The EFB Community from the Western Balkans and EU will gather for the online conference "Reloading the EFB Community" that is scheduled for September 25th, 2020. The core interest of this event is to strengthen the EFB network and support the individual and collective proposals and ideas that are in line with the EFB strategy for the upcoming period.
The EFB Executive Director Aleksandra Tomanic and the Steering Committee Members Atje Drexler (Robert Bosch Foundation) and Franz Karl Prüller (Erste Foundation) will share their vision for the Role of the EFB Community in the new EFB Strategy 2020 - 2025. The three key speakers that are listed for this occasion will offer fresh insights into the important aspects of the current state of play on societal and individual level, and will open the floor for rethinking the role of each member.
The first key speaker is Prof.Dr. Wolfgang Merkel /Berlin Social Science Center who will address the challenges to democracies in times of crisis, presenting evidence from the current COVID pandemic and the case of Germany in the session "Democracy in Times of Crisis". He will be followed by Prof.Dr. Bernd - Friedrich Voigt ( Founder and Principal at Managing Organizations, Germany) and his session "Techostress and Change Management" which will try to explain how the recent developments have brought radical changes for most of us – at work, and at home likewise. Reporting on the latest studies, he will talk about the poor digital leadership and insufficient self-competences as pivotal stressors in the speeded digital transformation.
Ivar Björkman, Executive Director, Open Lab, Sweden, a pioneer practionier in the area of using the design thinking methodology for societal innovations that are improving the quality of life, will present the best practices and examples of how the design thinking methodology is a powerful tool for creating innovative solutions both in the private and public sector. His session "Design Thinking for Better Community" will present the different interlinking aspects of this methodology which can be then implemented by our community looking into perspective.
Danica Bojic and Milica Bojic from Design Thinkers Serbia are in charge for the first physical workshop for the community members coming from Serbia. During the small-scale gathering they will immerse the local community into the process of design thinking. The participants will be introduced with the DT innovative solution design process and with the selected platform for future online collaboration.
This first kick-off design thinking session at the conference will be the initial motivation for developing joint ideas for national or regional projects which will serve as a EFB community response to the common problems that occur in your communities in “normal” times, but also now in the light of the Covid19 pandemic and its repercussions to come. Successive joint online workshops for further online education and participation in the community challenge solving will follow after the event, as a an instrument to reshape the dynamics of collaboration among the members of the EFB community.
