Team:CIDEB-UANL Mexico/HP-MultimediaDiffusion-SkypeConference

Skype Conference

As part of our human practices we decided to talk to teams about their projects, how they were going, striking to getting advice from them and also see if we were able to help them in something. During this activity, we also had as a target talking about our project to check how people from other parts of the world could react to it and how big of an impact it could make outside our community and country.

Our first Skype chat was with a German college team, Braunschweig; we chatted for about two hours, in which we discussed several aspects, and of course asked some other things out of the subject. We talked about how their team was first formed and how this year was their first time participating officially; how they tried forming a team before but didn’t work out, so it had to be dissolved until this year. They also told us their idea for the project they will be presenting in September and more or less how it is thought to work out.

But as our main goal, we talked to them about our project: a bio insecticide that would be produced by bacteria but was thought to be produced by the own plant; how this could not be tested because of the amount of time in our hands, but that we were trying to make it work on bacteria at the time to be able to see, or at least have an estimate, of how the product would work in real life. We mentioned it was based on a local problem concerning potato crops, at the city sides, and talked about each other’s opinion on the project.

The Braunschweig team seemed surprised at the idea, and said they liked it a lot. They said also that the basis of the project, since it was considered to help in a local problem, was very good; that it had a good outreach and an actual thought use to it.

The second team was from ????, also Germany. We had the chance to talk only with a girl, called Anja. We first thought we were talking to a high school team, but after mentioning how we were running out of time for the wiki, she seemed confused, for their wikifreeze was not until September. After asking what ages did the team members in general have, we realized we were talking to college students. Now everything made sense.

We did not talk for a long period of time, like the other team, because we were having trouble with the Internet connection. We spent more than half an hour trying to get the signal right, with the microphone and the webcam… and that particular day, the Internet was failing in our school, so were kind of desperate. When we finally settled down, we asked about their experiences, how the team was formed, what their project was about, and if they had had any trouble with anything. It was a particularly nice conversation.

We had the opportunity of asking Anja about something we were having trouble with, related to the wiki. She gave us a really good suggestion that we hadn’t thought about, so we were really lucky to have talked to her.

In general, we learned how important it is to share ideas with others and have them give feed back to you, especially when they have a background on the subject; this way, communication is easier, and the results from having these talks (involving projects and how they can be improved) are given a better view and review. We get new points of view on how it could turn out, or how the project could be seen in different cultures and perspectives form other parts in the world… Which is what part of Human practices is about; having others be involved in your project, giving feedback to each other, and using all the tools we have at our hand to make it possible and in the best way we can. Cooperating to expand, trying to go beyond the barriers that divide us as teams, as countries, and be all one same foundation that is competing to be better year by year.