A few weeks ago I has the pleasure of attending my very first Berlin Geekette event, a Service Design Workshop given by the enthusiastic and knowledgeable Louisa Heinrich. I didn’t know what Service Design was but the topic sounded interesting, so I decided to go. Service Design has now become my philosophy! And I intend to tell everyone I meet what it can do for their startup. While I gained a lot of fantastic knowledge, this wasn’t the only benefit of the workshop. I also found inspiration and courage to found my own startup.

I’m a farmer’s daughter and my granddad taught me how to milk a cow when I was knee- high! I have never known anyone who worked in a startup, never mind someone who created their own. It makes the idea of starting my own business extremely scary. It was a real inspiration to see so many of the girls that attended the event, had created or were in the middle of creating their own startup. They just had ideas they believed in and were doing what it takes to make it happen.

One thing I learned form this event was the difference between someone who offers advice and someone who genuinely tries their best to help you. I’m creative and my ideas can be very idealistic. Rather than dismissing my idea or telling me how I should be doing it, Louisa and the girls in my group took the time and interest to try understand what I wanted to do. They tried to help me figure out how I could make it possible. They really helped me clarify my idea and gave some useful feedback.

It’s so cool to be able to got to workshops like these, where you get to learn from the best. But it was also great to have someone with Louisa’s experience come around and offer advice individually. On behalf of all the girls, I would like to Thank Louisa for putting on such a great workshop and helping us with the exercises :D