Peaks from our presentation

Here are a few pictures from the final presentation. Thanks again for keeping tabs on our project!

Final reflection

Well, the project is finished. Our presentation on Monday was energetic and clearly a group effort, just like our activities during the project. I was very pleased on how the team performed.

I felt like the lectures during the course really prepared us for producing and presenting our work. Frankly I could not have been as effective in the work before this course without the lectures.

I would like to thank our team, Tizazu, Manyazewal and Pasi for a great job! We had our disagreements, hardships and miscommunications, but we managed to work through all that and create a great project. I know I have learnt alot, thanks to you guys!

Also thank you to Pamela and all the other people who made this course possible. Even though the course had a heavy workload, most of it felt fun and interesting!

My Final Reflection

When the course started I felt that our whole team was extremely excited from the project and the task ahead.

Now at the end of the project I honestly feel that that excitement and motivation for the course lasted till the end, and allowed us to be successful with our project.

In the early beginning we didn’t have that clear picture what we were expected to come up with, but with questioning, finding information and working hard we found what our task is.

Especially in the beginning I personally felt that I was very keen to get to the results, or to be more specific, wanted to find out what our product should be.

But now after the spring, I feel that besides that we were able to come up with some unique and marvellous product, from personal level the main lesson was how to work as a team, together with people with different study backgrounds and from different cultures.
By having been working in multicultural groups previously, I knew that every group is unique, as every person.

End of the day it may seem like that the main issue with this kind of a project is how we get to the results, and what kind of results. But at the same time project work and its succeeding is totally dependent on how well the team is working together. Like it has been said, “the chain is as strong as its weakest link”. So in order to get the team working, the group dynamics have to work and every person of the group have to give everything for the group.

The most positive thing of this course that I got was to be creating something new while at the same broadening my perspective, particularly what there is and could be done in order to improve the quality if life in developing countries.

And the other most important positive thing was the ability to learn more about team working, almost as if in real business case.

This course gave me more inspiration how to see technology as a helping tool, when solving the problems that billions of people are facing daily. So I applied and was allowed to attend to this new Aalto multidisciplinary project, where our group of four people should find solution to demanding water issue in Burkina Faso…

So in a way, my learning from this course's perspective will continue immediately after Solar Sail project, and I hope that same will happen to all the others.
THANK YOU, my fellow students and the course personel, from interesting & inspiring course!

SGT final presentations

The last course in the SGT module was concluded today with the project work presentations.
The fact that the topics covered were diverse in their nature made it an eventful & interesting day.
All groups presented their products and/or feasibility studies in attractive and unique manner.

It was also a good opportunity to learn from the different experts how to follow up and comment on others' work when assigned as a critic.
Hopefully there will be further life for these class-room projects in the near future and almost all of them seem to be promising in that regard.

The real world situation will be markedly different with more challenges but the lessons learned from the various lectures, group researches and workshops during the course lifetime should enable the respective groups with the required knowledge to pursue further if they wish to do so.

I believe NSN will go ahead and implement the prototype we developed (after making the necessary adjustments). The project was a good chance to share experience (as we come from different backgrounds) & it was also fun along the way.

Big thanks to our partner NSN, our mentors Lionel & Mika, the course staff, fellow students & also group colleagues!

Final Critique Session

Our last day of the course was inspiring and worthy of memories. I would like to thank all the course personnel(Professor Olli Varis, Pamela, Marko and Ulla), my fellow group members, our mentor Lionel and Mika, for their contribution to its success.
We have learned to be questioned for our output, that we did for months, to explain everything that seems failure. In fact, we did it very well.
From other group's presentation, the different settings - some of them even don't have slides and others use a mix of slides, posters or 3D pictures, an indicative for making a good presentation out of the usual style.
The comments by Dr. Paula were worth attending. I was personally giving much attention to her insights that even a silly mistake can divert audience attention, and could distract the spirit of the whole presentation. Specially, when it comes to group presentation, its vulnerability increases, one member may make mistakes, and make things out of order if the others fail to balance it.
When it comes to the course objectives, I think, we did it perfectly. Our group has developed a spirit of bringing different ideas to a single point decision. Also, we were knowing one another's personal interests, beyond academic veil, that helped us go smoothly till the end. Starting from idea generation and project plan to the first workshop and then the Final Report and critique session, we had good time commenting each other. We used GoogleDocs as a common workspace and comment one another's contribution.

Lets not count our chickens until they're hatched

Hey guys,
We are left with the big Monday. Promoting and, as pasi said, ''selling'' our product to customers [attendees].
We will have a good opportunity to unveil the long awaited Solar Generator that could address the problems of remote communities.
Hope we will make it so special that we may run out of ''Order Forms''...huh.
Lets make the presentation slides, and comment each other in GoogleDocs.
We havent yet crossed the finishing line - lets not count our chickens until they are hatched.

Last run before the finish line...

So it seems like that soon this long project comes to an end.
But at the same time I feel that due to the fact that the project has been very inspiring, I would gladly like take our concept further and develope the "phase2"...

It is going to be very interesting to hear that what is the feedback from our project going to be; will people understand it, are they gonna like it or are they going to think it is not feasible?

So we have to put some effort on those presentation slides and really "sell" OUR product!