Emerging Talent: Inside the Service Design Network's Young Talent Board

[00:00:06] Gerry: Jihee and Lea, I'm delighted to have you on the podcast. We've been emailing back and forth for a number of months. I'm going to say, about this whole kind of the work that you're doing with the Service Design Network. And I'm really happy to be working alongside the Service Design Network again.

[00:00:23] I think it's. Maybe the fourth time over the last couple of years, we've been doing stuff with what the global conference and, the SDN. Why to be a YTB? Should I say the Young Talent Board? but rather than me, tell everyone about it. Like, you know, I'd like to understand a little bit more around the structure of the young talent board and what the objectives are around this.

[00:00:50] Before we do that, I think it's probably fair to the listeners to it. Introduce yourselves. Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from and what you do. Who wants to go first?

[00:01:01] Jihee Hwang: I'm gonna go first. thank you, Gerry, for, I'm Jihee, I'm Korean based in Cologne, and now designing the future of Service Design Network as a project manager, and also Service Design consulting work at Superbowl. Clients like UNICEF and AI civic innovation platform with the ministry, so I'm more or less in the world of social and public innovation and AI.

[00:01:27] And, of course, Service Design Network, Young Talent Board co founder with me. Jaden, Juhi, Sahar, and now with Anna and, and Lea here.

[00:01:39] Gerry: The dream team.

[00:01:41] Lea Sevšek: Yeah.

[00:01:42] Jihee Hwang: Yeah.

[00:01:49] Gerry: come back to that one in a minute. But Lea is eager to jump into this one. Tell us Lea a little

[00:01:54] Lea Sevšek: a strong word.

[00:01:56] Gerry: Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from and what you do.

[00:01:58] Lea Sevšek: Yeah. Thank you. First of all, thank you, Gerry, for having us today. and, my name is Lea and I'm from Croatia. I'm an experienced designer currently located in Zagreb working for a small design agency. Yeah. I hope you come one day and visit.

[00:02:14] Gerry: Yeah. Invite me.

[00:02:17] Lea Sevšek: Yeah, I

[00:02:18] Gerry: Yeah, I'll definitely love to go to Croatia. I've been, I've been traveling a bit in the last couple of months. So yeah, definitely Croatia be somewhere I'd love to go to.

[00:02:25] Lea Sevšek: You've been officially invited, so you cannot say I didn't do it.

[00:02:29] Gerry: Nice. You heard it here, folks. what's the scene like in Cologne and, Zagreb in particular for service design?

[00:02:40] Lea Sevšek: Yeah, well, I think it's quite A huge difference because on the one hand you have Cologne, which he can say a bit more about, but we know that Birgit Mager, a founder of SDN is from there. So that's, we could say the center and start in point of service design. But on the other hand, you have a country like Croatia, which when you think about it beyond graphic and branding design, employment is very hard to find.

[00:03:05] And the definition of service design is quite still unknown. So I would say there's quite a difference between those two.

[00:03:13] Gerry: Yeah. Which might be a nice segue into the, the YTB, you know, trying to cultivate the, the maturity or the knowledge and the awareness of the potential service design can bring to both the locale and also to organizations. What sits behind your reason to get involved with the service design, YTB? Like what, what is, you know, how does that align to your purpose as well? 

[00:03:51] Gerry: So Lea, like behind your purpose, you know, why get involved with the Service Design Network?

[00:04:02] Lea Sevšek: Yeah, of course. He definitely has a different perspective being one of the co founders. So, mine is a bit towards coming from, finishing my master's, don't know what service design is, and starting to, get into the field. I come as an exchange student to KIST Cologne International School of Design where Birgit teaches, service design.

[00:04:28] I have not. Again, I have no clue what is service design. Never heard it before. My major is in industrial design and I'm

[00:04:35] Gerry: Ah, same as me.

[00:04:36] Lea Sevšek: Yeah, nice. Nice. So you know where I'm coming from. But, I'm writing my master thesis for the healthcare, in the context of healthcare, breast cancer, and, I got a recommendation to seek Margaret as my mentor.

