virtua Our Virtual Impact
IDEA went fully virtual in the 11th Year, due to the circumstances caused by the global pandemic. While this set some initial challenges, IDEA proved to be more resilient than ever before through a process of adaptation and virtual experiments that allowed to find out how to best operate in the new and unfamiliar setting. In fact, IDEA never stopped operating and supporting the wide community of founders and entrepreneurs that it’s surrounded by. In order to continue our operations, we moved all our resources to a virtual format, and found new platforms to host our two biggest yearly events, NEXPO and Pitchathon. This semester, our community also hosted various community events and internal programming workshops all online, including meetings with the Venture Advisory Board (VAB) and Management team meetings in the Virtual Lab. The VAB, a group of founders invited to give feedback on a range of Management Team projects, met exclusively online. Founders were invited to express their wants and needs and Management Team members got help evaluating and re-iterating projects and initiatives for the IDEA community. The #virtuallab was created on Gather.town in order for management team members to interact in a communal “space” since we could not experience the IDEA Lab. It provided fun opportunities in terms of character creation, public and private conversations, and collaborative activities.
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