What 27 hours taught me, that 365 days couldn't

Shot 1:- More Curious than....
I was excited since the day I registered for Global Service Jam 2012 in Bangalore. But I think, I was more curious than excited. Curious to know about Service Design Thinking.

Shot 2:- Hyprocritically true
I have always been thinking about how India being a service oriented economy (a large amount of money being pumped in through services industry via the likes of big european and american consumers) is still so nascent in its understanding of service excellence. Its more hypocritical in a sense.
We do not value services. We want products that instantly gratifies our hunger for owning something. But it hurts when you have to shell out 12k for Apple CarePack :)

Shot 3:- Hand in Hand
Service Design Thinking was the panacea I was looking for. Its only when we care for service delivery and excellence, that we can provide the same to our customer.
Its evident, isn't it ?
Products without Services is one-dimensional. Products need to evolve. Service drives that evolution.

Shot 4:- What the mind says
A Global event in Bangalore targeted around Designing services with like-minded people in a close setting - a perfect cafenine shot for the weekend. Atleast that's what my mind said to me.

Shot 5:- Still curious... 
I was out of station, and travelling. So with whatever limited opportunities I had to discover the basics on the topic, I did. I looked over the topic of the 2011 event - Super Heroes. And the videos posted by the GSJ organizers really condensed the essence of the event and opportunities it could hold for me.
Yet I was curious and intrigued.

Shot 6:- Journey into the Unknown
Day of the Event - Friday evening. Being able to finish my work early is a good thing. Atleast it was good for me, travelling from a totally different part of the city to the venue.

Shoty 7:- One among the Unknowns
I walked in to the floor of the ThoughtWorks office, and first thing that made me smile - Pictures of participants and their profiles hung on a wall. Service excellence starts very early in the customer journey - even before the actual service starts. Eating your own dog food - well done GSJ Bangalore.
I tried searching for my picture, only to find Dushyant - my old friend since college. I was surprised, happy and felt more at home.

Shot 8:-  Somebody came in...
Me and Dushyant added ourselves to the team 8 of the event. Dushyant was worried that even after 10 minutes of putting our names on the team, nobody else onboarded. And suddenly, the first name dropped in. A lady by the name Archana.
Archana was the linchpin - as I told Dushyant. Other members started coming in as soon we turned 3. In the words of Malcolm Gladwell - The tipping point was reached. It turned out to be a team of 7 people to start with.

Shot 9:- Not much to care about
A fellow jammer asked me the programming language I used recently. I replied without a blink - Java. And this thought stayed in my head for some unknown reasons.
We realized we need to have a team name. And out came in my mind - CafeBabe. Inspired from the Java language. More on this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_class_file
CafeBabe got a good response from the female members of our team.  We made a point to keep it. Not that everybody was happy with the name, but people hardly cared if it would matter. Atleast for a while.

Shot 10:- Amused
Neeraj was amused. CafeBabe was not the usual names of team he had encountered before.

Shot 11:- The fight within
A team as diverse as our country. Engineers, Entrepreneurs, Designers, Managers, Students. A perfect mix. That's what GSJ was all about. It didn't take a while before we started bonding with each other. The topic that we started bonding upon was the obvious fight of the left brain with the right. We started pouring upon the difficulties of communicating ideas in a left-brain centric industry. I had my own such tricky times.


Shot 12:- The mystery makers ...
"Hidden Treasures" was announced. Yes, that was the topic of this year's Global Service Jam 2012 - Conceive and prototype a service on the idea of Hidden Treasures. And with us, were the 100's of others around the world. The team CafeBabe looked for an empty space to huddle around. We needed ways to find our own adjectives around Hidden Treasures. When you are in the vicinity of the smartest among us, it doesn't take too much time to induce the same in you. Ideas started pouring in. The adult supervision of the team came in the form of two awesome designers - Rana and Archana. Two right brain thinkers but with amazing diversity of thinking and personalities. Dushyant was the devil's advocate - always ready to bring perspectives and helped us each to stop loving our own ideas but the problem in focus. It's interesting how we humans tend to bring out so much in defense of our own ideas. Ideas that were not real a moment back. Awesome isn't it ?

The next part is available at http://www.vivekjuneja.in/2012/04/what-27-hours-taught-me-that-365-days.html