Tag: aiesec

Culture Generation

Yesterday was my Executive Board teambuilding day. Everyone on the 2008 EB had committed to go, which was too good to be true. Sure enough, thirty minutes before we left Atlanta on Saturday morning I get the call that Bryan, my future VP Infrastructure, is mad sick, and completely incapable of even moving in his bed. But the other six VPes and I still made that trip out to Leesburg, Alabama, for a day of getting to know each other and planning for the year ahead.


It exceeded my expectations far beyond what I could have believed them to be. Even for what little time we did planning for our team, it was the most efficient meeting I have ever been to in AIESEC (except the German conference meetings which trump it all, but then again, they are German). The personalities that came together and the visions that clicked and the words of action, not deliberation, that were spoken gave my soul a big-ass jump-start on AIESEC in general, and especially for the Georgia Tech LC. I contrasted it with the ebb of motivation that has been going on, our low(er) conference registration numbers, the sometimes defeatist attitude in our leadership team meetings, and I see a bright and shining sun charging on the horizon, that is our Executive Board 2008 and a new era.


At tonight’s leadership team meeting, my heart just about exploded out of my chest when I was offended by the stark contrast between yesterday and today’s meeting. I value everyone in our leadership team. I found – and find – myself wishing I could sweep it all away though and begin with January 1. That is a hard confession to make, but that is how I feel, and that is what this outlet is about. Life with others is not about sweeping things away however, and we will all be better for working towards January 1 in the current situation because you learn more with challenges like this. I learned that a long time ago, and dammit, I just keep on learning it harder and newer.

It is three days before National Novel Writing Month 2007 begins and I have done no plot or character outlines.

Letter to Atlanta LC: An Entreaty to Apply for the Executive Board

Hey AIESEC!

This is Preston, your Local Committee President-elect of AIESEC at Georgia Tech for the year 2008.

Charlie has sent out the EB applications and appeals to sign-up already, but if you have not done so yet or are hesitating, then this email is for you.

Most of you have been in AIESEC for less than a year, but even for many of you who have been around longer than a month you have seen the overwhelming power of the AIESEC network. You have worked as a salesperson or external relations agent in a real business (that is AIESEC GT!), networked with some of Atlanta’s top political and business figures, begun a push to use the AIESEC network as a platform to develop a project or initiative that you have created, and even experienced the wonders of local, national, and international conferences – some of you have probably even gotten a meal and a place to stay from Europe to Japan just because of your AIESEC network.

Those stories are proof that AIESEC, unlike so many other student organizations, is not a place where only seasoned veterans can take ownership. AIESEC is designed for you to develop yourself, and you can ask anyone in AIESEC who knows me – I am a firm believer in providing as many opportunities as possible to as many members as possible, regardless of their life experience or their AIESEC experience.

The thing I want to get most out of my time in AIESEC is to be a part of the perfect team. The perfect team is one where everyone not only understands their role and their place in the team, but where they are so empowered and impassioned by the work their team can do that the constituent individuals and their interactions with each other and with the outside world are able to create a sum greater than the whole of its parts. The opportunity has now been laid in front of me to be a part of the perfect team: the Executive Board of AIESEC at Georgia Tech for the year 2008. I want you to be on that perfect team.

If you feel like you can create legendary projects, turn AIESEC into the most powerfully networked organization in Atlanta, and/or use your creative and interpersonal abilities to motivate individuals to utilize our platform to change their lives, you should apply for the EB. If you look back at your GT career thus far, even if it has only lasted two months, and think about your place in this school and in your major and in Atlanta and the greater world and can’t help but say “there’s something missing,” you should apply for EB. If you are hesitating because you think it would be a cool idea but aren’t sure that you could do it with classes and other obligations you have, you should apply for EB. And don’t even begin to think that just because you are new applying would be a futile effort – on the contrary, I specifically am looking for a mostly-fresh EB, because if I’ve learned anything in my time in the network, it’s that the results and enthusiasm are highest for those who have to work the hardest due to a potential difference (kind of engineering terms there, but it means that YOU have high potential and the job has high expectations, so putting you in that position generates high results!)

On the Brink of Madness

Today was supposed to be the first planned event – the opening plenary – for the Congress Committee, but they postponed it to tomorrow morning so that people who aren’t here yet will be able to participate. Today was not a fully free day for the Marketing team, though. We made our promotional team video. I’m technically also supposed to make a presentation about myself with pictures and music and all, but I don’t know if I’ll have the ganas to tonight. Plenary is tomorrow at 9 AM.

I went to bed at about 1:30 AM, after meeting everyone who was here and giving Tiffany (who I’ve finally seen again after six months) her care package from our LC and her glasses. She got me a sweet tapestry from Kenya. I felt like a jerk for not having bought anything particularly special. I was awoken at 11:50, still way jetlagged and exhausted, with a call to be in a Marketing team meeting at 12:30. This wasn’t planned! But luckily it was just unofficial orientation and planning for making our teambuilding and CC promotional materials. I imagine the video will pop up on YouTube someday.

The cafeteria here at the university (Yeditepe) serves pretty good Turkish food. This is good, since the place in Warsaw last year was really not so good, especially that one time when we all got sick after two bites and had to go to the pizza restaurant across the street. It’s hard to know much about the food though because Turkish is not an easy language, and I’m not exactly going to learn it in a month. It all rests on the mighty reputation of the doner kebap.

