Seit Mai mache ich jetzt ein Praktikum bei euforia . Ich war nach Abschluss meines Studiums auf der Suche nach einer Arbeit, in welcher ich meinen vielleicht noch jugendlichen Idealismus sinnvoll einbringen kann. Von einer Freundin hatte ich von euforia gehört und nachdem mir am Ende meines Vorstellungsgesprächs von meinen jetzigen Kollegen grosses Bedauern ausgedrückt wurde, dass sie leider keine Zeit für eine Stadtführung mit mir hätten, war mir klar, dass ich hier nicht auf klassische Arbeitsstrukturen treffen würde.
Eigentlich ist das auch nicht überraschend, wenn man bedenkt, dass gerade das einen Teil von euforias Arbeit ausmacht, nämlich bestehende Arbeitsstrukturen herauszufordern und alternative Lösungsansätze für Unternehmen zu bieten in den Bereichen Führungsentwicklung, Teambuilding, Selbstorganisation und generationen-, sektor- sowie organisationsübergreifende Zusammenarbeit. Ich habe gleich zu Beginn an einem unserer Workshops zum Thema Radical Collaboration® teilgenommen, welcher eines unserer Angebote für Unternehmen ist. Radical Collaboration ist gleichzeitig Philosophie, Arbeitsmethode und Training. Es geht darum die entsprechenden Kompetenzen zu erarbeiten um Konflikte im Berufs- aber auch im Privatleben auf eine Art zu lösen, dass langfristige und vertrauensbasierte Beziehungen entstehen können.
Das Thema Vertrauen hat auch in unseren Workshops und Trainings für Individuen einen grossen Stellenwert. Die Trainings für Einzelpersonen zielen vor allem darauf ab jungen Menschen deutlich zu machen, welches Potential in ihnen steckt und wie sie dieses entfalten können, um etwas in unserer Gesellschaft zu bewegen. Es geht also vor allem auch um das Vertrauen, dass man sich selbst entgegenbringt, um die eigene Rolle in der Gesellschaft sowie das eigene Veränderungspotential zu erkennen und auch zu nutzen. Meine Arbeit bei euforia ermöglicht mir dies selber weiter zu lernen und gleichzeitig anderen jungen Menschen mit auf den Weg zu geben.   
About me:

My name is Clara Wittich,  I came to Zürich in May 2018 to join the euforia forces - a youth-driven NGO for non-formal education and transformative learning methods. I work in the area of Project Coordination and Communication for our programs. Before that I graduated from the university of Freiburg where I studied an interdisciplinary Bachelor degree Liberal Arts and Sciences with a major in Culture and History, focusing on issues such as migration and identity.
 

About a year ago, while taking my morning shower and running through my tasks for the day, I finally admitted something I’d known for a long time: I was not happy at work.
If you’ve met me you’ll probably know I place great value on happiness. It’s a topic I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about – but that’s a story for another time and another article.  
So, standing there in the shower, I found myself at a crossroads.
The problem was not my job. As a well-paid, mid-level manager for a big corporation my role was actually considered exciting. I was responsible for developing innovative ideas and solutions for a great company (and I mean that – it really is the best employer in Switzerland). Everything should have been perfect: my work was valued, I was well established and I had the most comfortable life an individual can imagine.
But, what I had to admit to myself that morning was that I was working at the wrong place for my personality, my dexterities and my passions. In some ways, being successful in my role was an inconvenient coincidence. I found myself craving my usual preferences: a faster pace, no boundaries, painting unicorns and fighting dragons.
Big corporations are slower adapters of new ideas and rightfully so. They have much to lose and need to balance embracing innovation with operating in a well thought-out and structured business model.
To make a long story short, after realising it was me (and not everybody else) who was in the wrong place, I handed in my notice. My new mission in life: to create whatever I think is cool. My new resolution: I was not going to cave in when fear of the uncertain reared its head.
Some months later ReoR20 was born.
“Reor” means “think” and “compute” in Latin and “%20” is the URL encoding symbol for “white space”, a space in which there’s been no prior development. This is exactly what ReoR20 is doing. We’re a team of (already!) five people – Christos, Christian, Mary-Anne, Yiannis and myself – and we also have ETH Zurich and UCL at our side. We are a technology company applying Computational Engineering methodologies in a brand-new way, using it to calculate the actual risk posed by potential natural and man-made catastrophes.  The idea is really simple: don’t evaluate your future based on historical events but by calculating the ones that could actually impact you.
We are working with questions ranging from “What is the impact of a tailings dam break in Greece in the event of an earthquake?” to “What are the real flood zones in US?” and “How much will the next Hurricane Katrina cost?”. Don’t get me wrong – we’re not a consulting company, we’re a company using technology to solve real problems by selling deterministically calculated data.

