DREAMS workshop in Vejle, Denmark.
More than 8 months into the project, we finally had the chance to have a physical workshop, which was held on June 21-22, 2021, in beautiful surroundings in Vejle at Haraldskær, Sinatur Hotel and Conference center. This was a very successful workshop with very qualified partner discussions that advanced the strategy and tasks in the project.
First session on the agenda was about mutual competence development across environmental assessment (EA) and digitalization. The DREAMS consortium partners have very different backgrounds and roles in the project, which is a key strength of the project. However, in order to meet the common vision and objectives of the project this common understanding is key.
After a good lunch break with time for short walk-and-talks outside, the program continued with a session on the EA report repository – more specifically mock-ups, value creation, and process.
The afternoon included a discussion on the legal aspects of the project and open sessions where all partners could suggest and present suggested topics. Especially the topic of possibilities for standardizing elements of EA to increase communication and quality as well as enable machine learning was found interesting by many of the partners.
The first day of the workshop ended with a dinner followed by the European Football Championship match, Denmark-Russia, where Denmark won 4-1!
Second day of the workshop started with a session on annotation of EA reports. A test of annotation work was done in the spring were evaluated and discussed and a plan for the next round of annotations in the autumn was qualified.
Later on the day, the topic for discussion was the SDG framework. This led to many enthusiastic and interesting discussion about measuring and testing and much to consider for the next iteration of the framework.
Next topic on the agenda was WP planning meetings, where “Next steps” and key challenges were discussed.
Last point on the agenda was wrap up of the workshop. Everyone was asked for feedback from the workshop – both good and suggestions for improvement. It was clear from the feedback that this physical meeting was important and that meeting the consortium partners is necessary to get a common understanding and to have more in-depth discussions on key elements of the project.
For the next physical workshop the some of the suggestions included: embed mini-assignments (on key topics of the project), focus on the ‘products’ to be developed in the autumn, and have pre-workshop meeting + homework.