
Seb is the co-founder of JAM. Previously, he was Head of Design at Adbrain and then co-founded GetAgent.co.uk where he was in charge of product and design.
He has worked as a freelance designer for more than 10 years, for clients of every shape and size, and specialises in product design and frontend development.