As the design committee a lot of our work has revolved around creating virtual and intangible representation of our ideas and visions, that would initially translate to reality. I was personally caught up in the process of creating all these online versions of ideas that when the time came to see them in physical reality, it got a bit overwhelming. Specifically speaking, the banners gave me the greatest shock because they used to be able to fit on my computer, and now the biggest open spans across the front of the MPH.
The few weeks before GISS had been transformative in the way that I viewed my work because everything was quantifiable and right in front of me, making it all the more realistic. Despite the happiness involved in receiving the bags, notebooks, t-shirts, polos, banners, pens and so on, there was still a lot of work to be done in a very short amount of time. Looking back, I think that the time management factor could have been dealt with better to avoid a lot of the stressful moments a few days before the conference. However, I also realise that the main reason behind our lack of control of time, had to do with the fact that our productivity depended on the productivity of others (printing companies and so on). While all the organisations and companies we worked with did not delay the order, and did a fantastic job with all the "GISS Bling", I still found it hard to lose control of my personal productivity. Over the past two years, I think one of my biggest challenges has been to allow my productivity to depend on others, and trust that they will get stuff done. GISS has changed the way I view collective responsibility and my perception of sharing responsibilities. Through GISS I was able to realise that if the group that I work with is committed to a task, and everyone fulfils their responsibility all the pieces will fall into place.
After we received the myriad of materials, there were a lot of processes and producers that had to be done- like getting all the pockets stitched, counting and sorting the shirts, getting cloth logos stitched on the bags and so on. I have no thorough documentation of this because with the time constraint and extreme workload, it seemed somewhat impossible to stop and take pictures. This shortcoming made me reconsider the effectiveness of written, audio, or documented reflections, because they all imply that reflecting isn't innate and requires us to step back in order to reflect adequately. While I do believe that this is beneficial, I also think that a lot of our reflection happens inside our head subconsciously and over time, documenting these reflections become redundant. Beneficial to better understand our learning process, but still somewhat redundant.