[00:04:50] And then she introduces me to service design and who was one of her prime students at, her year.

[00:04:59] Gerry: She's like, that's right. That's right.

[00:05:01] Lea Sevšek: that's me. That's me. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:05:05] Gerry: That's exactly how she introduces herself as well. She goes, I'm just one of the prime students here, folks.

[00:05:11] Lea Sevšek: Exactly. I stand behind my words and Jihee says like, wow, who is this girl? I need to invite her to join service design. I see she has no clue, but I guess she could be a good addition to the team. And that's how I came into the picture. But talking about my purpose, why I actually decided to join was the reason I mentioned before that service design is an unknown field in Croatia.

[00:05:33] And it was really interesting to get involved into this space and stay in that community, which gave me so much freedom to explore something that I, well, basically are just getting to know. And my, since, I was in it for some quite time, my purpose developed more into the field of, well, now I know what it is.

[00:05:56] Now I want to bring it back maybe to creation one day. So. yeah, maybe a little less religious, but you can also say it like that. Yeah,

[00:06:13] Gerry: Stand back.

[00:06:14] Lea Sevšek: yeah, Messiah is coming, exactly.

[00:06:16] Gerry: about to open the book.

[00:06:20] Lea Sevšek: All the

[00:06:21] Gerry: it unfold.

[00:06:22] Lea Sevšek: yeah.

[00:06:23] Gerry: Journey maps.

[00:06:25] Lea Sevšek: Service blueprint, now everybody knows everything, exactly.

[00:06:29] Gerry: Yeah. Now the world's problems can be eroded and ended. Anyway, don't mind me. I'm, I'm what's known as the week after heavy workshops. So I'm somewhat fatigued. That's why I'm like, yeah, everybody is fine. 

[00:06:50] Jihee Hwang: So. Young Talent Board, except the name itself, we, I believe, we created by ourself. We have something to talk about. We have something that, what we believe in to build together and, and share and just be as it is.

[00:07:20] And that's how we, we started and founded in 2022, already the third year and third years of conferences you're happening. And, yeah, Yeah, the written description would say, like, bridging the gap between education and professional practice and then create more diverse and equitable service and industry, but more than the word sounds, I do believe what we do and why we do for this, young talent board community is bigger than that.

[00:07:52] Gerry: Go on.

[00:07:54] Jihee Hwang: yeah.

[00:07:54] Gerry: Yeah. So it's, it's more, it's more than that. Like, what does it give both? I guess the SDN, I'm thinking of the stakeholders are involved. So the SDN and, you know, emerging talent, what does it give those people who attend?

[00:08:11] Lea Sevšek: Exactly what?

[00:08:13] Jihee Hwang: So, I mean, in the industry on when we just scroll down the LinkedIn and we see people talking a lot of like, big words, people talk a lot about the change and then they make navigating complexity, the system change and systemic change. And I, at this point, I, I'm pretty clear, from my reflections that everything.

[00:08:34] Everything come from people and community is really the perfect place to, to really discover together and define and activate your belief and, and, 

[00:08:46] Gerry: Sure.

[00:08:46] Jihee Hwang: from, yeah.

[00:08:48] Gerry: So it's. Having spoken at the event last year, it was very well organized and that's not to say I'm, I was surprised, but on a, you know, over the weekend and on a Saturday, I wasn't too sure what to expect. It was a great experience like for me, you know, typically whenever I do a talk, I would usually say, okay, well.

[00:09:10] I charge, like I've, it's part of my job, but when I went in there, I could see that the amount of kind of detail, the amount of people that were involved, and the price is quite low as well, that I could see that a lot of the costs were probably just going to be absorbed on running this thing. It wasn't a case of.

[00:09:28] There's a lot of profit left over after these, these kind of events, because primarily. It's still done online. Correct. It's still going to be a 100 percent online conference, which is different to the global one.

[00:09:42] Lea Sevšek: so yeah, exactly. going back a bit. I thank you so much for recognizing that we were well organized because when you're in the background, everything seems you're, you know, Anything but well organized. You feel nothing is going

[00:09:56] Gerry: but from my perspective, it was like, I felt like,

[00:09:59] Lea Sevšek: to see that. And, actually we are not, we're all volunteers.

