My world

Hey all,

As promised this will be a longer post. Last weeks have been crazy with the preparation for our conference. The first week of July was filled with preparation for the conference. Writing sessions, preparing materials run trough,…. . We worked very long days but were able to pull together a very good conference preparation.

Friday was the kick-off of conference. With all State managers in the office to prepare for the conference it was my first touch point with the country. It was interesting to get to know those people and see the cultural difference between the different state in Australia. The MC team would like to give a special thanks to Dan for his contribution that day, resulting in a beautiful hole in our wall.  When we managed to get those destructive people out of our office we could start our simulation run trough together with the external facilitators. It was interesting to see how session would actually run.

Saturday, day 2 of the conference we could welcome the National leadership team. All LCP and SM joined us for a day of discussion around the conference (national plan, agenda flow, legislation,…). Apart from the plan launch of the ER cell not much happened. Later that evening we went out for a pub crawl.

Sunday was the subcommittee day. We gathered with some members to discuss 4 topics: Membership, national meeting (conferences) finance and exchange. I joined for the national meeting subcommittee, where we had to appoint LC’s to organize the upcoming conference. 

After this long meeting (9-17u) we would meet with the full facilitator team for the first time. A fairly interesting meeting with goal setting, agenda run trough, get to know and team building games. The less fun part was that most of us only left t-he office around 3 to get a few hours of sleep.

Monday, D-1 of the conference, was Developing leaders day. A day fully hosted by companies. This was the first contact with the brother membership base and some of My partners (I met Shell :-D). I had an interesting day networking with the new members and companies at the same time. Later that day we had the official opening with more networking opportunities with even more partners (I met Reckon, DHL, and more companies) joining. The OC pulled all their energy together and delivered a beautiful day to kick of the conference. For me the most exciting thing was to see te energy of the LC’s that were award an award on this official evening, but even more the energy of other committees to win that award next year.

After all this positive energy we headed back to the office for a logistics run trough and a detailed planning for the first day of conference. Around 2 we headed home to pack, and catch some sleep to leave the day after at 7 to the conference site.

Day one of the conference would prove to be very challenging. The team was very tired in the morning and we wanted to use the upcoming hour to prepare. SO as we arrived we went for some stretching and morning chat with the oc. 5 minutes after arrival we saw a cool bus coming on-site. We were not expecting one as we thought delegates would only arrive one hour later. SO instead of 1-1.30u we had about 5 minutes to set up everything ;-).

We sent Robbie on his mission to play the monkey and distract those delegates. In the mean time the rest of the teams pulled all their energy together and focused on preparing registration.  As delegates did not saw that we were stressed and rego went perfectly we were in a very good mindset to enter opening plenary. First day went like a normal first day of conference. It was cool to finally start the conference and be able to interact and talk to all those strange AIESECERS from all over Australia. 

 The rest of the conference continued on a fairly normal pace so I’ll just get some extraordinary events.

Day 2, Legislation. If you think Belgium LCP’s are difficult or talking about details I would advise you to go to an Australian GA. Al LCP’s have been very professional and look at each word of each motion. It was cool to see the dedication of the LCP and attending members to get the best motion mentioned in the compendium. On the flip side we were in legislation till about 3.15 in the morning. We saw the party start, people getting drunk, people going to sleep and the OC cleaning while we were in the other room hoping we would still be able to join .

Day 3, First session of Pieter. This was my first real session ever. I was a bit nervous at the beginning of the session, but throughout the flow I discovered that I actually liked doing this. In the end i only got good feedback, even from an ITC delegate so I can be quite sure that I delivered a quiet good session. Thanks to all delegates for their participation and feedback and Kay for the valuable input she gave to improve my session.

Day 3, Jerry Springer party Read sex change party. I’ve never seen such a motivated delegation to engage in a party. When I entered the party room I was amazed by the costumes they were wearing at this party. I’ve never see such things. Go Aussi

Day 4 was an emotional day and all about the MC Handover. Some goodbye speeches and video’s from the old team to official hand over the term to us. They tried but did not get us to cry. It was an emotional evening though

Day 5, the last night of conference! This is skolling night. It’s THE party night of conference. It’s the night were they have drinking races LC against LC. The rules are legalized and it’s a very serious matter. The feeling is awesome and impossible to describe.. the MC showed the as a team with coaching session in between ever race. The result of massive training and excellent team work is that we could take the skolling cup home! The MC rocks

This would be my first national conference. Only day 6 was left, with some emotional speeches at the end by LCP’s and SM’s. Thank you to the MC, members and alumni for this amazing week. I’ve enjoyed it so much.

On the way home we had to cope with limited care space, but the 96 litres of goon we took with us brought some hope. Back home it’s strange to sleep more than 3 hours (more than 10 days ago) and don’t have to run for the next session

This was my conference stories. I’ll try to add some pictures over the next weeks but you can have a look on my facebook.

Talk to you soon

Bye

Hey all,

It’s been a week since i’ve updates my blog. The last week has mainly been a week of transition and getting into work. Last Tuesday my international colleague Patricia from Colombia arrives, she is also known as the chuck of our team (more information see: here). It’s cool that I’m no longer the only international any more. We go along quite well and together we try to figure out our way around in this up-side down country.

