Personal Experience
I had a nice CEE party last night. One special thing that lasted in my mind was nice small AIESECer from Ecuador that I met during the party.
He just approached me to talk about cooperations. He was really amazed when I told him that that I know Yat Wang, our ex MC VP ER in Austria, who is now in Ecuador and lives in his city.
He then asked me out about EPs (exchange participants) and wanted to know how many I could send to Ecuador, telling me that he could raise any amount of companies that I need. He was quite disappointed when I told him that I don’t have an suitable EPs for him at the moment and that I would need some 6 months to organized them. However he stated that he has any amount of companies that I need if I just send him some EPs. Well, I said, I will do what I can and was wondering when he asked me “Where do you come from? You are from Sweden, right?” When I told him that I was from Austria, he almost freaked asking me if I knew Yat Wang. “Yes, I do”, I replied. His eyes were shining, when he started telling me that he knows her as well and that she lives in his city. He then switched over explaining me that this would be a nice opportunity for the 2 of us to talk about cooperations. He wants EPs and he can provide any number of companies that I need J Yep… it was a funny night with that small AIESECer from Ecuador.
Random stuff
The 5 most used words on this AIESEC International Congress:
Place n.5: literally
Place n.4: tremendous
Place n.3: basically
Place n.2: amazing
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand the winner is
Place n.1: random J
(and that does not just concern the Austrian delegation from time to time :-)
Day 7 party
well, i just found another PC that still works. let's see how far I come with my updates.
What a shame, I almost forgot to tell you about the party on the evening of August, 27th. Well, as all the AIESEC world knows, WENA (Growth Network for Western Europe North America) is number one. Therefore: the party was …. Hm… looking for words… amazing.
It was organized like a global village with all the WENA countries having a small stand where they presented typical national drinks and food. We came along with Austria’s specialty: burning Mozart. If you wanna try it at home: take a Mozartkugel, split it in the middle. Take Stroh 80 rum. Put the Mozartkugel on a tooth stick or a fork and hold it into the rum for a second. Take it out, inflame it (yep, you heard right) and then eat it. :-) You might need to be brave for the first them. There’s a secret about how to eat them. You just need to put them into your mouth (even though there are flames) and SHUT YOUR MOUTH fast. Otherwise you’ll burn it. :-)
I guess you can imagine that our stand was crowded. After helping some people to have another amazing AIESEC experience, I just left to have a closer look at the other stands as well. I got first attracted by the French stand, who hosted a French kissing competition. As I’ve lived in France for the last year I felt kind of an expert and of course needed to demonstrate to the others how to do that J
Then I got hooked at the German stand. They had some Brause powder and Klopfers. I liked the combination of the sweet stuff that didn’t seem to have any negative effects. Indeed those negative effects were then showing up about 1,5 hours later and forced me to crawl back to bed at quarter past 3 J
Day 8 (2007-08-28)
It was hard to get up in the morning after, even though we had a “sleep in” phase. This means that the morning plenary was moved half an hour backwards in the agenda to give us half an hour more of sleep. AIESEC International definitely knows that WENA parties are the best J
Well, so let’s talk about that day. I was at the breakfast, I was at the morning plenary. Not bad, hm? I was well went to the introduction of the GN (Growth Networks) but as the following session was not that interesting to me, I was glad to leave during a short break and go back to bed for another hour just until lunch.
The partner workshop I did in the afternoon (1 with Electrolux on Negotiation and 1 with Ingersoll Rand on Branding) were good, were interesting. Unfortunately they just lasted 1,5 hours each, therefore it’s clear that not too much content was delivered.
During the whole day, I had some really good conversations and exchange of thoughts with the other Austrian LCPs, as well as with Vlad in the evening who really inspired me. Thanks again, man.
IC live, Day 6
IC Day 8 (2007-08-28) (and 7 and 6 :-)
Yes, I know that I didn’t write lately (and by the way I already apologize for all the mistakes I will make in this text cause I’m not used to the Turkish keyboard) but there’s so much going on that I hardly find time for doing so (not even to sleep :-).
But let’s go back. My last entry was from the 25th of August, therefore I’ll continue with the 26th.