After lunch was filming until about 5, though Tiffany and I and some others had plans to go to a place to smoke some shisha (nargile in Turkish). Our plans were foiled regularly until after dinner that night, when we finally went ourselves. The place we intended to go was closed, and a nice man had his young 7-year old daughters show us around the neighborhood to find a place that was open. After two strikes, we found a good place at the edge of the neighborhood. Since no one who said they would come could contact us to find this new place, we were alone. We had a good, long catch-up conversation, along with our usual conceptual developments in thought. The shisha here is the strongest and best I’ve ever had – much stronger than anything I’ve ever had in the US without a doubt. Also, we quit smoking after an hour and a half and I thought my head was going to fly away, but the same bowl was still going strong. Efe, from Turkish Cyprus, told me that the bowls here usually last two hours. We also had two chais, a Turkish coffee, and a soda water (her bad idea) between us, and with the nargile it only cost 13YTL – about $10. Not bad, Istanbul.

We then went one place down to sit with some other CC members, who had piled in without our notice. There was more smoking, and we met some new people who had arrived that day. During our stay there, three policemen came in and demanded to see all of the ID cards of the Turkish patrons of the cafe. When I asked Efe about it he said “get used to it, it’s Turkey.” He said they can do that without a warrant or anything, and they do it often. On the way back to the university I saw two dogs copulating.

I applied for an MC CEED in AIESEC in Ecuador, which I’ll find out if I get that Monday. If I don’t have an electrical engineering job by August 14 (which I’m doing everything to get – I got another possibility in Izmir in Turkey for the fall just from being here) then that looks like the best option.

I’ll be able to blog more regularly while I’m here, I think – and since the days will be full, challenging, and fun, that will be a fruitful task.

Directing a Sauerkraut-and-Wurst Western

Chairing was a great experience. Like all great experiences, it did not go according to plan, but then through some good Gerald R. Rigging and teamwork combined with legendary German efficiency, a successful time was had by all – including me.

Let’s start with arriving on-site in bustling (with cows) Helmarshausen just in time to start the scheduled conference team pre-meeting at 5. Unfortunately several facis were not yet there, and to top it off, neither was almost any member of the organizing committee – which was made up entirely of newies, 4 weeks or less into their AIESEC eXPeriences. This was because the original OC had quit the job about a month before the conference, which lost vital planning time and funding contacts. The OC, which was supposed to arrive on-site at 2, arrived at about 9:30. I had made the choice to postpone the team meeting until everyone was there so that we could have an appropriately engaging experience. The Regional Support Team representatives did however read the OC the riot act when they arrived. The poor guys hadn’t even assigned roles to themselves, other than the OCP.

The faci meeting “get to know” part which I made up consisted of only two parts, the first of which was long due to how many people we were: partner up with someone you don’t know, get the other person’s name, LC, area of study, a story they are very proud of, and a story they are very embarrassed of. Naturally, after five minutes the partners introduce each other to the whole circle. Only a few people gave appropriately embarrasing stories, others unheadily copping out by saying “I don’t have any embarrassing stories.” Bad team vibe. The second part was something that I gleaned from an experience many years ago (many thanks to Howard Hanger and his extremely liberal ministerial ideas, which are in fact so liberal that they have gotten him defrocked from the United Methodist Church), and was facilitated by the fact that there was a piano in the room. After doing a note-check by having the team do a “do-re-mi” along with the piano in the key of C, I instructed them all to choose in their head a random note,
independently. Upon bringing my hands down, they sang their note – a cacophony of Germans. But after about thirty seconds, the group started listening to what the people next to them were singing, and as they altered their notes slightly, a sound harmony was produced. It wasn’t quite as forceful or of as high quality as those good old shoutin’ Methodists, but it worked – bringing together in harmony from dischord. Unfortunately I think that we were already so late and the earlier exercise had taken so long that the effect was muted. The meeting continued with expectations, etc.

I worked all weekend with the OC during my free time, since I had OC experience and they had not even experienced an OC working for them before. I helped them prioritize and organize into roles, helped them with how to communicate effectively to meet expectations of the facilitators, etc.

Thirty minutes before the opening plenary, it was discovered (as it often occurs) that there was no appropriate cable between the laptop(s) and the sound system. This almost always happens at smaller conferences, and of course should have been expected in this case with a new OC. It required a stereo minicable with an adapter to either a regular quarter-inch cable or an L/R setup. To top things off, only 20 delegates had arrived, and we had decided in our expectations on the concept of “Who’s not in is out” – if you are not in a meeting on time then it’s your responsibility to catch up, because the meeting is starting without you. With something like the
opening plenary however, it is important to make a big impact of excitement and anticipation, which is hard to do with just 20 delegates. I was charged with the decision to honor “who’s not in is out” or to postpone the plenary by some 30 minutes to wait for more delegates to arrive. The OC told us that in five minutes (ten minutes after plenary should start) a bus would
arrive, but they did not know with how many delegates. I decided to wait to see what the number was here – if it was enough (about 25 more delegates) then we would go ahead, if not, we would wait until 3:30, thirty minutes late. Luckily, the bus was full of Frankfurters and other assorted Hessian mercenaries, so we began the plenary. It opened with a powerpoint
presentation, which included the theme song from “Bonanza,” since that was the name of the conference, reflecting the concept that it was in Germany’s Wild West region. The powerpoint had to be moved between laptops, however, and of course this caused a problem. Not only was I compensating by holding the microphone to the laptop’s puny speakers, but now in the transfer the link to the song was cut. With delegates fresh in their seats and a well-designed powerpoint by one of the OC members starting up, I did something that only an American could do: I began to improvise the recognizable melody from “Bonanza” with my voice. I did it just on a whim, the silence having pressed in on me, since everything that goes bad is of course my fault as chair. Luckily, it was a hit – the delegates clapped along for the entire power-point, and I slipped into beat-boxing before finishing with the voiced melody again. I got positive feedback on that red-button decision. Score one for ‘Merica.

