Friday

Friday started with our MOE and then we had sessions related to our focus discussion groups (Global Engineer). The MOE workshop was fantastic, the students were super engaged in the presentation, and participated a lot. Then about 120 students went to the gym and saw a simultaneous broadcast of our keynote speaker. All in all, about 4000 students in and around St. John's participated in the presentations and saw the keynote.

In the afternoon I was involved in a breakout session about Global Engineering. First we looked at project design in general (designing a method for engaging new members at our chapter's kick off meeting). The design process is really neat, it involves 3 steps:
Ideation - defining the boundaries or constraints
Inspiration - rapid fire creative solution brainstorming. No bad ideas
Innovation - Construct the prototype system or device based on previous 2 steps.

We determined that our target audience (constraints) was a non-engineer in thier first or second year. Next the whole group listed a number of possible solutions ranging from scavenger hunts to food to meetings while running a 5km run or doing yoga. Then the large group subdivided into small groups, choose one solution and innovated it. We choose freestyle, so our innovation involved new members writing a rap about EWB for the senior members to 'freestyle'. The idea was a fun way for new members to activly learn what EWB is all about, but in a low risk way since the senior members are the ones performing.

A video encompasing some of our design elements is linked below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M66ZU2PCIcM

After design, we moved to Global Engineering. We focused on professional engineers (constraints) though another set of groups choose students as the target audience instead. Similarly, each small group spent some time in the ideation stage, and 'prototyped' 3 systems. Then everyone voted on these systems (10 total votes/person) and a second iteration refined the products with the most votes. Some popular ideas included:
- GlobeBook: facebook but for global engineers
- Standards for global engineering
- Making sustainable engineers sexy
- Handbooks of materials and suppliers, but also including sustainability data in with the materials cost, strength, surface and other properties
- Sustainability professional development system

In the evening was the AGM. At my first conference (last year in Missisauga) I only attended the last half hour or so, so this time I decided to stay for the whole thing. I can't lie -- it was generally pretty boring. There was some debate over the rules and process of voting, especially regarding the elected directors, and there were some interesting questions during the Q and A. It seemed to me that certain questions were glossed over (specifically a question regarding the GARI program in Ghana that was recently dropped) which is strange; normally the exec is more open regarding its decisions and decision process. And especially strange since this question was the most voted for (questions were posed online before the AGM started).

After the AGM (about 1) a bunch of us went out to Kops Karaoke. I was shocked that the bars in NL only really get going around then, and are open to at least 3:30 AM. EWBers filled the place up, sung and danced to terrible songs and had a ton of fun. Not as epic as the time in Malawi I rode home from a club in a police van, but pretty close. And super cool that all these bars are within a 10 minute walk of the hotel on the infamous George St.

-Mike