Field Work

Today we went out into the field to meet some of the external stakeholders for our project with Solo Techno Park (STP). We were picked up at the hotel and taken first to ATMI and second to a tenant of the incubator.

ATMI is a two-fold business. They are a manufacturer of all sorts of things that involve metal and they have a vocation school - St. Mikael's Catholic SMK. Vocational schools are referred to as SMKs and from driving around town there seem to be a lot of them. On the vocational school side of things they have their own students, but they also take in STP students for the applied part of their schooling. Following graduation ATMI employees a number of STP students and vice versa. Also, instructors at both organizations seem to overlap. The second prong of ATMI is actual manufacturing of metal supplies - cabinets, hammers, medical beds, baby incubators, etc. It was quite an impressive tour.

After visiting ATMI we had lunch at a great outdoor restaurant. Several people from STP were with us and besides yummy food we had a nice break from the hot morning walk through the ATMI workshops. I got cracked chicken - which is a lot like a chicken fried steak. My co-workers, Donnacha and Aban, both got some sort of bird with its head still attached.

In the afternoon we visited with a tenant from the incubator. He is producing motorcycles that are refitted to be used by people paralyzed or injured below the waist who cannot typically operate a motorbike. With motorbikes being a major mode of transportation this could be a very practical vehicle for some people to have.

By the time we'd finished our visit at Invarunner our heads were full and our bodies were hot and tired. As soon as we got back to the hotel we went to the reserved meeting room for the CSC to work in. The three of us, along with Candra our PA, tried to process some of the day and make a game plan for the rest of the week. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but I think we are starting to grasp our purpose.

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