Immediately after the opening plenary I went with the OC to diligently find the cables and converters we needed, in a nearby picturesque town. We got the minicable at Radio Shack-like store, but the converter was in the possession of the shop’s owner, who was on site on a boat on the river. Luckily it had not left shore yet, so we walked over and got the converter from him. The parties were saved! It would be no good to dance to no bass and low volume.

Overall I had a great and challenging experience, and looking back over my feedback I only had one “stop” – starting the faci meeting late, which was my decision but I think I made it for the best – a lot of “starts,” understandable since this was my first chairing gig – and several “continues,” so I’m glad for that. Thank you Germans!

The last evening in Frankfurt I had a solid conversation with Claudia, my excellent and accomodating host, who had been LCP of LC Frankfurt-am-Main three years ago and is on the Regional Support Team – an experienced AIESECer. Over a nice weißbier near her apartment, we turned to the meat-and-potatoes that those of us who have zipped around the network are wont to consume (and cook differently) – I aired some recent thoughts, coming off of my discoveries at ITC about why certain people join AIESEC in the “cultural spheres” around the world. They had developed into the concern that AIESEC, though it desires to create change agents for positive leadership in the world especially through entrepreneurship, it often partners with very “status-quo” organizations that are pretty entrenched in our system, both through capitalism and a bureaucratic type thing – and they often become the employers of AIESEC alumni. She relayed to me a story of a former German MC member who went on to become upper management in a large company that is a partner of AIESEC internationally, with the intent of crusading to affect their system and morph them into a true organization of change. Instead, he lost contact with most of his old friends, worked harder than a dog, and was instead defeated by his own zeal. Claudia said her mother had told her that the system will always change you. It’s unfortunate but apparently very true – the difference, for example, of AIESECers in Local Committees and AIESECers in Member /National Committees is almost always very stark, and it seems to be the ones in the LCs that affect the most change both in their communities and in their own lives. I wish it weren’t this way – in the spheres of the world that are centralized, you clearly have to go to the Source to affect change. How does it work that way when Ronnie Reagan’s “trickle-down” or “something-doo…voo-doo economics” didn’t and don’t work? The answer lies within I suppose. It’s a section of the agenda on which I am focusing strongly.

As an afterthought, have you ever been flying nice and high, realizing things will be delightfully smooth sailing with some good mini- and real- sized adventures ahead, and then you realize what Joe Cocker meant when he said “Slowly my mind and Dream turn into woe,” when in the span of about an hour many small trains collide at the same point? Nothing major at all, but I’ve got minor stresses clawing at some of my best-laid plans. That’s the mark of personal leadership, though – executing Plan E as well as you would have executed the first four, or executing a letterless plan as well as Plan E when it fails. This assumes five plans. Which you have already planned.

I Am a Hot Dog

I arrived this evening in Frankfurt and have been entertained over a beer by the overworked OCP for Bonanza, the conference I am chairing, and Claudia, former LCP with whom I am staying this evening. I have written down the conference goals and expectations in my notebook but that´s it so far. I expect an experience of winging it quite a bit, but I expect to be challenged (positively) on all fronts because this is Germany. I learned the art of facilitating from a German (thanks Maike) and it was a much more thought out and planned method than I would have intuitively developed. I expect an even greater similar challenge here. I go in a man, and I will come out a man who has been a chair. Given the theme of the conference they will have an extremely unusual opportunity to learn from a native what a rebel yell is.

Same as the Old Boss

At YOU CAN! in Poland, during Polish Night I sat across from a girl from the mainland of China. The conversation turned to censorship and its acceptance in China, and she told me that she thought that it was good that the Internet and publications were censored. She said that the government knew what was good for them, and so she trusted their decision.

This concerned me quite a bit, and was an unusual thing to hear especially from an AIESECer. I have just read this article on the BBC about life in modern Russia, and it has the same kind of concepts from the mouths of ordinary Russian citizens. Why do people willfully submit themselves to an unchecked authority like this?

Scraped Away like Rotten Cheese

A familiar tension has taken a hold of me. I walked tonight to go to Friend’s Doner-Kebab, because it’s the best in town and because the 25-minute walk to it was needed to clear my head and my nerves. I reflected on the paseo. I haven’t felt a feeling like this since the fall of 2005 – when I found the answer to my terrible loneliness and boredom in WREK and AIESEC. Now, with just over a month left and a final on the way, I feel that loneliness once again.

It’s not homesickness, although I sincerely can’t wait to see my friends and family again. Rather I feel like the Americans here have disowned or abandoned me, be it deliberately or through the crime of accident. Since Friday I’ve had almost no real social interaction, and that gets to me, especially when I’ve now got to study for this final. I specifically asked one person on Sunday afternoon: “If you do anything tonight, please call me because I’m really bored.” The response was “Will do.” They went out and did not contact me. Maybe it’s just because I’m from the South and am around people who are “sincere” at best and “polite” at worst, but that just ain’t right.

As I was walking, I recalled the challenge of ITC: Be authentic. Focusing on that phrase – much like someone from back home might have told me to repeat the name of Jesus over and over – washed and renewed me. I thought: If they happened to ask me what I thought, at least I’d tell them exactly how I felt. Bullshit gets too heavy to carry.

