blog Wetskills-UK 31 March – by Annelise Herman (University of Leuven)
Even after a good night sleep it was still hard to get out of the quite comfortable and warm bed at 7 a.m.(!). But all of us managed… some a bit later than others.
We had a ‘light breakfast’ as our merry receptionist calls it and then we took the beautiful purple ‘uni-bus’ to the beautiful green campus of the university of Bath lying at the top of one of Bath’s surroundig hills. Having found our way through the campus and the right class room, a nice, kind of second breakfast was waiting for us to get enough energy for the task that was lying in front of us… the Brain Hurricane.
After presenting all the four different case studies, a presentation on the Water Research and Innovation Center of Bath and a coffee refill, it was time for us to meet the experts for the speed dating. All of the six experts had different academic/industrial/research backgrounds from architectural engineer passing through (waste) water professional to an expert on public awareness/engagement. Following this we had half an hour to prepare sharp questions to ask on a 8 minute speed dating with these experts. This was actually quite challenging. Then the speeddating time arrived.. it was a real intensive moment… all of the experts had a lot of experiences to share and interesting stories to tell and the 8 minutes flew by each time, resulting in a lot of information after meeting these six interesting experts! And what is better than a good piece of pizza to meditate on all of this and fill our empty stomach after this intensive morning?! There was a small overdose of pizza but with the two guys in the group all the (27?) pizzas were gone at the end of the afternoon J.
After a midday stroll by the campus’ lake and the next door golf court we were ready for a first brain storm session in groups on how we were going to tackle the assignment we received. Having almost three hours of brainstorming and a first sketch of our action plan, it was really time for a nice refreshment with the whole group at the lively University’s bar!
After waiting in line, the purple bus took us back downtown, we decided to go together for dinner after a short power nap. Since the nice Japanese place was full, we went next door to some burger restaurant. The service was not excellent (understatement) since we had to wait at least 1h for our food and almost every plate seemed to be unavailable . But the party atmosphere and the free beer made up for it and we spent a nice evening together. Tired but happy we dove into our cosy beds!
