From the 11th until the 13th of February 2019, all the TraCS3-partners gathered in West-Flanders, Belgium for the next international partnership meeting. The hosts Diederik Declercq and Mathias Mestdagh welcomed everybody with a lunch buffet and the chance to take a look inside the Provincial Court, which is a cultural heritage of Belgium.
After lunch, it was time to get to work! Rima Dijkstra moderated the Steering Committee meeting on behalf of the Lead partner Hanze University of Applied Sciences (NL). Each partner individually explained their current situation concerning the TraCS3 and afterwards, future decisions for every partner were made! This first day ended with a pleasant dinner in Bruges by night before everyone may start their well-deserved night's rest.
Day 2 started in the Provincial Court with the partners' presentations of their regional Gap-analysis. The partner's stakeholders were welcomed as well and took an active part in the discussions which followed each presentation. During this meeting, we could count on our external moderator Karin Nygard Skalman who made sure everything was going very smoothly.
In the afternoon it was time for our first site visit, which took place in the House of Food where a tour in the company was organized. After this, Karin moderated the World Café discussions where the results of the Gap analysis were discussed and the partners and stakeholders tried to find solutions to overcome the biggest Gaps identified by partners. This was an intensive day that ended in an informal networking event. Everyone concluded that it was a very useful and important day in the progress of TraCS3, where everyone put a lot of energy in!
The last day, there were three site visits organized. Each visited regional cluster presented their own specialisation to all partners and stakeholders. When the site visits were finished, Rima moderated a closing discussion about the partners' and stakeholders' impressions on the meeting events: site visits, Workshop and World Cafe discassions. Participants of the meeting individually gave their opinion and the comments which were very positive showed a good learning atmosphere in the partnership.
We can conclude that it was a very pleasant and useful partnership meeting where important steps were taken in the progress of the project. The Province of West-Flanders want to thank all the partners and stakeholders for their contribution and the positive comments to the organisation.
Everybody will gather again in the next partnership meeting in Bremen on the 27th of May. Looking forward to it!
