October 2017

Wetskills NL – The Amsterdam International Water Week

Day 13 - The AIWW. Sadly, Wetskills the Netherlands 2017 is coming to a close. After a fabulous two-week excursion around the Dutch Delta and intensive work on our case studies, the Amsterdam International Water Week has finally caught up with us. After keeping our emotions bottled up yesterday during the competition, today we could finally relax and allow ourselves to enjoy this famous event of which we are proud to be a part of. We had the opportunity to tour around Aquatech, pop in some seminars, and even participate in conference discussions as young reporters! More importantly, we had the opportunity to do a lot of networking! Some of us (the Egyptians and South Africans) had a special opportunity to spend some time at their embassies on this day, so they were not at the AIWW. This included my blog partner, Asandiso, so we decided that I would write this entry...

Read More

Wetskills NL – Finals @ AIWW!

Day 11 & 12 - Finals! This is the day we’ve been working towards the whole event. Monday the 30th of October had us waking up feeling both energetic and tense. The breakfast in the hostel was amazing, as was the weather. Just the last day we had received final feedback on the posters and pitches and many teams made revisions the previous evening. The work was done and all that’s left is presenting the pitches by one team member. The designated team members were having sweaty hand palms and sat in the bus towards the RAI mumbling their pitches to themselves or their neighboring victims. Fortunately everybody wore their Wetskills pin, thanks to some attentive participants! Fig 1 - The attentive participants that reminded so many of us to wear the pin After having arrived in the RAI with still some time left, we had time to explore the AIWW terrain a bit...

Read More

Wetskills NL – Feedback pitching at Schouwburg Rotterdam

Day 10 - Time is running fast and all the groups are working passionately for final pitches. In the morning, each group met somewhere to be trained on pitch and working on poster and memo. The afternoon we met at Schouwburgplein 25 - Rotterdam, we got coffee and tea under the supervision of Floor & Frank. Jesper and Diana play the music as amateur, they are not professional. Each group started to pitch and got the feedback from the rest of the people. The session was helpful and each group got the feedback to improve performance of pitch. By Sharon & Abdallah         ...

Read More

Wetskills NL – Pitch(training) #1 @ Venture Cafe!

Day 8 - Hi there! After a late evening, returning to Rotterdam, Netherlands from separate destinations (Delft and Utrecht, respectively), it was 07:45 again and we were off! This time around, we took a tram, thereafter, a boat (Asa, Nicole, Radwa and Sifiso only made it by the skin of their teeth). Destination? Innovation Dock! To brush up on our presentation skills, since we are nearing the end of the program and actually had our 2minute pre-presentation pitches this evening. The session basically covered highlighting the main problems we aim to solve or assist in solving in our cases. After identifying the problem to tackle, you then propose the solution you wish to apply. Tim van der Staaij (our instructor/mentor) highlighted how important it is to dress appropriately, not waffle on, not move around awkwardly or bicker over the mic. After the presentation, we commenced with working on our cases in our respective teams,...

Read More

Wetskills NL – BrainHurricane #04 Delft

Day 7 - It’s the end of the first week and we all have to prepare ourselves well for the next week, which starts at Rotterdam Central Station. There was a sad beginning before going to Delft, it is about Hamed. He has to go back to his county and have to say goodbye with us early because he has to take care of his job in Oman. After hamed left from Rotterdam, we have to find out the process of getting a ‘OV Chipkaart’ to go to Delft. Some participants have trouble with their card and cannot get inside the station. When we arrived in Delft, we went to Hoogheemraadschap Delfland. HH Delfland near the city center is housed in a beautiful old building and take care of maintenance of dikes and dams, water level control and water quality control. On there, we learned from a wide range of experts. The experts...

Read More

Wetskills NL – The journey of all is actually on thrill now, at the exponential phase

Hey, its day 6, almost a week, Isn’t it? And we will be done by the event in another week, and all back to their home. We all (organizers, expert, participants) have been planning for the event since long and now have reached to the mid of Wetskills NL. The journey of all is actually on thrill now, at the exponential phase. The day started early at 7:20 am, all gathered at the hotel reception of the EasyHotel @ Rotterdam. Floor and Frank were counting if all have arrived or we are still waiting for someone. The hotel reception became the breakfast lounge as it was really early to find any breakfast outlet open. Some with coffee, some with bread, some could manage to sit and all waiting to start their journey to the RDM Campus. Suddenly, there is a message in Whatsapp group of Wetskills’ 2017, “Hey we just woke...

Read More

Wetskills NL – Brainhurricane 3/4 & into the field

Day 4 & 5 - The Monday morning after a Sunday of hard work and good night of sleep in the bungalows in Hattem started early with a lot of energy and enthusiasm from all the groups. They checked out and took the bus straight to the World Water Academy where they were given a warm welcome by the staff. Figure: Entrance of the beautiful building of the World Water Academy (Nieuwegein) Mr Johan successfully welcomed everyone, introduced the programme and gave a chance to each group to introduce themselves and the cases they are working on. He did the same also to the experts and gave them a chance to introduce themselves. Thereafter, the teams and the experts were given a chance to prepare for Regional Brain Hurricane 3. The process started where the participants had to do one of the important factors of Wetskills; “think-outside-the-box”, but they also used Dropbox to...

Read More

Wetskills NL – Balgstuw, bypass, Waterloopbos, Schokland & more…

Day 3 - It was an early start after a late night with Indian delicacy coupled with beer of many varieties. It was even interesting to see 23 people gathered for the party overshooting the capacity of the house. But it was a fun receiving such a set of guests who were globally picked up. There were lot of cooperation from the neighbouring bungalows with the hope to escape their own cooking after a long day. Anyway, the bungalow 79 hosted the Wetskills team and offered its hospitality to the extent possible. Aphelele was another attraction in the night with his skill of making double voice at a time. The definition of Mosusa had really added fun to the house. There were concerns over Mosausa what Sharon defined it: you mix Kkhina with Kkhumush it becomes Mosausa. Many of us could not understand what is Kkhaina and Kkhumush however, Mosausa was understood...

Read More