[00:10:05] So working and that, I guess that's the biggest beauty of it all. As he mentioned at the beginning, so young talent boards came to place. Because we recognize young people are maybe not represented well in the service design in general, and we wanted to give them more voice, but also freedom to create stuff.

[00:10:23] And that's why they love to join and volunteer. So none of us are. Getting paid or what we do, we just do it based on our love. And I guess in that way, motivation is stronger and hopefully organization better because of course, sometimes we also struggle with that. Thank God it's not recognizable. And besides that, yeah, I'm really delighted you had a wonderful experience.

[00:10:47] And could you remind me what was your last question? Because I talked too much

[00:10:50] Gerry: No, no, it's gonna, it's gonna, is it going to be, you don't speak too much, by the way, I'd, I'd be saying

[00:10:57] Lea Sevšek: Okay. Okay.

[00:10:57] Gerry: No, you're completely fine, but it's 100 percent online, isn't it?

[00:11:01] Lea Sevšek: Yeah, thank you. yeah. So last year we were 100 percent online and that was a deliberate choice because choosing young people around the world, they didn't have funds to travel long distances to attend a global conference. And we wanted to keep the prices very low again, to be affordable, but to try to cover some of the costs that happen in the background, like the platform or stuff.

[00:11:23] But this year we decided to. Have on site events going parallelly of this. Big virtual event. And we chose that because we said, okay, online, it's interesting. It's approachable to everyone, but we still are missing this local approach, by having this global reach. So this year we decided to rely on the amazing support of different universities and agencies all around the world who are practicing either service design or even beyond service design that could provide us onsite venues to Broaden our reach with the global conference.

[00:12:01] Gerry: cool.

[00:12:02] Lea Sevšek: So that's what's going to happen this year.

[00:12:04] Gerry: So if there's somebody out there at the moment who is kind of in a sort of periphery to service design work and as a service designer, or say a design researcher, a user experience designer wants to get into service design, what does their experience and their entry look like into this conference?

[00:12:57] Gerry: look like? What does their entry look like into the experience? What can they expect? How do they find these satellite universities to get involved in? You know, how much does a ticket cost?

[00:13:07] What are they going to get out of it? It's your opportunity to talk about the conference. Super

[00:13:12] Lea Sevšek: yeah. so in general, we are trying to get volunteers. We're opening a call for volunteers all around the world. And Usually what happened is the universities and corporations that supported us. We get next year, a lot of volunteers from there because I hope they have a good experience and they see, wow, this is really amazing.

[00:13:32] We want to join. So we had a lot of volunteers from, for example, SCAD. We had a lot of volunteers from SDSI. That's a university in Latvia with service design program. We also have a lot of volunteers from, UK one. You met Garavnik last year, for

[00:13:48] Gerry: Yeah, yeah. It's in Glasgow. Well, what about Loria in Finland? Finland. Mm

[00:13:56] Lea Sevšek: also Finland, on the other hand, where there are strong universities and agencies supporting us, we have, as the end chapters.

[00:14:04] So that's like a little association. So service design as part of SDN network. So they are also, when the chapter is strong and they really have a lot of influence over, you Not only professionals, but also young people in their country. Finland is one of examples. That's another reason when young people decide to join.

[00:14:22] And then we have, let's say that third group, which are the loaners that just somehow we even didn't recognize how, if we do, we would know the algorithm of marketing and we would know who to target, but in general, people who are. Just struggling to either enter the field, they're pivoting from one field to the other, or just emerging students.

[00:14:42] And they really want to feel this like support of the community. Yeah. Connection. Exactly. Exactly.

