On the 13th of November 2021 I had my final presentation for my Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design. I actually finished the diploma in October – after my FPA 2 tutor – Tomas Remiarz – checked 5 of my 10 designs. Ever since then I was nervous. I run several different small permaculture designs for the diploma and then realized after testing a presentation that I probably will only be able to show 1 to 3 designs.
Pre presentation day
In order to let luck play some role I designed a presentation which is online for all of the 10 designs, including some overall survey, analysis, evaluation and reflection. The idea is to give some insight about me and then let the peers decide what design they wanted to see. If there would have been time for another design the audience present in Tampere could have decided, then me, then a random design chosen by a random number generator.
The presentation
The peers chose the Biogas Shed. Which is one of the designs I love most. The need for this design was to get an old shed functional again using permaculture ethics and principles to guide the design. It’s one of the larger designs of the 10 and uses a lot of different design tools.
When I started to present I was bloody nervous. But the further I got into it the more relaxed I got. I even could make some jokes and talk about some problems. At the end I was already far over time and only presented the one design. All the questions from the peers took time. Ritva, for which I designed her garden, also spoke about me being a “Pelle Peloton”.
After a break, the peers took their time to discuss, I came back to the peers – this time without audience – and got their feedback. I was kind of overwhelmed.
The days after the presentation
A day later I received the written feedback from the peers. Since I chose very different peers from all over Europe I got a very diverse feedback. After all we should use and value diversity!
My printed diploma got sent out by Wilf afterwards but since it was pre Christmas then the letter got stuck in the mail. And since the Finnish post is more or less a nightmare the letter from the customs arrived so late that I had only one day to pay the customs fee – which of course didn’t happen because I didn’t open the letter in time.
Waiting for it
In January is still was without the actual printed diploma. I wrote a mail to Wilf that it might have been lost. He sent out another one.
