History of BEST - 25 years

Board of European Students of Technology

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www.BEST.eu.org

Let me tell you a story that doesn’t start with once upon a time...

Writers: Alejandro Sanchez Medina Alexandra Enea Alexia Spyridonidou Alla Berlova Ana Rita Gonรงalves Ana Rosa Andreea Nicu Andrei Danilov Corina Stirbu Gert Willems

Harald Rupprechter Ioana Jivet Iustina Pop Javier Martin Zamora Judit Gyenese Katerina Koutsonikoli Lucien Romagnoli Maren Elise Ruud Mathieu Vandenberghe Mihai Tociu

Special thanks to: Ana Rita Gonรงalves Mario Nzualo Mihai Tociu Sylwia Jankowska Ricardo Nuno Oliveira Mathieu Vandenberghe Arina Fedulova James Salmon Giro Raggioli Original design by: Ricardo Nuno Oliveira Europe, 2014

Mikhail Tikhonov Olcay Sari Patricia Diaconu Pedro Cardoso Roswitha Moti Triin Tartes Vicente Mauricio Vlad Gliga Wieke Villerius

BOARD OF EUROPEAN STUDENTS OF TECHNOLOGY

Board of European Students of Technology

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HISTORY OF BEST 25 Years making history

Facebook.com/BESTorg BEST.eu.org

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

- George Santayana

BEST is one of those rare organisations that touches the lives of many people. It is truly amazing how a concept, which was born in the late 1980s – “To promote Europe among Europeans” – has materialised as an international student organisation, which gathers 95 local groups present in 33 countries and has more than 3500 members.

Due to the fact that this organisation has had a big impact on its stakeholders, members and everyone who has engaged with it, this History Book is dedicated to highlight the evolution of BEST throughout its 25 years.

As George Santayana says: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. We hope that this book will help future generations of BESTies to understand the ideas, projects and mistakes which were made in the past in order to push the organisation forward.

Continuing upon the original idea of the 20th anniversary history book, this edition of the book includes new stories as well as updated stories from the previous one.

One can imagine that it is not a hundred percent possible to incorporate all the stories of the last 25 years of the organisation in a single book, therefore we encourage the next generations to keep their curiosity alive and dig up the treasure chests which contain old knowledge about BEST.

BEST 11 The Origin of BEST BEST Identity BEST Visual Identity

12 22 28

BEST SERVICES 35 Season Courses BEST Career Support Educational Involvement EBEC

36 46 54 56

WORKING METHODS 65 Private Area & Unified System Makumba Long Term Strategic Plan Knowledge management Helpdesk

66 71 72 75 77

BEST STRUCTURE 79 Boards of BEST Committees RAs BEST Regions Working groups Projects Alumni NET

80 90 118 120 124 130 140

143 BEST INTERNAL EVENTS 144 146 147 148 150 154 156 157 158 160

Internal Events Support Workshops SIT&SIM CMT meetings GMs RMs Trainshops 4Ts&TTAs, TRAMs, T-TRAMs Trainers Events IPF

163 BEST PARTNERS 164 170 176 180

External Relations BEST and Companies EduCational Partners Institutional Partners

185 BEST CULTURE 186 188 190 191 193 195 198

International Evening Honorary members of BEST Tunak Tunak Simply the BEST BEST Stories GMs traditions Zoltan’s Mother Story

201 LOCAL BEST GROUPS

01 BEST IN GENERAL

OUR MISSION. OUR VISION.

01

THE ORIGIN OF BEST etween 3-4 May 1987, the history of BEST began, almost two years before its foundation. This took place in Stockholm, at the Royal Institute of Technology. Here, a number of students organised a week-long exchange between European universities which was named ‘International Week’. At this event, both mathematics and physics students from universities in Berlin, Aachen, Helsinki, London, Delft, Warsaw, Stockholm, Zurich, Trondheim, Copenhagen, Paris, Grenoble and Louvain-la-Neuve participated. It was here that the idea of a new European association for students of technology was born.

A number of outcomes resulted from that International Week, including the organisation of a similar, annual event to facilitate discussions regarding European student exchanges and to benefit the European technology community. Also, for future editions, the event should be broadened both in

12 BEST in General

the scope of countries represented and the students involved.

A number of outcomes resulted from that International Week, including the organisation of a similar, annual event to facilitate discussions regarding European student exchanges and to benefit the European technology community. Also, for future editions, the event should be broadened both in the scope of countries represented and the students involved: • European Exchanges; • Creation of European Association of Universities (EAU); • Simplifying practical training; • Lowering cultural barriers.

This meeting involved students not only from physics and mathematics but also from other areas of expertise, coming from the universities of Grenoble, Berlin, Vienna, Ghent, Louvain-la-Neuve, Barcelona, Helsinki, Delft, Eindhoven, London, Torino, Trondheim, Warsaw, Stockholm and Lisbon.

It was decided to have two meetings per year, in November and April, and to find a solution for building an archive containing the conclusions of the meetings to be accessed by delegates. It was also decided that members of EAU would be able to represent each country.

A declaration of intent comprising of long and short-term aims was produced:

• Make host universities accept a year of study abroad; • Work for more lectures in English on higher courses. Students should be allowed to answer exams in English; • Work for exchange of three month in another university laboratories; • Improve social responsibility of engineering students European-wide.”

“V.I.A.” (Very Important Aims)

Adapted from Report of Meetings – Grenoble, March 1988

• Make available clear information about every university in the EAU to all interested parties; • Mediate between universities in the EAU and between universities and companies; • To support student initiatives concerning European-orientated affairs when possible.

The short-term aims: • Encourage the universities to accept foreign students; • Exchange information on student organisations in the universities; • Collect information about the different universities; • Stimulate international studyexcursions; • Invite students to workshops; • Get companies interested in the EAU. The long-term aims: • Create international Job-shops; • Get propositions of jobs from foreign firms; • Advertising of the EAU in the newspapers;

This meeting wasn’t only for working, as there was time to ski, socialise, and visit Grenoble University, Lyon and the Renault Corporation. “It was super!” according to Dominika Heybowicz, a delegate from Poland.

On the last day of II International Week, there was a discussion about the name of the organisation since the feeling was that European Association of Universities wasn’t transmitting the right message.

“The EAU (European Association of Universities) is recognized by the French government as a non-profit making organisation. It was felt that the term EAU was misleading so, it was decided to chose a new one on Saturday at 2:30” Adapted from Report of Meetings – Grenoble, March 1988

The first proposition was to call it European Students of Technology (EST), however the acronym in French means east. Finally, Giuseppe Margriote, a Torino delegate, came

BEST in General 13

up with the name Board of European Students of Technology (BEST). “ It has been decided to give a new name for this association: BEST Board of European Students of Technology Or another funny name: NBS (No Business School) BEST is a non-political organisation composed of students of technological universities. The

is a member of the organising committee of the international week.

Hope that students will all be European in 1992!

Good luck to BEST ! ” Report of Meetings – Grenoble, March 1988

Before II International Week finished, the next host was chosen – Eindhoven.

It was also agreed that BEST needed a logotype, and that a newsletter with updates should be written every two

“BEST is a non-political organisation composed of students of technological universities. The members of BEST are the committees at the European universities of technology.” members of BEST are the committees at the European universities of technolog y. Each committee nominates one student responsible for BEST in the universities, during one year, at each international week.

At least two meetings will be held each year to reinforce links between technological university students.

An International Week will be held in Europe in November each year. A working reunion will be held before the Easter of each year during 4 days. When voting, each university has one vote. A proposal is accepted with a 2/3 majority.

The organising committee is in charge of inviting the participants and distributing the final report to all. Annual president of BEST 14 BEST in General

months. Also, The first step in forming Local BEST Groups was taken: the definition of the term “representant” in BEST was agreed upon by the delegates. A representant of BEST was not a person, but a university member of BEST. Meanwhile, until the III International Week in Eindhoven, the educational system in Europe was the subject of a questionnaire to the universities already involved in EAU. Pierre Shorter and Christophe Sitanant from Grenoble collected the answers that allowed a university database to be built. The main finding of this questionnaire was that companies were involved in the

university programmes in many ways, such as: grants, donations of equipment, research contracts, training for students and diploma work.

