Working in an invisible team

Together with around 14 other AIESECers (Ken and Johannes are two of them) I am working in a national task force that is basically doing market research to better position AIESEC towards our customers. (Sounds like serious economics - and it is. Stay tuned here or follow the wiki in our intranet myaiesec.net for contents.)

Working in a taks force is one possibility (not only for LCPs, but for every member!) of many to leave the local level for a while and work on the national or international one. Now the special thing about this team is that it works completely virtually. That was a new challenge for me: Of course I use mail, skype, spradsheets, wikis etc on a daily base. But relying completely on them was new to me. Conflicts can come up much faster when you do not see your opponent. And we all learned a lot of small things, such as: More than two telephone conferences a day are really tiring. Call all 50 Local Committees individually if you want to get answers. The station of Hagen has no W-LAN, Hannover does. Virtual irony does not work. Some virtual rooms for telephone conferences tend to kick you out from time to time, others don´t. Google Docs are really cool, but when importing excel sheets, the design will be lost... I could go on much longer.

We also learned that working together in such a big team only works, when you know and trust each other. I am really thankfull to be allowed with this great team, coordinated by the one and only Arne.

Nicolas

Picture taken on our kick-off in Bonn - only a part of the team could be there, unfortunately.