As I partied hard on the 25th, I just came to my room at 07h00 in the morning, waking up my worried roommate. No wonder therefore, that I didn’t manage to get up at 08h00, as I planned. I missed breakfast (what a pity), I missed the morning plenary (well that was no pity :-) and just arrived late for the Microsoft Partnership Launch session. As they closed the door to keep the latecomers outside, I decided to go to the HP Café to check my emails and then went back to the dormitories to have another hour of sleep. So they didn’t really hurt me with not letting me in but helped me catch up with some sleep :-)
The 26th was our History and / or Alumni day. Coming back to the session at 12h00 I had a very interesting session with some alumni from 1960 – 1979. Among others, Martin Bean, ex PAI and now Senior Vice President Education of Microsoft. Wow, they were really cool. Hearing how AIESEC came into existence in the UK, went on to the US and then expanded to all of South America was amazing. Just imagine a world without all of our digital devices. Imagine how they were “printing” letters that they sent to companies. Incredible. No mobile phones, no Internet. However, they managed to communicate. In the session about 1989 – 1999 there were some other great guys telling about the problems AIESEC had because of being in South Africa. As the South African apartheid regime was isolated, AIESEC faced problems because African countries wanted to close down AIESEC as it was still in South Africa. AIESEC stayed hard, explained their mission well and managed not to be closed down in African countries even though they stayed in South Africa.
It’s amazing to see how history always comes back. Right now, AIESEC faces the same problem. As it wants to expand to Israel, many countries in the Middle East region put pressure on AIESEC and threat it with being closed down in these countries. We’ll see if AIESEC manages such a situation another time.
After a discussion round with 2 ex PAI and 1 director of a growth network of the years between 2000 and 2006, the history / alumni day closed with the Engagement and Leadership awards as well with the Alumni Engagement awards.
Finally, in big ceremony seven alumni became members of the alumni hall of fame.
Day 7
Day 7 had a focus on Learning Networks. First I thought it might be just a boring day but in the end … wow, I must admit I really learned something and specially: I got some good ideas out of it. I had some nice input about things that could as well be done in Innsbruck.
I was in the Learning Network track about Information and Communication Technology. Finding out that there’s a large need for interns with a technical background in the major IT companies all over the world (namely Microsoft, HP, Alcatel-Lucent etc) showed me that our idea of recruiting technical students this year in Innsbruck was a quite clever idea :-)
But the most amazing moment of the day was the big wrap up session in the evening when all the people met in the big aula and all the facilitators gave a summary of their sessions. I felt really touched when a young guest speaker, about my age, stood up, declaring that since 5 years he is HIV positive. The insight into his live, not so much being afraid of dying but being afraid of becoming lonely was incredible. Explaining that he can’t get a live insurance in the US because of his being positive and that he can’t talk about his illness, not even to his family (!!) made me understand him better. His message was that it can happen to everyone, no matter if you are well informed about it or not. Being drunk one time, he explained how he didn’t care anymore about the warnings and that HIV can live in the same house, just the next door.
Day 5 (2007-08-25)
Okay, probably I should really give you some basic input. IC means International Congress and it is the biggest AIESEC conference in the world. This year it connects 650 delegates from exactly 100 countries in Istanbul.
Concerning the weather here at the moment: it’s hot. Or to be more precise: it’s quite hot!! But as there’s a constant wind it’s however possible to survive.
Now as for today: today was really cool. They have a special LCPs track here, so I had functional trainings and meetings with other LCPs. Even though some of the input sessions were quite basic, I could take something out of other sessions as for example from the “communication” session where we talked about the new “I am an AIESECer” campaign that will be used for recruitment.
In the afternoon there were various tracks and as I had a free choice I took 2 sessions about Alumni involvement and Alumni Database. Afterwards we got the chance to have a first look at the new Global Information System of AIESEC that will be launched in November.
Guys, if they keep their promises, this new system will be a really cool tool. I’m looking forward to it, even though the migration from AIESEC.net to the new system will be a lot of work. But the concept is interesting. On the last day of IC we’ll get a more detailed insight.
If you are interested in the International Congress don’t hesitate to have a look at “live.myaiesec.net”. There you can as well get the output of the sessions we have here.
And don’t forget to have a look at the Vienna Blog. Martina posted a link to the video of the Austrian Role Call – the coolest Role Call of IC 2007. Austria performed “MfG” (Fantastische Vier) adapted to AIESEC :-D. Enjoy!!
