Notes from meeting

Notes from our meeting this past Friday.

Reflecting on Week One

K and I spent a great deal of time this past Friday figuring out the poll questions that we intend to ask; it was far more difficult then we intended. It's hard to ask questions that don't have prescribed answers. Also, we're realizing the power that other people have on our project. On the one token, one person can suggest we speak to the person that will get our project some legs. On the other token, if those important people decide not to help out, we're stuck pretty fast. I'm counting on Susan emailing me back, but I'm nervous that I won't know what to do next if she doesn't!

I also started to reflect on the value of our roles. We each have unique skills to bring to the table. For example, I couldn't have gotten the technologies together with the success that K has. The blog is really nice; simple, and the filter in which it organizes itself behind the scenes is brilliant: it essentially automatically categorizes the responses in a spread sheet. We don't have to deal with 40000 email responses.

K and I started a conversation about farming vs. gardening and found it interesting that although we are speaking about something we see more as a farm where people from all over participate in a mass of vegetation, we will have to speak of it with others as a garden which has more hobby-like and fun connotations. Choosing our words with care...

I'm starting to panic to be honest with you (diary) about the project; I'm not sure how prepared K and I are to really make an on campus garden happen. We have a meeting with Lara this week who has built a community garden and I don't know the first thing about it. Interesting side of picking a long-term "realistic" project is that you have to take "real" responsibilities. I hoping this doesn't back fire on us.

Week Two!

This week was a good week for us. We started conversations with three parties on Friday afternoon: Lara Skutt from the Tempe Transportaion Center Public Garden, Bonny Bentzin from ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability, and Susan Ledlow in the Psychology Dept.

Lara's assistant called me and we've set up a meeting for this coming Friday afternoon.

Bonny refered us to three women on campus: Jehnifer Niklas in charge of the Poly Tech Campus Garden, Deborah Thirkhill in charge of the Tempe Campus Garden, and Ellen Newell in charge of the Tempe Campus grounds. I've requested that the 5 of us get together for a meeting. Hopefully, we can get a tour of the gardens.

I have yet to hear back from Susan Ledlow.

Survey!

Here's my first stab at our survey! We are probably going to test out the survey on a few people in studio first to see how it functions before we email it out.

Check it out:

Meeting Notes

Last week was one heck of a week. We definitely were a bit busy with studio work. Now that time is on our side we can catch up on tasks a bit. Above is an account of our meeting last week. As you can see, we are trying to let the process happen very organically. However, we always try to organize everything at the end of the meetings. The process has been pretty fruitful so far and now that we have more time to devote to this, it will only get better.

My next task is to complete the survey that we will be emailing out. Survey to follow later tonight!

To be continued...