X-Europe started in a time “far, far away”, with six partners from across Europe meeting face-to-face to start a project. Sounds strange, right? With the pandemic, all parts of our lives were affected, and the workplace was no exception. So, we had to adapt ourselves to the online environment. But after 60+ meetings held online throughout 2020 and 2021, we managed to work together, in the same room, with all the safety measures that this time requires.
The pandemic took, what appears to be, a short break, and we also took a short break from our computers. On the same occasion in which we have been together with our startups on the Web Summit in Lisbon, November 2021, we decided to host a Consortium Meeting to review the project, analyse the work that we have been doing, develop strategies and discuss the next steps for the months ahead. It was attended by all partners (the project team and some of our trainers): F6S, TNW, Growth Tribe, Design Terminal and TechChill.
In the meeting, partners had the opportunity to share and request inputs, and we worked together to make important decisions on our programme. By brainstorming and group dynamics we walked through every work package of the project, reflected on lessons learned, discovered new forms of reaching our goals and put our heads together to understand how we can still add more impact to the project and create more opportunities for the startups that joined X-Europe.
We don’t know if it was just for us, but we think ideas flow a lot easier in person. Maybe we just missed the feeling of sharing and writing ideas on paper, in real-time, without saying “you have to unmute yourself”, but we enjoyed it a lot. On top of all that, we also took time to discuss sustainability measures and analyse if we can work together in the future, so brace yourselves because this team will help more startup ecosystems grow!
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