[00:14:48] Gerry: in that case, if there is people out there who are, as you would say, loners, it's a kind of a derogatory word. But anyway,

[00:14:55] Lea Sevšek: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:56] Gerry: if they're out there at the moment and they want to connect with the community, is there a place for them to go and kind of identify where the nearest places that they can go and physically meet for

[00:15:08] Lea Sevšek: Yeah, yeah, of course, of course, they can, we try to communicate over social media, a lot of our, Service Design Network, Young Talent Board, Instagram, or LinkedIn. And we are going to share all of the information there, but we already know. Those like hotspots happening will be in Mexico because we have a beautiful collaboration with the university there.

[00:15:31] And also, one of the nice corporations that's gonna support us is Accenture, in Mexico. So those would be like one hotspot. The other one would be the one that I mentioned service design, master. In SDSI in Latvia. So Riga, a lot of them are coming. a lot of volunteers are coming there. We're going to have one in America, in Atlanta.

[00:15:55] Gerry: Yeah.

[00:15:55] Lea Sevšek: he's working with services on drinks in Korea to establish an event there. Yeah. And the other one, last, but I hope not least was going to be in Berlin. So what we try to do here is really to cover all of the continents because that's kind of this year's idea as well. So we have the conference going for, I would say almost 24 hours.

[00:16:16] So in three time zones, so everybody can join and they won't be afraid that they're going to, that we are really European centric and they are going to be, well, basically one in the morning and they need to get up and be on the conference.

[00:16:29] Gerry: What about Australia? Because like that's where you know, my soul is still located. I lived out there for 14 years. Is there anything in Sydney or Melbourne? I know there's some great communities and great practitioners out there.

[00:16:43] Lea Sevšek: I know we are really trying to reach more, to the, to the Australian community, but this year we didn't establish an event there, but hopefully we will.

[00:16:51] Gerry: All right. If anyone's listening, anyone's

[00:16:53] Lea Sevšek: yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:54] Gerry: out in Australia or New Zealand,

[00:16:56] Lea Sevšek: reach out. Yeah.

[00:16:59] Gerry: this episode, and I need you to represent your country and stand up and put a flag, you know, put the, put the Matilda's jersey on and stand. We're going to do it. We're going to run it.

[00:17:13] So hopefully you might get something out of that. Cause we still have a large listenership in Australia, which is fantastic. Like, you know,

[00:17:20] Lea Sevšek: That's so wonderful.

[00:17:21] Gerry: so people get into the experience, they go in and they attend it and they can stay awake for probably about 18 hours. There's 18 hours of continuous content. Is it or 24 hours?

[00:17:31] Did you say?

[00:17:32] Lea Sevšek: Yeah, I did say 24 and sounds like very intimidating, but, yeah, it's not. It's not so like that. We divided it in, let's say, three parts of six hours, and then you have two to three hours of break and you can stay with us online and hang out. But we have these breaks and then you can watch the recordings of the, let's say, previous time zone and join the next one or as you please.

[00:17:57] And as you choose.

[00:17:58] Gerry: Okay. So I remember last year. when we were doing a pre call or something for the keynote, they were saying, oh, you can hang around for the disco. Now, I, I thought they were joking because, until a few weeks later then someone said to me, no, no, no, no, there was a disco. So tell us what this, what this entails.

[00:18:20] Lea Sevšek: Oh wait, you didn't join the disco

[00:18:22] Gerry: No, I thought it was a joke. Like, you know, I didn't think, I didn't

[00:18:25] Lea Sevšek: we don't

[00:18:26] Gerry: Yeah, yeah. So tell us, you know, you never joke, you know, you do joke. They're just not good jokes.

[00:18:34] Lea Sevšek: Fair enough, fair enough.

[00:18:35] Gerry: a joke. Tell us what the, tell us what the disco is.

[00:18:44] Jihee Hwang: Metaverse space designed by Chen.

[00:18:46] Gerry: Oh, cool.

[00:18:47] Lea Sevšek: Yeah, yeah,

[00:18:48] Jihee Hwang: really designed magnificent environment and those like portfolio hanging around and and we just look at each other and dancing. That

[00:18:58] Gerry: That's super cool.

[00:19:00] Lea Sevšek: Yeah.

