In November, CHIC was invited to participate with two project members at the Sensemaking Workshop in Bologna, hosted by Climate KIC. We were 80 participants from different EIT HEI Initiative projects from across Europe, and for two days we had the change to get to know each other and learn from each other’s projects. CHIC participated with our work package leader for the E3 Initiative; Ivana Vuka from the University of Split in Croatia, and our project leader; Ingrid Fabrello from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
The workshop was held where EIT Climate-KIC has its premises in Italy; at the National Research Council research area. The venue chosen was the research council library, which made for a inspirational and inclusive space. The goal of the workshop was to move beyond the silos of each project in order to learn from experiences across the initiative and explore synergies to strengthen the projects in the initiative going forward. The following aspects of purpose were covered:
LEARN: We got the chance to develop our understanding of HEI partners and projects across the portfolio, the journey so far, outcomes and lessons learned from the different projects that were present.
INTEGRATE: We identified potential synergies and points of collaboration between partners - thematically and regionally. The aim for this was to support and amplify HEI’s work in 2023.
CONNECT: We cultivated and strengthened relationships, human to human, within and across teams involved in delivering the HEI initiative by working together in groups, and sharing experiences thought and meals together.
ACT: We defined and assigned doable next actions to be taken to move the HEI Initiative ahead based on what we learned during the event.
On day one we got to know the other participants better through icebreaker activities, and we presented our projects to the rest of the group. Then before lunch, we started the first round of group work, where we identified challenges and successes in each project. After a nice Italian on-site lunch, we continued the group work with new topics, this time we talked about identifying and consolidating patterns of synergies across projects within the EIT HEI Initiative. We ended day 1 with a very nice dinner at a downtown Bologna pizza restaurant named Vasinikò.
On the second day we reflected on the insights from day one, and followed up with group work where we identified opportunities within the synergies that we had found during day one’s group work. We also talked about how to put this into action through identifying next steps. Day two was closed off with another nice on- site Italian lunch. To sum up, this was a very valuable learning experience, where we as a project had the opportunity to step outside our everyday work and tasks, and were given the opportunity to both see what we have accomplished, and figure out new strategies on how to improve our current work. The chance to talk to other project leads and work package leads was particularly valuable so that we could go back to our work and find new and better solutions.
Thank you to Climate KIC for having us!