Warm prompt: Boards when meets carefully!

*posted by Amy*


Taoping 13-July

Breakfast, congee, meet with group, build power point presentation, repeat. It seems all we do is meet in groups and eat. I think that’s why after breakfast Josh and I decided to get out and hike a little bit. We hiked up the valley to the west of town and back down, maybe five miles or so round trip. It was good to get out for a walk, and we also stopped and picked some peaches and plums from a local orchard, mostly wind fall, but a few off the trees. The peaches are just starting to hit full ripeness, and the plums are going off. We walked for about an hour and a half, and took some photos, but we ended up having to turn around because a landslide had fallen on the road, and there was heavy machinery out cleaning it up. Besides, it was almost lunch time, and we had a presentation to present this evening.

We got back in time for lunch, and afterwards, our groups started their work. The format, called pecha-kucha, was actually the most interesting part of the presentation. We had only 3 minutes to present 9 slides; 20 seconds each slide. It was very liberating in the brevity of the presentation; cut the fat, keep the lean. We ended up fitting 14 presentations inside of two hours. That is unheard of in the normal school setting.

I ended up having to present in two different groups, both focusing on ecology. One was water ecology, and the other was terrestrial ecology. It’s fun to the crunchy tree hugger from time to time. Everyone had a lot of info that was squeezed into the presentations , and all in all it was a very productive way of listening to presentations. Afterwards, we were told the format for the following days events, and we would find out who we will be working with tomorrow. That group will probably be the last group I will work with in Taoping, if not China. It is bizarre to think in ten days I’ll be home. It feels like there is so much work to accomplish, yet so little time. Such is life in the design world I suppose. I don’t know if there will be an update tomorrow, as we will only have about 24 hours to present a full site plan of our design for the entire city.