Luckily, I’ve got an itinerary that’s in my favor. My only exam is on June 5, and Chris Foulon from the US/Belgium, whom I met at ITC, will arrive in Valencia on his Eurotrip on the 7th. We’ll experience Valencia and Madrid together, and then it’s only a coupla days before I go to Germany, immediately after which is San Sebastián, immediately after which I look forward to a visit from Johanna and Claire for a festival in Valencia, and then only a week remains left of the Dream – at least, this chapter of it.

On a possibly unrelated note, this is pretty deck. Although I’ve heard the “wallpaper” bit before on OLED.

The answer to the answer-man

My plans to take on a padawan to become a new nomad have been scuttled – for now. The moriae can keep my sister away from the world outside Alabama, but they can’t keep the world away from my sister. The skills will be passed on when they will.

Today was the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, the great mythology of our time and for our time. I watched The Star Wars Holiday Special, generally considered to be the two worst hours of television ever produced. You both need to watch it and need to avoid it – all great mysteries are painful dichotomies.

I have always been interested in the archetype of the ship upon the sea. It was quite pronounced when I was in Gandia, where the Erasmus students and a small smattering of pensioners were the only inhabitants during an 18-degree January (that’s Celsius, ‘mericans) and the port was right there, beautiful, inviting, and playing the strings of latent mysticism. There’s something fascinating about getting on a ship on the river and/or ocean and having it like being on a road that takes you to anywhere around the world. I think I would have been quite fine as a ship captain back in the auld days of exploration. My current dream – the absolute greatest gift that anyone could ever get me, no exceptions – would be a dirigible, preferably in a configuration kind of like what they used in Final Fantasy VI. Around the concept – I don’t remember if it was Dave or Shaun – was created the phrase “Dirigible Pirates of the Sky.” Talks about creating a concept musical act continue.

I am forging my future for my greatest tasks – the German conference, IC, and research abroad – and it’s a heavy but giddy load. I balance it with going to a bodega with Vidar for some San Miguel Extra “Nostrum.” It was only €1,40 per caña. That’s a good price for a pretty good beer. Others went to bingo tonight, they did not contact me. I’m glad, mostly. More important things, like watching the two worst hours of television ever produced.

I must ask, where the hell is the hope from the pre-9/11 days? I’m talking of course about pre-9/11 music, which is personified (or at least “flagshipped”) by the Verve song “Bittersweet Symphony.” You all remember it, and when you listen to it today, you’ll realize just how much our culture has changed around that date. If you still have wax in your heart and mind and brain, then you might want to run not walk over to this webshite.

If you want hot wings, you go to the Anchor Bar (unless it’s Jefferson’s of course). If you want slow-smoked pork ribs, you go to Dreamland. If it’s horchata you’re after, you go to Daniel in Alboraia – which is where I went today after Pepe, Davinia, and I had szechuan chicken en casa and I remarked on the horchata de mierda in the fridge, when they recommended we hightail it about three kilometers to the north to the mecca of chufas. I had the most delicious horchata that probably exists, a mixta which is kind of ice on the verge of melting like a slush-formation, with fartons made on-site and warm. I’ll definitely return before I exit the Kingdom, but if you find yourself stumbling into the Comunitat, make a stop-off at this Ka’aba of Xufa.

I’m currently on the fence about it, but I’m pretty sure I’ll take the plunge to attend the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona; a quick glance at the lineup will reveal why. Then it’s my only test and the adventure of June.

Lady finger, dipped in moonlight, writing “What for?” across the morning sky,
Sunlight splatters, dawn with answer, darkness shrugs and bids the day goodbye.

Don’t Be Denied

The greatest things happen. You get back from the greatest conference, a newly fortified grand human being. Snatch about four hours of sleep back in Valencia before catching the six AM train down to Gandia to begin an amazing week of roadtripping (I invented the Spanish word via de calle) and camping through Andalucía, see faces old and new, return and begin the final crunch. You do and learn difficult things. Your amigo comes to visit. And you wake up on a Sunday afternoon, connect to the series of tubes and you get a message from a member of your fabulous TEAM from ITC with the subject line: Next Challenge – Chair for German Regional Conference?!?

And even though you promised yourself that after returning from Romania you would not leave Spain until you were back in the Land of the Free, even though there are so many great trips you could be taking in Spain, even though the plane tickets are a wallet-busting €50, you realize, by Dog, that’s a great opportunity, and you’re flattened and flattered that they would ask you do to it. So you say, “OK.”

And you chair the first offer that came to your box, which will just so happen to be, the best conference in the world, it was the best conference in the world.

That is how I’ll come to be the chair for Germany’s Wild West Region summer conference “Bonanza” from June 14-17.

The greatest things get even better. I was selected to be on the Marketing team as part of the Congress Committee of AIESEC International Congress 2007 in Istanbul, Turkey. This means 40 days of working on the most difficult and significant project I’ve ever been a part of. I am certain I’m going for the right reasons, and I’m going to put myself 100% into the work. I expect to cause a revolution. 40 days living with people from 50 countries in Istanbul and working harder than we’ve ever worked will do some kind of trick. Plus, I’ll get to reunite with one of the big characters of the great Story.