[00:19:01] Gerry: So there is kind of a networking slash fun experience within the ticket price for the conferences here as well. That's going to happen. Yeah. So who's DJing? Is Birgit gonna be DJing this year again? I'm

[00:19:19] Lea Sevšek: Again, how do you know again, if you didn't join last year?

[00:19:23] Gerry: I'm only joking.

[00:19:24] Lea Sevšek: I know, but yeah, mentioning the networking, we do have this like traditional networking one, one on one where you just like randomly join with other people. And I guess that was the most fun activity after the portfolio reviews that we had. And this, this call after party was more of.

[00:19:42] Well, okay. We did a lot of business today. Let's have some fun now and dance and have a DJ, which is not Birgit, not Birgit, but we do, we did rent a DJ last year, I think, who did like a really cute job at the end. So in the metaverse, but that's one of the, ways that we provide networking and it kind of gives a relaxing environment for everyone.

[00:20:03] Gerry: So when you bring together all these different continents and countries and communities, you're kind of blessed with a perspective of understanding and understanding. Service design at a global context from an emerging designers perspective. What are the challenges that are being faced for designers leaving university now?

[00:20:26] Like when I left, I did, I had a degree in industrial design. And now I see an awful lot of people finishing university with masters in specific areas of design, like service design in particular. Thank you very What are the challenges that they face when they enter a market, say like Zagreb, where they might have done a master's in service design, but yet the maturity of the locale is quite low?

[00:20:51] Lea Sevšek: Yeah, so we do not have a master in service design in Croatia. So let's say Croatia is a very specific example of a country where service design is not yet introduced. Although the problems are the same being tackled as around the globe, but we don't have a service design approach yet. Yet, but It's really interesting that you mentioned those different cultural, well, cultural differences for young people because that was subsequently happening after we started Young Talent Board and we started collaborating around the globe.

[00:21:23] We found out that the differences are quite big actually. So you have countries like Croatia, me coming from Croatia in the same field, then you have someone from, for example, UK and you know, For example, even with working with public services in UK is already on a such higher level than I could ever imagined in Croatia or definitely not in the next five years.

[00:21:48] And then you have, for example, students in Mexico. So talking with university professors who are actually a very good source of information of what is the state of young people when they're entering the market. So basically, this bridge between educational and professional practices, we found out about a lot of different struggles happening there.

[00:22:07] not only that there is not enough opportunities, But also, for example, when we compare to America shifting, I'm sorry, but shifting a bit focus, they have a different problem of, they cannot share their projects in their portfolios because of a lot of NDAs. Yeah. And that problem does not exist in Mexico, for example, but they just struggle in general to find a job.

[00:22:33] And then you have a country like Korea. Do you, maybe you would like to go a bit about the specifics of a Korean community and service design.

[00:22:41] Gerry: Yeah.

[00:22:48] Jihee Hwang: Oh, gosh,

[00:22:51] Lea Sevšek: You mentioned, I know you mentioned when you, when we talked about how, for example, Croatia doesn't know about service design. Then you have strong countries like UK and America who really know about service design and there are pioneers in service design and what else is happening. They have such, they had such a strong, Shift, towards service design and implemented in all of the fields that what started to happen now is that, they are starting to lay off people because they were hiring so much of service designers.

[00:23:20] And then you have countries like Mexico, then you cannot find a job. And then Korea who are also strong in service design, but, are not a worldwide recognized. So they're seeking. Recognition. We also had some beautiful talks with some design studios in Africa. They also have their own story. So they're also trying, they're practicing service design.

[00:23:41] They're doing amazing job, but they're liking this worldwide recognition. So it's like cultural differences are quite amazing.

[00:23:48] Gerry: Okay.

[00:23:48] Jihee Hwang: also differences between like public sector and private. Like, for example, it's my assumption, but like Taiwan, Korea, like Japan, like both are high force from the private, like public sector. So, like, Service Design is, selected, like chosen, to be really shifted. And for the, for the industry and in Korea, there's even half this, design governance program that's like citizens can participate and really learn the service and process and do the project and also do to kind of like celebration and so on.