Eindhoven was the ‘next place to be’.

The name of the event was changed to International European Week (EWE) and it took place between 30th of October – 6th of November, 1988. Students were invited from all over Europe, including students from the newly created BEST. Some new universities also came like Ecole Centrale, ENSAM, UTC (Compiegne), Dresden, Budapest, Darmstadt, Bologna, Zurich and Ljubljana.

This meeting was characterised by hard work, resulting in several developments.

Some important question were asked at the beginning of the event, like “Why BEST?” and “How BEST?”. To find the answer to “How BEST?”, four topics were discussed: • Communication inside BEST – To create good communication links with an information network to help organise meetings, and the idea of forming an institution called the Central Secretariat. This is still a hot topic in BEST. The solution to solve this problem was having a Meeting and an Information Network. The main idea accepted was to have no concentration of information, knowledge and influence at university members.

• Finance – Deciding on who had the responsibility for raising and distributing money, and for solving financial problems.

The outcomes of this topic were: • “Financing the weeks is the responsibility of the organisers of the respective week. The participants should pay travel expenses, while food and lodging during the week is to be paid by the organisers.

• There should be no participation fee for the weeks.

• The organisers of the weeks should be chosen 1 or ½ years in advance.

• The Local Groups will be responsible for covering their own expenses.

• We decided that for the time being the Secretariat will have to raise its own funds. If it is not able to do so, the Administrative Council will have to take over the secretarial function.

• A suggestion came up to finance the week by cooperating closely with companies, giving the companies a role in the week. (This was more or less the way it was done in Grenoble). ” Adapted from Report of Meetings – Eindhoven 1988.

(Ida Lau)

• Setting up local groups – members should try to increase awareness of BEST existence and get others involved in it at their home universities.

For the first time the aims and constitution of the Local BEST Groups was discussed inside of a working group.

Some of the most agreed upon aims were: “To make information about the other universities in BEST available to all students.

Getting BEST known in our universities, using newspapers, radio, bulletins, posters and

BEST in General 15

presentation. Invite foreign students to jobshops.

Get you university to create study calendars in english.

Create contacts in a foreign country for students going on a holiday.

Main aims of encouraging local groups and internal communication through newsletters.”

Adapted from Report of Meetings – Eindhoven 1988.

(Ida Lau)

Until the next meeting, a temporary structure of BEST was agreed upon. For the first time, the idea of having a Central Secretariat and an Administrative Council appeared. The structure and the functions of these two bodies are described below.

The Central Secretariat was in charge of the Information Network. Its functions were: • Collecting information concerning the work of BEST. • Receiving requests for information concerning BEST. • Selecting which universities to pass this information or any requests out to.

• Periodically writing newsletters (a deadline was fixed for the first newsletter) Amy Blake and Michael Farry from the Imperial College London agreed to take this position and set up a permanent Secretariat in London.

The Administrative Council were the organisers of the next International Week. The representatives from Technische Universität of Wien (Roger

16 BEST in General

17

BEST in General 17

Hackstock and Theodor Zillner) agreed to take on the responsibility of arranging the next International Week. Therefore the Administrative Council of BEST from November 1988 to November 1989 was founded in Vienna, Austria.

The President of BEST was chosen by and from this Council.

At that time, BEST did not have any formal Statutes. Christophe and Pierre presented a proposal for Statutes in Eindhoven from Grenoble, but there was no time at this meeting to discuss it. More work from the next university!

The organisation of BEST was registered formally, situated in Grenoble, France.

At the European Week in Eindhoven it was decided to keep it in this way.

The next gathering was set to be organised by Technische Universität Berlin in March or April 1989.

However, this location was not certain, as the prospective hosts were not sure they would be able to raise sufficient funds in such a short time.

But through the hard work of the organisers, from 10-14 of April, 1989, BESTies were able to gather in Berlin, for the first conference exclusively for BEST. This meeting became the founding General Assembly of BEST. The aim was very important – to define the statutes and to present precise plans for the future. The delegates were divided into two groups: one to decide on the Statutes and the second to discuss the future plans.

Regarding, the statutes discussion, BEST had been registered in France and not in other countries. There was a discussion about French law 18 BEST in General

and translation of the legislation for such an association into the systems of law in other countries. There was a guideline made by Vincent Gillet (France) containing all the advantages and disadvantages offered by French law. Finally, it was decided to translate the Statutes into French because BEST would be an organisation which is officially registered in France and thereby had to meet French legal standards. The guidelines also had to take into account that BEST had to be a non-profit organisation and that all of its members should be independent of each other and equal with no juridical subordination. After many discussions, the ‘preliminary’ Statutes were ready.

The important clauses are provided below.

“ART. 1 Title and location of legal registration Title: BEST – Board of European Students of Technolog y Location of legal registration: BEST ENSIEG DomaineUniversitaire BP46 38402 Saint Martin d’Heres FRANCE ART. 2 Philosophy: To promote Europe among Europeans.

ART. 3 Aims: BEST is a non-political and non-profit making

organisation with the following aims: • To provide information and mediate between students, between students and universities and between students and companies.

• To support European oriented student affairs connecting students.

First Statutes – Berlin, 1989” Regarding structure, delegates decided that BEST would consist of a Board, a General Assembly and members of BEST. Finally the status of the association was defined.

We can find something interesting in the article number 4: “(…)The Local BEST Groups may be only of two types: • Student organisations with legal status, such that all members of that organisation are passive members of BEST. • Individual students involved in BEST. These are all passive members.

An active member of BEST is the representative of an university chosen by its local BEST Group.

First Statutes – Berlin, 1989” Finally, the first set of Statutes were passed and deposited in Grenoble, since the organisation had to be registered somewhere, and it was not possible at that time to register an organisation as European.

The Statutes approved at the founding

General Assembly, defined the structure of BEST, simultaneously stating the scope of BEST as being limited to students of technology as found at technological/technical universities or university faculties in Europe. The basic element of the organisation is the Local BEST Group, commonly referred to as an LBG. LBGs constitute the representation of their respective universities in BEST, and vice-versa. It is made up of a group of students at the university of the LBG, and can be either independent or related to a student organisation at that university. In practice, both of these situations are encountered.

The discussion about BEST logotype was next. The conclusions of it were peculiar. In fact, discussions about BEST Visual Identity were always peculiar during the last 25 years, but more details are given in the chapter about Visual Identity. Below there is a part of the report related to this discussion in Berlin.

“Three new designs have bee made, and it was voted on whether to keep the old one, accept one of the new ones or design a totally new sign.

Results of the vote:

1. “sinus wave” 26 votes 2. “atomic model” 16 votes

3.

BEST in General 19

“circle” 7 votes 4. “new logo or keeping old” 42 votes Since one of the newly designed logos were accepted, it was decided to combine the “sinus wave” (modified) with the old logo.

The design will be made by Switzerland.”

Adapted from Report of the meetings – Berlin, 1989

And this was the genesis of the sinus wave and the map of Europe on our first official logotype.

The discussion group related to External information decided to produce a booklet about the companies interested in BEST. This booklet should be financed by advertisement.

The last subgroup, in charge with Exchange, Jobshops and Contacts had some interesting results: “Short-term Exchanges proposals: • Short-term student exchange should be managed informally.

• Possibilities for students to get practical experience and/or holiday jobs should be offered by each university in newsletters that are to be issued to all other BEST groups.

• Special weeks should be organised for foreign students to give them an idea of the university and how it is being run.

• Local groups should help foreign students who are looking/asking for holiday jobs or opportunities to get practical experience.

20 BEST in General

Long-term Exchanges – proposals: • Encourage professors to offer student exchanges.

• Look through existing offers and publish them.

• Provide information for long-term student exchanges.”

Adapted from Report of the meetings – Berlin, 1989

During these discussions, the subject of organising an international Jobshop was discussed. At that time many universities had a national Jobshop and an international Jobshop didn’t existed yet, so BEST could fill this gap.