Day 4 (2007-08-24)
Juhuuuuuuu. IC gets better. Much better.
Developing leaders day was interesting. The group works in the afternoon, finding out what type of team worker you are, were real cool. For all that are interested: use google and have a look at “Belbin test”. In addition I liked the group case studies that we did.
In the evening there was the Turkish Night. Even though the program, consisting of traditional Turkish music and a traditional dancing group was not that thrilling, the party became interesting when a Turkish belly dancer came on stage J
Day 3 (2007-08-23)
Partying till 4 in the morning made me tired. I got back to my room (had organised the key before cause my lovely room mate once again just took it along instead of putting it at the info-desk), undressed and tried to sleep but … my room mate was snoring that loud that I really couldn’t manage to fall asleep. I was turning around and around until 07h00 until he got up to leave for breakfast. So I got about 45 minutes of sleep during 07h15 and 08h00 before I got up myself.
Fortunately the programme of IC became better. In the, there was the really cool handover/takeover session of the AIESEC International team. The ex PAI, Dey was really entertaining when he talked about his term, his experiences etc. It was inspiring.
In the evening there was a LCP track, so I got to know some other LCPs and could start to connect. There are some nice guys J.
Instead of going to the party as the night before, this time I preferred going to bed as I really wanted to be fit for the next day to attend the “Develop Leaders Day”. And guess what, I even managed to sleep. *g*
IC Day 2 (2007-08-22)
Clapping hands and knocking on doors the Congress Committee (CC) wake-up team destroyed my sweet dream at around 07h30. Wanna know what? Breakfast started at 08h00. “Why the hell are the waking me up by now?” I asked myself. Until now I still didn’t find an answer to that question. Anyway. I got up, went to have breakfast. If you now imagine that breakfast consists of a large buffet like in a hotel – no chance.
Every delegate gets the same breakfast every day: I plate with a piece of cucumber, half a tomato, 1!! slice of sausage, 1 piece of sheep cheese, some olives and a little bit butter and jam. In addition you can have black tea or water and you are free to take some slices of bread. Wow, once more I was disappointed. No comparison to conferences in Austria where you have a big buffet where you can take as much as you want of anything you want. I guess we should do an inkind-raising training for the CC :-)
Then, Wednesday morning after the breakfast I was ready for the first session. We all were in a real big lecture hall, having the chair (a cool guy, ex President of AIESEC International some years ago) on stage calling all the countries to do a role call. Austria was singing “Schi fohr’n", getting same applause. At least we were more creative than many other delegations. At least 5 delegations were singing “Happy birthday” as a role call for some fake birthdays.
To be honest, the rest of the morning was quite disappointing as well. When I went to IC I thought that this might be a VERY cool conference where I get soooo much input that I can then use in Innsbruck. To be honest: the very first day already destroyed my hopes. As I said: the sessions in the morning were boring, repeating old stuff everyone already knew etc. It was that awful that I decided not to go to the sessions in the afternoon but better have some sleep. Seemed to be more valuable to me as I was very tired and feeling too well.
Concerning the rest of the day: getting up at around 18h30 I just had to wait for half an hour for dinner, had to attend another short session from 21h00 – 22h00 before the first party started. The theme was “sexchange” and AIESEC in Austria was of course very involved *g* All boys were at least (if not totally) dressed up as girls whereas the girls were wearing shirts and ties. Sexy Bene and me were wearing Dirndl, Vlad, Matthias and Amit were wearing skirts and bras and Peter was just wearing a scarf instead of trousers or a skirt J However, no one of the Austrian delegation managed to become “Miss IC 2007”. *g* Have a look at the pictures, we would have earned to win :-D
IC Day 1 (2007-08-21): Never ending journey
Well, after a 2 hours flight from Munich to Istanbul and 70 minutes waiting at the Istanbul airport, the bus to the Global Village finally left. Just imagine me, having my real big suitcase with about 22 kg, my bag pack and still wearing long trousers heading to the site for Global Village. Even though the bus was riding real fast (Turkish driving style :-) we didn’t make it in time and the rest of the Austrian delegation was already partying. Changing clothes fast to wear traditional Austrian clothes (Lederhosen, Stutzen and a Trachtenhemd) I was heading for the party, joining the rest of the Austrian delegation. Tiredness was like blown away when I saw about 650 other delegates, wearing their traditional clothes, dancing AIESEC dances.
