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

Trackback this Post | Feed on comments to this Post