ENSAM began its life with an idea of organising an international FORUM. It was also proposed that each Local Group should get information about the other students’ organisations.

Finally, the conclusions about the next meeting are summarised in the following paragraph and it’s possible to find also the First Advisory Committee of BEST: “At the last General Assembly it was decided that the next meeting would be held in Vienna, Austria.

There was controversy over this, because the Vienna representatives did not feel they should be founding members. This created a problem, because in the Statutes is written that only members of BEST can be on the Board, and that the President and Treasurer of a meeting should be of the host university.

A vote was taken and it was decided by a large majority that the meeting should be in Vienna anyway. In this case the President and Treasurer were voted upon even thought they are

not students of the university in Vienna, as was the Secretary.

It was also decided where the meeting after Vienna would take place: in Trondheim, Norway.

The elected Board of the next meeting consists of : • President: Ida Lau (Trondheim, Norway) • Treasurer: Christophe Fitamant (Grenoble, France) • Secretary: Jakob Lopez (Berlin, Germany) • Vice President: Ida Lau (Trondheim, Norway) • Vice Treasurer: (to be decided on by Vice President) The report of the meeting was not written by the Secretariat, since this does not exist as Statutes defining the Secretariat did not exist at the beginning of the meting.

It was decided the Secretariat of the Board should write it.”

Adapted from Report of the meetings – Berlin, 1989

As we can see, Ida Lau was both the President and Vice President in the first Board.

Berlin was just the first official chapter of BEST.

BEST in General 21

02 BEST IDENTITY

“Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you’d like to act.”

- Bob Dylan

o Whom It May Concern, stay awhile and read a story, without “once upon a time” …

The idea of BEST, Board of European Students of Technology, was born in 1987 and in 1989, in Berlin the philosophy: “To promote Europe among Europeans” went official during that GA. We knew that we think different. Our will was to contribute to the improvement of a new and different generation (and still is, nowadays). We wanted to support students to reach their full potential.

We realised that we can reach this if we build, step by step, a future. A future where each of us can build our careers by juggling our passions, experiences, learning opportunities and interactions with different working environments.

So, the creation of our statement of purpose started … From 1994 to 1996, we were shaping and reshaping it to make it fit perfectly with our will.

In 1996, the first statement was born: We will strive to develop activities

22 BEST in General

in order to help our fellow European students of technology to become more internationally-minded, by reaching a better understanding of European cultures and developing capacities to work on an international basis.

We will achieve this purpose through the active involvement of our members, in challenging and innovative projects, providing the conditions for their personal development and putting their abilities to full use. We will value integrity and seek a wide range contributions to the advancement of the Association.

We thus expect to provide European engineering students with complementary education, while broadening their knowledge of other cultures. As result, we hope to bring a significant added value to the training provided by the Universities, therefore increasing the potential contribution of students to their communities.

Later on, in 2000, at PM Budapest we said it’s safe to say that we are doing many of the things the purpose says … but we

also seem to be doing more than just these things. We decided that without some, more clearly defined purposes (a mission) and shorter term goals, it is very hard to keep this organisation moving in a steady direction. Instead, we risk assigning resources to projects that are not properly put into a strong context, and therefore lose any relevance and usefulness they may have. Because we all care for this organisation, we don’t want this to happen!

An issue that ties in very closely with the question: “What do you want to do” (your mission) is the question: “What do you want to be(come)” (your vision).

Of course, a vision, mission, structure and some values were about to shape BEST now. After long discussions in Budapest, a WorkShop in Warsaw (2002) and an Inter Committee Forum (2003) in Timisoara, GA Copenhagen (2004) happened. During this GA, a framework suitable for personal development was created and a new Statement of Purpose was officially released!

Continuing the process from previous years, in 2006 BEST formed the Identity Working Group whose aim was to build an adequate identity of BEST with perspective of developing the association. After several discussions, there was a kick start WorkShop in Paris where past was analysed, followed by a WorkShop in Ljubljana.

The vision became: ‘Universal understanding’ with the mission: ‘To develop students’. We based everything on values such as flexibility, friendship, joy, knowledge and quality.

In GA Zagreb 2006, the BEST’s identity was finalised.

Vision Empowered diversity People understand and respect different cultures and societies. The environment of empowered diversity supports people in applying their full potential and acting responsibly.

Mission Developing students BEST Spirit Flexibility Friendship Fun Improvement Learning From 2006 to 2009 no major changes were made, however the Marketing Strategy Project was started in 2009 by XXI Board and it had several outcomes such as the BEST Brands Book, Communication Plans and Marketing Strategy Guidelines.

And so, 10 years later, with a defined identity, we decide to develop an advanced Marketing Strategy.

In 2010, there was an Identity WS in Ghent to evaluate if the identity we had was proper for our association.

The outcome from this WS was that, in general, everything was still valid as it was in 2006 and the 4-pillar model started to be promoted to LBGs. We started to be surrounded by zillions of bits and live more and more in the BEST in General 23

24 BEST in General

digitalised era… so, in 2013 Marketing Project came again in the big picture.

During Marketing Project SIM Vienna all the BEST services were analysed again, the EBEC project got more attention and during International Project Forum Lisbon 2014 all the selling points and core messages for the services were finalised. The marketing side of BEST made a step forward and adapted all its activities to the new market in order to clarify BEST’s image and needs.

Nowdays, we struggle to get out the BEST of this organisation and … Yes, we work a lot, but we love this! We dream it, we are doing it and overdoing it, just because we have a great team, because every time we meet other BESTies and challenges it is a brand new experience with a bunch of memories! All these values and mission unified us, made us accomplish the 25 years of BEST, 10 years of competitions and 5 years of EBEC (and keep growing). In the end, this is the drive behind the teamwork across borders.

BEST in General 25

“

Yes, we work a lot, but we love this! W it, just because we have a great team, bec challenges is a brand new experience with a

We dream it, we are doing it and over doing cause every time we meet other besties and a bunch of memories!�

03 BEST VISUAL IDENTITY HE FIRST LOGO Beginnings are never easy. The great organisation called BEST was born, but without any visual elements that would show our identity. From the international week in Grenoble in 1988, the participants wanted to define the aims, structure and identity of the newly created students’ organisation.

Sketches were made defining a common Visual Identity and by the meeting in Eindhoven, a map of Europe together with the BEST acronym, was used on reports.

At the meeting in Berlin 1989, there were three proposals for the logo of BEST. “Three new designs have been made and it was voted whether to keep the old one, accept one of the new ones or design a totally new sign.”

The new concepts were “the atomic model”, “the sinus wave” and “the circle”.

Since none of the new designed logos were accepted, it was decided to combine

28 BEST in General

the sinus wave with the old logo. The people responsible for the new logo were members from Switzerland (Zurich).

However, Zurich would not prove very active later on and didn’t succeed in the task of popularising the logo.

The first official logo of a BEST group, was the logo of LBG Trondheim produced prior to the General Assembly Trondheim in 1990. It was made by a senior architecture student (Anette Dietrichson) and contained a map of Europe, a sinusoid on an oscilloscope screen (representing engineering students) and a Viking ship. All of the other LBGs were enthusiastic about the logo, but because Trondheim made a personalised logo for their university and town, the LBGs replaced the Viking ship and kept all the other elements.

The first time it was used on materials, was on the black cotton sweaters that participants received at the BEST meeting in Oslo in 1990/1991.

At the same time, the delegates were keen on having a colour associated with BEST. It was voted that the official

colour of BEST should be dark green, and the subsequent counterproposal of making it blue was rejected. Even though we had common elements, the logo was different from one LBG to another. One differing aspect was the dimensions. For example Warsaw and Tallinn had it really tall and thin in comparison with the other groups.

BEST members realised that there was still work to be done considering the Visual Identity. Meetings were made and lots of LBGs discussed how they could improve the Visual Identity of BEST and reach a Common Image.

The path was rocky as members groups of the organisation were so diverse, but with the determination of some internationally involved members, it would be achieved at PM 2007 in Valladolid.

