 My name is Katarzyna Darongowska and I work as a leadership engagement officer at IWA and I am very pleased to open the second day of our Emerging Water Leaders Virtual Forum 2021. Today we're gathering for a workshop session and we are after the first day of online panel discussions with expert panelists where is for the first session we welcomed Desi Gennadu, Jennifer Moller-Gallant, as well as Professor Dong Xin. For the second session we had a pleasure to meet with Jun Kinlapas with Valid Corey and Dr. Siddhartha Rai. We came to certain reflections, to certain conclusions, so many pieces of information, so many pieces of inspiration. Some of the highlights that we wanted to refer to for today's session is to communicate in order to communicate water through water risk angle is to assess water risks holistically, to identify pain points for governments and companies. If the water remains unaddressed and target your communication, push the right buttons, do not hold back and also realize that social media requires vulnerability that very often is not shared and in order to really connect with others it's important to tell your story, to establish deep connections, and establish a network of champions. We also need to address the mistrust and misinformation. We need to be honest, don't be afraid to be wrong when it comes to sharing certain pieces of information and then when it comes to public interactions and sharing your viewpoints it's good to always be backed up by data which builds your courage to express your thoughts and also we concluded that it's difficult to build trust of general public and it's very easy to lose it. I want to discourage you all as we are today gathering to talk about communications, to talk about the ways how we can really navigate through the overall of pieces of information that we receive these days and we want to get together to have thought-provoking discussions to steer really how we as young water professionals can navigate through all of that. Let me share with you housekeeping information before I proceed with introducing you to our lovely facilitator. I'm quite sure that so many of us are very well equipped with the knowledge of Zoom but I wanted to mention that if you needed to share your viewpoints make sure to unmute yourself also this session will be recorded and possibly shared and I would love to encourage you all as we are having two amazing guest speakers who will be introduced very shortly to write any questions in the chat box. Don't be a stranger, say hello, say where you're from and also connect network use this lovely virtual space to connect with your peers to share your LinkedIn profiles to share your IWA profiles so let me now introduce you to our workshop sessions moderators and facilitators as today comprises of two sessions. These three characters here are lovely young water professionals and this session will be coordinated and facilitated by Hujie Lu whom you can now see and Hujie is a part of emerging water leaders steering committee being in charge of professional development offerings to young water professionals and also she is a part of organizing committee of this forum and she will be today leading the session. Please Hujie give a warm welcome to everyone who has joined us and let us begin the workshop session. One my name is Hujie Lu, I'm a research professor at Jujian University in China and also I'm a member of the Emerging Water Leaders Steering Committee 2020 to 2022. I'm very excited to facilitate this session with the support from Kasia so thank you Kasia very much. I'm very glad to see the participants from all of the world for those who have attended the first days of the forum. I hope you can enjoy the second day of the forum as well. So as well young water professionals we acquire a lot of information from the internet but sometimes we feel we are information overload so how can we navigate through a great amount of information. This will be an interesting topic to discuss at our workshop. I think it's even more important to think critically and come up with our own opinions based on the information we received. So it's a great pleasure to introduce our two guest speakers today who will share their experience reporting water stories as media professionals who give their thoughts on these questions. So can you turn to the screen page? Okay so here are the three questions I just mentioned. How can young water professionals navigate through a great amount of information? How can we develop critical thinking as well as our all-informed opinions? The third question will be can these opinions contribute to the stories of water sector for the general public? Okay so our first speaker is Kaze Hayward. He is the IWI director of marketing and communications and also the source magazine publisher. He will be discussing what makes for effective communications as water professionals. So I guess I will welcome our first speaker. Hello Kaze. Hello there it's great to be here. Thanks Yuje. Thanks Kaze. Yeah welcome to the workshop session. We look forward to your presentation. So dear audience if you have any questions during our presentation so please feel free to tap that down in the chat box and I will ask your questions to Kaze afterwards. So please feel free to start your presentation. Thank you. Well that's great thank you so much Yuje and you know it really sounds like you've been covering some great things and already that you've got an excellent understanding occasion. So I hope I can add to that and prime you for your workshop today. I'll share some thoughts on the basic but important aspects of communications. Then I'll say a little you know about this subject of water that is so important to all of us and then talk to you about the source magazine which is IWA's membership of magazine plus I'll add a few extra thoughts that I hope will be a value to you all. So just what makes effective communications you know the first thing is that communication is not something you can do on your own. We're talking about a message between one person and another. Something's only communicated if it reaches the other person and if they understand it and if they understand it in the way that you intended it. So if you're communicating the real priority is for you to think about your audience. You've got to know their audience, who they might be, what their values might be, what their interests might be and in some respects you can think of two types of audiences. These might be new people you're trying to connect with but they might be people already in your audience or in your community. But I mean even if you know people in both cases you're fighting for their attention. This is now more so than ever with so many sources around. So once you've got your audience in mind from there you can then start to think about how you engage them, how you might want them to respond. And I think here there's perhaps two different types of audiences that are particular of interest. We can think of the general public and we can think of a professional audience. Now in both cases the aim is that if you want to communicate what you deliver has got to be accessible. It's got to be understandable. So you really then start to think about the language of your audience, their perhaps their education, their background, their interests and once you've got all of that in mind you can then actually start to connect with them and engage them and to do this you've got to give them a reason to read or to watch or to listen. Now that could be an initial aspect such as how it's presented, the headlines that you use, the subject that it's presented as covering, some kind of hook to get people engaged. Your message certainly you've got to have some clarity in mind and then for the content itself what is it that you're, you've got to say, what is it you want to talk about and here really I would say the main thing is that you want to try to tell a story. I expect this is something that the next speaker will pick up on but really it's important that you think in terms of telling some kind of story. And so these are just some of the very basic thoughts on communicating and I know that you've got to note that you can keep these same things in mind when you have the workshop later because when you're evaluating sources think about who was this aimed at, what might have been their motivations for publishing, what is it that they were trying to communicate. So you can use these, turn this back around the other way when you're evaluating sources as well. Now a bit about water, is it any different? Now all the things I've just said really certainly apply to water but is there something different about water? For me if there's one thing it's the diversity and it's almost there's no such thing as water. You can't think of it as a single thing. We have water supply, we've got nature, we've got flooding. There's always different uses, different dimensions and this is what makes water fascinating for me. It's why I've written about it for more than 30 years. You've got aspects such as the politics, the government, health. But that means we're in a fortunate position. I've got so many possible ways of connecting with audiences. Now to connect with them this can be potential to use words and pictures and ideas and certainly when you're thinking about the general public you've got imagery that can connect with people's lives, their values, their religion. Everyone has their own connection with water especially around nature. So you can really connect at a personal level. For a professional audience and especially for an international one it's for me I always it's really thinking about what travels, what can have relevance and then this comes back to knowing your audience. So this can be science and innovation, this can travel but environmental impacts and concerns and the ways people's lives are impacted and of course global policy that's driving action. These are things that communicate, you can communicate about across boundaries. So to take that now to think about the source we're clearly talking about professional audience here and this is people who've got their working lives based around water and you know we're people, we could be shocked and angered by water problems and injustice and this may be central to your own work. I think you've either heard or will heard from Sid Roy this is a great example of someone working on a really emotive issue in his work to do with the Flint water crisis. When it comes to source professional audience we're talking about the International Water Association and which for us here is a membership organization and when you start to have your critical reading of sources in the workshop you then need to think about the publisher, what the motivations of the publisher, they could be commercial, they could be campaigning NGOs out to effect some change. You then have perhaps editorial motivations, what are the values that are being applied? Newspapers have different political directions or leanings that appeal to different groups of people, what's the role of advertising? In journals you have the peer review process that shapes the editorial content. Now for IWA and back to the source, IWA is the publisher so it's really worth reflecting that IWA is of course a registered charity, it exists for charitable purposes and so the aims are to educate and to raise awareness and those are articulated in IWA's vision and mission. The vision is of a network of water professionals striving for a world in which water is wisely, sustainably and equitably managed and the mission is to promote knowledge and provide a gender-setting leadership for the goal, for the global water community. So there's key things here, it's about inspiration, about leadership and it's also about a network of people. So one role I have is to transfer that through to the source. So that's, we want the source to be a tangible benefit that's received by every member, it's got a real role in the coherence and the shaping and communicating of IWA's role. And then in addition to that they will have some editorial values about some independence and integrity, certainly science-led, the