Online Conference between Yorkshire and Gujarat

Today's main event was the preparation and conduction of an actual live link between Yorkshire and Gujarat. In the morning, we began to prepare the agenda and the material which we would present. This would be some of the material which had been prepared in the past days, during the workshop and the data collection.

It was not clear if the online link would work. A fallback option would be just a txt chat on Skype or Google, but we were interested in testing video and audio links as well. We transmitted all relevant material to the Google group which had been set up for this project, so that our counterpart in Yorkshire would have access to the material also offline.

But it turned out quite well. We sat in the conference room of the H M Patel Institute and linked to our group in Castleford via Skype. The video worked more or less ok, but it took bandwidth away form the audio. So in some instances we had to shut it down. A few poems were recited from both sides, paintings and concepts were exchanged, and the technology aspect in this project was highlighted. We presented a summary of the interviews with the people who were affected by the river changes at the Sabarmati river, and the group in Castleford presented the concept of a future city with a low environmental impact.

Overall an event that went very well!