Viviane Morelle, a UTC grad­u­ate who majored in urban sys­tems engi­neer­ing, now an alum­na, ‘visu­al facil­i­ta­tor’ and team coach at the head of her com­pa­ny Osan We, was the organ­is­er of the Mont­golfi­ades on the occa­sion of the 30th anniver­sary of the Com­piègne uni­ver­si­ty in 2002.

‘You have to dare, not hes­i­tate to tell your­self that it’s pos­si­ble and give your­self the means to achieve it. Be the main actors of your own lives. That’s real­ly what UTC allows you to do.’ Viviane Morelle speaks enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly about the Mont­golfi­ades, an event organ­ised in 2002 as part of the inau­gu­ra­tion of the 30^th anniver­sary of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Com­piègne. This pas­sion­ate Picardy native, now liv­ing in Saint-Lau­rent-du-Var near Nice, looks back on the episode with grat­i­tude to UTC, which gave her ‘the cheek to car­ry out this project’ and to bring with her a stu­dent asso­ci­a­tion, uni­ver­si­ty staff, local busi­ness­es and stake­hold­ers, local author­i­ties and the City of Com­piègne, which pro­vid­ed the nec­es­sary logis­ti­cal sup­port. This hot-air bal­loon pilot, who has been fly­ing since the age of 11, became a pilot at 19, was French cham­pi­on in 2021, world cham­pi­on in 2022 and world vice-cham­pi­on in 2024, want­ed to inno­vate and organ­ise a big fes­ti­val inspired by the eco­nom­ic mod­el of the Mont­golfi­ades organ­ised by the Cen­trali­enne de Lille asso­ci­a­tion. “After all, why not us?” Viviane Morelle con­vinced her­self. François Pec­coud, then pres­i­dent of the UTC, felt that the stu­dent lacked nei­ther con­vic­tion nor vision. “He sup­port­ed the project and gave me a list of con­tacts to approach. At the time, I did­n’t dare tell him that I had already met with them and that every­thing was already set­tled,’ says Viviane Morelle.

7 500 spectators

“Over a three day peri­od, we brought togeth­er local stake­hold­ers for com­pe­ti­tions and Olympiads,” recalls the 47-year-old busi­ness leader, who now shares her star­ry-eyed enthu­si­asm with her cus­tomers. Con­ti­nen­tal, Saint-Gob­ain, Gaz de France, Air Liq­uide, the Com­piègne Tourist Office, the Hauts-de-France Region, the Depart­ment of Oise… Flights and maid­en flights were pro­vid­ed. A line take-off of six­teen crews emerg­ing from the morn­ing mist was also offered. It was incred­i­ble and mag­i­cal. With a bud­get of €35 000, the Mont­golfi­ades attract­ed 7,500 spec­ta­tors. “Today, with hind­sight, I would be more aware of the risks we were tak­ing and the dif­fi­cul­ties we might encounter,” says Viviane Morelle. This expe­ri­ence, which was repeat­ed the fol­low­ing year by stu­dent Karine Houde and made pos­si­ble thanks to the part­ner­ships that had been forged, gave her con­fi­dence. ‘These encoun­ters are a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in my career,’ says Viviane Morelle. “They enabled me to under­stand all the aspects of project man­age­ment. The team spir­it, momen­tum and col­lec­tive dynam­ic made it possible.”

Gaining perspective

She was sub­se­quent­ly enabled to pur­sue a real pro­fes­sion­al voca­tion focused on team coach­ing with­in Osan We (Com­mu­ni­ca­tion through thought in Elfish lan­guage in Tolkien, edi­tor’s note): “I help them take a step back, both lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly. I engage peo­ple in col­lec­tive intel­li­gence to ele­vate projects, serv­ing the local com­mu­ni­ty as the UTC Mont­golfi­ades did. Today, I give lec­tures com­par­ing team­work and lead­er­ship. I put the expe­ri­ence I gained at UTC to good use in my career.” For this jump­ing Jack style alum­na, gain­ing per­spec­tive is also a way to expe­ri­ence adven­ture, to invite peo­ple to trav­el, to breathe in the scent of the wind and to touch the poet­ry of clouds. “It’s also about let­ting go, awak­en­ing peo­ple’s aware­ness of the beau­ty of the envi­ron­ment. Tak­ing to the skies is about releas­ing emo­tions, cre­at­ing a trig­ger and elic­it­ing the “overview effect” (the effect of see­ing the big pic­ture gen­er­ates a cog­ni­tive shock and an aware­ness that some astro­nauts report when they observe the Earth from space, edi­tor’s note). Shar­ing the small space of a gon­do­la to encour­age encoun­ters and spark con­ver­sa­tions via pod­casts is now on the hot-air balloonist’s mind. A breath of fresh air.

IL