CONTENT
Project Design
At the beginning of my project work, I decided that I will design my project with the help of CEPIA.
Collect: All information: project material, goals, external condition, requests
Evaluate: What is useful? Realistic? Which steps can meet my goals & requests?
Plan: Events (courses, festivals), Data, detailed timeline, pattern time frame (2-4 years), outline Action steps
Reflect: Do I reach my goals with my Action steps?
Implement: Do it and start with the first steps!
Adapt: Reflect was everything reached? What to do differently next time? Anything additional?
For each design phase, I created a text document. Then I went chronologically through the CEPIA process. To read my detailed process please view the documents Project Design in the Supporting Evidence named CEPIA.
My Thinking During this Cycle
To get an impression of the material, models, and theories I dealt with during this OP creation cycle, I invite you to skim my Annotated Resource Review in the Supporting Evidence. I tried to list all the relevant material that helped me to create this OP.
In general, my thinking was dominated by the following topics:
- Reflection: analyzing and learning from past experiences to draw conclusions for the present and the future → this made us want to start a land-based project
- Envisioning the future: wishes, goals, inspiration
- Searching for opportunities: properties or houses for sale, farms, projects
- Looking for expert information: setting up a business in agriculture and gardening, insects, perennials, beekeeping
Reflection on Project Development
At the beginning of the OP work I specifically outlined my project goals and defined clear implementation steps. I was convinced that I will implement them all because they were very specific. I used the Design Process CEPIA (explained in Project Design) and for the documentation the free desktop wiki ZIM (in the operating system Ubuntu). Nevertheless, I did not implement all my goals because our life situation changed unexpectedly. So I defined new goals and implemented these.
After all, I tried to go with the flow and adapt to the new life circumstances with flexibility. And to be honest, I was very energetic to follow and to implement my new goals: finding a property and designing our future concept. It was not something I just defined for the OP. I defined the goals for our very own vision and mission in the world. I did not write down the implementation steps. They were in my head and I did not think of writing them down.
In the end, a different project turned out than that I had planned in the beginning. Instead of a "blooming landscapes" project, the result was a project about our search for land and our future concept. Still, some elements of the topic "blooming landscape" were integrated.
What Elements of the LIPD Were Met?
Re-Design of my Learning Intentions and Pathway Design (LIPD)
Vision
The World calls us to design and regenerate a piece of land.
Designing beauty and benefit for animals, plants, and humans is the purpose of the property.
Inspiring people by the simplicity and complexity in a system and being the creator of a healthy piece of land.
Being able to follow our inner calling to heal the world and to give something back in a self-determined way.
LIPD (click here to get to my LIPD)
I wrote the LIPD a year and a half ago during pregnancy. Our situation was quite unclear and I planned the LIPD as location-independent as possible with my current interests. I tried to design projects that I could implement at any location independent from land or other people. This approach helped me to go on with my project work. More than one year after creating the LIPD my life circumstances changed completely and our wish to design a property and to build up our life's dream is huge.
Therefore these new learning intentions replace the ones outlined in my LIPD:
- carrying out a land-based design from beginning to end
- establishing a foundation to earn part of our family income with our land (products, services, events)
- connecting with people in our region who work in our fields (Field Analysis)
- finding a niche for products and services
To read more about my goals, please go to Zone 0.
Now my priorities changed, but I will not drop the goals I outlined in my LIPD. My interests in relation to the LIPD did not change at all. I really want to find time in the future to work on these goals. During this OP project, I could still work on topics like natural healing, needs of children and natural education.
OP-Process Reflection
What went well?
- The OP creation on Mahara was a smooth and ongoing process.
- Due to my clear project outcomes, this OP was easier to structure than the ones I created before.
- Working offline a lot and creating the pages of the OP in ZIM first was highly effective.
What was challenging?
- During creating the OP, life circumstances changed radically. It was challenging to document the happenings and give them enough space.
- Deciding what is relevant and condensing all the information into this OP.
- Creating the OP while taking care of our little daughter. OP creation felt very slow sometimes.
I worked on this OP for more than four months. But just in the last month, I worked intensively on the OP creation. The other months I just collected ideas, looked for possible designs or worked on the one or the other text sequence.
