THANK YOU!!!

I would like to take this opportunity to say Thank You to everyone from my class and especially to Noemi and Alyas for their support, encouragement, contribution and understanding throughout the entire course. I very much enjoyed working with all of you and thank you again for providing me with the knowledge I gained from each and every lecture. As you may know this is my last semester, and may be I sound very emotional but I want to say that I am going to miss Regents, Teacher, Friends and all the People I know from our university who made my studying period very interesting and exciting. I will try to do my best and meet your expectations.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Process Blog

Process blog was something different for me because I have never done anything like that. I think it is a very good idea to transform process handbook into process diary and I think it is also sustainable and less paper consuming. It was easy for me to be in track as I am always working from my laptop from all the assignments and I have the access to the internet almost all the time. Another advantage of the blog is that you can not only put and share different pictures but the vedios as well. I also think that it is less time consuming in a sense that there is no need to rewrite your notes, search for pictures from the magazines, then cut then and stick to the diary. However I found it different in the way to manage the blog and recording all the information because when we had process handbook, I used to have it on my table and everytime I looked there it reminded me that I have to record something or do some research, whereas with the blog it is different, until you log in and open the website, the is not so much to remind you that there are still things to be done, and also not everyone get access to the blog or the internet in the daily basis. Another point I would like to add is that may be blog is less creative, because you can not cusromise it very much, may be only backgroung and pictures. There is less freedom for creativeness comparing to process handbook, however still there are ways to make it different and eye catching.

DSM 6410: How was it?

DSM 6410 was one of the most difficult subjects of the entire degree, very time concuming and lots of work to do. The module covered three different areas such as design, sustainability and innovation, therefore in the beginning of the course it was not really easy to undestand fully the subject. However I found it verry different and I am sure that the knowledge I gained from the lectures will be very helpful in my future career. This module helped me to improve my teamwork, organising and management skills. In addition to that, the projects we ran through helped me to understand the subject and being able to apply the theory to practice. Even though it was difficult and requred a lot on engagement it was very useful. I was also writingmy final dissertation this semester and other 2 modules, so I had to manage my time wisely and make sure im on track and I complete all the work on time.

THE Event

The event went very well. It was very well organised and the entire group made a huge effort to make it all happen. Everyone was motivated, we had no disagreements or even arguments, and you can see it from smiling faces in the picture :D That means we worked not as a team, but as a big happy family. It was amazing how the group of 13 people made the event exciting and memorable. The room layout was well designed, we had to screens that was very helpful in order to prepare each presentations. We all had same t-shirts and this looked very professional and eye catching. (and warm as well). All the decorations were designed very well and I have helped the grout to decorate the room in a nice and proper way. The only difficulty for me was that I just slept few ours, because I wanted to make sure that my work is properly done and the presentation is revised, and I also had to come to uni at 7:30am on monday to meet with Joyce and put the program, attachment and the ribbons together. Each and every presentation was well done and it was very interesting to listen to different knowledge of sustainability in various countries. I know that everyone was stressed before the presentation but at the end every group member made it in very professional way. Still some presentations went over the time limit, though we managed to finish everything on time. We did not have many guests and one guest speaker could not make it to come for the event due to personal reasons. However I had the highest number of guests, 4 people. 3- from colledge and one friend of mine from UCL. I don't even know how I was able to encourage them to come on Monday morning, as they had no classes and reasons to come to college. I was surprised that the all came to the event and showed their support and respect. They All enjoyed the event + they all received t-shirts that made them even more satisfied. The rest of the day we were talking about sustainability with my friends as they all were interested in this topic. I admit that this project was like no other project I had in this degree, and YES it was difficult and time consuming, however I made an effort to do it well as it is my last semester. I believe that I managed my main role/task of designing the program and making sure the timing and the titles are right very well and I had no problems doing that. Now I can proudly say that I was a part of the group who organised and ran an event on such an important topic of today's world.

Reflections on the report and the presentation

I found project B quite difficult, firstly the topic of it - barriers to sustainability innovation, is relatively new and there is a lack of information on this subject. Secondly, the project consisted from 3 parts: presentation, event and the report.
Report: The report was 2000 words, first it was very difficult to find information on sustainability in Kazakhstan, and the main reason fot that is not that the topic sustainability is very new back, but because Kazakhstan uses web less and does not publish a lot of information online. I managed to find at least some information on fashion industry and programs undertaked by the firms toward sustainable world. However books on sustainability, design and innovation where helpful in order to find and identify barriers and apply them to my case. Then I tried to find out the reasons for these barriers, and found few of them, because I thought it is important to see why the barrier occur in order to see opportunities. When I only started writing the report, I was a bit worried that I will not cover 2000 words because of limited sources, however towards the end I had reasonable number of sources and even had to cut some words to fit to the limits.
Presentation: After I have completed my report, I started designing my slides and putting all the key information. I only had 6 slides including title page because we had to fit in 5 minutes to present. I did not want to put a lot of word on my slides to make it simple. "Less is more". I made notes for myself for the presentation in order to rehears and to use them for the presentation if im going to forget everything on the day of presentatiom. I always do notes, BUT at the end I never use then, however I feel more secure to have them in front of me, even if I never look at them. In my opinion, the presentation went very well and I covered all the main points, and I don't think I missed anything. On my report I identified 2 main barriers, but for the presentation I have used only one barrier, to make it more clear. I did the presentation in exactly 5 minutes. I was a bit nervous, because there were people outside of the college and I felt less confident, but I think that no one noticed my nervousness. Overall I liked my presentation, I think it was streight forward and easy to understand what I was saying.

10 steps to become Green!

1. Recycle as much as u can
2. Switch off the lights when you are done using house amenities
3. Take shower instead of the bath
4. Use public transport or bicycles, better for your body shape and mind
5. Bag it! use ure own recycable bag to shop and reduce number of plastic bags
6. Shop at your local farmer place
7. Use eco-friendly packaging
8. Buy green and sustainable products
9. Save on paper! Don't print too much and reuse paper
10. Travel by train not plane

Notes for the presentation..

Introdution:

• I am going to talk about fashion industry in Kazakhstan and identify possible barriers to sustainability innovation
• My topic is Fashion can't say no to sustainability in Kazakhstan
• I chose to do Fashion industry in Kazakhstan in order to research and understan the issue around the notion of sustainability in Kazakhstan
• One of the biggest challenge for any organisation's competitiveness is to become sustainable
• However barriers and resistance to sustainability innovation still exist due to various reasons.

Company Background:

• Fashin industry
• Symbat

Barriers to Sustainability:

• By looking at Fashion industry in Kazakhstan number of barriers remain for businesses ti implement sustainable practices.
• Rossel and Fur identified 6 main barriers to sustainability
• List the barriers
• 2 main barriers:
• Mindset barrier is significant in case of Kazalhstani fashion industry and symbat fashion house in particular.
• Even if people are willing to make more sustainable choices, they still tend to act according to their habits.
• Traditional mindset makes it even more difficult to implement sustainable practises as one of the main part of businesses development
• The main reason for that is because Kazakhstan used to be communist republic when the country was a part of the Soviet Union untill 1991.
• Even though after gaining independance country becan to change ist strategy, the communist mindset remained, and this is a huge obsticle.
• People in Kazakhstan believe that they are alone in their concern and small changes won't make any difference.

Conclusion:

• The word sustainability is still not used in broad terms in Kazakhstan.
• Therefore the main challenge is to change the traditional mindset and convince people that little changes can make a huge difference and can be seen as a huge opportunity.
• It is also vital to increase awareness about the notion of sustanability innovation to make the change towards sustainable world possible.