A Brief Summary of the Week-end in Berlin
The attendees (Photo from Iris)
Back l to r: Heide Hindahl, Noureddine Eraddi, Dimitris Polychronopoulos,
Katrine Haugli, Patricia
Comolet, Sylvia Bessler, Felicia Sexsmith, Michael Buchman
Front l to r: Heike Stengal, Joe Kearns, Cynthia
Tilden-Machleidt, Iris Barnert
Behind the camera: Vera Zeihsel
Not in picture: Sarah Groethe
Highlights
Presentations from
local projects which gave us some insights into what work is being done in Berlin. We
were joined for these presentations by a young Syrian couple, friends of
Cynthia’s, who have made incredible strides in settling in to Berlin. Their
story was both moving and inspiring. We were also joined by a young IT expert from
Iraq now working at the university – his story also was hopeful and uplifting. See below for links to the various projects.
Work on the structure
of information the SIG will share. We divided into two groups as follows:
- Looking at what categories of data we will store – the so-called Grid – what are the key identifiers for data stored. For example, if we reference a website which deals with language education of refugees we might categorise under both Education and Language. This is a critical need if we are to follow through on the need we identified at the Brussels meeting to allow us to store and to retrieve information and knowledge for the SIG members
- Define how an application/website might function. We examined how the application might be accessed and by whom, the security and legal issues to be considered and other data and functionality issues
We will publish more details on our findings in the next few
weeks
Refugee Tour of
Berlin – Sunday a.m
A group of us took a tour of Berlin organised by a local group
and given by refugees. While some of us found the tour to be less than we
expected, on a very cold, windy and wet morning, it nonetheless provided lots
of material for conversation and further investigation
Conversations over food and drink
As usual some of the best conversations tool place during
the coffee breaks and over our evening meals. Friday night we ate at a Greek
restaurant where Dimitris ordered a traditional Greek style meal where we shared
many different dishes. Saturday evening we went to a German restaurant and some
of us left there very late indeed. Sunday lunch was at a wonderful Syrian
restaurant called Yarok on Wilhelmstraße.
Pros and Cons of the week-end
Pros
We had a wonderful group of people who engaged, contributed
and inspired. We all made new friends and renewed old acquaintances.
We got some great work done on the both the structure and
functionality of an application to allow us to share critical information and
to support each other in the work we do.
Great venue and facilities
Cons
Not enough time! As happened in Brussels we found we did not
have enough time to cover all the topics which we had planned to address
Not enough focus on topics of interest. By necessity we
focussed on the practical aspect of how we will share knowledge and as this took
more time that we planned for we had to drop the group discussions from the schedule.
We will take all this into consideration for future events
The presentations
- Presentation SINGA projects + Ideas in Motion
- Presentation by Björn Lefers of Kiron Online University
- Presentation by Andreas Hirsch-Landau – see his initiative in Berlin-Moabit
- Presentation by Max Krieger – GFBM
Note on organisation: We need to pay tribute here to the
amazing work done locally by Cynthia. This included organising the venue, for
free, getting her students to do all the catering for our breaks, which was wonderful
fare, and organising the presentation from local organisations. All of this was hugely time-consuming.
Thanks Cynthia!