But nothing gold can stay, I know you’ve heard that story told. My love affair with Spain will be cut off on July 1, when I ride back into Atlanta on a white horse. There will be many meetings, and I’ll finally get to return to my own mecca-trough. Have you ever seen the Blue Ridge Mountains, boy? I’ll see them when I return to the steps of Lee Hall in Black Mountain, NC for the YMCA Youth & Government Council on National Affairs (CONA) 40th Anniversary Reunion. How I got there the first time is just the damnedest story, and the people who’ve affected me since – the future conqueror of Planet Earth and the person who, though too far away, still makes me believe in the music of life – will join together again. It’s my blue sky, my sunny day.

But before it all, I’ve got one test, hopefully a visit from a future nomad – my sister – followed by the Bonanza conference, and then to San Sebastián where I’ll encounter my Spanish amiga Alicia and take in quite the beach and pintxos scene.

And before I forget to write for a long time and lose that feeling, I have to say that the one thing I miss truly and forever and that never fails to bring me euphoria is playing music. It is a perpetual dolour to be around people with their drum circles and guitars and smaller instruments and only be able to clap, because everything I play is so large and not portable. Jealousy threatens me when I hear tell of my friends who go to the Capstone or UGA and they can play music all the time (and make a better living than I do at co-op), but it is nigh impossible to keep up at Georgia Tech. Lament of my life. I don’t need drugs. I get my seratonin high elsewhere, when I can.

International Trainers Congress 2007 – A Breath of Fresh Air

And was it.

My flight came into Băneasa airport (which is about to close for much-needed renovation) at four on Monday morning the 16th of April. I was looking around futilely for twenty minutes for an AIESEC sign, but I saw none. I went up to the main hub to ask if there had been anyone from AIESEC, and they said no. Was this about to turn into a nightmare in the wee hours of the morning in Bucharest?

Luckily, as I returned to the terminal I saw a guy with a hand-written AIESEC sign. He introduced himself as Alex on the CC (not the only Alex on the CC) and he took me to the BMW parked outside. “They’re one of our sponsors, so they gave us these two cars for the duration of he conference.” Just another example of how LC-hosted conferences are better sponsored! We drove for about half an hour to his bloc, one of those giant grey “Communist”-era housing blocks. It was surprisingly nice and modern inside, however – leave it up to an AIESEC-related trip to break more stereotypes! I slept for about two hours in his room, and then we had some breakfast and were off to LC Bucharest’s office. I met several CC members there, hard at work, and I admired their three-room office. They had even leased a room right next door to use as a CC office for the monumental task of putting on ITC 2007. It was full of fliers, posters, huge crates of food and bottled water (with gas…ugh), and beer. Their main office was pretty impressive – not exactly spacious, even for three connected rooms, but they had a great array of stuff – sugar-cube wall, posters and flags signed from many countries from either trainees, returning SNs, or conference attendees, at least three computers, parts of the Competency Model splayed on the wall along with yearly goals and working agreements, and best of all, a small aquarium. I spent some time talking with the CC until it was time to go to the Global Village site at noon.

I had my extremely meager Global Village possessions in a small bag that my mother was very kind to send to me while I was in Barcelona, but it was pitifully insufficient. I had a nice reunion with Kyle in the Teatrul Naţional, outside of which was the Global Village site. We chose a less-prominent stall so as not to be embarrassed by such displays as South Korea’s musical ensemble or Darko’s always-colorful Macedonia stall. However, we were surprised by some unlikely saviors: the U.S. Embassy!


They had produced a box full of nice propaganda including a large paper American flag (clutch), a couple of maps (also clutch), and a lot of booklets and information on American activities in Bucharest and opportunities to work in America – very popular among college-age youth in Romania and other Eastern European countries.


Global Village turned out to be more interesting than expected, largely because of the number of Romanian youngsters coming to ask about work in America. At the time it was unusual to me that these people about to graduate with a financial degree in an extremely promising country were looking to work for three months as housemaids and fast-food restaurant cashiers just to experience life in America. I was especially concerned because I’ve read quite a bit on the BBC recently about human trafficking through work-abroad programs like the ones they utilize. Kyle, however, assured me it was all good from his conversations with Romanians on his traineeship, and several of the LC Bucharest members had been on work abroad. It was also a program like this which our beloved George from Bulgaria, also present at ITC, has used to work as a lifeguard in Myrtle Beach every summer.

We were even interviewed by state television based on our reputation for providing a lot of work abroad opportunities for Romanians, and the television interviewer kept asking questions and nodding and smiling at me to indicate that I should say things along the lines of “There are plenty of great places in the US for college students to work!” We were on national TV that night. Duncan from the UK had his picture published in the state newspaper. There was also some fairly cool Romanian rock band with a violinist playing a KISS-esque violin shaped like an “S.” There was also enough free Rockstar energy drink to rival the cocaine intake of Tony Montana, Guns N’ Roses (pre-Chinese Democracy), and the entire pornography industry combined. This was true for the entire conference.

Why all the pomp and circumstance for 120 college students to have some stuff from their country displayed on the lawn in Bucharest? Because the President of Romania, Traian Băsescu, was to speak to the entire ITC 2007 delegation that evening at Opening Ceremony in the Teatrul. Good thing we booked him that night, too – it was only three days later that he was suspended by the state parliament.


Of course he wasn’t the only presidential figure in da house – none other than Gabiza, the President-elect of AIESEC International and current VP People Development for AI, was the conference manager for ITC 2007 and a native Romanian herself.


None of this kept me from falling asleep during some of the cultural presentations, but it was cool to have such a figure as a president addressing AIESEC, which is especially relevant and large in Romania right now on the good-job side of our benefits. When he came in the theater the myriad photographers and cameramen let out a strobe-light show of flashes and everyone stood and applauded, and he had to leave in the middle of the speech of the guy who started AIESEC in Romania, when all the cameramen left as well (except one lone guy in the middle). Said AIESEC-starter then remarked “If ITC goes well enough for all of you and you do great things, then maybe next year the cameras won’t leave when he does.” A dream of AIESEC’s for sixty years.

