Program staff (Liina-Kaisa Tynkkynen, Nadja Nordling and Matias Heikkilä) had invited Demos Helsinki experts (Satu Korhonen and Lari Hokkanen) to co-host the workshop to make the most out of the possibilities provided by the online environment in which the program operates because of the COVID-19 situation.
There were 58 researchers gathered in Zoom-workshop. The participants represented altogether 7 faculties and a number of disciplines from architecture to health sciences and medicine and from social psychology to knowledge management, administrative sciences and economics, to name but a few.
The workshop began with short introduction by vice president Juha Teperi and Assistant Professor Liina-Kaisa Tynkkynen after which we moved on to group discussions. We discussed about relevant themes to the program, seed funding instrument that has been planned to be used as part of the program and modes of collaboration.
A lot comes down to how the concepts of sustainability and welfare are defined – this also came up in the discussions. Seed funding was suggested to be directed towards salary costs and enabling collaboration between researchers. For collaboration, informal meetings were suggested in addition to larger events; these could be held in a digital environment and still achieve a more casual atmosphere for academic matchmaking.
Our research community building workshops continue 19.11.2020 and 3.12.2020 (both at 9:00-11:00). In the meantime, we will look to continue the discussion in Yammer (@TG-Sustainable Welfare Systems – for intra-organizational purposes) and Twitter (@SystemsWelfare). You are all most welcome to join!