After some amazing 2 hours we all went to a conference hall to attend the opening ceremony. Hearing very “inspiring” speeches from PAI, MCP of Turkey, Major of Istanbul etc. many people were just sleeping as they were tired *g*.
Finally, at around 23h00 I arrived at the venue (YETIPEDE University), still carrying my heavy suitcase, fu**ing tired and guess what: I had to wait half an hour at the check-in desk. (I’ve later on been told that the rest of the Austrian delegation had been waiting for more than 2 hours when they arrived on the 17th of August). So, around 23h30 I knew where I would sleep. Next problem: how to go there? The university campus is quite large and I had no clue where to go. Fortunately Karo took some time to show me around but..iIf you think that all my problems were solved by now: you are wrong. All the rooms at the dormitories are filled with 2 people but there was just one key per room. My key wasn’t at the check-in desk any more, therefore the Congress Committee assured me that my room mate was in my room. Standing in front of my room I found out that this was not the case. Damned. Where should I now find my room mate? Running around at the whole university campus with my big suitcase again? This was certainly not what I wanted to do. So fortunately one of the Congress Committee members finally opened my door – I was in. After a whole day, I was standing in front of a bed and looking forward to sleep. The room is not big, therefore I almost immediately found another problem: no toilet paper in the bathroom. Travelling half the world, being tired and just wanting to sleep, I did not even have toilet paper. It took another quarter of an hour to find again this member of the Congress Committee and to make him organise some toilet paper for me. “Toilet paper is handed over to delegates on Monday” he said. “Monday?” I asked. “That’s in 6 days. What do you guess I can do without toilet paper for 6 days?” “You can buy toilet paper here!” I was shocked. What kind of organisation was that? This is the biggest AIESEC conference in the world, there are 650 delegates from almost 100 countries in the world and there’s not even toilet paper? Conferences in Austria have a higher standard!! Well, after some time he then came back with 1 role of toilet paper explaining me that he’s doing me a favour. I guess you can imagine that I became angry by now. I was just glad that my room mate wasn’t there cause otherwise all my anger would have hit him.
Unpacking my suitcase I had the chance to calm down before he arrived around 1 o’clock. This Malaysian guy just thought that (as he didn’t have a room mate during the pre-meetings from 17th – 20th of August) he won’t get a room mate. Therefore he didn’t see a necessity to hand in the key at the info-desk when leaving the room. I kindly explained him that this needs to change by now before we got to know each other better.
At around 2 o’clock, 19 hours after getting up, I went to bed, feeling stressed and disappointed by IC for the first time as I had just expected a conference with Austrian standards.
It's scary in Peru
As I read the news today, there has been strong earthquake in Peru. About 500 died, over 1500 casualties. It stroke mostly in cities Ica, Chincha and Pisco, where around 70% of houses are damaged.
Labels: Peru
Hej from Sweden ;-)!!!!
Hello AIESECers in Austria!!
I`m currently doing my CEED in Götheborg and just wanted to say hello to all of you. Hope you are all having a nice summer with some time for relaxation and enjoying yourself!
Here in Sweden the AIESECers are very nice with taking care of me. Tomorrow I`m gonna meet even more of them and I guess we will start working on recriutment - hey I`m excited :-)!!
So hope this message get posted...just wanted to give it a try...more of me and Sweden next week ;-).
Take care and have a nice Sunday
Your VP PD-HCM Sabine
Blog revival
Heeeeeeeeeey AIESEC!Way to long our Blog wasn't used. This is an initiative to make a re-vival.
Let's use this means of communication to foster communication inside the LC as well to keep contact with our Alumni and abroadies.
I'm looking forward to read all the interesting stories what you guys are doing at the moment, where you are, how you enjoy your holidays or how work is.
In case you've never used this blog or you don't know anymore how to use it, please
have a look here.
Happy Blogging
Benni
Now a word from Olo:
The blog is now shiny and in new place. How do you like it?
Thanks to Dody G. from Nomadlife (actually from Silverkey, but that doesn't matter) we have new place for our LC's blog. Save it in your bookmarks! ibkblog.nomadlife.org
best wishes
OLO
Thanx
Hey Olo!
Thanks SO MUCH for all your help to put up the blog again and changing the host. Wouldn't have worked without you!
Greetz to Poland.
Benni
