A Designer at Heart at the Class Conference

This week I have some exciting news and a cool opportunity for the first 10 people that will contact me. We are an official Silver Sponsor of The Class of 2020 for the upcoming The Class Conference!

Who or what is The Class of 2020? There might be a chance you don’t know this body of experts if you don’t work directly within the shared living market in university cities. But let’s say that if you want to learn about the latest and most trustworthy trends shaping cities, and living environment where students and young workers move, you’d look at these guys.

The Class of 2020 is a partner-based think tank researching the latest trends and evolution of the real estate sector. Established in 2011 in Amsterdam, as stated on the official website, it is built on four main pillars: Events, Research, Academy, and Advisory.

Their work is also ultimately expressed by the following claim:

We advocate for community collaboration and provide thought leadership on the future of university cities. Our vision is for cities to attract and retain the brightest young minds, and for them to lead the way to social and economic success in return.

About the Class Conference

There have been numerous events organised throughout the years, involving panels of experts investigating extremely interesting topics, and giving invaluable insights for people working in this industry like the one I attended and that you can read about here in My First Pan European Summit by Class of 2020 – Blended Living.

Naturally, the virus outbreak brought everything to an abrupt stop, at least for now. This, anyway, hasn’t completely stopped the group that has been able to organise its most important event yet, the Class Conference in the “Graduation”  year (2020), by the title Fast-Forwarding the Future.

We couldn’t miss it.

But let’s back up a little and see why this year is so important. In 2011, upon founding, the initial objective was to solve the student housing crisis following the financial crisis and the necessary timespan estimated was 10 years. So, 2020 was supposed to be a year for celebrations. These unprecedented facts though hindered the process, but also sparked an interesting conversation on what is going to happen from here on out and how the industry will change because of it.

The apparent dynamic is that the pandemic has somewhat inverted the growth trend of university cities where students and young professionals are instead moving back home to work remotely. The situation poses a significant threat on the huge sector of student accommodations, co-living, co-working spaces, and blended living schemes that have been developing exponentially in the last few years.

So, now the main point will be to establish the resilience of the sector, what can be learnt from this year’s events and what we’ll collectively bring with us forward from this experience. This will be, in fact, the main focus of the Class Graduation Conference.

At A Designer at Heart, we are such good fans of the Class of 2020’s work that we decided to take part and sponsor this event. As sponsors, we were asked to submit a trend report and a 1-minute video. With those, I will speak for the Student Accommodation side of the industry giving my vision of potential trends that could bloom from all this uncertainty.

Events Logistics, Registration, and Discounted Tickets

The event will take place as a half-day virtual Conference on November 19^th, 2020 from 13:00 CEST. Participants will also have access to the Class Trend Report 2021, a document produced yearly that reports opinions and insights from numerous experts in all the different segments of the market.

As for the registration, only the late registration phase is left for which you can sign up here: Registration

As sponsors, we have 50% discount tickets for the first 10 people that will contact us.

It will be a unique event, giving invaluable learning and networking opportunities, so I suggest to not hesitate to hop in for it! Hope to see you there!