Tomorrow University held its Spring Meetup in Vienna with workshops on nature-based climate solutions, eco-anxiety, and bystander intervention, plus a graduation ceremony for the MSc in Sustainability, Entrepreneurship and Technology. The quarterly European gatherings bring together students and professionals to build networks and tackle climate challenges through collaboration.
Chapters
Hi everyone, we're here at Vienna University for the Tomorrow University Meetup where we're examining interconnected minds and the power of the collective. Our highlight? 2 days of workshops, panel discussions, and the graduation of some of our MSc learners. Let's take a look. So my name is Gebhard, I'm the Managing Director of the Climate Lab.
That's a place here in Vienna where we bring people together from different sectors to work on solutions towards climate neutrality and circularity.
I was very happy to be able to present Vienna Business Agency today, especially also concerning all our initiatives towards a more sustainable city, explaining the students what we do as a city organization in order to create a climate-neutral city.
Certainly when I was young, I would tend towards Starting to do things with people that are like-minded and also maybe speak your language and maybe are physically here where you are. So that's the easy way to start. I'm pretty convinced if you want to scale and you want to scale your message, you can't just stay there. You have to embrace diversity.
The workshop Nature-Based Solutions in Enterprises is basically because we're facing climate collapse, extreme weather, heat, food insecurity. And while we're looking at governance and tech solutions to that, we have solutions. We have nature, we have forests, we have biodiversity, we have water purification. This workshop's about utilizing those natural solutions to combat climate change.
I just gave a workshop about curiosity, to unleash our collective curiosity. Yeah, I think curiosity is, is the base to find the solutions that we need in the world.
I spoke about the intersection of human rights with sustainability, entrepreneurship, and technology. I let the audience discuss that between them and let them explore what was the connection with sustainability, entrepreneurship, and technology within their mission statements.
Today we hosted a bystander intervention training. We introduced the bystander effect, which is the effect that the more people witness an incident, the less likely they are to Intervene or act.
I think we're at a time now where we are all kind of frozen by eco-anxiety, and to have the chance to be able to take action and to know how to take action— we often end up in situations where there's a bit of panic, there's a bit of overwhelm. So to be able to know which steps to take in situations like that, to be able to move forward to improve the quality of our community, of our own personal health, of the health of our planet, all in one go, is a pretty, pretty powerful thing to be able to do.
Our workshop was about bridging the gap between social enterprises and mainstream enterprises, because I believe that together they could make a huge, huge impact, because each party is strong, but when they would collaborate, they could achieve much more.
The workshop was about a world led by women. It was so important for me to look at the picture of how would the world look like if only women would lead. Like to look at different perspectives, such as the healthcare system or the entertainment industry, and to look at today's problems and if we could have solved them or not, or what would be different. To also give all the people in the workshop the opportunity to get different perspectives and broaden their spectrum of knowledge about feminism.
It's a great pleasure and honor for me as Dean of the WU Executive Academy to open the graduation ceremony. For the Master of Science program in Sustainability, Entrepreneurship and Technology. You will make great things happen.
Creativity and an open heart. Remember, you are the changemakers of tomorrow.
It feels really good to graduate, and also I'm maybe a bit sad because it's over. I'm also looking forward to, to, to staying part of the community and, and keeping in touch because I don't think it's, it's It's not over now just because I have the diploma.
So that about wraps it up for our Vienna meetup. While we're an online university, these meetups are an incredible opportunity for our students to connect with each other, to network professionally, and to co-create solutions for a sustainable future. We run 4 of these meetups a year throughout Europe, so let's see what we get up to in the next one.