Calculated 1917 Thessaloniki fire
 
Sustainability is at the heart of ReoR20 and we love applying our technology to environmental and societal initiatives. Currently, we’re looking at healing ports by tackling poisonous shipping emissions and we are also exploring an opportunity around the construction of infrastructure that will utilise wastewater. We want societies to be healthy and resilient. We are improving the ability to understand present and future risks and that allows for the implementation of the best possible engineering and financial mitigation measures.
So, next time you’re at the Impact Hub, come and have a chat with us. We promise to show you some of the cool things we’re working on – and, if you don’t find them cool enough, then the beer is on us.
If you would like to find out more about ReoR20, send us a mail [email protected]
About the author

Danny Chatziprodromou was born and raised in Thessaloniki, Greece. He moved to Zurich to complete a PhD at ETHZ on Computational Dynamics. When he is not at the Impact Hub you’ll find him on a mountaintop or in the sea swimming or playing his Uke.

Howzit, would be the typical expression that many South Africans use on a day to day basis. Alas, as two South African female entrepreneurs we are now faced with Gruezi and Guten Morgen.
This of course is exactly our journey. Unfolding the days and weeks and awakening our event spirit in a foreign country where the rules and regulations are very different to that we are used to.
So we ask ourselves the question why?  Our answer, if you don’t embrace a world of change and showcase who you are, no one will get to see your talents.  As creative business events organisors we want to highlight the best SA talent, mixed with food and wine as well as implement our African twist.
As a female start-up we have faced challenges, but we have learned that with every little stone in the road, is the next level of progression. If you want some South African inspiration and ideas around your events – we welcome you to contact us as we are currently busy with some exciting concepts and projects.  Click  here to find out more about our current events and about  Charmaine Taylor , a designer from Cape Town who creates pieces of Jewelry from the original fence from Robben Island the time Nelson Mandela was imprisoned there.


About Natania and Nina Natania comes from the luxury events market and has organised various events in Ibiza and London. Nina’s background is more the corporate media side and has worked with and for Forbes Africa, CNBC Africa and been involved in strategic Business Development into the Sub Saharan African territory. Mixing the two worlds is what N & N Creative Business events are about.

www.nataniaandnina.com  
 

Startup working cultures are women-friendly
Have you ever considered working in a startup? If not, let me give you some arguments:
Most probably you will work in a small team of peers, you will have a lot of responsibility and freedom to shape what you do, you will learn new things every day and flexible working hours plus home office are real, not only on fridays. Of course there are also some downsides, but I’ll save them for a later post…

Today an increasing number of young companies experiment with transparent salaries (actively closing the gender pay gap), self-organized teams (fostering collaboration) and other progressive policies such as unlimited holidays.

Doesn’t that sound like heaven? To anyone and in particular to women who prefer collaborative work environments, equal pay and often need more flexibility as they still do most of the care work?

Still, it’s difficult for startups to attract women
Unfortunately there is a huge lack of women in the startup ecosystem. Why?  Most of the startups in Switzerland are founded by men-only teams which means that their organizations and recruiting processes are built by men and tend to attract other men. Furthermore, we – as a society – just recently became interested in women and their specific behaviour in order to serve them with what they want: different organizational cultures and designs, interesting job profiles and application processes that do not lose them on the way.

