Day 4 is coming to a close and I’m thanking my lucky stars
that we do not have any events planned for this evening. In fact, after this blog entry I will be
hitting the sheets!
In many ways, I feel like the luckiest girl in the world at
the moment. The powers that be seem to
believe that a free education in the most practical and relevant life skills
for one’s career is worth giving to me and my fellow Climate-KICers. Not only this, extremely prominent lecturers,
coaches and even advisers to Nobel laureates have dedicated time to imparting
their wisdom to us. They believe the
future is in our hands and are ready to support us on our journey to making
this happen.
Yesterday, we visited a micro smart grid called ‘Innoz’ in
Berlin. The owners called it ‘Berlin’s
Living Lab’, though the best way I can describe it is a sort of ‘green’
commune. If I were a physicist, this
would come close to being my CERN.
Although it didn’t house a silver bullet, such as the Large Hadron Collider,
it did have innovations bubbling away at the rim. Start-ups housed in double garages, big
businesses venturing together with non-profits, rows of electric cars hooked up
to charger stations, solar panels galore and, of course, no green commune would
be complete without an old gasometer. Smart
residential buildings were being built and Matrix-like technologies allowed me
to manipulate a computer-simulated smart grid by moving images around with the
tip of my finger. And with a beach
volleyball court and top notch foosball table (and not to mention an excellent
crew of Italians chefs) on site, lunch time was a breath of fresh air!
Today, we spent the afternoon learning the fundamentals of innovation
and I had to blush internally, as I made the cardinal sin the day before of
criticising a brainstorming idea too soon and without offering a positive
alternative. I noticed at the time that
my teammate wasn’t too impressed with me and to make matters worse, it was the
first time I worked with that person! I’m
a firm believer in ‘calling a spade, a spade’ and so with my tail between my
legs, I had to go over to my teammate with my apology in hand.
As the afternoon session progressed we split into teams once
again and developed a proposal to a set challenge (e.g. consumption). To my surprise and delight I realised that I
have finally, after a number of years of practicing, learned to present an
argument / position in a manner which influences others and ultimately enables
me to gain their backing. It helped that
we shared the same final goal, though the means to achieve this was in
dispute. So perhaps this is a step in
the right direction for me. I also found
a way to add structure to the group without pushing my methods onto others or
behaving aggressively. This felt
fantastic! Especially as we were such a
large team of 10 or so.
My next steps are to start focussing my energy on the end
game. It’s incredible that I have short
biographies of the business plan judges already. But it also means there’s no excuse for not
doing my due diligence. I would like to
make sure I understand their interests, expertise and priorities. Where there’s a good idea, there will be
money. Though it doesn’t hurt to think
about where the money currently is when starting to establish that good idea!
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