In the last week I was listening about 10 hours a day to people about what was the country reality, the history of AIESEC in Australia, there systems and much more. When there was a first meeting where my input was required it was directly quite heavy, we had to decide who we would send to IC. Unfortunately I didn’t get to go, so no trip to Brazil this year, but this gives me more time to discover this continent.

On Friday night we went out to some club. It’s very different here! Parties start around 9-10 and they already are dancing around that time. The clubs are also not closed off but have big windows and you have a cool view wile dancing (definitely because we went out in darling harbour)

Saturday we had a day of teambuilding, where we decide that sustainability would be the theme that would be driving our team. It was nice to get to know the different people on the team, and our team coach. I’m really looking forward to work with these guys in the upcoming year.

On Sunday we went, apart from getting in the office to do some work, shopping. It’s actually quite cold in Sydney and as I didn’t thought about that during my packing process I had to buy some other clothes. It’s quite difficult to find your way in stores you’re really not used to. But apart from the fact that I was lost all afternoon, I found my two new jumpers

Today (Monday) was the first functional day. We sat together and start transitioning accounts, which let to my first corporate e-mails and phone calls. It’s a quite strange business culture as High profile people are naming you mate, and you only use first names, but you feel a connection with everyone straight away.

The last week was so much fun that I’m looking forward to the upcoming once. To give you a better insight on my life I’ll be uploading some pictures about our office and house mater today and tomorrow.

Hope you enjoy my postings

Stay tuned

Hey,

I’m on the moment in Lithuania, another AIESEC conference! Now only for LCP’s, and i have to admit that it’s maybe even more powerful than IC!

The story started on Friday when we left  from Zaventem. Phillip just did not missed the plane. For the rest everything was OK.  There was an awesome OC pick up, only the Indian gaan we were waiting for and has not yet arrived till today (maybe he is in jail) was quit annoying! We had to get in two way to small cars, so we had to work together to get in and out the car, to make sure we could see what we were doing,… Quite an experience. We arrived at a first hotel, foolbooked, but the second time we were more lucky.

We went to a quite place to eat and at 3.30 we were back for some sleep.

Saturday, Day 0 of the conference. Wake up was 2 minutes before actual departure, so we did not had the time to enjoy the facilities of the Hostel (luckily). We rushed off for Global village, in the middle of the biggest shopping centre of Vilnius. We amazed quite some people with our appearance, and so we had a great exposure for AIESEC.

Afterwards there was official opening and moving to the site. We arrived here a one of the most beautiful sites I’ve ever seen, a real conference site! In the middle of the forest so no neigbours to disturbed in the process of enjoying our parties.  

Sunday, today, day 1 of the conference. Today we started meeting our self, and the other LCP’s. We are a quite funny group. We just turned back from a animating promotion of Lithuanian dances, we could participate so each one of us enjoyed!  

Now I’m returning to the party, and try to get some new friends

See you in a few days.

Hey,

It’s a little month since IC now. Many things have happened, many things have changed but we can look back on a very successful start of the year. We are working together with our team on the recruitment, we are almost half way now. Class presentations, info session, … have already passed and everyone is very positive looking forward to the Get to know day in a few days.

For me as a person’s this month has been very intense. It’s the first moment I have some time to write a little text on my own blog. I’ve had a very busy time, with a lot of up’s and downs, difficulties and moments of happiness. But throughout all this I’ve had the opportunity to get richer as a person. I’ve had the opportunity to lead my team, I’ve made some mistakes but they gave me the opportunity to learn, that was the most interesting part about it.

I’ve never lost my motivation throughout this month and my motivation is stronger than before. I’m very much looking forward to Euroco, another AIESEC conference that I’m attending, I’m looking forward to see old friends back!

I hope that in the near future I’ll find some more time to inform you about the things I’m doing.

Greetings of an over motivated

Pieter

Hey,

I’m writing you from the last morning plenary. Around me there are 600 people dancing, screaming,… they all have the same objective but they cover more than 100 countries!!! I don’t know when I wrote you last but i guess it’s some time ago! There is happening so much here, so I’ll tell you the two key stories of the last days.

First one was yesterday morning in a session about the GN initiatives. I realized I’m still very weak in the field of exchange and that it’s actually such a nice field to have some expertise in. We saw different parts of the world present their projects to raise the eXchange numbers, and there were so many we could participate in. I was once again amazed!! And I hope AIESEC EHSAL will be able to participate in some of this projects!

Second one was the Official dinner. We dressed up (it was 30 degrees)a were sweating our ass of in the busses on our way to the venue for the dinner. On this dinner BELGUIM won the UBS excellence award for the WENA region. It’s an award for the realizations of the last year(‘s). It was a wonderful moment to be recognized by the full AIESEC network. It also gave a lot of energy to the new team and all participants of the Belgium delegation. Afterwards we still had a way to hard party but I’m happy I’m in the morning plenary now! BTW: On the cup, our country name was changed into BELGUIM!