support, things sort of supported by sound science and these are all editorial values that are in tune with IWA and also aiming just to create a product that's got real value in its own right. Now I think in the workshop later you have an example article from the source to look at so I won't say too much about that but you look for yourselves and you clearly think that the source is about providing leadership, inspiration, authority that which isn't neutral but so there are some values behind what gets published at various values and you might want to reflect on that as you look at the sources. So just to recap, for communication you've got to know your audience, engage them, give them a reason to read and watch and listen and have a clear message and tell a story. When you're looking at a source think about what the motivations were for water, there's diverse opportunities to connect and really think about what travels and for the source here it's about IWA's vision and mission to inspire and leadership and having a membership network that we're catering for. Now I thought it'd be useful just to add a couple of points to that, one is about the media and understanding media interests and how to get media coverage. Now this isn't new, in fact I looked at this in detail in the run-up to the World Summit of Sustainable Development in 2002. I spoke to some key people even then, someone called Peter Adamson who launched a new internationalist magazine and it really said you've got to have the briefest form possible to get your message down to the briefest form possible and really focus on communicating that. I spoke to an academic in the UK and it's important to anticipate the water is complex but the media will often pick up that on that in a way that focuses on individuals. I also spoke with Tracy Osborne of the World Bank Institute and they were setting up a network to engage interested reporters and there is the opportunity to tap into genuine interest in the media and at that same time I also evaluated a year's worth of environmental coverage in an influential UK newspaper. Just give some thought on news agendas here is that even then atmosphere related and especially climate change news was dominated the environmental coverage but it was also dominated by sort of land related issues and that was in fact in that year there was a big foot and mouth disease outbreak in the UK so it's not something you can plan for and we see that today with COVID there is a news agenda has to follow what is happening out there in the world but clearly we see that with climate change and today and so you've got to work with those sort of agendas to really highlight water's relevance I think that's the lesson from that. And then just finally one other area I thought it'd be useful to pick up on is about your own individual roles as communicators. The big difference today certainly with compared to 2002 is that thanks to social media you can communicate directly with your audience so that means you are the publishers, you are the source. Now there's challenges around digital world, information overload and how we all interact with each other but there's great opportunities and you can create your own space so I really encourage you to think about your own values and about what space you want to occupy and how you want to be in that space and here is a book I've seen over the years I quote from is a book called How to Thrive in the Digital Age by Tom Chatfield and his quote is we must learn not simply to share but to share well and to participate in the digital commons with the kind of integrity that breeds integrity in others. So when you think about your role here I'd urge you to read for example there's a book by Panil Ingelson on water stewardship by IWA publishing that's available open access and it's about your personal journey of what it means to be water steward so to close you know you have an important role to play as the emerging water leader community and so if you really go out and communicate on water it's not only it's fascinating and a diverse area it relates to really urgent issues of our time so that's the end of my presentation but I've just added about your next speaker you'll hear from Max Fry of BBC Global News and the IWA and BBC Global News announced recently that we're working in an exciting partnership in which BBC Global News will explore water issues and solutions to these issues and the content will be hosted on BBC's global platform and will feature mini documentary series so and as a global authority IWA is working closely with the BBC to help shape this content so there's a whole editorial communications process behind this and I think this is what Max will share with you and with that so thank you very much. Okay thank you Kate for your wonderful talk just for those who joined a little bit late I just want to highlight three key points that Kate just mentioned the first one is know your audience the second one is water is diverse water is interdisciplinary and the third one is he mentioned the the role of source at IWA is communicating IWA's mission and the value so he also gave us a lot of practical suggestions afterwards so I Kate I saw at least one question from our audience that question is from Yao Leila hi I saw you were you turn on your video so thank you for joining and the question is I love the idea of defining the values that drive Kate the message what are the implicit value of source that may not be apparent to the casual readers so Kate would you like to give a short answer to that question yeah I would say that those are some of the the items that I just really really listed there because I mean the sort of things that I take for granted and trying to communicate IWA's vision and mission is it's not something that you would necessarily want to put at the top as a statement on every article it's it has to be much more subtle and much more in the background I think that aspect such as sound science is you all there's a whole editorial process behind that of who I would choose to speak to who you interview who you go to and I mean a great position in the IWA network in that people involved with specialist groups for example clearly have invested their careers in focusing on particular particular areas now so in some ways it makes it easy to know you're going to an authoritative source but it nonetheless it's it is an important aspect of considering who you talk to why you talk to them and and what you you put out in the in the article that you're producing so I think that those those strong always think about who it is I'm speaking to who who it is is the voice who's who's dealing with a particular issue and those I'd say are some of the important values of that are there they aren't necessarily explicit but they're there behind the scenes and everything okay thank you and we have another question from 90 to that yeah sorry I apologize if I pronounced incorrectly of your name so her question is please share more about means for scientists to communicate with the general audience so I'm also from from academia so I have a similar question as the lighting so uh case do you have any suggestions on this well I think that you would always bring it back to the specific example and opportunity it depends if you are if there's an opportunity to talk into a newspaper if there's an opportunity to just write about a piece of work that you're putting out into into through social media is that to people who know you is it something that's general so it's much more valuable to think to look at the individual opportunity in the individual case of where you're trying to have an impact so you will you will always want to because that will always mean there's a slightly different audience there's that will mean there's a slightly different opportunity to have that hook have that catch different things will catch people's attention you've got different clearly if you're trying to communicate with with pictures that it's a different way of approaching things with words so I mean when I I get so many my career has been based around um talking to scientists working with them for their articles that they produce now so my specific example is often around the magazine and um it time and again I'd say that the the the key points often get buried they don't it's not that they're wrong but if you're coming from a training where you have a standard approach for producing a paper for example that doesn't lend itself to catching people's attention the same sort of way so I think you've just got to step back and put yourself in the minds of the person that you're trying to you think you're trying to connect with and that won't as I say that won't always be a everyone you you'll have to sometimes bring it back to specific people that you're trying to trying to reach who you're trying to share your your thoughts with and bring your really trying to bring up really the essence of what it is you're trying to communicate okay thank you case I think because of our test schedule we will it's a pleasure to have you in our session so we will continue to ask the questions in the in the in the chat box but it's time to welcome our second speaker who is Max Fry so Max is a partner manager at BBC Global News. IW and BBC have collaborated together to showcase a number of short water related document documentaries on online platforms Max has pre-recorded his presentation and he will bring us his opinion on how to critically engage with different media sources about water topics. Well thanks for the very kind introduction it's an absolute pleasure to be here and of course thanks to all of you watching and listening and of course the wider team at the IWA for having me speak today for the next few minutes and introduce the upcoming workshop so the team asked me here today to quickly introduce the notion of how water becomes a story and what better way to do this than to speak from my experience working at the BBC and specifically on a project that BBC Global News are working on with the IWA. Now a quick introduction to me my name is Max Fry I'm a partner manager here at Programme Partnerships which is part of BBC Global News and when we set up a series it's my role to take an incredibly broad view of it to make sure that we really include an equitable spread of geographies organizations and contributors. To explain BBC Global News quickly just in the context of the BBC that's really everything outside of the UK so all of the BBC.com sites the news sites and of course and importantly BBC World Service. Now we have a huge viewership and certainly one that we are incredibly proud of we have 468 million weekly viewers but importantly 155 million of those are online around the globe and those are important to me ready for two reasons firstly because me and the team create content specifically for BBC.com so for that 155 million global browsers but for the wider BBC why they're important is that we can track their behaviors attitudes and interests over time and ultimately produce for them the content and type of stories that they want to see and of course that audience data has been crucial in informing us on our decision to develop this series on one of the most precious resources in the world water. Now very quickly we're part of BBC Studios which is the creative part of the BBC responsible for the Blue Planet, Top Gear, Strictly Come Dancing and Doctor Who series but what we're creating here is cinematic mini-documentary series and that's really what me and the team do we want to create visually strong attention grabbing compelling and in-depth series on topics that matter but perhaps don't reach the breaking headlines. A lot of what we make of the BBC of course is very snackable we tend to talk in headlines we tend to talk in breaking news as one of the globe's leading broadcasters but I can tell you that there is a desire across BBC Global News to make more in-depth content about other issues that are truly shaping society and we are absolutely thrilled to be creating this series on water more specifically the clean secure efficient circular equitable production use and reuse of water so there's a lot to cover. We all