The past two weeks have been busy in the best way, but it means I’m behind on writing how it all fits together.
I attended a Sludge to Resource workshop in Durban, 23 – 24 October 2018. My write-up is available here (word doc) and I hope to pull some highlights into the post itself in due course. Some info, with some schedule changes: http://wisa.org.za/event/sludge-to-resource-symposium/
My presentation here (pdf, 3MB)
During that event there was interest in what my idea of the urban biorefinery actually looks like, which is a great, helpful question, so I have to map it out – another blogpost.
I also got excited about the possibility of fungi to process sludge, help with dewaterability, and produce cool things, so I have to blog about that.
Then I attended a control engineering hackathon today, and met great people:
One of the great people I caught up with is Karen Wolff, who I met previously and was on the verge of working with her and her team at the Cape Town School of Engineering before the tragic and unexpected death of co-founder, Francois Hoffman led to the dissolution of the CTSE. This was a blow to me too, as I shared their belief that it was exactly this type of initiative that we need to grow the real skills in South Africa. I’m glad to report that Karen has managed to find another route through her new role as developing the Engineering curriculum at Stadio multiversity (launching 2021). Relating to this I need to blog about my thoughts of a bioacademy, which Karen liked and we are going to find ways to make work.
During lunch we spoke in roundabout ways of life and things, for example how ‘Structure, Power, Control’ describes both process engineering and life itself – everything. It reminded me of work I’m doing with social scientists on opening up engineering knowledges to other ways of knowing (which is starting to clarify my thoughts as bumbled about here)
Then I still need to blog about my visit to Separett. So much of awesome, so little time.
Oh ya, to add to the todo is follow ups from a meeting with Jonny at Isidima on water metering and other cool stuff. Another blog post. Thought it would link to the control engineering hackathon but that ended up rather different in a great way.
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