[00:24:25] They do have like certification, national certifications and. And really backup supports to industry to grow versus the challenge in Korea is that, not, you know, like private sector is more to our brand strategy and UX. So it's actually a very different concept. when I talk to, People working in, in Japan as service design sector, it seems like it's also kind of like similar that it's, carried up from the public sector and, and private is still, you know, like figuring out what's the, the, the value of service design can be implemented. So it's very different landscape.

[00:25:03] Gerry: Yeah, there's a lot of differences, but there's probably a lot of commonalities in terms of the, the experience is what I can hear in terms of being connected with the community to really feeling support and getting your portfolio together, getting everything structured in a way so you can give yourself the best chance of finding a job.

[00:25:24] With the YTB like. For people who are listening, saying, well, I know there's a global conference coming up, later on this year. What's the differences between the global conference and the YTB conference?

[00:25:38] Lea Sevšek: So both of them here have their own let's say target group and their own approach to it. So the global conference is more focusing on the professionals who are established in the industry and providing them space to connect and share recent findings and projects. So it's a really broad approach. The most important conference when it comes to service design, I would dare to say, and the other underhand young talent board wanted to be more, organizing the next gen conference wanted to provide this like very fresh and open space for people who don't have a lot of experience and everything basically that you mentioned.

[00:26:15] So there are cultural differences. We try to merge them somehow and find the common ground of how can we provide opportunities to everyone. So you mentioned community building, how the hell should I build a portfolio? So do I need a mentor? All of those questions we try to resolve and provide a space for it.

[00:26:34] That's why we're offering not only from workshops, what you can also have on the global conference and talks, but also mentorship sessions and portfolio reviews and design challenges. So everything, everything that can you build your skill sets. So what started to happen is a lot of professionals from the global conference recognize that.

[00:26:52] Our, aim to help young people and they're really providing beautiful support to review portfolios. So we're going to have portfolio reviews from frog Munich, from a central Mexico. So also from all around the globe, that would really, really help young people because they know that's the next generation upcoming and, well, they, they're leaving their work to them at the

[00:27:16] Jihee Hwang: I dare to say the value of, like, Young Talent Board, like, next gen conference is that it's, chosen from young people. It represents what young people think is important. For a global conference, it may say, they have, like, different reasons to be presented, or, you know. But then, young conference, like, We design the conference program, the criteria, and we reach out to people from our, our values and, and principles.

[00:27:46] And that's really, talks a lot. I don't want to compare this. I'm not a big fan of this idea of the professionalism, like which conference is more professional or which is not. I don't think so. but yeah, the, the real value is that it's, it's, designed by young people and run by young people.

[00:28:04] Gerry: Okay.

[00:28:05] Lea Sevšek: we basically, we hope we know what's best for us, or at least we want to, provide what we, we went through because when I finished, when I finished college, for example, I was, I found myself in a place of what now, what, what should I do now? And I was in Croatia. I wanted to, I finished my exchange year, service design.

[00:28:26] I came back to creation. I was like, but what am I going to do now? Who is going to help me? So, Staying in this network of young talents really, really was like, super, super nice. And, this stress and, let's say I, I dare to say even depression at some point when I decided, should I go to Germany? Oh no, then they have a lot of hiring freezes.

[00:28:49] The language is, not, so it's not English. So it's English. German, you gotta know German because it's a research based field, but if I want to go to England, oh, what about visa? Which other country can I choose? So, so many problems that I really don't want young people to go through. So, I guess this empathetic moment was like really something that drives me the most to work with Young Talent

[00:29:15] Gerry: Yeah, for sure. So it sounds like there's a lot of thinking and a lot of doing going on to connect the expectations from. Other young designers who are experiencing these kind of problems. I can see the value that it would give to people. I know when we were in the prelude to this conversation, we're talking about really creating a global, community to really connect people.

[00:29:40] After the event is over, is that something that persists throughout the year? Or is the goal of this conference to try and bring people together to foster those relationships so they can build their own communities?

[00:29:54] Lea Sevšek: Well, I can say definitely that people like Jihee and Anna Han, who is the other Young Talent member, and Jaden also, we are now basically best friends. And every year we have new volunteers coming, and we have team leads who are leading small teams of four to five people. And they all become, they all became such good friends that at least this friendship persists.