know the vital significance of water in our lives it's historically shaped where we've settled as humans it's of course key to our health and most recently our hygiene of course I hope that we've all in this group been relentlessly washing our hands over the past year and a half to put it simply water is a requirement for life but most of us aren't aware of the challenges in supplying safe and secure water and its media's responsibility and global leader's responsibility to get this information out to the public to incite positive change perversely many of us take water for granted many of us in this room will be able to turn on a tap after this call and have access to safe clean water to drink and washing but of course it's hard to forget that 2.1 billion people across the world lack access to adequate water services and in turn this means that this is possibly one of the most important series that I'll ever work on certainly and one of the most important topics in the world right now but the good news and pardon the pun the tide is changing people want to know more and the BBC release surveys every month to find out about what our audience are interested in a huge number of them are actively reducing their water use respondents also said that reducing their water use is more of a priority for them than taking other steps for example such as changing energy suppliers using digital meters or buying energy efficient home appliances finally a large number of respondents and almost most importantly are interested in clicking through to stories about the oceans and about water so with this series we can really capitalize on that interest and build a real sort of broad and in-depth understanding of what the pressures of climate change population growth and an aging infrastructure might mean but crucially chart those creative solutions at every stage of the water cycle and that's really one of the storytelling techniques that we adhere to at program partnerships it's not only giving context issues that matter telling them in an effective manner but we want to be able to pose solutions and at that scalable and accessible solutions for our viewers who can make a change now hopefully we'll be creating a dedicated BBC dot com site for water so that millions of BBC browsers globally in 2022 can access that and learn about trending water issues I think ultimately you know not just to BBC not not just me and me and our team but I think we should all want audiences to appreciate water better as a resource we're very lucky we have an engaged and curious viewership but we need them to be involved in the conversation around the sustainable future of water and sanitization we want a water-wise world as does everyone in this Zoom call and I hope this series another big broadcasters can play a part in making that happen now of course the partnership with the IWA is absolutely vital to us and in terms of what we believe will make a difference in how media portrays such important global topics such as water we believe in three main things when telling a story and of course it's not limited to these three there are lots of things that go into creating a good relatable piece of content but I'll take you through the following when going in depth on themes you need expert guidance and that's why we work with organisations such as the water association in order to lend us their credibility and knowledge expert knowledge on a topic whenever you're reading something always check the source and the validity of what you're reading the accuracy of what we produce is absolutely paramount in order for it to be heard so by that I mean we want to give the audience actionable interesting facts they can go away and take to their work to their friends and so on and so forth in a relatable way but perhaps most important of all we want to uncover the most compelling stories and of course characters to tell those stories on screen and find innovative ways in order to make content relatable and accessible to our viewers and that last point is absolutely crucial we specifically use character-led storytelling as a technique in relating to our audience because in my opinion without strong powerful relatable ways in order to tell a story it's very hard to create real and meaningful engagement and that leads me on to my final point in this call we have a room full of brilliant exciting minds future leaders of the water industry and if you have any suggestions of topics you'd like to see featured in this series or that you'd like to see the BBC pay more attention to in water please feel free to let me know I would love to hear from you all I've asked the organisers to share my email with everyone but for those of you who have a pen and paper in front of you it's max.fry at bbc.com have a tremendous conference thank you very much for listening and enjoy the upcoming task although max is not here but I would like to thank him for his his sharing I think I have learned a lot of useful information he mentioned nowadays it becomes more than more important than ever that the media can communicate water challenges and issues to the general public and the other media they will not only be the story tellers but also they are trying to like a suggest solutions to these challenges and during the process they need help from a professional organisation such as IWA and the young water professionals as well so if you're interested in telling him a story or you're interested in being part of his documentary series next year so please feel free to contact him he left his email address at the end so are we supposed to have a Kiwi session as well so or we should move on to the next part right well that very much depends if our lovely participants still have any any further questions I guess Keith would be the top point the guru of all of the all of the incoming questions but please feel free to use this opportunity while Keith is still here with us as he's schedule is very filled up so he is joining us only for a part of this meeting and once we end the Q&A session he will be coming back to and arrangements for the rest of the day so please feel free to speak out unmute yourself we see Michelle perhaps Michelle has any questions please feel free to do it and also I encourage you all to turn on your cameras as it would be really lovely to see your faces and hear hear you out as well thank you so much Michelle yes I have maybe one more question for Keith I'm from Belgium and sometimes in the media here in Belgium we can see that awareness about global warming and water awareness is getting more and more attention but what we see is that it's mostly driven based on a way to scare a bit people what do you think of that is that also a kind of pressure that you feel on your side to to bring stories more from a scary side or yeah how do you handle that well I handle it largely from the perspective that we are a membership organisation of people whose job it is is to act and implement solutions on water now we could we could spend all of our time pointing to all the things that are are failing and are being done right and the problems and that is there's absolutely hugely important issues this is why I pointed to the example of Sid Roy highlighting problems in Flint you know there are massive issues and I think that where we do pick up on from something that you would say is a classic newspaper news story we would still want to be trying to understand well what is it that went wrong what are the lessons what are the what can we learn from this and but then more generally it's to we are people who are invested in trying to find solutions so it's not to avoid the big problems that there are it is really genuinely just to try to explore the focus on what is what can be done about it how can we sort this out and the sources a specific example it's for it's a magazine comes out four times a year with a relatively small number of features so what brings this group of people together is a desire to act and a desire to to make change and it's like that is why we are here we can be reminded a bit of what we're doing wrong but we are also invested in trying to make things better what are the solutions sharing the best ideas so I think that's that what's informed that's what informs where we're coming from from the source but clearly the the big problems that there are in the world deserve a deserve attention and the media the typical classic media agenda is that to put pressure on governments in particular to to to show why they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing it's a different kind of pressure it still can have a positive motivation behind it it is still a call for change just applying it in a pressure in a different way well thank you Kate and I understand that you have a very busy schedule so thank you very much that was a pleasure thank you to all and have a really great rest of the workshop let's move on to our next activity on agenda which is the group discussion uh let me first explain the rule of the session we'll break out into three groups in the breakout room sessions we'll have a two part the first part you will be given 20 minutes to discuss the five pieces of resources we shared last week by email there is one one article from the source magazine one article blog and one podcast one video youtube video and the other one is a scientific article so during the first part please after we we break out into rooms so please tell your team members what are the main takeaways and what make these documents effective sources in your opinion I would also like to inform you that each group please designate a spoke a spokesperson at the beginning and this person will give a three-minute summary at the end of this part one so the part one will be 20 minutes so Carcine will help us to break out into rooms so we will gather together after 20 minutes but before you move on to your your individual room so please take a picture or a screen shot of the yes the the questions we're going to discuss after we come back so first what are the takeaways what make these effective sources and other critical readings you would like to share yes thank you so much Hugh Jay and just one little thing for me to add is that just in case if you needed any support from my side or Hugh Jay's side we will be staying in the main room so you can let us know once you are in the breakout room you can then gift a sign that you you need some support so we'll try to be there and then also we will try to communicate with you about the timing hopefully you have wonderful discussions and so I'm going now to break everyone out to the rooms and I hope you have a wonderful time talking together hello everyone welcome back I think everybody everybody has come back so welcome back oh I believe you all had a lively discussion with your group about the given resources I believe you have learned a lot from each other so now let's invite three spokespersons from our three groups I don't know who you are but please tell the rest of us the men take a ways from your group discussions and before that please can you like introduce yourself yeah I'm Tohid and Abutohid and I'm from the group one feel free to summarize your discussions okay so from our group I will share one article I'll share the insights from one article and Rona could share the other one so if that's okay because we will be sharing our insights so first one I'd like to talk about the LinkedIn article the headline was that crisis of crisis so the main thing that is very connective I made a good connection with the article because it is it is mostly on the focusing on the integrated approach to the to solve the water supply management because we lack of it in in all the ways because when you think that we have a shortage of water supply we just think to give a pipe connection and just install a model and that's all actually we need to do work on the whole hydrological sector so there is a quotation in the article which which is very good connection make a very good connection that is when human interfere interceptor all together all of that natural cycle especially in significant and compounding ways as in mega cities we are sure to