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A typical day of a kaospilot project leader… :)
By Henrique Vedana | April 10, 2008
I’m the project leader, and my task is very clear, I’m also the only kaospilot, which gives me full autonomy and authority to do the way I want to. I have 3 members in my “team”, two Chinese girls and one English guy. Lots of skills, energy, creativity, and a perfect theme for an easy process and grandiose outcome!
I first met them yesterday at 11.09am, and in less than 10 minutes I had figured out that one Chinese girl barely understand any English (and she is a third year student in a English-speaking school!), the English boy is a teenager that speaks all the time (and I almost didn’t understand his British accent), the two girls want to leave for their classes in the afternoon instead of staying in the group, and they didn’t even understand the word “guanxi” (or the way I pronounced it). All this happening in the middle of an over crawded and over noisy Chinese University cantina. I was hungry, and people know how grumpy I get when I’m hungry just before lunch-time.
It took me another 15 minutes to convince all of them to seat down and EAT. As I finished eating I was able to see myself in that cantina “from the outside”, and I started laughing. I knew everything would be OK…
The English boy, Mike, who is a photography student from UK, is turning 19 tomorrow, and is extremely creative and talented, while being impulsive in sharing his out-of-the-box ideas. The Chinese girls, May and Claire, both 23, found two other friends to be their translators, so our group quickly grew in 50%. They are all Chinese design students at the last year of their studies.
We quickly got to unfold the meaning of the word GUANXI, a Mandarin word for “networks”, “relationships”, which in China is extremely important for virtually everything you do in your life, from finding a girlfriend, a job or a travel agent. We are still in the process of understanding the concept of Social Innovation, a buzz-word in the Western countries which apparently has no translation in Chinese, but their creative minds had already created three pieces for our exhibition next week. Now it’s time to work, get the materials we need, and setup everything on Monday morning…
My group is one of the 29 international, inter-disciplinary and inter-cultural groups of creative students, finding connections to Social Innovation on everything, from health and cultural traditions, from Olympics to Music and prostitution.
The Social Innovation in Shanghai Exhibition project is result of collaboration between 34 Kaospilot (Denmark) students, 29 University of Gloucester (UK) photography students, 8 Shanghai (China) Theatre Academy students, 30 Raffles LaSalle (China) multimedia design students and 30 Raffles LaSalle (China) graphic design students.
The final exhibition will take place on April 18th 2008, at the Shanghai Fashion Hub, 1158 Middle Luochuan Road, Shanghai, China PRC.
Topics: Projects |
April 10th, 2008 at 13:15
Communication is the core of teamworking, though being a designer myself and havin chinese colleagues I found out that non-verbal communication is easier in the creative field. And misunderstandings sometimes even unfolds new ideas
heads up, it’ll be fun and I am curious and looking forward to the exhibition!!
Ufuk (non-chinese)
April 10th, 2008 at 13:57
Nice article Henrique. I like that the rough start payed of and you got an additional 2 members - That’s GUANXI? Or…