The first attempts to change the logo started in 1995-1996 and after that, attempts to reach a Common Image of BEST came every four or five years. As rocky as the path was, it was interesting and exciting at the same time. After some time, the people interested in marketing realised that the logo was not really suitable. It was complicated (making it more difficult to print on promotion materials like t-shirts) and it was not obvious that an oscilloscope with the sinusoid on it actually represented engineers.

At GA 2000 in Sweden, we faced a new attempt to introduce a new logo. Yiannis Zevgolis, the markeTeam coordinator at that time, made a proposal to change it ... into a “worm”. This was the name that the proposed logo got, even though

some people were not sure what to make of it! Unsurprisingly, the proposal was rejected.

One strategy of putting a common image into practice and to get LBGs to follow guidelines was through this new Logo, as having the whole organisation use the same graphical face towards the external world, was seen as the first step.

THE GRAPHICAL PROFILE Even though the logo has not been changed, there was a new proposal at GA 2004 Copenhagen about BEST’s graphical profile. The document stated the general rules of how the logo should be used, what colours were allowed and that the ratio of the logo rectangle should be 4:3. The proposal to have a graphical profile of BEST was accepted, and markeTeam took charge of overviewing the correct use of the logo. However, there was some resistance. For example, some LBGs wanted to keep using their local logo, or use specific colours which were not agreed upon. (For a certain period of time, LBG Eindhoven made proposals at every GA to change the Official Green to orange-blue ... they even offered nice quantity of Dutch beer to each voter in 2002.)

Other tools, like pins, templates (presentation, a one-pager, and webpage) helped also to harmonise BEST’s identity and give LBGs the proper tools to promote a unified European organisation.

BEST in General 29

THE SHIELD At the same time, during GA 2004, markeTeam received a mandate from LBGs to develop a common image of BEST. As a result, there was a workshop on the topic. One of the results was the creation of the BEST shields. The idea was to have one shield in the top left corner of the design and an inverted one in the lower right corner - and slowly have the shield with the new logo replace the inverted old logo.

During that spring, members from markeTeam made a proposal for making the shield elements official for BEST, and making it obligatory for all LBGs to use them in all BEST materials. However, as these were made during IPF 2006 Riga and there was not enough time to show them to LBGs, the proposal was withdrawn after a long discussion. The shield elements simply remained “guidelines” and it was stated that “it would be good to use”. Still, some LBGs started using them with quite some success, however we were still pretty far away from a Common Image.

NEW PROPOSALS Time passed and BEST still needed to find a way to create a consistent Visual Identity. The XIX Board (the Sailors) decided that a Visual Identity for BEST needed to be created (and with a good concept). BEST collaborated with a company to create proposals for a new logo and they came up with four different concepts; the “human concept” being one of them.

30 BEST in General

“The result proposed by the company was probably more fitting to represent BEST outside of BEST than the existing concept (logo + shields / old logo and old font), but at the same time it was not fitting to BEST inside of BEST.” - Manuel Gay, the Sailors

However, there was no time for doing proper change management and when the new concept was first presented, BEST was not ready for such a drastic change introduced by an external party.

So by the time of GA France 2007, more concepts were created: “flower power”, “leaves” and once again the shields. All four proposals were presented at GA in 2007 and once again, none were approved. However, BEST finally realised that a change in its Visual Identity was unavoidable.

A NEW VI The Board of BEST restarted the Visual Identity project and elected a new project leader: Marian Buhnici from LBG Brasov. Prior to Marian, the task had been taken on by Christian Banik from LBG Stockholm.

In September 2007, the Visual Identity Workshop in Timisoara 2007 took place and 19 participants interested in the topic joined to create a new Visual Identity for BEST. The participants were divided into groups and came up with five different ideas. Each of these concepts was explained in detail in a brand book. At PM 2007 in Valladolid, all five concepts were presented to LBGs who voted on the new logo. The proposal

of the “Star Concept” was approved.

After many years of work to create a common image of BEST at a European level, the goal had finally been achieved.

There was a stated transition period of one year, in order to give time for LBGs to start using the new logo. This time was also used for gathering feedback and at GA Tallinn 2008, the BEST Brand Manual together with all the changes were accepted. By GA Budapest 2009, all LBGs had to implement the new logo and follow the BEST Brand Manual.

spring 2013 all materials and templates were updated and redesigned.

EBEC VISUAL IDENTITY Besides the Visual Identity of the organisation itself, BEST also defined the identity of the European BEST Engineering Competition. EBEC is the fastest growing external project that BEST is offering to students, both in size and in popularity, and a consistent Visual Identity plays a significant role

“After many years of work to create a common image of BEST at a European level, the goal had finally been achieved.”

After a few years of usage of the Visual Identity document, some inconsistencies were detected. In 2012, BEST once again made a step towards unity, by updating the Visual Identity document with the initiative and work from Radovan Zvoncek, Youcef Mammar, Judit Gyenese, Ana Rita Goncalves, Marija Gogic and Krzysztof Kobylecki.

Some new regulations were added like the usage of the BEST Logo, the usage of BEST logo with other logotypes, recommendations for the usage of graphical images on BEST materials, and some old design materials like sinusoids were removed from the Identity. The new version of the VI was approved on Virtual International Plenary in spring 2013. After this, in

in the way an event presents itself to its stakeholders and keeps its public image.

The first VI was created for EBEC Final 2008, and a document called “EBEC Graphical Guidelines” appeared in 2010. The content was focused on the explanation of the new logo and how to use it, as well as recommended colours, fonts, design elements and unacceptable uses. The credits of the first version of these guidelines go to Christophe Jouret, Leszek Gorczyca and Thomas Ykman.

During 2011, the EBEC Visual Identity SIM Istanbul occurred, and afterwards the EBEC Visual Identity elements were organised into a new document to maintain and strengthen the desired image for the EBEC brand (at every level). It was this SIM where EBEC BEST in General 31

logo was redesigned and the current EBEC visuals with a differentiation for the 3 levels of the competition, were created. After the event, new EBEC graphical elements and guidelines were introduced, ready to be used by Local BEST Groups.

2012 and 2013 were trial years and input was constantly gathered from LBGs. Evaluation took place each year and the number of LBGs following EBEC VI grew year by year. In 2013, all the national and regional rounds were using it. In spring 2013 mT made templates for LBGs to use, in order to strengthen the proper usage of EBEC VI. During mT SM 2013, the document was updated and during GA Bucharest 2014 the LBGs voted for the proposal defining EBEC Visual Identity as a mandatory component in all EBEC events.

32  BEST in General

BEST in General 33

02 BEST SERVICES

WHAT WE DO. WITH PASSION.

01 SEASON COURSES

HE STARTING POINT Even from 1989, the moment that BEST was born, its main goal was established: to help the students of Europe. One of the main programmes discussed back then was a project that aimed at making the learning programmes of European Universities of Technology known among students. In this way, BEST would be able to ease the students’ task to go and study abroad. Even though all LBGs worked hard to reach this goal, the project was very hard to implement and soon BEST members thought of another solution.

The idea of courses organised by BEST in collaboration with universities popped up during the General Assembly (GA) in Trondheim in 1990. At that time, it was the most important thing to do and it seemed easier for everyone to organise such events. The delegates then decided to have a list of topics that

36 BEST Services

every university could hold a course about. These courses should be about two or three weeks long and would have to be taught in English so that everyone could attend them. Obviously, they have to be technology-based courses. They would be prepared for groups of about twenty or thirty people. The range of time for holding these courses would be from June to October. This would be the beginning of the Summer Season.

The BEST programme of complementary education is one of the oldest and most important projects of BEST, aimed to broaden the knowledge of European students, mainly in the field of technology, but also in other areas that can contribute to the personal development of every student involved.

The courses organised all over Europe within the programme, enhance the knowledge of its participants in a way that complements the education provided by their own universities.

Therefore, the mission of the Complementary Education Programme of BEST is “to facilitate self-development

in the fields of engineering, management and cultural matters”.

The academic part of a single BEST course is of course very important.