cause this so the evidence has affected the lowest water level in the dam and it has caused a massive shortage of water supply so the main takeaway is the same thing that we need to approach in an integrated way so that we consider all the aspects that is related to the water cycle and water sector and take care of it and what make these effective sources I think the these sources are effective because these are multinational and we just most of the time we just think of our country we just see like in Bangladesh we are the lowest basin of the gbm basin we are the lowest country at the like through our country all the water again just going to try and make my ways and go to the pay off angle so when the upper upper region countries so many people think of themselves so the lower riparian countries are suffer a lot so we should think of it as an integrated way as a basin as a river management and we didn't discuss any other readings but we'd love to if you have enough time we are we already short short of time so I think if we are given enough time we would like to discuss some more articles thank you I'll hand over to Rono hello I'm Rono Trashtian and so I looked into the other article which was on the IWA the source I think that was the title of the blog it was on the intermittent water supply and it basically summarized the main takeaway is it summarized what the intermittent water supply problem is in a theoretical sense but also with a practical example and I think that itself makes it a very effective source of information and as someone from South Asia who is faced intermittent water supply and who sees it on a day-to-day basis I felt like the article was very relatable which helped make it more effective as a source of information so the audience factor as was being discussed earlier and another thing was it also talked about the it was a very interdisciplinary perspective not just technically on non-revenue water or pet systems or water quality but it was more holistic such as human side psychological aspects were also included and I think that was also a very interesting way to think about it and as someone who has faced this issue in person before it also grounded it to a more theoretical way of thinking about it so that's why I felt like it was a very effective resource for information thank you who would be willing to tell us your what your group have arrived during this breakout room discussions I'm happy to deliver the message from room 2 hi Huijie and our group was myself Niti and Maria we had a very lively and engaging discussion on the first question about our main takeaways there was consensus that all three of us felt like there's still a lot to be done all of these problems are so complex and interconnected and therefore they require systemic and holistic solutions but just because we experience these problems commonly doesn't mean that they have to be blanket solutions they still have to be appropriate fit for purpose and a very important point raised is that even if we take one step at a time that is still an achievement and we need to celebrate those kinds of steps an important takeaway that we also had is that building capacity has to be continuous and deliberate and that includes honing our communication skills to reach more audiences which leads us to the second point about whether we feel these resources were effective in general we did although we we noted that sometimes the choice of the the media becomes the message the choice of where you put your content dictates who it reaches to and the tone of that of that messaging so for example we felt that the because the the podcast was hosted in the Danish Water Forum website or so it limited the the reach of the message whereas if it were hosted somewhere else more popular medium perhaps it could have reached more audiences Maria made a very important point about striking a balance between sounding smart you know as you know scientists and engineers and technical people but also being relatable and being relatable can be achieved through various ways one of them can is through having an emotional hook and discussing stories from the point of view of certain characters which we felt the BBC video did extremely well. Nithi also made a very important point about how the personal story as in the crisis of crisis blog article making it personal makes it credible and if you back it up with data and research it even becomes more credible on the last point we feel that over time when story the first time an issue comes out fear mongering is natural we've seen that with the pandemic for example when the pandemic first broke out everyone was fearful the media was hyping up the fear how scary it is but over time as we understand issues and these problems more and more as we do research as we find solutions media's messaging also tempers fear mongering suddenly there's hope suddenly there's optimism so it's up to us to find those new angles new solutions so that we don't become too pessimistic in our communication and we turn over to the more optimistic side we also did not specify on the final question any specific critical readings we said there's too many to mention too many books too many articles to read but we emphasize that there is a need for a multiplicity of perspectives as Keith mentioned during his talk what we see as the final content in these readings in these materials has undergone a thorough editorial process we don't know what has been vetted and we don't know what has been left out so we'd like to see for example the source or iwa be more conscious about how it it's transparency in in putting out these kinds of opinions and articles we also mentioned that perhaps it's time not just for the experts to be doing the talking but also the public at large and citizen science can be a good way to start that it engages them more it gives us the point of view of the of the common person on the street so to speak and it raises more public awareness so thanks to my teammates for a wonderful discussion thank you yeah for your wonderful sharing and i think it's very comprehensive and you will have put a lot of thoughts on during this short time i'm glad that you your group members have read probably all of the sources and i think your opinions are very much appreciated so next we'll invite the spokesperson from room three jaren with us what you have learned from your discussions yes hello my name is ira and i'll be speaking for my group i first of all want to thank all the participants including tanya michelin hark we really had a lovely and engaging discussion because i think one of the reasons for that was that we come from different backgrounds and we managed to kind of share different perspectives on the questions so both from academia in the field for example and so i just made some bullet points that helped us answer the questions and i don't know we we didn't have this kind of structured discussion touching upon each and every question but when we when we were having the discussion i think we just covered all the questions automatically and yeah that was just more of a natural conversation and so speaking about the main takeaway so i would like to say that we mentioned that it's very when it comes to communication in general it's really important to focus on different kinds of audience convening convenient different messages in different types of content and depending on the background of the person for example then we also mentioned that it's sometimes not easy for all the people to access all the sources of information depending on the situation for example like crisis situation let's say and see another important issue that we discussed was about the importance of sharing the information that comes from the ground from the field from from the people who actually are going through a type of problem like like water problem or or some other ones so yeah i think these were the main points that we were talking about but again we had more of a natural kind of discussion so yeah sorry if it's not that comprehensive and yeah thank you that's good enough okay thank you enough okay i'm glad that each group has an effective discussion in the first part of our breakout room sessions in this part i i think i believe you have your own opinions about effective communications and we are in this part during this open discussion session i hope you can discuss the water stories you heard from the first day on the forum or your own stories your own water stories what maybe it could be a story that you read or watched on the on the tv on the internet what impressed you the most what do you feel strongly that you want to broadcast or any piece of information that you think should be communicated i thought it would be young as well because he is a a wonderful storyteller yeah sure i i thought i'd i get the discussion started um so at yesterday's session a which was the earlier session all three speakers i felt were very very compelling but i very much enjoyed the way the professor shin adon shin presented the research on the cities and climate vulnerability um what a surprising takeaway for for me was the the differences in city vulnerability can be broken down according to several factors there's political there's environmental um sometimes we are we we only automatically look at the cities available water resources and basically the research said that this is not the only factor there's so many other things that complicates the story of climate change and city planning um what i also liked from that research is the idea that some cities may stand to benefit from climate change which for me is surprising um and i and i and i and we had to ask what does that mean and there was a very good explanation for that you know that um some cities um just might find uh say additional augmented water supply or an opportunity to improve their technology or infrastructure base that's why it can be an opportunity but knowing hearing from our speakers today keith and max if we presented that kind of research to the media i think what they would pick up is that city of guangzhou will benefit from climate change or city of this will benefit from climate change have no incentive to act against climate change and that's i i think as water professionals we need to protect our message from that kind of twisting that can happen um in in popular media um so uh for me it's it's a compelling story but also it's important for us when we bring out these stories to to the public to own the story and control the narrative from start to finish thank you for sharing daddy yang in yes i'm calling you out what is your take on this um from my side i have to say that i'm just trying to figure it out how i get to learn about what is going on and that is why this whole thing came about because i was reading a lot of stories that would shock me i mean i remember when i read the the young story for example when when i read it i wrote him immediately because i was like oh i'm so happy that you wrote this now i know a little bit more about you know what is going on um but i kind of feel like if it was someone else writing it that i didn't know um maybe i would not connect to it so much and this is me being like very honest and that's not fair and so what do i seek from a story is it facts no it's a connection because and then hopefully the connection is supported with facts um but we do have to open ourselves more to acquire this this new experiences that everyone is feeling and this new solutions and inspirations for new designs um and that is where i'm sitting right now so i'm actually hoping that what i'm hearing from this session will help me make sense of how we'll approach all the articles that i'm reading because i get fascinated also by a lot of things at the same time you know this article about art and and the the implication and its connection uh i mean my mom she's an artist and and so in my head is like wow this is incredible you know the work that she does in schools with connecting students with water can really make a difference in the future votes and democracy of the country and and that cannot be overlooked when we try to communicate with the with population