After the Opening Ceremony, we all crowded onto the buses bound for Mamaia, three hours away on the coast of the Black Sea, which is where the conference venue was situated. A perfect situation more or less, since it was on the beautiful Black Sea shore and was largely uninhabited (and the food was really good too), although the others who did inhabit it were US military-men, which I worried would prompt questions to me from the other delegates. Luckily it did not. I got as much sleep that night as I could, knowing the kind of toll conferences can take on one’s sleep schedule.

The next morning we were introduced with some concepts that have still stuck with me and that I am still incorporating into my life’s modus operandi: “Be authentic,” referring to how we should interact together at the conference (but of course also in life) and also the concept of how circles work in the way we work together. It was used as a basis for the new revision of the Competency Model, but somehow this presentation made it all come together and make sense to me. Anytime I’m a leader of a team from now on the concept of a circle in all its forms will be at the forefront of my mind in that dangerous phrase (has been for me, anyway): “how we work together.”


Appropriate for this reason, that we started the day with personal learning. Finally, my opportunity to delve into my own self and develop how I work with myself, since I’ve never actually participated in an LDS. The theme here was “patterns” and goal-setting. Looking back over my goals, I have achieved only three but I have made great gains on the others I listed. The drive for my paradigm shift was beginning! – but I still didn’t see the pure, electrifying channel I could get on. I wasn’t disappointed (YOU CAN! gave me all the disappointment I could muster, and there were plenty of YOU CAN! delegates here expecting much better) but I wasn’t satisfied. Impatient or clairvoyant?

After evening plenary, I went with my roommate, Carlos “One time in Venezuela” Marquez, to participate in what I expected would be an ordinary Nordic circle (you’re not a level-six Thetan…er, AIESECer…if you’ve not participated in one of these cultural exchanges). To the uninitiated, in a Nordic circle (the great circle again!) everyone stands in a circle and there is a bottle of alcohol, usually a Scandinavian vodka, to pass around. The person who has the bottle (always in your left hand!) tells something important – how they are feeling (EXCELLENT!), something heavy that’s been on their mind, a sincere praise to someone in the circle, etc. – takes a hefty swig, and then with their right hand they make a hard pull-down motion with their right fist and elbow at the same time as the person to their right does so with their left fist and elbow, and both say “HUH!” simultaneously during this motion.


The person then passes (still with left hand) over to the person on the right’s left hand, and they continue. Almost off the bat, it wasn’t just “glad to be here, want to meet all of you, I thought it was cool the President was there” kind of stuff. The things people had to offer came from deep within them, and it was clear that we all were here for exactly the right reason. We expected to be challenged heftily in the coming week, and to be able to draw from and share with each other to maximize our experience and the things we would learn. Some went on soliloquies about how they were very confused in their life right now but that they were gaining renewed vision and well-being right in the circle as they heard the others speak. The most powerful moment came after one of the delegates (who would soon be a part of my team for the week) gave a particularly long soliloquy about the difficulties he had faced over the past couple of years and how he had coped and was still looking to the future positively. When the bottle reached the initator of the circle, who had one cycle earlier confessed that he had come to hate all people and was extremely discouraged with life itself at the moment due to some atrocities he had witnessed, stated emotionally that because of what we were saying and especially what my future team member was saying, he was coming again to see the good in people who want to fight against something that is unjust. He could not thank us enough. Impact experience number one down, on only the second night of seven days.

The next day began the real meat-n’-peetaters of the conference. After another session on interpersonal learning (Feedback Focus BIO: Behavior > Impact > Outcome, and no that’s not a Panic setlist), we had our first team session. For the first time we met our team, which consisted of twelve delegates and one faci. We decided on a team name (TEAM for us, though others chose names like Huggers, Q’s, Doggie Surfers, and other assorted monikers), and were given our first task (without thoroughly knowing each others’ names): a lightning-fast scavenger hunt. Various items were posted with their worth in points, and we had twenty minutes to get as many points as possible by bringing them back into the plenary room – and we also had to make up a team cheer in that time. The items ranged from a hammer and 50 seashells to (the most worthy) a hotel evacuation plan, a live dog, and a car license plate. We are AIESECers, and although my team secured none of those, at least one specimen of each was brought back, with at least one angry complaint following each. Most notable was when I was running back into the hotel and saw the hotel manager with her arms crossed staring with a grimace at a vehicle’s front, bare of a license plate. At the same time a man was coming out and fuming, “What is this! THIS IS MY CAR! This is NOT funny! This is NOT a game!” He was wrong on the last two points.


Then began the real stuff. Nadya, our excellent faci, explained to us the premise that was to come. We had 48 hours (really much less, because much of that time was allotted for other sessions and things like sleeping) to come up with a four-hour session on personal leadership. At the end of that 48 hours, we would be in Bucharest back at the university, and for the ten teams of 12 people each, there were 500 Romanian university students who had signed up for International Training Day 2007. The biggest international training event in Romania.

Damn.

