Open Space

In today’s class when did an exercise that was new to me called “Open Space”. This was done in order to create groups of people that think alike or are very passionate about a certain project that they would like to see done in the community of Colwood. The open space concept is a way to get people’s brains flowing and tries not to limit people’s creativity. Everyone had to write an idea that they would like to see put in place in Colwood to help the community become carbon neutral on a piece of paper and hang it up. Then the idea was to read all the different idea’s and projects and determine which ones were of interest to you and then to sign up for those projects. I signed up for the project about making a map of all of the trails on the Royal Roads University campus as there isn’t really one made yet. This will be done by either walking the trails with a GPS system and inputting the data in to Arc GIS and making our own map, or hopefully using existing layers. The map will consist of all of the trails on the RRU campus as well as the length of the trails, difficulty ratings, signs on the trail, signs pointing out certain species of trees, and lights so that people can also use the paths at night. Our team has also talked about going out into the community and asking people if they think it would be a good idea to have this map, just to get a general idea of how useful it will be. When I first moved out to Victoria to go to school at RRU, the first thing that I wanted was a map of all the trails on the campus so I could go for jogs and bike rides and discovered that they didn’t even have one. This will be a very useful tool to have for new students and people that live in the community as it is a beautiful place to walk, jog, and bike. The project will then be presented to the mayor of Colwood and hopefully handed out at local food stores, gyms and RRU. By making a map of all the trials I believe that it is a step in the right direction of becoming a carbon neutral community. The concept of open space was a very good concept as it allowed everybody to voice their thoughts and allowed people to work on projects that they were interested in and passionate about instead of being told what to work on. I really think this was a positive and great way of doing these projects as it is a very neutral process that had no limitations.