On November 4th and 5th, the Center of Molecular Modelling (CMM) organized two inspiring team days in ‘Strandhotel Westduin’ in Vlissingen at the Dutch coast.
These ‘sea classes’ as we call this two-day team event, were attended by 32 of our CMM colleagues, including ZAP, PhD. students, postdoctoral and administrative staff.
During our dense and varied programme, we brainstormed on the first day about how to improve collaboration on projects and challenges for the future. We held group discussions about our communication and PR strategy, as well as about ways of financing fundamental research. Some of our CMM-members shared their insights on career development and internationalization which were discussed further within the whole group. In between the sessions, we went outside for a beach walk or some nice beach games. After dinner, we made the dunes unsafe during some exciting dune night games.
On the second day, after a boosting morning run, the topic of computer infrastructure and data storage has been touched upon during panel discussions. The concept of ‘Active Learning’ has been discussed vividly during a session about education in which good practices were shared. Furthermore, some of our PhD students gave a presentation about our Friday Morning Lectures (FML) accompanied with a real-time voting system. During a session about ‘CMM improvements’, our team got the chance to speak out loud about current practices that can be organized in a more efficient, nice and friendly way.
The team event ended with some informal Q&A ‘on the coach’ which gave us the opportunity to get to know some of our group members even a little better.
It has been two inspiring and dynamic days during which a lot of ideas came up which were all noted neatly. The aim is to organize task force meetings in the coming months about the most urgent and feasible ideas to implement.
