A delegation of five platform coops from Belgium – namely Usitoo, FitMyNest, Cobea, Coop It Easy and Wibee – accompanied and financed by Smart Belgium and Hub Brussels / EU-GIVE visited Berlin on the 16. and 17.05.2019 for a two-day learning journey organized by Andreas Arnold, Thomas Dönnebrink & Ela Kagel from SUPERMARKT Berlin with the organisational and financial support of Mona Meyer zu Kniendorf and Miriam Sufraga from BeShared and the Platforms2Share Team. 

The five visiting platform coops were matched with local correspondents, in order to facilitate knowledge exchange and mutual learning. The organizing team aimed at curating the teams and encounters based on the following principles:

• Allow for enough time to make contact and engage in deep conversation.
• People need the chance to meet peers from other domains as well.
• All the knowledge exchange formats should be based on self-organization, so that the teams can figure out what works best for them.
• Communication at eye level, no lecturing, no consulting. Instead: Active listening, mirroring and co-creation.
• Let participants change sceneries every now and then: don’t make people stay in the same space for a whole day.
• Breaks, leisure time, walks and casual encounters at the coffee machine are most important.

This video was produced with the help of the BeShared project. It captures the two days learning journey in Berlin. Hope you’ll enjoy it!