Wetskills Netherlands 2020-
by Bram Berkelmans, YEP
Today was a thriving Wetskills day. We met up with our case owners, shared ideas, brainstormed broadly and exchanged plenty of energy together. Every group dove in their case study and made themselves familiar with some relevant background info. We kicked off the day through a pitch by Hein Molenkamp of the Water Alliance, he explained us how the Netherlands has always been a water rich country and smart innovations have made us a frontrunner in the international water tech sector. The Water Alliance is part of the Water Campus, an incubator in Leeuwarden that supports start-ups in growing their network and developing their technology. After the acquaintance between participants and case owners it was time to speed date with the experts. We have a pressure cooker in which we could ask all our questions in timeslots of 10 minutes each to four different experts.
This BrainHurricane was quite challenging and exhausting, luckily it was rewarded by a delicious lunch within the beautiful venue of the Water Alliance. This is an old church that got renovated into a multifunctional office; see for yourself at WaterCampus Business Centre ‘Johannes de Doper’. After having a brain relaxation and getting ourselves totally soaked deep into our case, we now got the time to share thoughts and put things to the paper. Ideas, knowledge and remarks all ended up on post-its and flipcharts, paving the way further towards excellent concepts to work on.
Around 17:00 we wrapped up with some final get together, all being exhausted but satisfied with our accomplished steps on this hot day with plenty of sun! We left the campus, some went for a dive, others had a picnic in the park and some shared a few beers while putting the finishing touch to their Plans of Action for the week.
