History Book of BEST
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o President : Miha Pelko - Ljubljana
oSecretary : Eva Sturtewagen - Ghent
oTreasurer Stefan Hallez – Ghent
oVP Complementary Education : Giorgos Athanasopoulos - Patras o VP Educational Involvement: Joao Rei - Almada
oVP Career Support: Panagiotis Isigonis - Chania
oVP Internal Education: Angela Scaueru - Bucharest
oVP for Information Technologies: Vilius Benetis - Copenhagen o VP for Public Relations: Gregoire Toussaint – Grenoble
•XVIII int. Board of BEST, aka Jazzers, 2005-2006
oPresident: Nadina Busuioc - Bucharest
o Treasurer: Jihad R’Baiti - ENSTA
o Secretary: Susan Langer - Copenhagen
o VP Local Group Support: Xavier Rondé-Oustau - Ecole Centrale/Helsinki/
Stockholm
oVP External Services: Elina Seppänen - Tampere
oVP Internal Support: Michal Wojtera - Lodz
•XIX int. Board of BEST, aka Sailors, 2006-2007
oPresident: Bartosz Lipnicki - Gdansk
oTreasurer: Luka Vidmar - Ljubljana
oSecretary: Bram Simons - Eindhoven
oVP Local Group Support: Katy Vanbrabant -Brussels o VP External Services: Tzveta Dimitrova - Sofia
oVP Internal Support: Manuel Gay – Lyon
•XX int. Board of BEST, aka Lemons, 2007-2008
oPresident: Ömer Hantal - Istanbul
o Treasurer: Seger Decombel - Ghent
o Secretary: Peter Verwilst - Ghent
o VP External Services: Adriana Garboan – Bucharest
o VP Internal Support: Cristina Dumitru – Bucharest
o VP Local Group Support: Giulio D’Aversa – Rome
•XXI int. Board of BEST, aka Bunnies, 2008-2009 o President: Tim GovaertGhent
o Treasurer: Cristian Arteni - Bucharest o Secretary: Triin Lohmus - Tallinn
o VP External Services: Tassos Natsakis – Thessaloniki o VP Internal Support: Karina Herman – Timisoara
o VP Local Group Support: Xavier Duchatel – Paris, Ecole Politechnique
•XXII int. Board of BEST, aka Surfers, 2008-2009
o President: David Salamon - Budapest o Treasurer: Andres Ütt - Tallinn
o Secretary: Nataliia Gurianova - Lviv
Chapter 5:
BEST Organisation
o VP External Services: Lucien Romagnoli - Ghent o VP Internal Support: Vladimir Bulgaru - Chisinau o VP Local Group Support: Paal Lohne - Trondheim
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Honorary members of BEST
BEST is able to grant Honorary Membership upon persons having rendered important services to the organisation. Honorary Membership is recognition of excellence for contributing to the development of the goals and values of the organisation.
No special privileges are connected to the title of Honorary Member of BEST.
Honorary Membership of BEST is regulated by the Statutes of BEST and Internal Regulations of BEST.
Only on very special and rare occasions in the past, Honorary Membership was awarded. As of 2009 there are only four Honorary Members of BEST.
Ida Lau Borch
She is founding member of BEST and President of the 1st Advisory Committee of BEST (April - October 1989). Alumna of LBG Trondheim, Ida was elected Honorary Member of BEST at the General Assembly 1992 in Helsinki & Tallinn.
Gabor David
He is also founding member of BEST and President of the 3rd and 4th Advisory Committee of BEST (April 1990 - April 1991) and Vice-President of the 5th Advisory Committee of BEST (April 1991 - October 1991). He is from LBG Budapest. Gabor was elected Honorary Member of BEST at the General Assembly 1992 in Helsinki & Tallinn.
‘Shortly afterwards, it was decided that from then on Honorary Membership could only be granted to people who had never been a member of an LBG.’
Jean François Picard
Also known as JFP, he is a former businessman of Procter & Gamble. Jean François has largely contributed to the development of BEST by supporting BEST in the organisation of events and by giving soft skills trainings to BEST members. JFP served as a kind of advisor to BEST and has attended several General Meetings of BEST in the first half of the 1990s. He was elected
Honorary Member of BEST at the General Assembly 1993 in Bratislava.
Philippe D. Grosjean
He is a consultant and former secretary-general of CESAER. Philippe was the man who got
BEST involved in educational matters, when BEST was asked to join the H3E project in 1996. Philippe introduced the (inexperienced) BEST people in the world of educational matters and has, during the lifetime of the H3E project, always supported students’ interests in the project. In the academic world Philippe D. Grosjean was a controversial person due to his straightforward style and outspoken opinions. He was elected Honorary Member of BEST at the XVIII General Assembly in Stockholm in 2000.
