Blog: How we work – A glimpse into a Ground Truth 2.0 face-to-face meeting
After 6 months of working in a virtual team, it was time to meet face to face with the partners in the consortium again. While our meeting started with “business as usual” – updates from the different demo cases in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Kenya and Zambia – we quickly turned towards working sessions in order to work on certain topics in more detail. As the end of the Ground Truth 2.0 project is close (December 2019), lots of time was spent on ensuring the sustainability of the Ground Truth 2.0 citizen observatories and tools beyond the project. In small teams, we discussed different business models and collected ideas to base further work on.
Moreover, as we are approaching the Ground Truth 2.0 Week, a week of dynamic and interactive events at the end of September 2019, lots of planning was done during the face to face meeting in order to put together a great program that will allow participants to find out what citizen observatories are, in what ways they differ from ‘normal Citizen Science’, how they allow communities of citizens, scientists and policy makers to jointly monitor and manage their environment and how they can be used to impact decision making. Want to know more about the Ground Truth 2.0 Week? Keep an eye on our website where we will publish the complete program shortly!
Besides planning and organizing lots of things for the project itself, there was of course lots of time to socialize and to have everyday conversation as well. We even quickly crossed the border to Belgium in order to meet some participants of the Antwerp citizen observatory, which focuses on heat stress in the St. Andries neighborhood. We not only learned a lot about the ambitions of the CO members, but were also shown what has already been put into action. On our way back, our excursion quickly turned into a nice little team building activity when the Dutch weather got us stuck half-way in the late evening and we had to maneuver our way back to Delft without public transport.
All in all, the meeting was a great success, and we are looking forward to continuing working together on the Ground Truth 2.0 project during the rest of the year.
