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Nemus is a Latin word meaning 'sacred grove.' We chose this name because we felt that it represented our sentiments perfectly. "Your future is green" isn't only the central motto of our team and website - it also serves as vision statement. At the same time, it can inspire others to learn more about green energy sources.

 

Diversity: When the team was started, we found that we were all from different social backgrounds, and, to a certain extent, from different economic backgrounds. Our very diverse personalities, opinions and ideas allowed us to have different perspectives on each decision, problem and suggestion. Our team's diversity can be described very well through the motto of our country, South Africa: "Unity in diversity."

 

Democracy: At the start of the project, we had a brainstorming session about our team dynamics in general. We wanted to create an environment where everyone could feel comfortable, have fun, and give the project their all. Although Johannes was the team leader, we experimented with a democratic approach when it came to decisions. The result was that everyone had to give input on big decisions. Although this made the process a lot longer, the decisions in the end were a lot better.

 

Effective collaboration: One of the big challenges we faced was the fact that our summer holidays separated us for six weeks in December 2008 and January 2009. Michelle went to our neighbouring country, Namibia, where she lives; Johannes visited Germany for seven weeks; and the rest of the team went on holiday. This made it extremely hard to work and communicate. To overcome this challenge, we created an online collaboration website. The website enabled us to keep track of our work (through a to-do list) and communicate (through a forum). We chose a forum instead of e-mail, as everyone could see what everyone else was saying. The collaboration website brought us all together and made the distance fade away, which was really cool.