Now I know, how deep is the OCEAN — Thanks to COVE & IBM CSC!!!
Centre for Ocean Ventures & Entrepreneurship (COVE) + IBM Corporate Social Corp (CSC)
It was a week back when we, 15 IBMers, started our journey to help 4 organizations in Halifax as a part of IBM CSC program. Little, did I know that it would be a grand celebration and the team was welcomed by the Premier of Nova Scotia, the Mayor of Halifax, along with four of our clients —COVE, NSCC, Department of Education & ISANS, where they talked more about the expectations from our projects — and the impact it would have on the Nova Scotia community. We also had the pleasure to meet Chris MacIntosh, Director, IBM, Nova Scotia on the kick off day.
Soon after the kick off ceremony our learning started with a field trip to the two most beautiful fishermen villages Lunenburg and Mahone Bay followed by the Nova Scotia Sea School. Our client Dr. Sherry Scully (The Director of Learning & Development Department @COVE Oceans) who is also a brilliant story teller generated our interest in knowing more about the school and took us to find how it is helping children acquiring hands-on adventure experiences that are inspired by the ocean.
~ This day taught me what actually the experiential learning is !!!
Second day started with us being at COVE Facility to bring Design thinking live in reality and pouring in all learning to the board we had on the first field trip. We saw it working with our ideas mingling with the client’s ideas and taking shape slowly.
On Third day, we were invited at the Oceans School Launch at Steele Ocean Science Building, Halifax. Ocean School is a joint collaboration between Dalhousie University, the National Film Board of Canada, the Ocean Frontier Institute and Ingenium. It’s described by its creators as “a groundbreaking immersive learning tool designed to spark interest in ocean science and advance ocean literacy.” This was followed by a tour to Acquatron — The Cutting-edge aquatic research in world-class facilities.
The Aquatron Laboratory is Dalhousie University’s aquatic research facility, located on Dalhousie’s main campus in the heart of Halifax. Considered by many to be one of the best in the world, the Aquatron is the largest university aquatic research facility in Canada.
~ With such facilities at hand, exploring the depths of the ocean is about to become a much more immersive experience now !!!
Me-Aishwarya, Ilan, Saptarshi and Katrina (the IBM team for COVE project) were back to our design thinking room to pen down our observations and thinking process before it flies out of our little minds. Things started to take shape of having all facilities and world class infrastructure in place, what exactly Halifax is missing — the consumers of all of these facilities and learning? And how do youth/children know that this all exists? — to be able to become more aware of avalanche of opportunities existing in Ocean industry and it is NOT just FISHING OR SHIPBUILDING but much more than that and HIGH-TECH too.
Well from all this now you must have understood that developed countries too have improvement opportunities and IBM CSC is trying to bring a positive impact to the communities by partnering with some of the Non profit organizations in these regions.
~ Thinking has no boundaries & there is always a scope of optimization !!!
In between the work, it was a fun learning too — we had the opportunity to take a tour around the harbour on @LeewayMarine #striker. Retrieving #oceantech devices at great distances quickly is only one of the missions this vessel will be used for.
Stay tight for more interesting updates in the coming weeks. Till then have a nice weekend and Happy Thanksgiving !!!
