A tough couple of days

The sun was up early this morning to shine a bit of light on the arriving summit participants. Actually some of the arrangers of Energy Crossroads might have seen it rise. They hustled through the night getting all the LEGO® bricks sorted for the different game boxes, so that the game would be ready for Tuesday afternoon. Unfortunately it took longer than expected, so some of them greeted the participants with only a few hours of sleep behind their eyelids.

Actually, as our host Carlos mentioned in his opening speech, there have been a lot of problems arranging this summit. We had problems getting a location as the rent at the Bella Center where the IARU conference arranged by the University of Copenhagen is taking place, was too expensive, but fortunately the University of Copenhagen aided with giving us facilities at both the old University in the city and The Faculty of Life Sciences at Frederiksberg.

Also we had trouble gathering the LEGO® bricks for the game. For a long time we couldn't get them from LEGO® itself. We were starting to think that we had to sweep every toy store in Northern Europe to get enough. But Michael, responsible for sponsors, showed his impressive rhetorical skills and persuaded the CEO of LEGO® to donate the bricks for free. A huge relief for all of us.

And if that wasn't enough, one of our panel debaters cancelled yesterday, which struck panic somewhat into the group, but once again we were saved. This time by Marianne Bender, who is chairman of the NGO OVE and agreed to step in on a last minute call.

Some of the hardest working guys in our group have been stressed beyond belief, and if this had been a summit on human rights, it would have been ironic that the working conditions have been highly illegal the last couple of days. So it's nice to see that everything fell into place at last. The summit is now at full roar.