A short look on the past, but mainly a look into the future: that was the theme of the busy special Christmas edition of the Campus Cafe: Step into our Future on Thursday 12 december. "The plans of Campus Groningen for the upcoming five years have been approved", said Edward van der Meer, Managing Director of Campus Groningen during his introduction at the Christmas party in teh new Grand Cafe De Admiraal on Zernike Campus.

Growing and sharing

After the word of welcome by Edward van der Meer, a couple of speakers gave a taste of the three themes that will be on the forefront the next five years on Campus Groningen. Cees-Jan Groen of VentureLab spoke on the plan and on the expansion of the startup community, project VentureWeb. This is associated with the theme of Community Building. Corina Prent (director RUG Holding) and Deepak Veeregowda (Head of Global Marketing and Sales of Ducom) gave a pitch in the theme Integral Campus Planning& Development on the future Innovation Center Engineering & Chemistry, that will be build on Zernike Campus.

Finally, Michiel Winters (Accountmanager business VDM-Group BMW & MINI) and Stephan van der Veer (owner Pouw Rent) pitched on the project of electric shared cars at the UMCG. This new, sustainable and future-proof form of mobility is related to the third theme the next five years: Campus Services, which focuses on sharing several services and commodities. The kick-off of this shared car project is planned on 10 February 2020. 

Making moments last

Students of the Minor Event Management at the course Facility Management of the Hanze University of Applied Sciences helped organise this yearly event. Amongst other things, the manned the photo booth where visitors could have an instant polaroid taken of themselves in a Christmas theme. They also held a short survey amongst the visitors about the satisfaction on the vent itself and possible new locations for upcoming events. Many thanks to Chantal, Laura, Odette and Delano for all their help! 

Photo's: Geert Job Sevink