In 2000 the XIII Board invited the four Honorary Members of BEST to attend the 6th Presidents’ Meeting in Budapest. Ida Lau Borch and Gabor David were able to join the delegates and share their memories of the early days of BEST. Jean-François Picard and Philippe D. Grosjean could not attend the meeting. Philippe sent a letter to the PM, which was read in the plenary by the speaker, Yannis Rammos.
Article written by Pim Bonne
History Book of Board of European Students of Technology |
1989-2009 |
Chapter 6
BEST Internal Events
•Cultural Exchanges
•Workshops
•Short Intensive Meetings
•Trainshops
•Committee meetings
•ICF-IPF
•GMs
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Cultural Exchanges (CEs)
Cultural exchange is an event organised by two or three Local BEST Groups. At least 30 groups visit each other in groups of around 10-20 BEST members. Participation on this event offers students to understand and get in contact with culture, traditions, academic and social life of the other country. Even from the beginning of BEST, Local Groups were attracted by the concept of Cultural Exchanges and most of the LBGs registered at least one CE during these years. Some of them even have these events once per year. Because we do not keep track of all these kind of events, we cannot say exactly at what point BEST members enjoyed them, but official documents like BEST Magazine record them even from 1996.
WorkShops (WSs)
Workshops are short, work-oriented events where about 20 BEST members discuss, plan, develop and get actively involved in ongoing projects during a face-to-face meeting. They are among the oldest internal BEST events that we have.
Workshops are geographically spread all over Europe, to get as many BEST members as possible involved in the international work. The workshops have two main goals: to gather input from a wide range of active members on the work done in BEST and to provide a continuous training for participants. They are planned and organised in order to work on
Technical Committee WS Barcelona 1998
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projects that typically face difficulties to be handled in a virtual way. Up to 3 or 4 topics are worked on and each topic is lead by its topic owner.
The content depends on the hottest topics at the time when the events take place.
Until 2009, there were 77 WS announced in PA. The first one was organized in Turin, in 1993. Although we didn’t find any official documents about it, the first ones were about strategy, growth, 3-years-plan, international development and so on. First were lots WS organized per year because in the early times of BEST every event was either a GM or WS. Now we have an average of 3 WS per year.
Short Intensive Meetings (SIMs)
Short Intensive Meeting is very similar to a workshop, with the difference that it is focused on one particular project and on average involves fewer participants (usually around 10). They are usually planned only some weeks in advance according to the needs of the projects.
The first event organized in this way was Minerva Development SIM in 2003 hosted by LBG
Leuven. After this event, other 8 SIMS followed as intensive working days that aimed in developing several specific projects.
TrainShops (TSs)
TrainShops are events that last 6-8 days, during which 15-20 participants get trained and gain knowledge on a particular topic. Every year 3 to 6 TSs are organized and their topic changes according to the needs of the organization and are decided by the International Board together with the Training Group.
LBG Budapest had the honour of organizing the first TS in 1997 in Balatonfoldvar. It was called “The International Training SEMINAR”. The next one was the “Trainshop Human Resources in Young Engineers’ Life” in 1998 hosted by LBG Timisoara. From then, TSs evolved and even got names and they are organized periodically ones or twice a year.
The topics can be various such as: Leadership(bePROUD), HR and recruiting(beMORE), PR and Image(PRIME) who was changed later on in beKNOWN on design and marketing techniques, fund raising (beRICHER), project management (beREADY) and organizing events(beABLE), IT(beNERD).
Trainers Camp
The Trainer’s Camp is one of the possible first steps towards becoming an acknowledged
BEST trainer. It is a two-week long course, consisting of several training sessions aiming to equip the participants with all the skills and tools they will need in their BEST trainer career.
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The objectives are to learn how to build and deliver presentations in front of groups, how to facilitate group work, how individuals communicate and interact in groups and what are the most effective ways of designing and delivering training sessions. Apart from these skills, the future trainers also have the chance to get to know more about BEST, its structure, and how the organisation works. The course contains both theory and practice, with the possibility of delivering trial training at the end.
Trap 5 Sex-change party
The first Trainer’s camp was organized in 1999 and it has provided BEST with a trainer’s community with over 100 members most of them still active.
The BEST Training system is self sustainable through this event.
4Ts Train the Technical Trainer
It is a new type of event that started in 2008 in which experienced committee members get trained in order to deliver technical training sessions in fields like: design, marketing, IT or fundraising.
Committee meetings (CMT meetings)
Every international team has 1-2 meetings every year in order to work on important topics and plan the year’s agenda. The number of participants varies according to the members
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BEST Internal Events
of the international team, the availability of the members, etc, but they usually gather 6-20 participants and it lasts around 1 week.
The first CMT Meeting took place in Helsinki in 1994 and it was about Strategy. Although it was considered a CMT meeting, the people present were members of Strategy Working
Group that were discussing new ideas for developing BEST at European level. The first event of such way organized by CMT members was SPOC Meeting in Chania 1996.