right um so to be honest i'm kind of lost in the middle of all the the information and trying to share that with you guys so i'm not sharing like a a conclusion i'm sharing that i feel a bit lost that's what i i can do um and yeah but i don't know were there also um you guys have you ever felt the urge of writing something i mean young of course uh you did and you actually did it but um i just wrote my first article and it was sort of danish magazine so it's in danish and it was about the importance of um leadership in in the water sector and connection between seniors and young water professionals uh but i was wondering from your side if you guys have lived something that made you want to yeah um write a story i can see here that mango i think one go yes perfect thank you thank you so much for giving this opportunity to to join you today even i missed yesterday for the walk but um i have a story um about the water you know i'm from zambia have you been to africa before if i may ask okay i'm from zambia africa and um our setup of the water system is quite different because most most of the rural and urban areas we use um um we call them port holes uh holes where we just dig and we drain water from them and it's quite strange that um with the brobo with the brobo going around the world right now the the the system is quite changing every day with the with um with the new implementation of the the sdg that we have to eat up to 20 20 30 20 35 some of their 10 years from now 20 um i'm looking at i'm looking into a solution that will we will help the ball holes that we we do uh digs from places to places because um at some point those ball walls tend to dry you know and um on a story that we talk about the community the connection between like my my friend there the the connection between the community the politicians and the environmentalists is not quite so stable because um they're all coming from different different backgrounds that they don't understand if i talk about water they'll think like i'm crazy or something because water is something that is given naturally from gold that's how we take it from here but if we can have a community engagement that people can talk about it and uh and decide to the community that water you're supposed to reserve water and um the water sector it has in our country not something that we we we put as a p1 but we put it like um it's just something that we we talk about like that we are discussing right now okay um i like i like i like to wear the the the the previous lady i think i don't know where she's from uh the way she's putting that she's lost i say well i'm lost but um i've learned something that from that from the team group that are joined that thank you thank you so much for your points that we have a young um uh posted uh uh information about the i think it's a magazine called water sense and policy uh it's regularly people's water environment is fair work works of art mainly uh photos go with we engage the public so i just want to remind people that um it's a good resource okay what would you like to add i i have a question actually and it's maybe a question for Ines and Yang but maybe other people will also have the feeling that i'm struggling with so sometimes i have a lot of ideas in my in my mind and things that i want to bring out to the world that i want to write down in a blog post or something like that but that i'm always afraid that i will not reach a lot of people or that i will not get feedback and i'm just putting something in the air with no response and then i'm afraid that i will lose my motivation to keep doing it no no please michelle don't do that no no no don't think about that step the step of actually writing it i mean to be honest what was hard for me was actually to be brave enough because i was second guessing all the time that people would maybe i would write something and and maybe i didn't mean it in a certain way but people would twist twist it so those were actually my concerns or or that i was not getting the correct source or you know in the end you know but this is my philosophy i mean if one person got inspired by it i mean wasn't it already worth it and and and i do understand like you know we are looking for massive no but we're not you know it's not about massive connection it's about connection right so i'm very confused in a lot of things but i have to say that in that i'm very clear that if it's one person ten uh i'm just i wish i could say that some podcast that i did touch three people you know or that inspire them to do something different um i think the process of creation and writing it's yeah that's also what it should feed you and and get you further understanding almost like an organization of thoughts that you go through while writing that then you can use to to build on your careers okay we will keep in touch yeah i think um michelle you asked a question i also struggle with because we have limited time and it's all about passion responsibility your interest so if you feel passionate to during the writing process i think it's something worthwhile to be published or to be expressed i mean delivered to other people and even if very limited people read or respond i think that you will enjoy the process but if you write feeling very painful during the process then i would think it won't be a very good strategy during the communication process yeah can i add one more thing i think that also sometimes for example for water professionals there are some facts that are corresponding to any times right and sometimes there are some some some pieces of information that are relevant to now as we know and this is actually the theme of the forum how young water professionals can be leading the water sector through disruptive change so i think it's also important to remind ourselves that this is my opinion for today it may change in one year because i'm still evolving i'm learning the world is so rapidly changing that i'm coming out of my conference zone but my opinion may change you know in one year it may not be relevant but at least i've made that step it's good to remember and remind ourselves that the world is changing and we need to act upon it what do you guys think i'd like to add to that because i i can relate with what you just said michelle about um being being afraid to put something out there whatever that is it could be a blog article it could be a simple post and and for me it also could be related to to to my art to my hobby to music which obviously i i do um but the great thing about the iwa i've come to learn over the years of engaging with the emerging water leaders is that there's so many people ready to help you i and and i would not have had you know the the the fraction i've had with writing for for the iwa blog or for the source for example if i did not get that support along the way and the support that iwa will be giving you is not is not the it's the criticism it's not even criticism the critique that you get is all positive and and building up so when they give you back to you comments and edits on your blog post it's all feedback is a gift and i and i've come to treasure that process of of the iwa the fact that they offer us young water professionals this unique opportunity and platform we should take advantage of it but remember that only the bold will take on that opportunity so take that first step submit your first article even if it goes through five revisions which i assure you my first article probably did um but it is that process of learning and the the sooner that you do that the sooner you overcome your fears thank you for sharing that young thank you that's such a precious piece of advice i think for anyone to relate to that arena there are your takes creating communicating certain messages or stories any reflections of what you've heard yeah thank you for the discussion and for the question uh so i personally think i'm not a really good example of uh like sharing and communicating because i don't have that much of experience in that um but i think that this is what every person has to learn has to some like somehow uh somehow do even even if it doesn't reach a wide audience even if you communicate something that bothers you and something that that is important to you to your closest to like circle you know to your maybe friends or family that's already something and yeah i think that that also concerns the the water the water sector thank you for sharing of course and you know we are here to connect to to chat and we've got here um on the call some i would say experienced young quarter professionals already but they were all they were also in the beginning of their career doubtful themselves and they are still it's a creative process tapping into into for example water sector so thank you so much you know i'll pass to Hugh Jay for final remarks of our gathering yeah so our workshop only lasts for uh less than two hours but i think the discussions can continue and go beyond this workshop uh today we're very glad to have uh two speakers who give our a lot of thoughts on from uh a media perspectives and i think our our wonderful participants have uh very effective discussions in the breakout rooms on also after that we come back and shared our own stories how can we communicate more effectively as uh young water professionals i think everybody uh has a lot of uh uh takeaways from this workshop and i hope uh you already enjoyed this discussion huge thank you to every single one of you and to all of you together for coming for bringing so many insights inspiring sharing your backgrounds your diversity it's it's really important to get together and to talk about the topics that are relevant to the bigger picture but also to us personally we'll be concluding the forum with networking sessions um as you know we have two sessions per each day we'd love to have you there we'd love to hear from you it's going to be more of a casual gathering something that we would have in front of a coffee machine or sharing drinks when it comes to in person events so we look forward to seeing you there and um let's stay in touch let's connect and uh let's continue the discussions either on iwa connect or linkedin we'd love to hear from you thank you so much everyone we'll see you tomorrow uh i have to say that i'm just thrilled to hear both of these presentations because i kind of feel like they really answer to what we were trying to propose when we envisioned the workshop in the first place because in the beginning you know just to share this was kind of a um driven by kind of a feeling like do we all feel like we need some sort of new awareness of how to communicate water and and it it seems like we do and it seems like there's something to talk about i already feel among friends uh perfect because i was hearing you talk about um the the different ways the different medias and the different how we need to think about the audience all of this but i was wondering if you have noticed throughout your career that the different generations are somehow bringing something new into the way that we communicate not only media but i mean in the intention have you seen a change over time is the younger generation coming with some sort of new intention on how they want to talk about water or is it the same and we are all aligned on what we actually need to say currently i i think what you know clearly is different it's what i said to um just how the world is is different um today in that um you younger generation you would have communicated to much more locally you would have communicated you would have communicated with your friends your local network you might have joined a local environmental organization um you know the the opportunities to connect with like-minded people around the world you know full well are vastly different and you can have um you know much more specific conversations you can really focus on issues that are really of interest to you and and that that that's the the great thing about it is that you just have such an opportunity to connect with um with with like like-minded people so i think that you know that that makes it different um there are you know there's a real richness