It consists of lectures, case studies, company visits, visits to research institutes, etc. There are currently three major groups of learning events organised by Local BEST Groups: • BEST Course on Technology is an event aimed at increasing and widening the professional knowledge in a certain field of technology, especially concerning modern technical applications of technology and the latest research achievements • BEST Course on Career Related Skills is an event about nontechnological subjects in order to develop personal skills in topics linked with working methods, communication techniques, marketing, economics, project and organisational management and other such soft skills with an emphasis on practical work • BEST Course on Applied Engineering is an event aimed to make students put their theoretical knowledge into practice through team cooperation, while overcoming the obstacle of limited time and resources But there’s much more than the academic part of a course that can make the days with fellow students from all over Europe an unforgettable experience. It is a great opportunity to find out that students from all around Europe are alike, that there are no borders between them and that the different cultural

backgrounds of the participants actually make the event even more colourful and interesting. Besides, better getting to know the host city, country and culture, looking beyond the walls of usual tourist attractions, many other things about other countries and cultures may be discovered through the eyes of participants.

Also, apart from BEST Courses, there are external events not containing an academic component: Leisure Events.

They mostly focus on social and cultural aspects and often are based on outdoor activities (hiking, rafting, skiing, parachuting, etc.). It is however required to have an organised programme for the duration of the whole event.

The next step was to have some regulations and recommendations about what was then called the “Summer Programme”. What was this Summer Programme really about? It contained the actual season, as well as all the previous deadlines included (the activity announcement, application, validation, ranking and optimisation).

SUMMER PROGRAMME 1991 The decisions made at GA Trondheim ensured that courses would admit at least 20 BEST students, have some kind of evaluation, have a level and a topic decided by the organising university and have 4 working hours per day. 75% of their places would be given to BEST students and the rest to non-organising BEST universities. All the information and prerequisites regarding their details would be submitted to BEST. The BEST Services 37

applications and pre-selection would have been completed before the GA and the tuition costs would be covered by the organising university.

All of these rules were to be respected by each university and LBG. Because back then we didn’t benefit from internet facilities and online application, students were filling their application forms by pen and afterwards gave them to the LBG at their university. The GA delegates of this LBG would then take the applications and give them to the organising LBG where the students applied. Another solution was to send the application along with their CV through the post by a certain application deadline.

This process was hard. Selection was made manually by BEST members, so there was no common procedure of selecting and ranking the applicants. At some point, some applications even had pictures, but this got out of hand when in some LBGs the selection was made based on good looks, and soon adding pictures was no longer allowed.

In 1992, during the GA in Helsinki and Tallinn, the first optimisation was done.

LBG Grenoble took the challenge to make the first manual optimisation. Its purpose was to fill most of the available places and allow students to apply for several Summer Courses (SC). This method remained difficult and had several downsides. Year after year the system was improved, but it took a lot of time and effort from the BEST members.

“At the beginning of the 1994 Summer 38 BEST Services

Programme (SP), several problems were encountered: • The SP-posters and the SP-leaflet were made and distributed very late due to continuity problems and overloading of the responsible.

• The deadlines were postponed by the V Board because of the delay of the info-material and organisational problems.

• The new deadlines were subsequently ignored by a large proportion of the SC organisers.

• There were major problems with the optimisation which resulted in a further delay.”

The result was that the first list of participants was distributed at the end of May. Some SCs started in the beginning of July, so the applicants had more or less given up hope and in some cases arranged other activities.

This prolonged the time before some of the participants were informed of their acceptance even more. The final result was a large number of unused places and a much larger number of unsatisfied applicants.

Some of the SCs had problems living up to the standards of the BEST SCs. As could be read in the VI Board report: “Every SC is representing BEST toward its participants, so if a SC is poorly organised the whole BEST network is discredited”.

Organisers always tried to get money from programmes like ERASMUS or TEMPUS. For some of the seasons, we were financially aided by the European Union, as we were applying for grants for the courses. Also a proposal for collaboration with FEANI was presented by the Board, as they seemed

to be interested in helping Summer Courses locally by providing lecturers in technical subjects (after all, they are engineers).

During GA 1994 in Turin, the first official “Book of making Summer Courses (SC)” was presented. It was called the Summer Programme Book (SP Book) and it included all the deadlines and advice for the SC organisers.

THE SUMMER PROGRAMME BOOK The SP-book was made to improve the “quality” of the SCs and to improve knowledge management. It was made to improve the SP-booklet made by Ovidiu Sandor from the V Board, decrease the papers needed for a SC organiser, and finally structure the Rules of the BEST SP. The booklet was included in the book, some chapters from it were restructured and minor changes were made.

To start from the structure of the book and then later deal with the contents was treated as a completely new project, where the booklet and the rules were given as background material.

The book was to be updated after each season after gaining more and more experience.

As the SP was growing more and more, inside BEST a new team was born that was concerned about the complementary education offered by BEST: SPOC or Vivaldi Committee.

SPOC was originally founded back in GA 1996 to solve problems related to the optimisation of BEST summer

programme. Originally known as the Summer Program Optimising Committee, one of the committee’s early projects was to try to find a way of ranking LBGs based on the quantity and quality of their activities (a project that was later dismissed).

Gradually, as the committee developed expertise on this and related areas, SPOC grew to implement and take care of the Vivaldi procedures and the quality of BEST complementary education. SPOC was also involved in the development of the current optimisation engine: “Johnny” (as a proper IT-committee didn’t exist by then).

In this period, lots of events (WorkShops) were needed to establish common ground for the SP, and define some requirements and advice that each LBG would be encouraged to follow. For this, the WorkShops in Kosice, Lund, and Barcelona gathered members of SPOC that worked to make these BEST events easier to organise and better planned.

During these events, they prepared all the information for the book and started organising and improving it as much as they could.

QUALITY OF BEST COURSES AND JOHNNY Until ‘96 -’97 the application was still made by fax (or snail mail) and the optimisation was made manually. As the Internet appeared in the lives of BEST members, SPOC considered that there was a pressing need for a system that would make the optimisation BEST Services 39

automated. Therefore some people from SPOC joined forces and started working on an optimisation procedure.

Some people from the CMT had to design the content of the application and others would implement it accordingly.

From the ones that initially worked in the development of this application, we can mention two guys from Timisoara: Ovidiu Sandor and Cristi Bogdan.

Ovidiu had a scholarship in Stockholm so the hosting for the server was there for a long time. The application was called “Johnny” (as the anonymous guy name in Romania) and the hosting was nada.kth.se.

Many of the members of both the Information Technology Committee (ITC) and SPOC focused on Johnny server to make the optimisation process better, so several versions of Johnny were launched during the years 9698. After a couple of years, Johnny turned into BEST Application System (BAS). It remains practically the same application, just continuously updated with new features that make the life of BESTies easier.

In parallel, another project was developing inside SPOC. It was named Green Apple and it was a set of guidelines that would assure the standard for the courses’ organisation.

The first attempt to discuss and develop a quality system for BEST Summer Courses was at IBS Athens (November 1998). The discussion group handled two case studies: “Building up a quality system for evaluating the experiences of foreign students at a university 40 BEST Services

BEST Services 41

and how to improve the services if needed” and “A quality assurance system for BEST Summer Courses” based on the outcomes of the first one.

The work on this topic continued during the working group about Quality Control at the PM98 in Torino (November 1998).

At IBS Ghent (February 1999), a quality system was designed. The different steps of the system became more detailed.

During the WS in Maribor (March 1999), the Green Apple system was finalised.

At the 17th GA in Lisbon (April 1999), the whole system was evaluated and we talked for the first time about the possible implementation during some demo courses in the Summer Season 1999. The main problem that arose was the use of the word “Quality”.

During the Summer Season 1999, the quality system for BEST courses was implemented at 8 Green Apple demo courses. These courses took place in Valladolid, Athens, Lisbon, Budapest, Gothenburg, Ljubljana, Ghent and Stockholm.

At the WS in Zagreb (October 1999), the demo courses were evaluated and the Green Apple procedure was modified.

During the PM in Chania (November 1999), the procedure was further discussed and the project was presented to the delegates (proposal number 17-P-CH-EDU-501).

