Running a 300+ participant hybrid design sprint. Is it possible?

I am sharing my experience -from the trenches- of how we managed to run a hybrid design sprint with over 300 participants. You can thank

@Andra Stefanescu

for encouraging me to share it.

I probably can't go as detailed as I would like to, but here it goes.

I recently facilitated a hybrid design sprint with over 300 university students at an open social innovation event organized by the Peruvian Ministry of Production. The event aimed to tackle complex environmental issues. Think of it as a four-day hackathon.

Previously screened participants were divided into groups of seven using an algorithm that analyzed their backgrounds to create more diverse sprint groups. Some of them were located at a University campus while others joined via Zoom. I also joined via Zoom from my country.

To start, the organizers presented three major challenges that needed to be solved and that affected particular groups of people. Days before "Sprint Week", participants had the opportunity to listen to and interview people affected by the problems, as well as experts who were brought in to help them gather data and define more specifically the problem they would solve.

I have to say that defining the problem is probably the most difficult part for participants and it is something we need to work around and improve it. But we've managed to make it work somehow 🤭

To assist the participants, we assigned a "design sprint mentor" to each of the three categories. These mentors were responsible for answering questions and providing guidance to the volunteers assigned to each group and the participants themselves.

Both mentors and volunteers had prior knowledge of design thinking and received a design sprint onboarding before the event to clear up any questions regarding the process. We also had a team supporting on the technical side -HUUUGEEE kudos to them.

During "Sprint Week" if any problems could not be resolved by the mentors, they were escalated to me as the design sprint master.

A few days after "Sprint Week" the teams presented their solutions to a team of judges and the winners received funding to get their ideas going. I have witnessed a few startups emerge from events similar to this one. It's amazing!

If you plan to run a large-scale design sprint, I recommend having volunteers with basic knowledge of design thinking -helps a lot, having people to help with the technical stuff, and always having a backup plan -more than one 😅.

The key to a successful large-scale design sprint or event is to: "Divide and conquer."

This is the third event of this kind with over 70 participants, so if you are interested in running an event like it, I'm happy to talk and give more insights than the ones mentioned in this post.

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