Wetskills-Denmark

Reflection on Wetskills experiences in Copenhagen

Copenhagen, Denmark – 27 August 2021 – Wetskills Challenge Day 13 By Magnus Johansen (Danish Technical University)   Wetskills is over – now begins the digestion of all the impressions I have had during the past two weeks. I have learned about solutions within the water sector. This is what Wetskills is about, and it has been great, but honestly it is not the thing I will bring from here. What I will bring from the past two weeks are experiences from real cross-disciplined teamwork and memories from the meetings with all the new people. And this has been really great!   I am doing a master’s in environmental engineering and usually I work with the technical aspects of the solutions. How big should it be? What data are available to measure and evaluate it? Can you achieve the same result with a smaller, cheaper solution? I have been challenged in putting these things aside and focus...

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Wetskills Finals and more

Copenhagen, Denmark – 26 August 2021 – Wetskills Challenge Day 12 By Renske Nollen (DIJK53)   Today was the last Wetskills day. We went to the university early in the morning to practice our pitch a few times (or more). Around 9:30, all the invitees arrived. We were welcomed by Ronja, Inge, Johan and May-Britt. In the morning we listened to the presentations of the guest speakers. Meanwhile, the nerves rose for the pitches.   After the coffee break it was our time. The three different groups presented their project. Everyone had put a lot of energy into the pitch. Thereafter, all invited guests were able to view our posters. The various guests and jury members were able to ask questions. All the posters looked interesting! After the morning program (and a great lunch!) it was time to take the boat to the ambassador's residence. During the sight-seeing boat trip we could see the little mermaid and of...

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Final day!!

Copenhagen, Denmark – 26 August 2021 – Wetskills Challenge Day 12 By Francisca Sousa Braga (Aalborg University & Porto University)   The DAY that everyone wanted to arrive to be able to show their work but at the same time the day that no one wanted in the calendar because that meant that Wetskills Denmark was going to come to an end.   We start the day the best way possible with a keynote session about resilient cities and climate adaptation and then afterwards the moment that all of us were waiting for…the Wetskills Final!! It was great seeing the work of the 3 groups and I have to admit that I’m really proud for what we accomplish in these two weeks of intense work. We worked hard, but we had amazing moments of laugh, fun and some crazy ones as well (right team 3 ;)). Right before lunch there was still time to show our posters in the...

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The end is near

Copenhagen, Denmark – 25 August 2021 – Wetskills Challenge Day 11 By Richard Marijnissen (Wageningen University & Research)   Today it was finally here, the dreaded deadline. Arriving at 9 o’clock with much to do and a limited time to put al our final thoughts into papers, posters, and pitches. What will the final result be? We’d find out soon enough. And not too long after, at 11:11 the poster was ready and for a moment we took a rest and reflected. No matter the result of the competition, we were a damn good team! Throughout the  afternoon we were on fire checking our to-do list item after item. The final pitch rehearsal only confirmed what we knew, we were on the right track! By 5 the paper was completed and we were about to leave for dinner at Absalon. Still final doubts had been creeping in. Is our pitch not too long? Should we cut a...

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Feels like a deadline day already…

Copenhagen, Denmark – 24 August 2021 – Wetskills Challenge Day 10 By Sarah van Hulten (HZ University of Applied Sciences)   We are very close to the deadline day… So, we are all a bit stressed out. Today we had our pitch and poster rehearsal. Well, I am not sure whether it was a rehearsal or not, because tomorrow we are supposed to have a rehearsal as well, so I am still a bit confused about that. But let’s just call it a rehearsal for now.   Before we started, the rules were explained to us. If we wanted to give feedback to a group, we had to give constructive criticism. That would not be that hard, because the posters and the pitches of every group were quite nice. But I guess you can read that tomorrow/Thursday in the blog😊 (on Thursday we have our presentation day and since somebody is going to write a blog on that...

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The calm before the storm

Copenhagen, Denmark – 23 August 2021 – Wetskills Challenge Day 9 By Sverre van Klaveren (Dutch Water Authorities)     In every great story there is that moment, or that night, before the protagonists find themselves in great peril. Whatever might happen is unknown, but all involved know it is coming. The Monday in the Wetskills program is that day. With barely 48 hours left before the competition deadline, things can’t readily be changed anymore. The heroes look at the tools at their disposal and count their luck. Are our plans and ideas good enough? Will they help the case? Might we win the admiration of our peirs and if we’d allow ourselves to dream a little: might we win this Wetskills? Or would we fail? Would our pitch and poster find no solid ground? It was with this mood that we sought our final advice: could the municipality of Copenhagen provide some opinion on the state...

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Sunny Sunday!

Copenhagen, Denmark – 22 August 2021 – Wetskills Challenge Day 8 By Renske Nollen (DIJK53)   Sunday is our one day off from the program, but our team had the stressy feeling that we weren’t progressing enough. On Friday we went on a field visit to Sweden, so we got a day behind in producing content. Therefore we took the morning to work on our case. Very nice images and maps were produced, you should really take a look at our poster in a couple of days!   After lunch we took our free time and enjoyed the sunny weather. First we walked to Christiana, a free-city inside the city. There are not really rules or regulations, but it is a community-based organisation. The art was very interesting and the housing and vegetable gardens were nice! Unfortunately we did not so much enjoy the smell of weed, so we continued our journey to Reffen. Reffen is an old...

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Sunny Saturday

Copenhagen, Denmark – 21 August 2021 – Wetskills Challenge Day 7 By Alisa van Gent (Wageningen University and Technical University of Delft)   Today, we are already half-way through the program. Therefore, it was a very nice moment to share ideas between groups and give tips and feedback upon each other’s projects. After a nice sleep in on Saturday morning, we started this Wetskills day with an innovation carousel. It started with some chaos, but we managed to all hear what the other groups work on and present our own ideas. It was a very good practice for our pitch on Thursday. This was actually the first time I heard what the other teams were exactly working on.   For most of us, these days of the program are about getting from (several) abstract ideas towards a more presentable, concrete solutions. This can sometimes be a bit difficult, because you want the idea to be innovative and attractive....

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A day trip to Falsterbro

Copenhagen, Denmark – 20 August 2021 – Wetskills Challenge Day 6 By Team 2   Our Wetskills challenge is based in Falsterbo, a Swedish peninsula close to Copenhagen. So, we decided to see our case since it was not in India or Australia and we could get there within 90 minutes. We started our day by grabbing some croissants and kanelsnurr and then rushed to the station. We crossed the famous Oresund Bridge and we could already see our destination and some windmills from our window. We arrived at Falsterbo Strandbad and first went to see the dunes and the beach, took a small dip and walked along the beach looking for some sea shells, which we never found. We then walked to the neighbourhoods to grab a coffee and some carrot cake and continued our exploration. Falsterbo had so much to offer in terms of experience, the golf courses, the brackish lagoons, nature parks, birds...

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Team 3 in action

Copenhagen, Denmark – 19 August 2021 – Wetskills Challenge Day 5 By Anusha Mehta (Netherlands Water Partnership)   Our day began with some soft jazz music and a brainstorming session to get our creative juices flowing and develop out-of-the-box ideas. Laptops closed, coloured markers ready and on our feet, we used the reverse brainstorming technique to come up with ideas. This technique uses a method where we first list all the things that would be required to ruin stormwater systems in cities following which we backtrack and look at how we can improve every negative aspect. The session was full of great ideas and lots of laughter!   Our brainstorming session was followed by two training sessions, one on the Canvas Business Model and the second on Posters and Pitches. The Canvas Business Model provided us with a method to take the next step in developing a solution for our cases. It is a method to identify the...

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