Miriam here, I'm the community development & impact lead at Dogpatch Labs.
A bit about Dogpatch
Dogpatch Labs is a startup hub, located in the heart of Dublin’s Digital Docklands. On a very basic level, we're a co-working space for Irelands tech entrepreneurs, we run events, meetups and workshop as well as corporate innovation programmes with companies like ESB, Ulster Bank, Hannover Re, and AllTech.
We reserve about 10% of our membership space for social enterprises and are lucky enough to be home to some of Ireland's most successful social enterprises including CoderDojo, Change X, Change Donations, FoodCloud, Keep Appy and Giveback.ie.
Our mission is to accelerate the development of Ireland’s startup ecosystem and we do this by engaging in ongoing strategic projects across areas like smart cities, mentorship programmes that connect startups to corporates, universities and investors to maximise their chances of success, and regional development projects.
A bit about Dogpatch & Impact
We're a bootstrapped for-profit company but ecosystem impact is at the core of everything we do. Diversity and Inclusion has been a particular focus for us over the past 5 years to help lower barriers for potential entrepreneurs from underrepresented groups and help unlock their entrepreneurial potential. As we look to the next 5 years, we're broadening our definition of impact to encompass environmental sustainability, national economic development, tech4good.
Really excited to see how this network can help build a more connected community of social entrepreneurs within Ireland and across the globe and help us connect to and learn from one another.
Thanks both for the welcome. To answer your questions @Ashley Misleh | Marketing it was consistent communication, flexibility with our members and agility that got us through those months.
Plenty of them adapted in during that time; one example that springs to mind is IoT company Wia who create smart solutions for operations and facilities management that were primarily concerned with air quality and energy into occupancy and compliance. Others like ChangeX and CoderDojo had to really go back to the drawing board and examine how they engaged and organised their communities in the virtual world. Our community were also heavily involved in the Open Source Ventilator Project
Welcome to the forum Miriam! How did you keep the momentum going while the doors were shut for three months? Did you see any of your start-ups adapt and reframe during that time?
Welcome to the Forum Miriam! Very interesting to read about Dogpatch Labs and it is nice to see that you approach social entrepreneurship from the perspective of startups. Here in Estonia we have a similar mindset trying to combine the creative, problem solving potential of the startup sector with the strong values of impact oriented organizations.