of of of issues there's a great understanding of of problems people are just you could be so vastly aware of the um of what's going on clearly that's the challenge as you've put said at the start where you've bombarded with so many sources but i think to um you just have to turn that around and look at that um the from the opposite direction just say what a fantastic opportunity that that is because um you know if you can be concerned about your local environment and your local river and your local whatever your local drinking water your local beaches but to connect far more easily and readily with people who are sharing those issues and concerns in different places is what's is what's different so i think that the topics aren't necessarily um different they've always been um people have had environmental concerns but um you know it's feeding off that ability to connect with other people is really what's radically different yeah yeah i can see that i i would share that from when i try to read and to connect with my fellow young work professionals and hear their experiences and again i'm now aligned with what max was saying that it's important that we also focus on a solution in the end right presents a solution to this problem and it and because now currently we are focusing a lot on community-driven solutions driven solutions then it can be that the solution that is being used is actually very specific to that site and great that it is you know and and then it's more difficult to translate or to transpire to other parts not all the time through it can be that we drag some inspiration from that and that's where i feel that we have the opportunity here is that to know that somewhere else in another part of the world there is someone trying to do something that we are also trying to build to our community and maybe face some challenges to create that link with the community and all of those learnings and those processes we can take from so maybe it's not all the time the solution but also the process i would say and and and and that's where i think it becomes personal and that this connection that comes it's it's also from from from an inspiration and from the opportunity i think that communicating these sort of stories allows us to link with each other and inspire each other so that we feel like we are moving as a whole what and we feel like this incremental change that we were talking about yesterday feels some sort of more it feels stronger right that that's how i feel it it gets translated to us um perfect i will stop talking and i will open the floor to um all of our lovely uh attendees so do you have any questions very open to allow you to to just you know open the mic and and make your own question yes jen yes um hi i'm uh jen from germany i'd like to ask you keith um if in the future we might need to feed other channels more than we did before for the for example of course as an i w a member i received the source magazine every month i think about two months and i really appreciate it but um i also received those magazines from the from the national organizations here in germany in the water sector and so on and it's too much information to read it all and of course um you you read the specific articles you're interested in but this is maybe one article or at least me i i maybe have the time to read one article per um magazine i i receive and i think to to reach a broader um auditory and especially uh non um specialist auditory so it's a the normal public auditory i think what do you think um it's the right way to reach them so i think i just um checked how many followers the i w a channel has on instagram and currently we have two thousand and one hundred followers and i think today that's not very much at least to to reach a big auditory and probably most of the followers are i w a members and i think maybe to i i know that we will um yeah lack information if we go into those formats but um because we have this information overload i think we need to think about new formats and to to reach a broader um yeah auditory so if we would more frequently post uh instagram stories about specific water topics maybe that will be a way to to reach a broader auditory oh what's your opinion on this and and are you also responsible for the social media um yeah interactions or activities of i w a thanks very much ian uh yes as i think you'll appreciate the you know what we can talk about and the number of people that we can um try to connect with is limit is limitless uh really there's just so it there's so many opportunities um that's the good thing that's the positive thing uh in in my role i am now responsible for the the social media core activity um the you you mentioned the the instagram and but even that is a i think that's a relatively new um area of activity for us um we've built on but we've built on more what we we have been doing on twitter what we've built in on um linkedin i think those are those you know platforms we're much further down the line i so i think it's a case of us yes extend into other networks we've got um our chinese office use we chat and you know they are you know tens and tens of thousands of people involved in the we chat in china so um it's there's great possibilities there i think what we will so that's one thing we do ourselves uh when i say ourselves i mean it you know centrally um but the big thing for us will be to be smarter work um you know in a much better way where say for example if we have an event we'll make sure we're working with active participants yourselves but then it's about how you then feed out to your network so we we can we should think aim to do more where we release materials that are then shareable rather than that it then spiral so try to feed a spiraling out of of those messages um that's i think it's the way we're probably going to have the best um success but yes for me um it's about having a a plan to to expand what we do there's so much that can be um and done and that's why we're so excited to be working with the bbc that you know really um it's it's bbc global news it's it's there they have the ownership of it but they're working in partnership we add some authority to that and it'll be great um to have iwa's um name much more visible that's why we say excited there's you know the really great opportunities um around that um but yeah i mean thanks thanks for that um you know feeding those inner suggestions um it's a work in progress plenty plenty to do i hope that's uh helpful perfect and i hope that you all i i actually just went on instagram and started to follow either the way again um so so now it's there um and i hope that you follow my lead uh so we become slightly closer thank you so much jenice yes i was just about to mention um our lovely guest speaker will be coming back to his busy daily routines and schedules we thank you so much key for joining us for sharing these insightful pieces of information that is a pleasure and thank you for coming right well casio says i think you know working with this group to inform communications work could be really really useful so but anyway i wish you really well with your forum so thank you very much for having me here thank you so much keith bye that was really nice um and there i can see in the shed that we already have ideas so i'm actually in the iwa program committee for the the conference coming here in net mark for 2022 and it looks like we have some ideas for a tiktok account i think why not if you were present in japan in the last edition of the world lord of congress in the exhibition you will know that the hit was karaoke so we watch all the young world professionals sing and of course we know who was the best but still we also know that it's really fun to share this moment with future leaders and um you know to to allow us to connect even more so tiktok seems a good follow-up move on to the workshop yes yes so the idea here is that we will be dividing you in breakout rooms and i would like you guys to discuss the five resources that you received which ones were the ones that actually touched you or not and i'll i'll dive a little bit uh after and then after that we will discuss a little bit about how to communicate water stories and particularly our own and and i want us to go there and to touch that point okay so this will be the task for the first part of the workshop so you guys will be divided into groups you will do a short round of introductions so you know who you're talking with and and that's we have some sort of information of background information of you and then try to look at the different resources what were the key takeaways what made these effective sources of information and did you had a critical opinion about it uh did you develop any new knowledge or did you agree with what you're reading did you even thought about if you were agreeing with what you're reading that's also a fun one and then last but not least if you have any other source of uh reading that you had over the past months that you actually found interesting you are also welcome to put that on the table okay select also a spokesperson it can be that then after everyone can talk it's just for now for us to have some sort of organization uh to have a spokesperson okay and this person doesn't need to agree with the opinions of everyone this person will be just in charge of kind of summarizing whatever was discussed in and in certain rooms and later on work on a exchange and and learn and and then again continue with a conversation uh I hope that you have a fruitful conversation just share your opinions we are among friends guys so just go for it uh see you in 25 minutes hello hello welcome back I can see smiles on your faces it looks like you had really good discussions yes good and thank you for for joining one of the sessions if you could just identify who was the spokesperson for the first group uh Tarika and Cristiana were there and so we were three of us we said okay let's talk about as water professionals how our communication should be with the general public so Cristiana gave an example from his work experience like when there is a water scarcity in the city and the the public and seasons start to become panic so as the municipality or governmental professional you need to communicate with the public and calm them down so we discussed like how should be this communication with the public and we concluded concluded that the transparency and having a clear communication with the public is very important and try to make the public a part of the action that we are taking is very important that would be like educating the public and guiding them how to contribute to water minimization or having like sharing the open calendar of water usage with people and make them a part of this process and also as the water professionals what we can do is to demonstrate the results of our action so if we would like to convince and engage with with the public somehow we should be able to demonstrate and explain the results of our plans and actions so um well since I'm working on the modeling field I was sharing my personal my professional background and like we can use models to demonstrate what's going to happen in the future and try to convince people how we should act to be able to conserve water resources and so on so these these were the general discussions that we had in the breakout group one connection to with people it's definitely one of my passions and one of the things that I'm still figuring out what to do more specifically who do we need to get in touch with because is it that we need to get in touch with local authorities to make them more aware or is it that we okay let's give up on this let's just go for the next generation of people and go to schools and make sure that they they will vote in a democracy that will you know thrive for change or more awareness in water issues still debating this but I think both are needed and I do find arts and also some engagement with modeling and visuals a great way to do it a great way to do it regardless of the age um it can be that we need to talk more about people who are not in the water sector and and make them and bring them in kindly bring them