Lets head off for the MY aiesec.net presentation

Greetz

Ps: pictures you can find on : http://www.duivenkot.org/pictures/main.php?g2_itemId=25400

Ola,

Saturday we had some  sessions in our personal track, it was cool to meet the people who where doing the same as I was doing but the content of the sessions was rather disappointing, although I had some conversation with other LCP, coming from other realities.

In the afternoon we had sessions about several topics,  the most interesting one for me was the “’I’m an AIESECER campaign” where we learned to describe our feeling of the AIESEC eXPerience.

A quite day, but in the end I was tiered and I was feeling very weak so I went to bed early and decided to give myself a sleep in. I feel much better right now and I’m ready to kick off the second part of the conference. Still for and a half days to go.

Greetings

Hey all,

Today I have got one of the best AIESEC experiences. Today we had AI transition. The old PAI gave the floor to the new one and they transmitted symbolically the vision for AIESEC  2010. Both team here on stage and were sharing their experiences. It was the most powerful moments I’ve ever lived in this organization. I was almost crying!!!!

Today I also discovered that my AIESEC experience has not ended yet, and cannot end in the end of this year. There is so much more to learn, experience,…  In which direction I want to go I don’t know yet, but I still want to contribute to this organization for more than only my LCP term!!!

We had also the first LCP track today. More than 150 LCP’s from all over the world are present on this IC. It was nice  to get to know some of them and to see that we are all challenging the same issues. In the next day’s there will be way more possibilities to do some exchange of experience.

Tomorrow the Development leaders day will kick off, lets see what this IC can contribute to my personal development.

Greetings and have a good night from Turkey

Dear all,

 
Finally some time to write! The last two days have been really busy. The conference has been started!!!! And it is an amazing experience!!!

 
Day 0:

 
The first day of the conference starts with the opening plenary. You have to imagine a room with 700 people from 100 countries each trying to let everyone remember their country. There was so much energy during the 2 hour during roll call session. People screaming, laughing,… maybe for the new countries even crying!!! I’ve never seen such an amazing and diverse room.

Afterwards we went on to global village (county market) to taste the different kinds of food en do a quick journey around the world. Again we saw amazed people, looking funny, stupid (we had Belgium hair!!!).

Afterwards we attended the opening ceremony with some dances from all  over turkey, speeches from very important persons (even the Meir of Istanbul).

Days 0 was probably the most international and powerful day of my life.

 
Day 1:

 
We got sessions about the basic AIESEC ideas, rather a more absorbing day, where we got a lot of useful and les useful knowledge.  Hopefully we will get some international experience as we are now heading off for the AP party (Asia-pacific) where there will be …. (keep updated)

 Greetings

Hey all,

Just back from the party, the weather is so nice (but way to warm, it’s killing me) we can have our parties outside at the tennis court of the university.

Today was full of sessions about what we can and hopefully will do in the next year. They gave presentation about different opportunities (conferences, projects,…) and we got a clear image what there was to do in the WENA network. I had also the chance to meet with my colleague LCP, which was very cool cause we were able to share our feeling at the moment and we got  immediately connected on all of our issues, although we where only whit five and I hope more lcp will join soon.

Tomorrow the last day of preconference, and then the real IC can kick off, I’m really looking forward to it.

Have a good night

Way to hot greetings

Hey all,

I’ve my first break here at IC, so time to keep you posted.

Traveling:

Traveling to the venue was really a challenging experience. We left Brussels around 20H with the plane, and landed at 2o’clock in the morning Turkish time (GMT+2)  at Ataturk airport. And than, the adventure began.  We were totally lost at the airport as there were no people from AIESEC waiting for us. In the Starbucks (first time in my live) we met some other delegation also waiting for pick up.

Around 4am someone from the organizing team showed up to take us with a bus trip for one hour to the venue (an amazing venue BTW). After a very long extra hour of check in we could finally get in our rooms at 6am!!!! The flight from Brussels to Istanbul took us less time than the transport to our room J

Day -3

This was today, the first day of the conference. After 3 hours of sleep I was feeling ready to meet no one, and sleep another sleep, but apparently we had to start of the sessions, and there were 300 people at breakfast all eager to talk to you. The morning started of very well. Luckily our MCP, Andries took a bit care of me and guided me to the first session (than you mate) .

After I got awake, during the opening of the day, I was ready to start enjoying the conference. We had sessions and I could directly feel the power of the AIESECERS around me. It’s amazing to be here and the feeling I have cannot be put on paper. I had a conversations with people I never met before about the organization where I was committing to for the last 3 year, and it felt like normal. First time since long I could talk about my passion!!!!! I’m so happy to experience this!!!! And above all, these people came from: Peru, Tanzania, Puerto Rico, Sweden, Spain, USA, UK,… (I can still keep typing for some timeJ.

I’m really enjoying my time her, and it is really the right place for me to be right now so I would like to thank all people who gave me the opportunity to be here, and above all those who pushed me to attend this conference.

I’m heading back to sessions right now. I’ll keep you updated.

Overexcited greetings from a tired Pieter