Start-Up, Week 4, Norming, Storming, Performing

 

From Norming and Storming to Performing

 

Monday:

We started the week with our normal check in and updates followed by the second presentation to the Edspace team. This time we were looking at what consumer base we would focus our research on. Following what we had gathered in week 3, we split up in three different groups. Rory looked at the consumer base, Tom and Adam at the business 2 business approach, and Maxine, Hettie, Niki and myself looked at the social model.  Every presentation was extremely well thought out and presented, which made feel like we had entered a new stage as a group: the performing stage.

This was then followed by brainstorming with the Edspace team to come up with focus points, and where we wanted to direct our attention.  

Tuesday:

Tuesday was very exciting as we had our first introduction to Design with Graham, one of the architects who created the Edspace. We looked at many different designs of various items  and started looking at things with a designers eye: was the item practical? useful? aesthetic?

Before breaking up for lunch we met the offcuts of the Edspace, the material we will use to build the interior furniture to stay in a zero-waste philosophy.  

After lunch we regrouped for a short while, only to split again to start thinking and drawing various furniture and designs that would fit the Edspace.

 

 

Wednesday:

Wednesday was one of those days where we managed to day 100 things in about 5 hours. We all deserved a good pat on our shoulders!

In the morning we presented our many different and excellent ideas in the Remakery. Everyone had looked at different pieces of furniture with a few ideas overlapping. The level of creativity and diversity in the group was high, leaving the  design team to choose from many great designs .

We then went back to the classroom where we looked over the notes from the previous days brainstorming. We managed to put these notes into various groupings which would eventually define the groups we would work on.

To help us decide what aspect of the project we wanted to work on, Johannes held a session on comfort zones/ challenge zones, encouraging us to choose something we where excited  about, but did not necessarily have any knowledge in. To facilitate the decision-making process, he made us draw matrix’s of each category. Similar to the one below. One axis represented skills and one represented will or excitement, starting from 0 to 10. Each cross meant to be representing the first letter of our name. This was an effective way of seeing who was interested in what. He also held a session on project management. Looking at various ways to manage in the most effective way.

After an effective morning, we broke up for lunch and went down to the car park outside of the Hub to see Stu setting up the Edspace he had built. Despite the rain and wind everyone was very excited to see the building we would work with.

 

After lunch we reassembled, and had a session led by Hettie, who was facilitating the week, and  Amelia on deciding roles and putting forward our needs and own goals. Faster than we could have imagined we had made up our mind on who would focus on what for the final weeks leading up to the final event. Hettie gave us a little homework to write up a ‘job description’ of our role, thinking of what we envision and what our personal aspirations are.

Thursday:  

The morning started with a quick but relaxing 20min yoga. We then attacked they day by going through our  homework, and thinking of further steps to take. We then shared our new organisation with Amelia and Johannes who where very impressed.

From 11 until lunch, we had a session with Annabelle and Louise on Non violent communication (NVC). A very interesting workshop, introducing the idea of a ‘blam

 

e free paradigm’.

The NVC session ran a little over time so we only had a short amount of time after lunch. However we still managed to fit in a review of the two past weeks led by Amelia and Hettie. We used the image of a tree as our timeline. Seeing everything we accomplished in eight days (spread over two weeks) felt very encouraging and strengthened my feeling of a group performing well together. To the risk of misrepresenting nature, our tree had grown from a little seedling to a tall tree in no time!    

 

Blog post written by  Julia Tholozan – Edventure 10 Student