in without scaring them with like this whole like bad news but kindly bring them in on on what they could do and and that they can have an option here to help us um perfect I will move to the second group and let's see how this goes so if we go to the second room breakout room who was the spokesperson to be to be honest we didn't define that in the beginning but I can do it of course you can okay so um yeah we got in the first questions what the main takeaways were we um we said that one takeaway that was that tackling problem is not easy and all the five resources had that in common and um what they had in common as well was that problems um are different all over the world but that the stories could be connected if if 112 and and another takeaway was that um the every story was placed on a different platform so in a different format we we had all formats in there so a usual um internet article then a blog um a video a podcast and a scientific article and each of those formats yeah aims at a different audience and that you choose wisely what audience you want to reach and um yeah choose the white format for this first question did you get any feeling on what which one kind of touched you the most which one it was different so we said that um um it's a pretty personal thing what format uh touched an individually individually best so um I can say that the the BBC video uh got me most yeah it depends on also on the purpose why you choose one of the media so of course if you are a researcher or doing your PhD you would probably prefer the scientific articles since you want to quote it in your own studies and so on but um if you are a non-professional and um you want to know something about the water sector then um yeah maybe the video is the the most suitable format but I would like to get over to the second um story because it also um maybe it gives an answer to to your story which was my um favorite and I always said that for me it was the um the video but in our group we um discussed that yeah everyone has had other um yeah favorites and but what we said what there's what made all stories effective was a personal story that was yeah more or less um available everywhere at least in um the blog the video and um the the podcast so that were personal stories um of yeah of humans of individuals and not general stories um we think in our group that if uh if an aspect is shortly presented it's probably more suitable for both auditory so the scientific article is yeah was pretty long and um you have to be very interesting in the topic to read it completely um and the longer it gets the um harder it will become to keep the people yeah in it or edit another yeah point um what made the story effective or at least the video story was um it um it had a happy end in it so in the end there was water again in the Colorado River in uh in Mexico of course you you don't have always a happy end but if you have it um I think the audience feels more um yeah comfortable with it um sorry to to to catch you but I kind of feel I was feeling a bit like oh is this like a a disney consequence uh but but then I thought uh maybe it's true because you can you hear the problem and you hear a solution and you have this happy you know feeling that maybe brings you inspiration not like internal peace in a sense that okay the issue is solved because I would believe that something well done would still raise awareness uh if it didn't have that happy ending then maybe it would be just like a weight like one more thing you know like I'm working on this in my local work in my job and someone else is it and they are also you know failing god no yeah to be honest I I didn't expect to get a happy ending there wow okay that's nice yes well uh let me jump to the next group we'll have opportunities to continue talking so um it's actually funny that you sort of ended on that point of talking about like having a solutions focused article because we talked about that for quite a bit um and we had sort of different takes on it but it's it's like you go a lot of um I know conferences or watch some things is and you know and not not naming next like six there's a lot of like we have to do something and very little like doing something so uh we kind of we kind of liked that notion of like having a an article end with a solution and be like you said having that sort of like inspirational way out yeah with the solutions focus um we were really talking about we talked a lot about uh Yann's blog post so at least we're all talking about different media sources and yeah I was like so what was what like stood out to us was focus solutions um reiterating some of like the main points like several times so it made it like really easy to digest um and that like he was like there was a lot of character uh stuff within the story so like similar to what the DC guy was saying like how it needs to be like a character-led story for us to be to be interested in it Abel always also made that really good point around like the and this was like when it keeps points all it was like the medium that um that these stories come to us in mm-hmm yeah it's good thing you guys sent us so many different mediums because everyone's got like a different uh one that they they prefer um like whether you're a visual person or like better at learning from audio um and also like the accessibility of reading in English it's like a lot of people in the world probably know how to like hear and speak English maybe like the reading is not like um as strong and so having the the video or the audio is like maybe more accessible to like more international audiences yeah it's really funny that you point this issue because um one of the problems we had when selecting was that not all resources were available in all countries and this was something that suddenly it just of course I know this information you know but I'm just not aware of it like I'm not aware of it in my daily life that this is a reality and that there is a limiting factor that I simply do not consider um and we really try to be broad but then oh but Spotify cannot whatever or this one cannot whatever this video cannot and I'm like what no oh yes right that that exists and um so it's it's interesting how we also need to consider that in in the media selection somehow and definitely I would like to add that also influencing the way that we want to reach any special populations of readers you know it's we must be critical about who wants the who wants to be reached by this information right yes yeah it is because because I kind of feel like then do we need to make the exercise do because if if what we want to reach is people who are not even aware that maybe they want to be reached and sorry if this is getting too much but but you know it really demands a different exercise right yeah okay yes do we have another group Gaurav yes where are you joining us from I am joining from Delhi India Delhi nice it's quite late here and that is also one of the reasons why I would keep it short the reason why I would keep it short is because there wasn't much discussion that we could do in our group because some of us were facing a lot of issues with the network and that wasn't very much clear sound so however we had Hathim Sayodhi and Jacob in our group joining from Germany and Africa and myself in India based on what we could understand and hear from what we were speaking between all the interruptions of network and so on I would actually echo with what Jan mentioned about the sort of diversity that you've tried to reach out with in terms of the resources so that the medium of resources video this audio there's scientific journal paper blog post and the article of Mr. Kala and I also really liked the idea and I actually appreciated when there was a personal story that went along with the narrator or whatever was being communicated the message that is also the reason why I liked and I think some other members in our group liked the YouTube video particularly the story of Mexico and as Ian mentioned while I was watching it I did not expect it to have a happy ending and it was quite a surprise when actually a joyful surprise when there's water back into the Colorado River in that part of Mexico so while I was watching it there was some interesting ideas for research that I got for myself which I think I would implement in the coming days or weeks maybe but the other opinion that I had was and because we were discussing so much and communication with what Keith discussed and the previous discussion based on the resources so recently I and one of my colleagues or partners we got a project funded through Swiss water partnership and the project itself is I'm sorry I'm trying to bring some personal world related stuff we have not so much for go ahead so learning from the resources already so the partner that I am working with she was actually a physicist but now she's a a full-time practicing artist and again a young professional so much very much interested in water I myself am a researcher urban planner working in water and sanitation so the project is sort of an intersection between science arts and technology we are trying to simplify water knowledge through visualization if I can put it in a sentence that's what it is but we arrived at that point through a process of design thinking and we conducted surveys of students across the world we had a few hundred responses and the very critical issues I think that I would like to mention here one is that young people I mean not our age but even younger ones they do not know what to do about water and climate change how these two are connected how and what they can do to mitigate the issues that may arise because of climate change this I think is not an issue about education because most I think most a curriculum around the world capture water and environmental education even at the school level I mean I remember learning it way back in my school so currently the consciousness and awareness is much higher however the issue lies in communication students have taught what is climate change students have taught the issues that may arise because of climate change but and they are taught of in in silos they're taught about you should turn off the tap you shouldn't use a lot of water and the water and so on but they're not communicated well as to how their daily actions transform or manifest into something much bigger crisis maybe as urban flooding or water scarcity as we saw the case of Johannesburg a few years ago so there is a disconnect between knowing which is you know the theory of water and climate change and practicality of it in implementing so this is what we tried we are trying to bridge through our work in Swiss water partnership the second issue that we identified is again coming from the surveys that we did language and accessibility accessibility of course in terms of language and then the accessibility in terms of a wider network so making it online or offline because most people so I have a mentor in US the other one in Switzerland so both of them gave suggestions that it would be a good idea to convert it into something that goes offline it could be digital but still offline because even in US there are areas which are not very well connected with internet so these are the two major observations that I got while watching and reading the resources I could not read all five or go through all five I so I read three of them I saw two or so one of them so this is it I think which one did you read sorry I'm just so it was the video the art ones or you didn't go through that one completely or so I missed out the podcast entirely because I couldn't find time I watched the video and I really loved the video actually because it's so much a story of perseverance yeah and hope and I saw I read the article of color and the blog post by yeah perfect and I skimmed through these paper because as I mentioned the project that we are doing is at the intersection of art sciences and communication yes and me being a researcher and urban planner my partner is an artist scientist so it's sort of fits well into yes no no no I completely I was also thrilled about that yeah perfect well I think we're done with