Nearly to half way point ....

After the many meetings, visits and exploration around Istanbul city in the beginnning part of our trip, we are all now beginning to pull the knowledge and information we have gathered and getting down to doing some serious work. Among 13 of us, this task is not easy and concious that we have to deliver a coherent analysis and diagnosis of our work on friday, we devised a systematic framework to do this. (wohoo! our project is finally taking shape in some form)

We welcome Michael Safier into joining our party and the briefing we gave Michael in the morning not only was to update him on the on- goings of this trip, but for us to reflect upon what we have actually been doing the last week or so. And as always, the feedback and guidance from our professors and Michael are insightful and putting us back on track .....

Our project statement... too vague/ not encompassing enough. (Doh! would help to actually define what we are doing accurately.) It transpires that forming the vision of the project and the mission of how to achieve this vision is not an easy task. We need to unpack the terms to clearly define what we are trying to do in a specific way, but yet consise enough for it to be a strong focused objective. Looking at the verbs used are key, as this determines the action we will do.



A quote from Yves's counterpart: "Stratgic planning is about knowing what you do not want to do- the rest is space for freedom."


It may have been identified that as a group, we WANT to do everything and help and address issues in many possible ways which is why we struggle to develop a focus vision and mission statement for our project.


With our vision in sight, it should help us distill information we do not need in our mapping and research activities, which we have spent the most part of today doing.....

Jon's hands-up to speak rule enforced during an orderly meeting

I would just like to congratulate everyone on their efforts so far and for the phenomenal amount of work we are producing. The long working days may have been draining, but let's remember this is our last few weeks working as students together so we should make the most of the remaining time to pull together all our efforts. We all have a strong common aim to do what we can to help the Sulukule residents and make a positive difference in the development of Istanbul.