The first day started off with an ice-breaking exercise. Everyone was asked to write down one key word on a piece of paper, and then another person (word) that could be paired with your keyword. For instance my keyword was mobilization, and I paired this with the word activism. You where then asked to talk about your word and the connections to the other word for 10 minutes. And then repeat this with two other words. What started off as an ice-breaker actually gave enough material to write a dissertation. The stories behind the key words made your heart beat a little faster. My key word was mobilization and I paired up with activism, potential and anomaly. During the conversations I discovered that there were so many links and connections that all three keyword paring could be integrated into one large keyword pairing.

I found several common denominators. The first one is that ‘change’ should be all about people. It is not about process. People should be at the centre of all the actions. The second is that technology plays a huge role in our lives. The difference between the paper generation and the Digital Natives generation is that the first look at technology and wonders how to use it and Digital Natives look at technology and see what it can do for you. This means that the two generations are divided not by age and location but by mindset. Therefore, it becomes important to look at what role technology offers us? It is changing the way we think and the way in which we interact with each other. It is creating new forms and avenues of mobilisation and collaboration.

Everybody I talked to found it important that you have a passion for what you do and for what you are trying to change. Many called this beast by a different name, like a dream, hope, believe, inspiration and passion, but in the end one needs to have a certain drive to do the things they do. The other thing that kept popping up was strategy. This word can have many different meanings. From the basic link: mobilization can be a strategy for activism to in our work we should focus for 80% on developing strategy and 20% on technology to initiate change.

And one should not leave out engagement and dialogue, for change to happen we should engage with each other, with the people on the ground, peers, practitioners and policy makers. We should form dialogue about issues that are important, need changing or are inherently conflicting.

And I would just like to close that someone choose the word ‘potential’ because he felt there is so many potential in the room.