[00:30:21] Is really, really strong throughout the year. And then based on that, we try to organize more and more events. We want to pursue doing this onsite events beyond just the conference. And then all of us go and meet and the global conference. So this persistence throughout the year, at least with the community that we have built and the return as we have every year is really something that's, that's longstanding

[00:30:45] Gerry: yeah, yeah, look, I have got an exclusive code I see in my notes here for the listeners. You give them 15 percent off. That's one five, not five. Oh, 15 percent off the tickets. How much are the tickets for the YTB conference?

[00:31:04] Lea Sevšek: it's for students. It's only 30 euros. So that's,

[00:31:08] Gerry: They go there. Do they get 15 percent off 30 euros? Well, that's, that is like, that's about one and a half pints in Dublin at the moment. It's points in Dublin. I don't drink anymore, but like I was told someone paid 1250.

[00:31:25] Lea Sevšek: You were told,

[00:31:26] Gerry: Yeah. And I was like, oh my God, that's two and a bit pints. Should I say, so. Okay. So it's, what's the full price if you're a professional wanting to go to it?

[00:31:37] Lea Sevšek: Yeah, exactly. So, we do have, for all of the, all of the 50 percent is for all of the prices. So only also for students and professionals and professionals. And we made this division to give more opportunity also price wise. So we have students and young professionals are up to five years from a university, which would be around eight euros.

[00:31:59] So it's like more pints, but still

[00:32:02] Gerry: 80 years, eight zeros.

[00:32:05] Lea Sevšek: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, we have then for professionals, which is around 200 euros. So it's like also really, really hopefully approachable, but our target group for definitely students and young professionals.

[00:32:18] Gerry: And who's, who's doing the keynote speaking this year? Do you have any, anyone that

[00:32:23] Lea Sevšek: we are yet to announce, you're yet to announce our schedule, but, once it will be up. Yeah,

[00:32:29] Gerry: Tell us now.

[00:32:30] Lea Sevšek: It's going to be a surprise.

[00:32:31] Gerry: can't be a surprise. You have to do it on this podcast. Come on.

[00:32:37] Lea Sevšek: Jihee, do you want to say it or we're going to

[00:32:39] Gerry: Come on. It won't be out for another few weeks anyway. It'll be out. You'll have released it by the time this comes out. Guaranteed.

[00:32:50] Lea Sevšek: Oh, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to share it yet. So,

[00:32:54] Gerry: if you don't want to tell, that's fair enough. But I'm crying on the inside. I am crying on the inside.

[00:33:00] Lea Sevšek: But that just means you need to keep up on our social media to see what's coming.

[00:33:04] Gerry: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Well, look, I'll put it,

[00:33:07] Lea Sevšek: that you were one of the speakers.

[00:33:09] Gerry: that's I want to, I want to attract people to this conference, not they're like, if he spoke last year, it's, it's only, it's only going to get better. That's what we're saying here. So, hopefully it's going to be, a fun filled, fact filled, 24 hours. I'm going to put links to all of this in the show notes.

[00:33:30] in return, we've got other stuff coming up with the SDN folks on the podcast and inside our Circle community, which is a private paid community for people to connect who are ethically driven around the future of design. So we've got a lot of alignment with the YTB and I wish you the very best of luck with this event.

[00:33:49] if there's anything else that you want to shout out, like, is there a specific link for people to go to, to learn more about those speakers as they're announced? Thank you very much.

[00:33:58] Lea Sevšek: yeah, you'll see the full schedule under SDN Young Talent Board social media. So if you go to LinkedIn or Instagram, you can check

[00:34:06] Gerry: You'll see it on there. Excellent. Well, look, Lea and Jihee, I really appreciated you coming on to here today to talk to me about this. fantastic. And I wish you all the very best of luck. And

[00:34:19] Lea Sevšek: Thank you so much, Gerry, for having us. It was a wonderful talk.

[00:34:24] Gerry: stop.

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