Building One-Stop Shops: brick by brick

What does an ideal one-stop shop look like?

A young visitor to our booth kicked things off: the ideal One-Stop Shop offers ‘first aid’. Others soon added: this is just the ‘beginning of a journey’, on which the OSS helps to ‘overcome hurdles’ (represented by a ladder). Each visitor to the stand added a few bricks each representing a feature/characteristic of OSS, and together we got closer to the answer of what an OSS is, can be, and what would make an ideal OSS - and had some fun in the process.

This was the EU Peers booth at the Climate Alliance International Conference (CAIC) 2025 in Cologne, hosted by our colleagues Carsten and Marcus. The last day of CAIC, this time 11 July 2025, is always traditionally the ‘Learn & Share’ marketplace. We had great conversations with the visitors, mainly from German municipalities, and others.

The most pressing questions were resource-orientated: What does an OSS cost? How much staff does it require? Can I channel a specific funding line through the OSS? But there were also more physical and spatial questions: would it be better to have one in each neighbourhood or in the centre? What kind of premises are suitable?

On the part of EU Peers, we are working on finding the best answers to these questions, e.g. through the EU Peers Survey, which creates comparative values. However, the overview of OSS in Europe is still in its infancy. Our main approach follows the principle of connecting peers with each other, who can share their real experiences and with each other. 

The LEGO® Board featured many such approaches: from the bundling and consolidation of financial flows from federal, state and local sources (the tip-off came from a state ministry) to the organisation of on-site visits to renovation projects that have already been implemented and a technical exhibition in the OSS. Our favourite model was the mobile OSS. There was no shortage of ideas and experience!

Participants wrote to us later on LinkedIn about the unusual method: ‘Bringing the One Stop Shop to life, at least with ’clamp bricks‘, was a lot of fun’ and ‘A great idea to create an inviting stand with Lego to get people talking.’ We are pleased we were able to prepare this great, mostly rather technical topic of OSS in this way! Thank you for the good reception and your visits!

For EU Peers, the booth in Cologne was also one of several steps towards entering the German-speaking world: our community intranet HumHub now also has a German-language space, we have recently been more in dialogue with our colleagues from Climate Alliance Austria, and in Germany our colleague Jenny-Claire Keilmann was invited to an OSS meeting of the Ruhr Regional Association the day before. For all those interested in the OSS exchange in Germany: The next meeting will take place online on 25 September 2025 (10-11:30h)! 

And if we meet offline again, we'll be happy to bring the bricks.

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Pictures

All pictures by Marcus Andreas & Carsten Kuhn, Climate Alliance

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