It can be argued that many potentialities within society are left unused by organising hospitality venues based on modern planning practices. These planning practises regard the setting as a rational space which is predictable and manageable. By applying modern management principles to spaces of hospitality an important function of spaces of hospitality can be easily overlooked and that is that spaces of hospitality can be regarded as spaces which provide 'difference' for both host and guest. This difference in spaces of hospitality entails that hospitality space gives an opportunity to experiment with different futures, or in other words with different becomings. The concept of 'Urban Vitalis', which is initiated at the beginning of the twentieth century by the German philosopher Georg Simmel, and in 2006 reworked by John Pløger, illuminates this quest for difference. Through 'Urban Vitalis' human beings are recognised as self-transcendent entities, whose lives - attitudes, values, ways of acting and behaving - may change through their 'being-openness' toward life but also always influenced by the ongoing striving for being part of relational positions or intersubjectivities. The concept of 'Urban Vitalis' enthrones the quest for difference in space rather than modern managerial principles such as profitability, make-ability or controllability to study hospitality space. When curriculums of Hospitality Management Studies are reviewed, hardly any attention is given to the possibility that spaces of hospitality can be spaces which create a difference. By adopting 'Urban Vitalis', spaces of hospitality become sites of experimentation where humans should be able to experiment with new combinations, where humans can experience that the future is not a replica of the past. Through the processes which happen in spaces of hospitality and which open spaces of hospitality to difference are limited. This study can be seen in the light of the aim to create spaces of difference and focuses on home exchange space as an informal space of hospitality. These informal spaces are characterised by open ended planning processes. This research explores the home exchange experience from a participant perspective and the overall research aim is to analyse the nature of the home exchange experience in order to conceptualise the dynamics of open-ended planning processes in spaces of hospitality. In other words the practise of home exchange is used to identify processes which underlie creative becomings in spaces of hospitality. The study follows two trajectories, namely, interactively exploring literature alongside the data collection. The interactive exploration of the literature led towards an employment of the concept of the 'Assemblage' from Deleuze and Guattari (1987) in order to know hospi tality space. The Deleuzian Guattarian assemblage focuses on what space does rather than on what space represents and searches for processes which underlie the becomings. Through the concept of the assemblage, the metaphor of the Cultural Laboratory (Lèofgren, 1999) is used to explore the literature and to reach a post-structural understanding of a space of hospitality as space of experimentation. The art project by Sabrina Lindemann 'Hotel Transvaal' is used to ground this understanding. Alongside this literature review, field work has been conducted through a participative (auto) ethnographic study and a total of twenty-two home exchanges have been conducted and recorded, this data collection occurred while connecting with home exchange organisations.For analysis and representation of the methodology during the interplay between fieldwork and literature review, 'Sociological Experimentation' has been developed, its goal is to ident lead to difference. It employs three ways of knowing: the evocative, the performativity of space and the process of becoming. The evocative dimension showed the importance of an initiation by the host into the space and highlights the non-representational bodily aspects of the assemblage. The performative dimension stresses the importance of the X-thing, which represents the unknown and potential emergence of the subject into serendipitous experiences. The becoming aspect also focused on this growing and shrinking by becoming other and creating lines of flight. Through becoming other, the guest could become and the ability to (temporarily) escape the guest role by creating new configurations of bodies and sensations. Recommendations for providers of hospitality space and curriculum designers in hospitality management are to acknowledge the constructive forces in spaces of hospitality and to facilitate for X-things to enhance serendipitous experiences.
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Volta Energy heeft de missie om de ‘mobiele energiemarkt’ te verduurzamen. Met aanhangers vol zonnepanelen bieden ze een alternatief voor vervuilende dieselaggregaten. Alleen draait de back-up nu nog op (bio)diesel. In H2 Modus blijkt in hoeverre waterstof daarvoor een schonere oplossing kan zijn.