With the Green Apple project, BEST tried to satisfy European students of technology, provide them with sufficient information about the course and fulfil their expectations. BEST members 42 BEST Services

wanted to improve the quality of the complementary Education provided

by BEST. Through a highly developed evaluation system course organisers would get feedback from participants: already when preparing the course, during the course and also at the very end, all enabling them to improve their way of working.

At the end of the 2004 seasons, all LBGs applied the Green Apple standards in order to provide quality services for European students of technology. After PM04 Portugal, Green Apple was no longer needed as there were no longer any differences between a Vivaldi Event and a Green Apple one. The project had been a success.

In 2003-2004, we developed a strong system that was offering students a good complementary educational programme. It was clear for each LBG what they needed to do in order to have a quality event where all parties would benefit from. All of this information was provided by the Vivaldi Procedure: There is a common procedure for promotion, application and evaluation of complementary education activities within BEST, called the Vivaldi procedure. This procedure was based on dividing the year into 3 seasons (spring, summer and winter) and having common promotion, application method and deadlines for all the events within each specific season.

An important part of the procedure is “Johnny”, our special application/ optimisation/evaluation engine and related database (developed solely for

BEST by the Information Technology Committee). As it is accessible through Internet, it offers a possibility for all students from universities with a Local BEST Group to apply to the announced activities (one person can apply for up to three events in one season). After the application period is over, the organisers choose the participants for their course, taking into consideration the motivation letters written by the applicants.

After the lists of selected participants are entered to Johnny by the course organisers, the optimisation is run, making sure that the students are accepted to a course high on their priority lists, but only to one learning course within the season (in addition they can be accepted for up to three leisure events).

A very important step at the end of the procedure is the evaluation that has to be entered into Johnny by all the participants, giving feedback to the course organisers, so they can make improvement plans for the next event they will organise.

“Even though Johnny offers great support for event organisers, participants and SPOC, in the near future the “Johnny version 2” will be developed in co-operation by SPOC and ITC to provide even better facilities for all the parties involved.”

- Quote of SPOC report

RECOGNITION OF BEST EVENTS The term “academic recognition” refers to the process of carrying out studies at a

foreign university, receiving credits for it (from that university) and later having these credits/courses recognised at the home university as part of the studies required for a degree.

The “Recognition” project was launched in 2000 and it’s been ongoing until now (2014). The main goal of this project is that the home university recognises BEST courses as academic courses and gives the participating students ECTS credits. To make this easier, each LBG has had to fill a Course Information Form (CIF) for each participant. This is a detailed document stating the academic as well as cultural parts of the course: the number of study hours, the topics studied, the structure and grade given at the exam, and various cultural achievements.

In GA Warsaw 2010, a new CIF for the Recognition project and a new certificate of BEST involvement were introduced, and in 2012 a Recognition handbook was written for the first time. During IPF2013 Ghent, it was decided that Recognition would now be an exclusive project of EEC (it was previously shared with EduCo) and as such the mailing list recognition@best. eu.org was marked inactive. Later that year, the recognition coordinator was elected and the recognition mailing list was reactivated once more.

THE BIRTH AND WORK OF EEC At PM 2004, it was first discussed a merger between SPOC and Competitions WG (CWG). During ICF Bucharest in 2005 the plan was BEST Services 43

settled: the structure of the new CMT, knowledge transfer, tasks for the team, further steps, transition period, new framework and places for the international events and new webpage were all defined. After the ICF, a new era started and a new CMT was born: the External Events Committee. This CMT deals with both SPOC projects and competitions, and succeeded in implementing a proper unified system for all types of events BEST was providing.

The year 2006 brought new changes for complementary education. As BESTies considered that they could offer more to students, one of the approved proposals was to have four Seasons instead of three and so the Autumn Season was (once again) created. LBGs could now organise in autumn courses just like the ones prepared for Winter, Spring and Summer Seasons.

“Another outcome of the attempt to improve the complementary education service was the idea to investigate the possibility of having monthly-deadlines instead of season-deadlines for preparing and announcing non-optimized events”.

GA 2006 report

At the EEC Summer Meeting and BEST Academic System Short Intensive Meeting (BAS SIM) in the summer of 2006, the investigation on the “Monthly Deadlines” concept was made.

As a conclusion, a more advanced concept - Flexibility of organising non-optimised events - was brought to life, which would give full flexibility 44 BEST Services

to announce non-optimised event by the organising LBG. Promotion would be made by virtual tools, such as the Public Website or a Newsletter. This would have meant that non-optimised events can be announced after the official announcement deadline of the season. These events would then have a separate set of deadlines (application deadline, account validation deadline, final list deadline and confirmation deadline). The evaluation and deposit return deadlines, however, would have remained the same as those of the season in which the event took place. A second option was also introduced, which differed in that the application deadline would be fixed. Though the first option was preferred by LBGs, the proposal was not approved in the plenary.

This was the first step in making nonacademic courses more flexible.

In 2007, EEC members stressed the importance of the quality of the academic part of the course organised, and it was concluded that a minimum standard must be set and followed by the LBGs. The quantity of events organised was a hot topic at GA France 2007. To motivate LBGs to organise more (preferably public) events, the idea to start a challenge club was presented. This club would gather all the challenges of LBGs and be able to see the progress made later. Changes in the Vivaldi Handbook were made regarding the boundaries of a season, announcement procedures for an event and season deadlines procedure.

At PM 2007 Valladolid, delegates approved the change of the minimum

number of participants at a BEST public event from 20 to 22. BESTies understood that BEST was not reaching all the students of technology across Europe applying for its event, therefore leaving many of them disappointed.

Granting two more places in all events was a small step but a strategic move for the future. At the same event, the term BEST public event was defined as either a BEST Course, Event on Education or BEST Engineering Competition (leaving the leisure events aside as they didn’t provide the same value for the students as the academic ones).

In 2008 (both in GA Tallinn and PM Bucharest), the idea of quantity was presented by many LBG delegates and the four season rule was proposed. That meant that each LBG had to organise at least one BEST public event. Some LBGs couldn’t meet this condition so the reasons for not doing that were explained in the plenary.

In PM11 Copenhagen, the country categories were removed from the Vivaldi handbook in order to make them easier to update.

In PM12 Timisoara, a proposal was passed in order to replace the term Seasonal BEST Engineering Competitions (SBEC) to BEST Courses on Applied Engineering. The proposal’s aim was to avoid any confusion caused between the engineering competitions part of the European BEST Engineering Competition (EBEC) pyramid and those outside of it.

In GA13 Valladolid, further changes were made to the Vivaldi Handbook: its structure was updated to version

5.0 by implementing a clearer and usable structure and by removing the inconsistencies that were created in the document throughout the years.

Furthermore, the status of EoE’s was updated and the possibility of asking a fee for them was included in the Vivaldi.

Complementary education remains the most important aspect that BEST is concerned with, and through its events it brings a new approach to higher education in the technical universities of Europe.

For all of these events to be enjoyed by students from all over Europe, we must thank all the LBGs and members in the past and present that had a dream and committed to it.

BEST Services 45

02 BEST CAREER SUPPORT

EST Career Support (BCS) is the totality of services provided

by BEST towards students, in order to attain career development and access career opportunities. We strive to create unique opportunities for internationallyminded students and engineers to start an international career, or even to embark on the adventure of studying abroad.

Looking from MINERVA to BEST Career Centre, or from CaSCO to finTeam, we will see that the career services of BEST and the bodies taking care of them, have evolved over the years.

THE LONG ROAD TO BEST CAREER SUPPORT BEST Career Support existed as an idea from the very beginning of BEST. The report of the International Week in Grenoble 1988 mentions that

46  BEST Services

BEST should organise a kind of jobshop, which would be international job fairs that would gather students and companies from all over Europe. At the beginning this was not possible to make, but the idea was developed over the years.

1993 was the year for another idea: STED (Students of Technology European Database), which was supposed to be a database of CVs where access could be given to companies. By that time, Internet access was scarce and expensive to turn these ideas into actions.

