Event management (Volunteer work)

Event experience planning and management –

Service Design Network Finland

Volunteer work

Service Design Network is the leading non-profit institution for expertise in service design. I have been a volunteer in the Finnish chapter core team since 2022.

10th Year Anniversary Event

To celebrate their 10th anniversary, Service Design Network Finland decided to organize an event. I worked with with the chapter lead Eliisa Sarkkinen, and the core team planning the event and managing teams of volunteers both during the planning phase as well as during the event.

The event took place at Flavourium Black Box located in the Mall of Tripla. It consisted of a panel discussion with pioneers in Service Design in Finland, the presentation of the Service Design report, as well as three talks from the sponsors related to the topic of using Service Design to do good and give back.

We organized a hybrid event, with 200 participants onsite and 150+ participant online. It was supported by 10+ sponsor companies and organisations.

My roles:
- Planning the agenda, operations and activities at the event

- Managing the team responsible of planning and executing the event activities

- Managing communications with attendees

- Managing communications and coordination with speaker sponsors

- Running backstage operations during the event

Main activities:

- Coordinating across planning teams to ensure delivering a comprehensive experience

- Identifying and handling critical issues at each stage of the planning process.

- Solving communication issues during the planning process

- Developing best practices to improve collaboration across teams
- Developing and documenting practices to track and develop the attendee and sponsor experience

New challenges and learnings:

- Managing a 200+ event with multiple sponsors and stakeholders

- Managing and coordinating multiple volunteers and teams

- Managing sponsor expectations vs volunteer based operations

Service Design Day Event 2023

Service Design Network Finland collaborated with Miltton to host the Service Design Day. The event's theme was Festival of Inclusivity under the topic "Do good - give back".

The event was held at Miltton premises, hosted about 150 participants and included talks both from the president of Service Design Network, Birgit Mager and Design Director at Miltton, Juho Paasonen. Service Design Network took part of organizing multiple booths at the event presenting projects about inclusivity, as well as offering networking activities.

My roles:
- Ticket registrations and communications

- Teams coordinator

- Backstage manager together with Miltton team

Main activities:

- Managing ticket registrations and communications with attendees

- Supporting our chapter lead Eliisa Sarkkinen with coordination and managing volunteer teams

- Managing operations and presenter's experience backstage

New challenges and learnings:

Planning a large event in a very tight schedule in collaboration with another organisation

Service Design Day Event 2022

Service Design Day 2022 was the first big event organized by Service Design Network Finland after the pandemic.

The event was hybrid and hosted about 200 on-site participants. Sponsors took part in presenting their talks under the theme "Do good - Give back: Courage to design for good".

My roles:
- Event coordinator

- Sponsor manager

- Backstage manager

Main activities:

- Planning the agenda together with the core team

- Coordinating and communicating with sponsors and volunteers

- Managing ticket registrations
- Managing communications with attendees and sponsors

- Supporting our chapter lead Eliisa Sarkkinen and managing volunteer teams

- Managing operations and presenter's experience backstage

- Designing visuals

New challenges and learnings:

My first experience planning and executing an event of that size.