Thoughts after MOMS

Yesterday in the evening I returned from MOMS, the local conference of Muenster and Osnabrueck. After having slept for 13 hours I now feel relaxed and start to reflect on what I experienced between Thursday and Sunday. I want to share some thoughts with you.

It was the first time for me to experience a conference from the perspective as a trainer. Together with Christine I was allowed to facilitate a workshop for twelve new members, leading them in their first discovery of AIESEC. I am very happy how everything worked out well; all the sessions we designed before ran smoothly and I think we managed to put a clear focus on the unique possibilities of AIESEC: having amazing leadership opportunities, the chance to start creative projects and getting intercultural experiences through our international network.

Random moments:

... listening to Lars, a member who joined my LC half a year ago, giving a small presentation on Taking Responsibility and realizing what an awesome experience every single member is living in AIESEC.

... talking to Mareike, LCP Twente (Netherlands), my colleague from our partner LC, about the life of an LCP and realizing, that 800 great people all over the world feel just the way I am.

... meeting our amazing chair Alina from Romania, France and UK for the first time in the office, knowing from the start what a good job she would do.

... walking through the venue and being greeted by "Muenster Monster" (a part of our LCs culture) shouts at every corner.

... having a goodbye-round with the executive board of AIESEC Osnabrueck - their LC will be dissolved now - a extremely sad moment. Looking into their faces and listening to the speech of Kai from my team I realized how much energy they have put into AIESEC and how much they personally have gained - even if in the end they did not succeed.

... going through the meetings of all our functinal teams, being warmly greated by all of them with a nice strong drink ;).

... geeting individual feedback from all the delegates in my workshop - both areas for improvement and praise... seeing how much they have learned in those three days and what great persons joined our organizations!

More than half of my term as an LCP has passed. Remembering the last MOMS in May I see how much I have developed and changed as a person. Obviously, the way was not always easy and I have been through a lot of rough patches (as my friends know). But it was definitely worth it!

Tomorrow we are having our elections. I am looking forward to listen to the speech of the candidate for LCP. I am looking forward to the period of transition and to three more months as a LCP. I am looking forward to whatever awaits me in AIESEC after my term.

Thank you all for this amazing weekend, for the last nine month, thank you AIESEC for the last two years! Special Thanks to all my Monsters!

Nicolas

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You can find some pictures from the weekend on our Flickr-Account - Micha and Philipp put them there.

National conference

Last weekend, I went to one of our national conferences, SAM (Strategic Autum Meeting).
This is a conference where all the executive boards from 48 Local Committees come together to have a mid term meeting. There where around 300 people attending this conference.

For me this conference was so extraordinary because of the people. Meeting all the people that have taken the challenge to be in the executive board, to challenge themselves as a team to lead their local committees.

Most of the people I had already met on the first national conference at the beginning of our term, the NKK (National KickOff Conference). Then began our journey and now we met again. Every one of them has gained experiences in the past 6 months; some of them were great and some were not so good, but this is excatly what made me went to be a local committee president. I wanted to challenge myself. To grow futher. Until now I, as well as all the others, have grown in areas such as:

leading a team, celebrating success, acepting failure, facing problems one after another, feeling tired of the job, feeling not understood, feeling hungry for more etc.

And we are just in the middel of our journey, still 6 months to go to gain more experience and to grow further.

"Why not?" are the words that really touched me on this conference. A very challenging statement from our Member Commite President Gesa.

When was the last time you challenged yourself?

Experience an international conference

This is my first international conference and it´s just great.
The German Delegation consists of 15 Local Committee Presidents (LCPs) and Gesa, our lovely President of AIESEC Germany and we are simply rocking the house... ööööh hotel!!! :)))














EuroCo is a conference for LCPs from Western Europe and North America and from Central and Eastern Europe. So you maybe can imagine how it is to learn, talk and party with 160 LCPs from countries like Russia, Slovenia, UK, Sweden, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, etc.

This picture shows you one of our first moments at EuroCo: the Global Village!!!

I had very cool moments:
- Talking with Przemek from Poland and Mini from Belgium about national planning.
- Discussing eXchange with LCPs from Eastern Europe.
- Meeting the President of AIESEC International, Aman.
- Chatting with the girls from the German Delegation. Enjoying a walk at the beach with Jens. Having a party in the elevator.

You REALLY should go to international conferences... this is the view from my window!!! :)))

Happy greetz from Lisbon!!!
Betti & the EuroCo Delegation

154 days left

In 57 days my LC will vote my successor...
In 62 days my successor will go through Baaaaaaaptooooom and gets his/ her first insights into LCPs life...
In 65 days I will introduce my successor to the Board of Advisors...
In 75 days my successor and I will be at WMV (Wintermitgliederversammlung) in Augsburg...
In 81 days I will say the final GoodBye to my LCP colleagues...
In 101 days the Take Over will start...
In 126 days my EB and I will say GoodBye to our LC...
In 153 days my EB and I will hand over our local planning to the new EB and celebrate at the Take Over Party where I will have to say GoodBye to my EB...
In 154 days I will look back on a year with my EB and my LC: all the LC Meetings we had, all the Trainees that arrived and left, all the projects and events we organized, all the problems we solved...

154 days left - I will enjoy every single day...

Blogging is great and relevant

Just a short note to motivate you to start your own blog about your life and experiences - be they within or without AIESEC, in whatever country

There are definitely quite a lot of people reading this stuff. Every time a new article is published here, viewings go up. A lot of people come from Facebook or other blogs that link here. Also, some search on Google for keywords such as (just a selection of the most common) "leadership experience, aiesec, leadership and myself, impact of an amazing leadership experience, Learn from my experience of leadership" and, my most favourite search entry, that summarizes for me very well what AIESEC is about: "what local organizations can give me leadership experience".

(The map shows only the very recent visitors - storage is limited. It is funny, as I can see many friends and member of my local committee in other countries on the map.)

Cheers, Nicolas

Federal Elections in Germany

Leadership also means taking on resposibility - and voting is the responsibility of each citizen. On Sunday we are electing a new Parliament here in Germany. Trainees from all over the world meet in Hamburg and made this video to motivate all Germans to cast their ballot.
If you are living in Münster you might even find me handing the papers to you - I will enjoy that day helping organize and count the vote.

Enjoy the video!

Personal Notes from the Train

Hey!

At the moment it is approaching 1 am, I have slept around seven hours altogether in the last three days and still, somehow I feel like writing a short note :).

I just returned from Bonn, were I meet with the other members of the team on external positioning (see my post here) for an intense two days of working long hours, discussing and having fun. In the train back I realized, that working in this team alone I have gained so many new skills. Also, just minutes after leaving I was getting good-bye messages from friends I have made in this team.
In every part of my life so far I have met lots of people, most of whom I do not see very often any more. But there always are some people who will stay with you. In the last two years in AIESEC I have met so many incredible persons from so many different backgrounds as I have never met before and it is nice to know that some of them will also be there in the future :).

On a different topic:
Sitting in the train, reflecting on this, I got a short message from Natalie. She is my pre-predecessor and one of the most amazing persons I know, even though I do not hear from her very often. Right now she is doing recruitment for Google. From Paris she sent: "aiesec is amazing. just wanted to share that with you. send greeting to my local committee". Now, I do no know what made her send that message to a person she hardly ever sees at 11:30 pm - but I am pretty sure it must have been a strong experience. And it feels to good to be working in an organization that is creating experiences like that every day, everywhere for so many people.

Sorry if this got a bit sentimental, maybe will be more factual next time.

Nicolas