Greetings from all in Milwaukee!

Today is our second day at the EWB-USA International conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; our 11-person team of superheroes is currently chowing down on delightful, endless, and ‘free’ Mexican food in the Wyndham airport hotel and conference center. We’re surrounded by EWB-ers from all over the world, who are salivating over our projects, and dozens of engineering firms vying for our gleaming gold-plated resumes…or rather, minds. We’ve been learning and eating a ton either way. It’s been a pleasure “networking” with fellow EWBers who have similar humanitarian motives, especially the ones who have programs that are akin to ours.

There are many lessons we can take home to NYC. One of the most humbling of these was the understanding that we are working for the community rather than for our own project goals. Tales of embarrassing failures and cultural mishaps throughout the conference have driven home this message. Nevertheless, we have learned much about the role of communication and cultural understanding.

What’s also been great here is meeting other EWB chapters who have done projects similar to ours, and seeing how they have been successful with drastically differently structured teams. Some teams, like us, have projects in several countries, while others focus on one country but do a different project in a different community every year. Breakout sessions, or seminars, have also been very helpful, allowing us to think more critically and creatively for the interests of the community that we are helping. Some of the session topics have included: Engineering in the Real World-For the Classroom, Splitting the EWB-USA atom: building a reactor to transform the workplace by harnessing renewable EWB-USA energy, and Trickle Up: Learning from the people with the greatest need. We also heard from successfully implemented projects in Guatemala by the University of Wisconsin Madison, Marquette and the Milwaukee School of Engineering. We were impressed that one group functions under the framework of one implementation project per year. We have a few more sessions to go and we’ll try to sum up some highlights when we get back to New York.

Well, we finally finished our posting and dinner is just about here, so stay tuned for the next EWB blog coming soon!

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