So long, and thanks for all the fish.
They say that all good things must come to an end. Today we’re announcing that after six wonderful years, Jam is closing down.
To this day, we have thoroughly enjoyed everything we’ve done together. Our events were fun, different, and a pleasure to organise and run. You brought them to life and we couldn't be more grateful for all the great moments we enjoyed in your company.
In this announcement, we’d like to share the rationale behind this decision.
2020 has had a disastrous impact on society and the economy as a whole. From a business standpoint, companies operating in the events industry have been hit particularly hard.
Our revenues crashed, and we lost a considerable amount of money in deposits paid to venues – including Hawker House, who we were saddened to hear, are also in the process of closing down.
We successfully ran several online events throughout the year, but it quickly became clear to us that it was going to be impossible to recreate the experiences we'd created in the past, online.
But we didn't throw in the towel. At the end of the year, we attempted a pivot, and launched – Jam Club – an online community for our most committed members.
Our vision was to build a thriving space for growth-minded product leaders, offering intimate virtual workshops every month.
Pivoting from an in-person events company to an online community has proven significantly harder than we’d originally hoped, and the losses we accumulated in 2020 have proven too significant for us to overcome. And so now we’d rather stop here, celebrate the journey, and say a proper goodbye.
What now?
We’ll keep Jam Club open for the next six months. We won’t be moderating it or running any workshops, but you'll be able to access all workshop recordings, discussions, and member profiles. We hope you’ll be able to use it to reconnect with friends made at past events.
To claim your free invite just drop us a note at hello@makingjam.io.
You can also find all past talk videos on our YouTube channel.
Thank you
A huge thank you to our amazing team of staff and volunteers; Marta, Sunil, Jessie, Maria, Francesca, Stephen, Joan, Monica, Ecem, Steve, David, Michael, Mahtab, Eva, Gizem, Antoine, Jeff and all those that helped run our events every year. We’re deeply grateful for the friendship, shared memories, and support you’ve shown us over the years. We couldn’t have achieved everything we did without you.
Thank you to Doug and Chris at Intelligent People. You supported us from day one, and have always been a pleasure to work with.
Thank you to all our speakers and workshop instructors for all the brilliant content you’ve delivered over the years.
And thank you, for the good times we created together.
Seb & Mathilde
About
Blog
JAM London 2017
The line-up
Fiona McLaren
Senior Product Manager, Idean
Previously at Made by Many Fiona McLaren is a Product Director at Idean UK. She leads teams to bring new products to life, and improves existing ones, with clients like Skype, ITV, Finnair, the World Economic Forum and Expedia. She'd be lost without the ability to learn from users every step of the way and has previously worked for London 2012, Amnesty International and Last.fm.
Eva Liparova
Product Manager, Victoria & Albert Museum
Eva Liparova is a product manager at the Victoria & Albert Museum, responsible for defining and delivering all things digital at the museum. She has previously worked as a product manager at Knotch, an intelligence software for measuring the impact of digital marketing. Working with various brands and startups, she has also been a freelance theatre producer, community manager and startup founder in Berlin, London and San Francisco.
Ed Cooke
Co-founder & CEO, Memrise
Ed is the co-founder and CEO of Memrise, a language learning app with 50 million users, and a unique approach to helping people learn, immerse and communicate in a language. Memrise was Google Play's app of the year in 2017, and has pioneered the use of rich media in learning. Ed's background is in philosophy and cognitive science, and his self-taught memory-palace skills led him to compete successfully in multiple World Memory Championships.
Cindy Chang
Senior Product Designer, Intercom
Cindy Chang is a Senior Product Designer at Intercom in Dublin, Ireland, where she?s on the mission to make business personal. A San Francisco Bay Area native, Cindy studied design, education, and computer science at Stanford University, and has previously worked at companies like Salesforce and Intuit. She?s passionate about designing workshops and blending design thinking methodologies with visual narrative to create meaningful products.
Gabriel Valdivia
Design Lead, Facebook
Gabriel is a Cuban Product Designer, based in San Francisco, currently exploring Virtual Reality as a Lead Designer at Facebook. Most recently, he was part of the design team behind Facebook Spaces and Facebook 360 for the Oculus Rift and Gear VR, respectively. Prior to that, he spent a year in London building a product team and leading the design for Multi-Post Stories, a Facebook initiative focused around long form storytelling.
Chad Jennings
CPO, Moo
Chad has spent over eighteen years at the intersection of product, design, and user experience, following a Master's in human-centered design from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. During his career, he has held key roles within companies such as Method, Smart Design, EF Education First, and Blurb, which he also co-founded. He contributed significantly to the growth of all of these organisations, and these experiences led directly to the role at MOO, where he has been since early 2015. At MOO, as Chief Product Officer, Chad manages three pivotal teams: physical product design, product management, and experience design.
Mads Victor
Head of Design, Peakon
Mads is the Head of Design at Peakon, an employee engagement and retention platform based in Copenhagen and London. They?re on a mission to make everybody love their job ? while building the world's best workplace.
Melissa Sweet
Product Designer, Strava
Melissa is a Product Designer at Strava, a social network for athletes based in San Francisco, California. Prior to joining Strava, Melissa led UX teams working with companies such as: Playstation, the NBA, Dreamworks, and Faraday Future. She loves cycling, anime and cute doggos.
Pantelis Korovilas
Lead Product Designer, Hopper
Pantelis is an award-winning, mobile-first product designer with a knack for product strategy, app architecture, illustration, photography, and finding the best coffee-shops in town. Currently, as Lead Product Designer at Hopper, he's helping drive the product concept and design of Hopper's iOS and Android apps. Pantelis designed Hopper?s super-fast, mobile booking flow— QuickTap Booking— which surpassed $1 million in gross bookings the first 12 days after launch on iOS, among other successes that have led Hopper to be a #1 travel app in hundreds of countries.