I put my name out there to be chosen as our conference manager, and I was selected. I thought it wouldn’t be such a big deal. We started out throwing out ideas for what to include in our session – intro and closing, “Wear Sunscreen” video, break into groups, “What is personal leadership?” – cliché stuff for AIESECers. Things started to get stressful, though, when I was trying to establish some vague timing guidelines which we could then split up and refine, while everyone else was trying to take it from start to finish. We all recognized, though not verbally, that we weren’t working together as well as we could at the end. Couple this with the revelation that one of the members of our group who was not so good with English was crying in her room with frustration. I was heavily reminded by one of the more experienced members of the team that this made it _my_ responsibility, as conference manager (and also as someone who spoke Spanish in this case), to comfort her and bring her back into the team. The clock ticked onward.


Carlos from Mexico, whom I knew from YOU CAN!, approached me. He has proven influential on me because he was the first to get me to realize how non-U.S. Americans think of themselves as Americans (of the New World), in a different sense than U.S. citizens think of themselves as Americans (note that in Spanish there is a word, estadounidense, which means American as in “United-Statesian,” where no such word exists in English). He asked me, “Are you finding it hard to work with the Europeans?” “Yes,” I replied. “I am getting so frustrated!” he continued, “I think it’s a difference in the mode of thought of Americans and Europeans. For us, let’s say we were going to write an essay. What would you do? You would write a rough draft first, and then follow it up with a second draft, and a third, until you have something worked out. But here, they want to argue out every small detail and leave everything perfect before they start on something new!” It was an important insight for me to have at this juncture, as tomorrow was an extremely important day in terms of making the agenda and finalizing our roles. And then Ahmed broke out the shisha and it all went to hell.


The next day, I intended to sleep through breakfast and get an extra hour’s sleep so I could concentrate…when I was awaken at noon by TEAM, who proceeded to jump on my bed to rouse me from sleep. Although doubtless the several extra hours of sleep were good, I missed a pretty important session called “Pimp my Training” in which the facis would help us with parts of our session we were not so strong on. Nonetheless, I charged through the day’s task of leading the completion of the agenda by stating at the beginning that we would start out with the American way of work (create a general, vague time block of assignments) and then wind up with a European way of working (split up, refine sessions, then come together and smooth them out). It was taken to well, and we stuck to our timings – and I also did what I could to better incorporate Lorena from Spain and Claudio (!) from Italy into the conversation though the rest of us may have been talking a bit too fast. It was during our conversations about how to arrange the agenda on this afternoon that I first noticed the amazing gains that we were all making personally, and how we were coming remarkably close as a team. It turned from a frustrated reluctance to concede to others’ opinions to building on each other and finding places to fit something new. It was enough to make my heart start to rush for a little bit, and it felt like this was a part of a movie where some nice swelling music was playing and the camera was circling moderately slow around the circle as it caught people leaning forward, eagerly giving what they could and listening. TEAM was beginning to come into its own.


After dinner, we all still had bits to work on together, especially me with the PowerPoint-heavy introduction and closing. While arranging all the stuff together, Gabiza was walking around checking out what people were doing, and we struck up a conversation about the Middle East and America when I mentioned that some of the members of LC Atlanta had met her at MENALDS. During the very time we were talking about how relevant AIESEC is in the Middle East, some of the US militarymen came walking down the stairs on their way to the lobby. I remarked, “Here we are with our mission, and who knows what they are about to do, possibly in the same region? Are we working fast enough?” The question remains unanswered: Are we working fast and efficient enough? Does AIESEC need oiling and some structural changing? Does AIESEC need its own Change Agents?

The bus on the way to Bucharest the next morning was largely spent sleeping, so we could have as much rest as possible for the Big Event. Also because we had to wake up at six.

Although I was very excited about what was coming up, I was also quite nervous – especially after we had our nice reception in the Aula Magna and walked out to see the 500 Romanian students in question.


And then Lorena pointing to the the stone banister and saying “I want to do it (slide down the banister)” in her Spanish accent just made me laugh really hard.

We came into the room and arranged and rearranged and rearranged again the room to accommodate the “beamer” (projector), spaces for flipchart posters, and of course all the people. Taking into account what Williams had once taught me about how to make the perfect session – “stimulate all five senses” – and remembering the Circles of Influence, I had arranged a game at the suggestion of one of the TEAM members where they would get into two concentric circles and meet everyone in the other circle quickly. After the expectation setting and other such issues, the other facis took over.


In the end, I believe we did a damn, damn good job – except for the evils of technology, which threatened to malfunction right before the intro session started, and then successfully derailed the closing with the “Wear Sunscreen” video taking five minutes to start up and the “experience leadership” powerpoint coupled to Blind Melon’s “Change” not functioning at all before time ran out. I ended like we had intended – “It’s up to you!” – but still felt dissatisfied with the all-important ending due to Teknos, god of me hating Georgia Tech and also anything that has electronics, intervening to scramble our humanly eating of the Tree of Knowledge.

But everyone had great things to say. They thanked us repeatedly, sincerely, and they are starting a Yahoo! group to stay in touch. On the ITC 2007 Facebook group also people who participated in International Training Day joined just to thank us for the job we did.

It wasn’t really until we returned to Mamaia that we realized just what a significant thing we had accomplished, and it finally clicked for me then the big difference: we had accomplished something. This wasn’t learn-about-sales-and-take-it-back-to-your-LC, this was create a team environment AND a session from scratch and then deliver it to impact 50 Romanian students. The difference was clear. Not only had I and all the others at ITC learned by doing – not even easily guided, but really quite independently with great autonomy – but we had impacted others in the process. THIS was the key – this IS the key. Learn by doing.