On the international level, career support for students started with the launch of the first version of MINERVA. For BEST members, it started with the first Company Day at a GM, where they could meet with companies that were specifically interested in students with their profile.

For local students, it started with the first local job fair, company presentation, or any other type of local career event.

THE LOVELY MINERVA and became a supplement to the CV

database such as: MINERVA = Moving Into a New Era of Recruitment with Virtual Access • NExUS - Needs and Expectations of University Students The beginning of MINERVA CV • University Project database can be tracked down to 1997, • Career Advice where the original idea to develop a virtual job fair was created. The If we were to split the history of development lasted for many years and MINERVA in different periods, they by the end of 1999 we reached the first would roughly be the following: version of MINERVA. A newer, more stable and flexible version • 1997-1999: Start up of the project was launched in 2002. From 2002 until • 1999-2002: IT implementation 2005, various improvements were made and financing Extensive in the system, there has been a huge • 2002-2004: promotion of Minerva and Minerva Promotion • 2004-2006: Evaluation/ was integrated in the public website of BEST. Later on, after ICF 2004, it was Termination of Committee/Project renamed into BEST Career Centre. splitting • 2006-present: Follow up period In 2006, the CV database was part of the merger project where users have CASCO’S LEGACY one unified account for BEST Career Centre together with Private Area In the early years of MINERVA account and BEST Courses account.

Minerva has been a working group (WG) (as a Working Group and later as a between 1997 and 2000, after which the Committee), there was a separate WG applied for the “Committee” status at budget and separate fundraising efforts GA Stockholm 2000. This status would undertaken separately from the rest of be received in GA Ljubljana 2001. The the organisation. There was a financial name of MINERVA remained until GA responsible and a budget voted at Gabcikovo 2003, where the committee General Meetings. BEST members was renamed into Career Support involved in MINERVA had company Committee (CaSCo) due to the broader meetings and were fundraising money for the CV database. activities of the group.

The original idea was to create a unique With the creation of the Support Group CV database of students of technology (which would eventually become the and attract companies to recruit new Financial Committee of BEST; also engineers through the Internet. At the known as finTeam) MINERVA was same time (though not deriving from restructured. There was no more Career Support), new projects emerged separate budget and no specific BEST Services 47

fundraising for the project. Instead the committee had to focus on the development and promotion of the database, as well as its other projects.

Things were moving pretty well in the period 2002-2004, after BEST had just launched the renewed service and there was extensive promotion of the BEST Career Centre.

The first doubts and concerns regarding the provided services were raised in late 2003 and 2004. On one hand the interest from students remained low (despite promotion) and on the other hand there was very limited development in all the projects under BEST Career Centre. Until 2005, the involvement of Local BEST Groups in the project decreased step by step, and the committee was starting to have HR problems. The success of “BCC-LBG Cooperation” didn’t last long. In addition to this, finTeam was having difficulties in promoting BCC towards companies.

All the major developments of the period 2004 - 2006 were based on the ideas of finTeam members that needed to have attractive offers towards the companies supporting BEST. As a result of these reasons, the first ideas regarding administrative changes in CaSCo appeared. An evaluation working group was created in 20052006 and the results were presented in GA Zagreb 2006, where the proposal to dissolve the Career Support Committee was approved. It was obvious that BCC was a fine fundraising tool for BEST and if used as such, it could constantly provide opportunities for European students. The two important projects 48 BEST Services

of CaSCo were transferred to other teams, and the responsibility for the maintenance and development of BEST Career Centre was given to finTeam.

A VICIOUS BUT POSITIVE CIRCLE After going under finTeam, BCC started being developed to better suit the needs of companies rather than that of students. However, more companies meant more offers, and this meant more interest from the students. More students - even more partners.

Another huge boost to the number of users in BCC came from the unification of our public and private websites in 2008. After the unification, whenever a student was creating an account to apply to a BEST event, the creation of the CV was just one click away. When also the possibility to export their CVs in pdf and doc was added, the number of updated CVs doubled in 2008.

The third and most important boost was the implementation of the Local BCC (formerly known as BCC — LBG Cooperation) which meant that LBGs could sell the access rights to the CVs from their university. With this extra financial motivation, the promotion of BCC was now being performed by the LBGs. COMPLEMENTARY EDUCATION SUPPORT Complementary to the technical skills they learnt in school, some BEST

courses started teaching students how to find their perfect career. These external events are seasonal activities just like regular technological courses, and they are called BEST Courses on Career Related Skills.

Officially, this category of courses was implemented and the first career course was announced in Spring Season 2003

by LBG Madrid. However in Summer Season 2001, Stockholm had already organised an event “International Engineering — Preparation for a Global Career”, even though it was a regular course.

Over the next 11 years, 48 career courses were organised (around 4% of the total number of external events).

WHAT ABOUT THE BESTIES? After meeting with BEST members on several occasions, companies realised that these particular students, after gaining experience in project management, teamwork, international communication, leadership and many other skills, potentially made really valuable employees. finTeam also realised this and career related activities during General Meetings started being organised.

Companies would pay participation fees to come to the Official Opening Day of General Meetings and meet these highpotential students.

The first full-time Company Day (with speeches and a job fair in a General Meeting) in GA Sweden 2000. The previous three GMs did not have any companies present, though in

GA Romania 1998 there was an Official Opening in the Palace of Parliament in Bucharest. Since GA 2000, the Company Day became a must for fundraising the budget of a GM. Nowadays, it includes 20 mins of speeches, 2 hours of workshops and a job fair with personal interviews. In the previous years, Official Opening Days have brought around 20.000 Euro to each organising LBG. SO WHO WAS FIRST? The LBGs, of course! MINERVA started in 1999, Company Days in GMs in 2000, Career Courses in 2001, but LBG organised job fairs started almost as early as courses!

Timisoara’s first edition of a JobShop was held in 1993. It was a really small project, but it developed over time and nowadays is organised by all LBGs in Romania. All in all, over 20 LBGs are organising job fairs every year.

Job fairs in BEST saw a major increase in number and quality after the cooperation with bonding started in 1997-1998. bonding job fairs were so advanced and high-quality that LBGs adopted the German model. Coorganisers from BEST would go to bonding job fairs every year, and bring back the knowledge.

NEW ONLINE TOOLS CAREER NEWSLETTER One of the main tools we use for reaching students is our Career Newsletter. It is BEST Services 49

a very important tool to make students aware of relevant and up-to-date career opportunities and special programmes.

In the early 2000s, finTeam started to work on creating a newsletter dedicated to promote career opportunities of our partners. After the work done by several bodies of BEST, the Career Newsletter tool was added in 2006.

From 2006 to 2014 the quality of the content was increased and now the service provides an extremely high value for the organisation.

SOCIAL MEDIA In the end of the 2000s, Social Media became a highly dynamic communication channel. Starting from 2011, finTeam and markeTeam started to discuss about how BEST could use this communication channel in order to provide career support to students. Afterwards, BEST started to use its Facebook and Twitter channels for career support news promotion. In 2013, LinkedIn usage kicked-off right before 1st edition of BEST Career Day and its usage has been still increasing to provide career support towards students and to reach a wider audience.

BEST CAREER DAY From the very beginning, Career Support and International Job Fairs were valuable ideas for BEST. In 2010, the organisation of an international career day that would also include external top students from all over Europe, started to once again be seriously considered. Why wasn’t BEST offering 50 BEST Services

this opportunity to external students and broadening their career horizons?

The preparations and discussions were held between several relevant bodies, since the project involves a combination external students, requires external promotion and intense preparations.

After two years of hard work, 2013 saw the organisation of the first BEST Career Day alongside the GA Valladolid Official Opening Day; 45 external students and almost 300 BEST members participated!

After the 1st successful organisation of BEST Career Day 2013 and positive feedback from all stakeholders, next edition in 2014 in Bucharest was led.

Building on these 2 events, the 3rd edition is planned to happen in 2015 in Chania.

The concept of BEST Career Day has a lot of potential and BEST is on a right path to make even greater event in future.

activities, such as; workshops, trainings, debates, etc.

