The end of the beginning

We're sitting in a circle in the beautiful back-garden of The Hub in Rotterdam. The 17 students that started this journey. People of all sorts. Entrepreneurs. Artists. DJ's. Jean-sellers. Farmers. Psychologists. All united with our year of common history. Year of highs and lows. Year of extreme experiences. An intense year. And just like that, it's over. I doubt that it had even occurred to all of us that this moment would be the good bye moment. The moment where our paths dissemble for the summer. All our focus had been on wrapping up the year by securing next years beginning; selecting a Team 2. We had forgotten that our year was now ending.

As the birds sang in the trees, birds that I do not recognize, foreign birds that don't live in my hometown, in my country, and a cat tip-toed between our wooden chairs we realized that this was our ending ceremony. Unplanned we just sat in a circle and shared. Shared our concerns. Shared our wins. Shared our losses. Shared support. Shared gratitude.

Sometimes there was silence and we, 17 KaosPilots and 2 members of our staff, no less KaosPilots than us, just shared the silence broken only by the birds, the cat and Guus's teaspoon banging against his kneecap. Silence is golden.

This year, the first year of the KaosPilots in their base here in Rotterdam, ended that very moment. But the next year will come. September will ignite a new KP year where the entrepreneurs, artists, DJ's, jean-sellers, farmers and psychologists will welcome a new team of tree-huggers, poker-players, baristas, lacrosse-players, biotechnologists and more and glide into the new school-year on the skates of innovation and ideas.

And how appropriate it was to bid the year farwell by testing out our KP values in real-life by floating Olivier's styrofoam island. BALANCE was surely needed to keep the "boat" floating, RISKTAKING was apparent by those who dared to step on the untested floater, REAL WORLD is portrayed in the usage of those innovative islands in the future once global warming has drowned Netherlands and it's underwater sister countries, testing it out ourselves was STREET WISE and co-pilots showed their COMPASSION by hugging those wet ones who fell in. And it sure was PLAYFUL!