The trainers’ meetings are short events that are aimed to increase the skills and knowledge of its participants on a specific topic, or to develop new and existing training concepts. For example they can be organized to develop a new TrainShop or to train the trainers on a specific topic that is needed to be delivered during other BEST events.
This kind of events is quite young, dated from 2006. Until then, TiGro CMT meetings sustained the needs and it wasn’t considered a must to have them in the CMT agenda.
International Projects’ Forum & Inter Committee’ Forum
International Projects’ Forum (IPF) is a yearly meeting where BEST members from international working bodies gather to work on specific projects of their body and cooperate with other bodies. Formerly known as Inter Committee’ Forum (ICF), its name was changed in 2006 when the work in BEST started to get more project oriented rather than committee oriented. More and more bodies of BEST got invited among the participants of the event as well as our NGO partners.
The first ICF was considered to be a Workshop(Committee kick-off) with all of the CMT delegates that needed to work on the common projects. LBG Warsaw was the first organising LBG of such an event. The main topics discussed were about the Future of BEST, development of Karamba and Vivaldi programme and discussions about the collaboration and structure of other student organisations.
Together with the name and participants, a major change was in the way the schedule was handled. The schedule of ICF was committee-oriented, each team having its day of discussion with another team. It was more or less up to them to manage the time and fit all the topics in the given time. IPF on the other hand, has a clear predefined schedule for each person participating. The sessions are project-oriented and each session benefits from exactly the people who need to work on that topic. Although a painstaking job for the person making the schedule, the efficiency it brought pays off immensely.
In 2008-2009 the event gathers 50-60 most active members of BEST International. It is one of the most important internal working events that BEST has and in 4-5 days its participants can work on more than 20 different projects.
The second edition got the name ICF and was hosted by LBG Tallinn in 2002. In the next years, LBGs like Timisoara, Ghent, and Bucharest hosted the following editions. The Inter
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First ICF -Committee Kickoff , Warsaw 2001
Committee’ Forum was prepared to be a meeting for people active on the international level of BEST. For four days the BESTies worked on current projects of BEST, and took a deep look into how they could continue serving BEST in the best way.
In 2006, ICF turned into IPF. For the first time, project coordinators were included and the discussions were project oriented. The first IPF was organized by LBG Riga, and until 2009,
LBGs like Lund, Skopje and Zagreb helped BEST plan its activity for the next year.
Round Table
This event gathers representatives from our multinational partners, possible future partners and BEST members. The goal of this meeting is to evaluate the cooperation and to look for further cooperation possibilities. We very much value the feedback of companies and are looking for ways for them to be more involved in our organisation in order to ensure a sustainable way of working together. We aim not only at using our network for promotion of their activities, but also to use their expertise in areas to further develop our members and students we reach.
First round table concept was discussed at BEST-bonding partnership Workshop Porto 1997. In that autumn BEST and bonding planned for their future collaboration events like
Round Tables where all of the hot topics where discussed freely. After that event, BEST considered this kind of approach with potential, so , in GA 2002 in Paris, BEST organized
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their first Round Table with their 6 companies (partners, possible future partners) and BEST members(mostly Board members).
“The Round Table Meeting” consisted of a number of topics. Some were meant to give information, some to ask for feedback and other to discuss and evaluate. Some of the topics discussed were: opportunities given by Minerva, the interest of companies in UK students, opportunities for companies and students and FB from companies related to Minerva
Until 2009, 6 editions of Round Table were organized soldered with General Meetings.
Internal Events articles written by Cristina Dumitru and Mirela Andriescu
General Meetings
What a general meeting is
In the very beginnings of the organisation, the face of Europe was totally different from what we know now. Back in the late 80’s there was still no fast way of communication across Europe and mail, telephones and fax was the only way members could share experiences and information with each other. Thus the need for meetings was born. After all, the whole organisation was born during a meeting.
The first meeting, even before BEST was created, was held in Stockholm in 1987, and it was the very first form of a General Meeting. Of course it was totally different and it was called differently (International Week) but it’s the origin of our meetings today. Three meetings and two years afterwards (after the International Week in Grenoble and the European Weekend in Eindhoven) there were thoughts of a working reunion, something that happened finally in Berlin in April 1989. However, this meeting was special, because it started as a Working
Reunion and finished as a General Assembly, the first one of BEST!
Story of General Assemblies
The first General Assembly took place from 10th to 14th of April 1989 in Berlin. Back then, the discussions about legal existence of the organisation were quite a lot. These discussions led to the fist version of the statutes of BEST where they decided that:
“What will exist in BEST is only a Board, the General Assembly and the BEST members with the following powers: The General Assembly of BEST elects the new board of BEST, makes the budget and decides on topics.”
Something that led in the following article in the statutes:
“The General Assembly (GA) is composed of all the active members. Two General Assemblies are held annually between January 1st and December 31st. The invitations and the agenda have to be sent to all active members by the president at least two months before the meeting.
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