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In the context of global efforts to increase sustainability and reduce CO2 emissions in the chemical industry, bio-based materials are receiving increasing attention as renewable alternatives to petroleum-based polymers. In this regard, Visolis has developed a bio-based platform centered around the efficient conversion of plant-derived sugars to mevalonolactone (MVL) via microbial fermentation. Subsequently, MVL is thermochemically converted to bio-monomers such as isoprene and 3-methyl-1,5-pentane diol, which are ultimately used in the production of polymer materials. Currently, the Visolis process has been optimized to use high-purity, industrial dextrose (glucose) as feedstock for their fermentation process. Dutch Sustainable Development (DSD) has developed a direct processing technology in which sugar beets are used for fermentation without first having to go through sugar extraction and refinery. The main exponent of this technology is their patented Betaprocess, in which the sugar beet is essentially exposed to heat and a mild vacuum explosion, opening the cell walls and releasing the sugar content. This Betaprocess has the potential to speed up current fermentation processes and lower feedstock-related costs. The aim of this project is to combine aforementioned technologies to enable the production of mevalonolactone using sucrose, present in crude sugar beet bray after Betaprocessing. To this end, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences (Zuyd) intends to collaborate with Visolis and DSD. Zuyd will utilize its experience in both (bio)chemical engineering and fermentation to optimize the process from sugar beet (pre)treatment to product recovery. Visolis and DSD will contribute their expertise in microbial engineering and low-cost sugar production. During this collaboration, students and professionals will work together at the Chemelot Innovation and Learning Labs (CHILL) on the Brightlands campus in Geleen. This collaboration will not only stimulate innovation and sustainable chemistry, but also provides starting professionals with valuable experience in this expanding field.
-Chatbots are being used at an increasing rate, for instance, for simple Q&A conversations, flight reservations, online shopping and news aggregation. However, users expect to be served as effective and reliable as they were with human-based systems and are unforgiving once the system fails to understand them, engage them or show them human empathy. This problem is more prominent when the technology is used in domains such as health care, where empathy and the ability to give emotional support are most essential during interaction with the person. Empathy, however, is a unique human skill, and conversational agents such as chatbots cannot yet express empathy in nuanced ways to account for its complex nature and quality. This project focuses on designing emotionally supportive conversational agents within the mental health domain. We take a user-centered co-creation approach to focus on the mental health problems of sexual assault victims. This group is chosen specifically, because of the high rate of the sexual assault incidents and its lifetime destructive effects on the victim and the fact that although early intervention and treatment is necessary to prevent future mental health problems, these incidents largely go unreported due to the stigma attached to sexual assault. On the other hand, research shows that people feel more comfortable talking to chatbots about intimate topics since they feel no fear of judgment. We think an emotionally supportive and empathic chatbot specifically designed to encourage self-disclosure among sexual assault victims could help those who remain silent in fear of negative evaluation and empower them to process their experience better and take the necessary steps towards treatment early on.
Our world is changing rapidly as a result of societal and technological developments that create new opportunities and challenges. Extended Realities (XR) could provide solutions for the problems the world is facing. In this project we apply these novel solutions in food and hospitality. It aims to tackle fundamental questions on how to stimulate a healthy and vital society that is based on a sustainable and innovative economy. This project aims to answer the question: How can Extended Reality (XR) technologies be integrated in the design of immersive food experiences to stimulate sustainable consumption behavior? A multidisciplinary approach, that has demonstrated its strength in the creative industry, will be applied in the hospitality and food sector. The project investigates implications and design considerations for immersion through XR technology that can stimulate sustainable consumption behavior. Based on XR prototypes, physiological data will be collected using biometric measuring devices in combination with self-reports. The effect of stimuli on sustainable consumption behavior during the immersive experience will be tested to introduce XR implementations that can motivate long-term behavioral change in food consumption. The results of the project contribute towards developing innovations in the hospitality sector that can tackle global societal challenges by exploiting the impact of new technology and understanding of consumer behavior to promote a healthy lifestyle and economy. Next to academic publications and conference contributions, the project will develop a handbook for hospitality professionals. It will outline steps and design criteria for the implementation of XR technologies to create immersive experiences that can stimulate sustainable consumption behavior. The knowledge generated in the project will contribute to the development of the curriculum at the Academy for Hotel and Facility at Breda University of Applied Sciences by introducing a technology-driven experience design approach for the course Sustainable Strategic Business Design.