Let me give you two examples to illustrate:
- The majority of women in Switzerland works part-time. Especially between the age of 30 and 45 when people usually advance in their careers. The easiest measure to increase your chance to hire a woman is to offer part-time positions, job-sharing or other flexible HR policies. - Our language is highly gendered. This means that we automatically associate some words with men and others with women. Research shows that gender neutral job ads receive up to 42% more applications. This tool checks your texts on biased language.
These examples come from behavioural economics and suggest that how we design organizations and recruiting processes has a large influence on who we actually hire. Think about it for a second. Do you sell your product to all customer segments in the same way? So why do you have the same recruiting strategy for all employee segments?
What you can do?
Startups, as well as any other companies, should take employees as seriously as customers: Identify the groups you want to attract and learn what they want. On our side, we decided to host a women-only edition of our match-making event on June 25 , where talented women can speed network with companies that want them at their top!

So, if you’re a woman, check out the offered positions . I promise, it’s worth having a look! It might change your work-life completely. And if you’re a man, recommend this article to a woman-friend.  

Yours sincerely,
Johanna

PS: This blog post does not contain any gendered language.

Check our website for open positions and registration for the event! About the author Johanna is an enthusiast entrepreneur and change agent. In the past 3 years, she has helped Impact Hub Zürich’s partners to transform their cultures towards more inclusive, innovative and self-managed work environments. Right now she focuses on building a new venture which helps companies to recruit more women into top positions. Stay tuned.

In letzter Zeit haben Firmen zunehmend Kapital aufgetrieben, indem sie ihre eigene Cryptowährung in sogenannten Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) auf den Markt gebracht haben. So haben Startups im letzten Jahr - 2017 - mehr als 5.6 Mia. US-Dollar über ICOs gesammelt, fast sechsmal so viel wie Blockchain-Startups im Schnitt jährlich an „traditionellem“ Venture Kapital erhalten.
Was macht diese neue Finanzierungsform so beliebt?
Man kann nicht von Cryptowährungen sprechen, ohne Blockchain zu erwähnen. Die Technologie ist eine der bahnbrechendsten Innovationen der neuen Zeit und dementsprechend attraktiv für Investoren. Einfach ausgedrückt, ist Blockchain eine dezentralisierte Datenbank für Transaktionen, welche jede Änderung transparent erfasst. Die Technologie hat das Potential verschiedenste Industrien und Geschäftsfelder zu revolutionieren.
Ein Anwendungsbereich sind beispielsweise Treueprogramme, welche für Firmen sowie Kunden Schwierigkeiten darstellen. Zum Beispiel haben Firmen das Problem, dass Kunden zu wenig aktiv sind, während Kunden in der Nutzung ihrer gesammelten Punkte ziemlich eingeschränkt sind. Aber: Blockchain to the rescue! Indem Firmen u.a. von einem riesigen, verlinkten Netzwerk profitieren können und Treuepunkte als Tokens einen echten Wert haben, können Treueprogramme effizienter und nutzerfreundlicher gestaltet und die Experience verbessert werden.
Genau hier setzt qiibee an und bietet die Möglichkeit, von der Blockchain-Technologie zu profitieren, indem Firmen ihre Treueprogramme in einem gemeinsamen Ökosystem auf die Blockchain bringen können. Das Interface der Treueprogramme der Brands bleibt wie gehabt, aber die Kunden haben die Freiheit mit ihren gesammelten Treuepunkten – in diesem Fall Treue-Tokens – machen zu können was sie wünschen, und nicht was der Brand ihnen vorgibt.
Über den Autor

Gabriele Giancola, Co-Founder und CEO qiibee
Gabriele ist Mitgründer und Chief Executive Officer bei qiibee , einem dezentralizierten, auf der Ethereum Blockchain basierten Treue-ökosystem. Dadurch, dass qiibee eine Plattform und ein Interface Design anbietet, auf welchem jedes Treueprogramm „tokenized“ werden kann, beabsichtigt das Start-up einen fragmentierten Markt zu konsolidieren, dessen Ineffizienzen zu beseitigen und die Rolle einer zentralen Datenauthorität abzuschaffen.
Gabriele hält einen Master in Business Management von der Universität St. Gallen (HSG) in der Schweiz und war als Entrepreneur schon in verschiedenen Projekten involviert: So hat er beispielsweise   gratis-auto.ch   gegründet, einem Start-up, welches sich auf mobiles Outdoor Marketing spezialisiert hat, und besitzt eine Mining Farm mit rund 60 Miners.