Inspired by the Main Advising and Mentoring Training I refreshed my skills in OP-creation. It was great to repeat all requirements for an OP and also do a "Pro-Review" for somebody else in the training. To read more about the Main Advising and Mentoring Training, go to Zone 4.
OP-Design
It was challenging to visualize the design of this OP in my mind because it has a lot of different elements. As a starting point, I collected the different elements on little notepads. The three-folded structure including Commentary, Core Report and Supporting Evidence is quite clear.
As soon as I thought about the design of the Core Report, I was disoriented by the many possibilities I had. So I decided to keep it very simple and to use the categories "Personal", "Peer", "Professional", "Project" and "Patrix". I started to assign my project topics to these categories and played around a little with the arrangement (see the pictures below).
Some days later I reflected on the design, but I was not satisfied with the outcome. There were too many topics that would fit into different categories at the same time, e.g. "Personal" and "Project".
I thought about other simple possibilities. My boyfriend then motivated me to design the Core Report using the method of Zoning. This is the method I implemented in the end. To read more about Zoning, please see the page "Project Overview".
Tracking
Tracking the project was at times challenging. Sometimes I was a little overwhelmed to decide what is part of the project or worthwhile to document and what is not. There is no border between private and project. So it was challenging to keep a frame and decide which information is relevant and which is not.
Nevertheless, I defined my milestones and tracked them via ZIM (simple desktop-wiki; open source). I used the function to tick the squares. That made it easy to track my tasks.
Excerpt of ZIM
Managing Time & Promises
Documentation
Goal: Finding an easy-to-use and adaptable documentation tool with subdivisions. I want to use it daily and therefore it needs to be very clear and quick and easy to access.
The tool I used: The open source software ZIM, a desktop wiki.
Experience: It is easy-to-use and I really used it almost daily. I definitely will continue using this program.
Life takes place in disruptions
The moment we realized that the current farm is not our long-term home and that we want to find a place of our own, where we can implement our project. This was also the reason for:
A missed due date
I actually planned to submit this OP in August, but after this insight, a process of reflection and research began and I had other priorities.
Timeline
I had no timeline for this OP. I wanted it to submit it as soon as the first part of finding our home is completed. For my next OP, I am going to create a timeline, because I do not depend anymore on a personal process to finish. But still, I do not know how long the process of a land-based design realistically will take.
Commitments balanced to capacity
I had well-defined goals and implementation steps. But as I already outlined, my goals changed and in the end, I implemented different goals. In general, I would say that my commitments were balanced to capacity. Bear in mind: as a mother of a ten-month-old daughter the capacity to work on any kind of project is limited and at times very challenging.
Time estimated realistically
In general, I am able to estimate my time realistically. Only if some disruptions happen, I can not make any time commitments.
Life Update
This is a brief update on topics that are not part of the Core Report:
Since I am a mother of a daughter my life changed completely. There is nothing I can it compare to. It is just such a huge responsibility, love and challenge. Giving birth to her in my mother's house was great and powerful (and at the very moment a challenging and painful) experience. Valentina Rosa develops quickly. I breastfed her.
At the age of four weeks, she started to cry a lot and had huge trouble to fall asleep. I was in direct contact with her 24/7, but we did not know what to do. We visited some experts, but nobody could really help us. When she turned four months the crying reached a normal level. She still does not fall asleep easily.
With this unique human-being, it is the first time in my life that I experience a real, deep and unconditional love. At times we felt so helpless about her crying and it was the biggest challenge in our life so far. The 24/7 job of being a mother wears out my energy at times, but fortunately, I am able to summon up new strength in quiet moments.
Now at the age of ten months, she is a very agile, interested and cheerful baby. She absorbs our world in such an intense way, it makes us marvel at her.
Click here to open my general "Life Evaluation", written in August 2018.
Project Integration - Comment on Future Pathway
Now that we have finally found a property, I am clearer about my future pathway than ever before. I really know what I am going to work on. But I cannot say yet how much time it will take to produce the next content-related OP.
OP4 is going to be about a typical land-based permaculture design with detailed site observations and plans. We want to design our property carefully and take as much time as it needs. First, we need to move to the place and arrive at a new every-day life. Step by step we are going to increase the focused work with the land.
Our Daughter