doing a round of the groups and and I allowed people to talk here because I kind of feel like this is how we understand people and we understand where they're coming from and and what worries people and and what can where which points of commonality do we have more about how to develop the water stories because now we went through the process of thinking okay we had this different resources this ones were the ones that we believed touches the most or made more sense now it's about what stories we would like to share and is there something maybe from day one that we really like that we would like to write a piece about would we prefer to write an opinion piece or do we want to talk about a personal story and and then we'll go deeper a little bit on how we can make those stories a little bit more compelling I was wondering I had a personal story that I had to talk about like it was bothering me so much that I I needed to put it into you know like I needed to say it you know I'm not to classify people but I'm Southern European and I needed to take it out of my system you know so and it was about how my experience as a PhD student which for example is not the same as Pavel has and every time I talk with Pavel I'm like oh there's a different size of academia that I didn't know but my experience with academia was that I could only graduate if I had X number of papers and having X number of papers was better than having a good experience or a good research yeah overall and and that was not a good point and and I think that unfortunately there's a lot of other PhD students who go through this process of having to just publish and I've worked with IWA and some of the members are he present like like Jacob Amanger and Yank was in the earlier session on on how to bring research closer to practice but for me telling and doing work on this topic is really important being vocal about it is really important and protecting the next generation of young world researchers is really important to me so I had to write about it so I did I finally wrote about it and but it's in Danish so you know I was still a bit limited in my audience it will one day it will come I still have an email from Kazia asking for a piece of my email box for yeah a lot of time but I'm wondering if anyone here in the room kind of had like either a personal story or was inspired by something that would that made him or her feel like oh I should I should write something about this yes of course Jacob I think during a pandemic I was thinking about this to kind of write stories about how young work professionals can rise through the ranks looking at the challenges that exist I mean the non-technical challenges and how to even handle them because there are a lot of us that have gone through the same thing and have come out successful that we can share our experiences for other young people to learn about so that's something that I've been trying to write something about but just for me to understand Jacob did you ended up writing about it or did you just felt like writing but you haven't done it yeah I thought like writing about not done it yeah but is it because of lack of time do you feel like you don't have enough information is it resources is it confidence where is it yeah I think it um I would say let me say resources because I feel it should come from one person it should come from only my perspective it should be like the perspective from other young water professionals in other parts of the world and then in other sectors in water industry so that is why I've not written it yet because I this kind of it should be a good something or I have to consult other young water and because of time I see I see well now we know that uh I hope that uh that by the end of this workshop you realize that either way is here also to support and to provide resources either with this connection with BBC with Max directly or the source and again you're always welcome to actually contact me or Cassia if you want to you know pursue or gain more insight on how to connect and and write a piece and it can be a blog it can be something that we can share either the way connect so it's there's a lot of possibilities that we can do and and remember that once the piece is out to be honest it really doesn't matter if it is to start in the source or to be in a blog post like like Young's article right it will be out there and if it's relevant and interesting people will connect to it right and that's that's the starting point and then you start to develop a narrative because in in my head what happens is that I I write something and that when I write that piece and the piece is out I maybe already do not agree with 100 percent of what I'm reading and that's okay right because you are building your rationale and you're building your your thought process about that experience or or opinion right you're still developing it and I hope that you know I hope that I don't have the same opinion today that I'll have you know in 10 years and and and that's the growth um and and it will just add up add up add up as as life goes and you gain new perspectives of life at personal level but also in your career and in contact with others you will add to the narrative and by the end of your career you will have a very solid story I'm sure anyone else would like to share like any um moments where they felt compelled to to write or to be vocal about their their take on the sector I'm like when it comes for the experience of mine with respect to the water and stories I can uh like I can divide them into different categories so I've worked in uh water supply climate actions and the climate change with respect to the modeling and currently I'm working with urban waste water systems so for which story I should say first and I have a very personal story when it comes for water quality and chronic kidney disease which is like a significant disease in Sri Lanka and as well as in India and in South Asian countries and what I really liked when as it was like the dialogue was going around with communication I really liked the uh I'm not sure about the uh the podcast and the uh the materials that you are mentioning but I really liked uh I followed the uh water diplomacy course which which was uh given by IOT so in that they had like different segments and I really liked out of those I really liked uh I really liked the podcast that they had about Nile River Basics where they have put up all the people from communities from different countries different nations along the Nile River Basics share about their beams with their countries like uniqueness like they had the the sounds of the drums and they had the water bodies gasping and everything so it's really interesting and I really liked the other apart from the V-log and uh there's something else I really liked the storytelling component that they had and they have shared the storytelling which which was there at Bentley I guess uh I'm not I'm not too sure about the names uh so that was very interesting so I really liked the stories that they are going to showcase with that storytelling and the podcast when it comes uh for the for one of my experience of putting these uh water diplomacy into action I really like to uh I really like to like say I was uh like I was like you have to get a ground to give uh to give water supply to get to get people connected for your water supply scheme in Sri Lanka so in that area there is a group of indigenous people who are living so we have an idea of having of putting up a video putting up a water diplomacy with them uh about uh how do they feel about water and what are they going to work with respect to water and with respect to the first uh point that we discussed about the involvement of scientists artists politicians and citizens uh so when it comes for water supply it's good people are like uh people are happy to get them connected for water as it is what is a necessity but when it comes for the urban wastewater the situation is like dramatic it's a dilemma so it's very hard for people to get connected it's very hard for people to get negotiated when it comes for the urban wastewater so in that aspect the role of uh I should say not politicians the role of the government or the municipal officers are significant so that particular role that they have to pay like if they have played correctly if because at the end there should be the bridge in between the respective water organization and the citizens or the people so they should be able to negotiate they should be able to persuade they should be able to give the message that we wanted to have for them with the people I say I should say uh rather correct communication they should have the effective communication with respect to the and be and be a bridge with people with the organization and with the people thank you for for sharing all these different stories you really should try to to to have some time to write some of these ideas and and share it with us either you know I I do think that blog posts would work very well and then just share it on iWayConnect and then we'll be able to read about them and you know it will start to generate some conversation and if we come around and create a couple of resources it might be that we can create a iWayConnect gathering just going through the resources that are generated for example uh from young more professionals that could be really cool absolutely to go through the process of creation what happened what didn't happen and things like that yes Tarika you touched upon indigenous communities and I could see Emily it just her face was brightening because I think that she's very much interested in that topic and in fact she wanted to organize a gathering of young quarter professionals about about indigenous communities because she's originally from Australia so we could be definitely in touch um with regards to that because there is a lot of knowledge and wisdom coming from indigenous communities and their uh their connection yeah exactly and their connection to water yes yes uh I I would want to really thank to everyone who has joined we so guys now I will ask Cassie to please stop sharing the screen I can see Pavel is great sharing the link to Tarika to be able to share her word be inclusive going around technology yes we're all in the end of the day engineers um and and let's um take a group photo if that's okay with you guys what do you guys think I have to say that we do have a catch non-official phrase for this uh emerging world leader forum right Emily we do have a one word because it's a hashtag word tag it's a hashtag so it's only one word it's do not hold back do not hold back exactly I can courtesy of the first panel session yes exactly do not hold back this is our motto and I feel like that will give you some energy to you know stand in our stories believing them understand that there is a growth in our rationale so do not be afraid to put out what you think today and do not worry about how many people you will need to inspire of course frame the audience and all of that and think about the medium but uh in the end of the day if you connect with one person two three ten if you can inspire anyone across the globe it's a win uh so count on that I do believe that if you are here it's because you have a story to tell and that's that's it right so let's go for for a group photo Cassie will you take care of that would you take the lead yes uh all right everyone anyone else wants to turn on their cameras Jacob maybe no or anyone else if uh if so um let us just wait a few more seconds and uh get ready think about something nice and smile think about the what you're taking away from this session and uh yeah let's do it we got it completed perfect beautiful so many beautiful faces we all froze yes perfect guys uh have a good rest of the day thank you for joining remember that tomorrow we have a session on networking and you know how important that is so that we stay connected and we keep each other accountable in this journey and inspiring others as well okay so I look forward to see you tomorrow in the network session yes thank you so much everyone perfect thank you so much thank you everyone see you tomorrow bye