Don’t learn about how to make sales calls at conference – make sales calls at conference.
Don’t join an MC member’s session on effective mentorship – get a learning partner for the duration of the conference, and for the future.
Don’t listen to your MC VP PD rattle on about the Competency Model – get in teams, identify strong and weak places for the model in your LC or in general in your national network, and implement real, hard changes to the structure right then and there at the conference. Then run sessions the next day about various stages of the AIESEC Experience for people in those stages.
Don’t look at a PowerPoint presentation about the new IT systems – register all your new members and put up your profile on-site. Then tear into your MC VP IS with demands for a wiki and nomadlife blog-linking, and don’t let up until you’re part of the team working out what the wiki will work like later that day. Make sure it gets implemented – the opposite has happened before.
Don’t say you think the MC should incorporate open-source thought into the way your national network works – get an interested team together to hold a three-hour interactive and legislative session on cutting-edge thought trends and how they can benefit AIESECers and the network itself, complete with CEOs from startups or organizations like the Long Now Foundation. Make sure that one gets implemented too.
Don’t talk about Salaam traineeships – make sure each national conference has a quota of Salaam trainees present to give a presentation (and of course a Traineeship Power Hour).

Don’t talk about the revolution.
Live the revolution.

That night was, needless to say, a celebratory one for everybody. The highlight was Gabiza dancing Bebot – at IC this one will be more popular than the shag in the 1940s.


The next day actually started out on a low note (for those in the know, i.e. engineers). It was a day where we would have externals come in and in the morning plenary Gabiza gave a session on the AIESEC Learning Environment. This was already kind of a question mark, because I’m pretty sure we had all read about this in the Competency Model, so I guessed she was only doing it for the externals. Then she went into a section about global change over time – global warming was on there of course but so was the concept that the entirety of society would fracture in ten years along community, religious, and moral lines, that nanotechnology would be more or less commercially ubiquitous within ten years, and the kicker – that we would achieve zero-point energy within ten years (hint – zero-point energy is found next to the money tree). At this one, Kyle and I could only look at each other and shake our heads. After the session he put it best – “I hate it when management kids try to talk about science!” It served only to make me surer that new, better ways of thinking had to flow fast through the network and fundamentally change many things about it. I also theorize that this is why AIESEC Atlanta is always at a bit of odds with our national direction – because we have a completely different, engineering-based and analytical mode of thought.

In the same vein, I had several conversations with people from different backgrounds, probing about their reasons for joining AIESEC. I had a general idea of what the outcome would be before I asked them, but I wanted to make sure my sentiments were correct. My most interesting conversation was with Marc from Côte d’Ivoire, who confirmed my belief that most people from “corrupt” or “developing” countries like those in the Middle East-North Africa, Africa, and several AP countries regions (and from my experience in Mexico also people in that region as well) join AIESEC with a considerable interest in staying in their country, becoming a leader (a real Change Agent), and helping to change the bad things. I also confirmed (again, not totally, but as a general system of interest) that people from the European countries generally join to be insured a good job when they leave AIESEC, usually in a nice, cozy office position. Those of us from the Americas tend to join so we can expose ourselves to other cultures and develop ourselves with new ways of thinking and talking with people from different backgrounds, so we will be more highly developed people when we leave AIESEC and look for our life’s way after we graduate. Of course, there are elements of each bit in each person’s reason for joining, but these are what I have perceived from conversations as the “number one” reason for these demographics to join. I couple this with AI’s general recruiting emphasis on the European reason for joining: get a great job with a great established company. To me, this is not what will create a change agent, because such established companies generally aren’t down with living the revolution. Along with our infrastructural changes, our change in vision has to be one that manages to appreciate each aspect of joining the network and emphasizes it in the right way in both recruiting and helping people through their AIESEC Experience. I think that’s kind of controversial (especially because of the power of our business partners) but we won’t be creating many Change Agents that live the revolution if they just get into upper management of ABN Amro or Petrom when they graduate.

Thankfully, the evening included the kind of direct action feedback for the network I hoped we’d have. As we sat around in circles in the World Cafe setup, discussing the feedback for ITC, people were clicking on these same ideas. The last part called for three specific steps that ITC can bring to change the network. If I recall correctly, my circle had “conferences based on ITC’s learning-by-doing-and-impact model,” “creating an active network of facis like the IS Musketeers,” and, frankly, I don’t remember the third. But they promised they would take them all into account for the output!


That night, Gabiza changed the agenda to cut out a good bit of the next day and have the internal Global Village all during the night, with Closing Ceremony on the beach for the sunrise. That was a good call.


Unfortunately I didn’t get to enjoy too much of Global Village (which was crazy for which part I did participate in) because I was finishing up my International Congress 2007 in Turkey Congress Committee Teamsters application – fingers still crossed on that one.

The Closing Ceremony, however, was perfect. It was kind of cold and windy, but there was music, and we sang along, and the emotional closing because we had all really produced and changed so much together. It was contrasted so much with the end of YOU CAN!, which was kind of like a shove past the finish line, although it would be sad to leave everyone. Here it was like “the band” breaking up, going their separate ways, waiting for their blurb during the credits telling you “Where are they now?” But because of each other – specifically because of what we achieved together – those subtitles won’t be anecdotes of failure. Our command of ourselves and our environments has shifted markedly, we have met people much wiser than ourselves, and we have witnessed something new about everyone we have met, old and new. “What ifs?” are now non-existent for many of us. There is no height that is unreachable. All of this is vested in the fact that we are the new trainers, the holders of the Way, but we’re not here to teach you. We’re here to help you live the revolution. As it is said, “It’s up to you.”