So what started from a way to fundraise has turned into the numerically largest BEST service. Many companies, universities and institutions are willing to reach BEST members and top technical students all over Europe, in order to promote their career opportunities. Which one is going to create your future career?

CAREER SUPPORT IS EVERYWHERE Of course, not just career events are offering career support to participants.

There are other opportunities: General Meetings are a perfect example, but you will also find companies willing to recruit participants in Regional Meetings, TrainShops, Committee Meetings, BEST Courses, and most recently Engineering Competitions.

Not only recruiting, but also creating a network between students and companies; enabling their interaction and career development via various BEST Services 51

03

EDUCATIONAL INVOLVEMENT ince the early times, BEST was interested in Engineering Education in Europe. The goal is not only to make students aware of the most recent hot topics but also provide their input to Higher Educational Institutions. Throughout the years, we have participated in various conferences and written papers on European engineering education topics.

Since 1996, BEST has been collaborating with various thematic networks and educational organisations.

Our Educational Involvement started after receiving an invitation from SEFI and CESEAR to join a new European thematic network, H3E. This was the first time that our organisation had the chance of conveying the student perspective to discussions on education at the international level.

For this reason, an educational committee was created within BEST

52 BEST Services

with the main task to take care of the Educational Involvement of the entire organisation.

From the this year on, BEST started to organise Events on Education (EoE), named IBS (International BEST Symposium). An IBS in EduCo’s hands became a 3-day seminar where students from all over Europe, together with academics and representatives from industry, discussed educational matters.

One of the first IBS organised that dealt with H3E problems was in 1996 in Copenhagen. After that the number of such events grew exponentially and every IBS had a theme of general interest for the three parties.

After 4 years, H3E was succeeded by several new projects: E4, ETNET21 (two thematic networks on engineering education) and Leonardo 2000 (a project connecting engineering education institutions and industry).

The year 2000 brought many changes to the structure of BEST educational events. During the the EduCo summer meeting one of the most discussed topic

was the birth of a new event, BACo, the BEST Academics and Companies Forum. It was tried few times to organise a BACo, but it would only be in 2005 that the first BACo was organised in Zagreb. The BACo concept was better defined in 2003 providing information about the participants, the benefits of each stakeholder, the discussion plans and possible themes and the structure of the event. At that time the IBS concept was also redefined and new discussion topics were identified.

SIGs. During PM 2004, EduCo submitted a proposal to change the name of the IBS to BEST Workshop on Education (BWoE), with the purpose to create a BEST Events brand, easily identify all students. Currently these events are known as the BEST Educational Symposium, which gathers students and academics and the BEST Academics and Companies forum, which gathers all three stakeholders. These events are the core activity of EduCo and our

“Since 1996, BEST has been collaborating with various thematic networks and educational organisations.”

After withdrawing from one activity of E4 in August 2001, BEST didn’t cut all of the communication with E4, and members of the organisation were invited at the E4 Management Meetings, as they felt that BEST is a big stakeholder in the European higher educational system.

The year 2004 marked the start of a new collaboration within a thematic network approved by the European Commission: TREE. TREE developed out of the E4 Thematic Network. The project was divided in four lines; each line had a co-ordinator. Each line was further divided in number of SIGs (Special Interest Groups). BEST had a dual role. We were in the management committee (managing the overall network) and we were the leaders of 2

main tool for gathering student input.

Many of these events are organised in collaboration with our partners, which you can read about in the Wiki about Educational Partners.

Opinions gathered during the aforementioned events are summarised in reports that are sent to our partners and disseminated at various events BEST is present at. Moreover, we’re continuously attending conferences and partner meetings presenting papers and outcomes of our events to ensure the development of engineering education that is favourable for all stakeholders.

Each year, several EoEs are organised around Europe that in total gather up to 100 students. Moreover since 2005, a new type of event, Local Event on Education, has been organised by LBGs. BEST Services 53

The format and idea behind the event is the same as for EoEs, however those events tend to be shorter, gather only local students and partners and focus on local problems. We acknowledge the fact that all universities are different and we’re striving to provide fellow students with an opportunity to make a change.

Despite many fruitful cooperations over the past years, there are still many things to be done. By looking at our past achievements, we see that the educational system can be improved and these efforts will be sustained by many motivated BEST members the same way they were in 1996 when everything started.

54  BEST Services

BEST Services 55

04 EBEC

“A dream turned from a napkin into a wonderful, impressive reality!”

t was January 3, 2002. The very second time a BESTie took part in the Canadian General assembly. I had the privilege to be that BESTie, sitting in a Montreal pub with the Vice Presidents of the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students (CFES).

Between beers and after dinner we wrote down on a napkin what would be the ideal journey of exporting the Engineering Competition from Canada to Europe with BEST. I knew it would become a huge success, I just knew it. I was just surprised that something so cool did not start already in BEST while it was everyday life in CFES already then. I was only sorry I would not be there to work on it in the next years since I was about to finish my Treasurer mandate and go to earn a living.

And now I see this video, all what generations of BESTies did in the last 11 years, and I feel so proud of our organisation and you guys – you turned a dream from a napkin into a wonderful, impressive reality.”

- Carlo Spellucci, Alumnus LBG Rome

56 BEST Services

And that’s how it all started! The idea got BESTies attention very quickly and at the Presidents’ Meeting in 2002 the first Engineering Competitions Handbook was made and a Competition Working Group (CWG) was formed.

The first BEST European Engineering Competition (BEEC) was organised in 2003 by LBG Eindhoven and LBG Ghent with 60 participants in three categories: Team Design, Case Study and Debates. The nice atmosphere at this event helped in getting the competitions spirit spread around other LBGs, who wanted to bring the concept in their own universities.

In 2005, the structure of competitions started to be more developed and the idea of having a pyramidal system of competitions appeared during the 2nd edition of BEEC organised by LBG Warsaw and LBG Gdansk. Several LBGs organised BEEC as an alternative to BEST Courses providing students a practical engineering challenge during their course supported by lectures and practical work.

With an increasing number of local engineering competitions, CWG decided not to provide content to all the BEEC, but rather set up quality and support system. As the BEST courses and competitions became quite similar, in 2005 the CWG was merged with Season Program Optimisation Committee (SPOC), creating the External Events Committee (EEC).

By 2008, already four countries were organising local and national rounds (Portugal, Spain, Poland and Belgium).

2008 and asking if BEST should set a big step to develop a European final with local and national rounds, the whole plenary took to the idea positively. The current Competitions Pyramidal System has been used since 2009 under the name of European BEST Engineering Competition (EBEC) Project with the EBEC Team to coordinating the whole process with help of all the working groups and committees.

“Over 25,000 students have teamed up in the local rounds from the past five years and the EBEC project has had to think bigger and to come up with fresh and innovative ideas for real life situations.”

Meanwhile the cooperation between CFES, bonding and BEST resulted in the creation of an international engineering final where the best engineering teams from each organisation would compete in team design and case study. The International Engineering Competition was born (IEC) giving BEST the challenge to select two teams in each category which would represent BEST at the IEC. Therefore at IPF Lund 2008 the concept of BEST Competitions’ Final (BCF) was launched as a final of all the existing competitions in BEST with Lucien Romagnoli as coordinator in charge of the project. Presenting the project to the delegates of GA Tallinn

25 YEARS OF BEST. 5 YEARS OF EBEC Five years of improvement, enthusiasm and hard work has led to a more structured and more developed concept of competitions in BEST. Being a core activity of the organisation by providing complementary education, the EBEC project has three main objectives: • Self-development of the students that participate in this project which is ensured through the two competition categories: Case Study and Team Design.

• Promotion of Engineering and BEST Services 57

Engineering Education among students giving them the possibility to practise the theoretical knowledge gained during the academic courses, by finding new technical solutions for day to day problems that society is dealing with at the moment.

• Promotion of cultural diversity among students and to gather students from different countries.

The EBEC project is developed through a pyramidal structure and it works as the following: • Local EBEC Rounds (LRs) are usually one day events organised by the LBGs from different technical universities around Europe, involving more than five thousand students.

• National / Regional EBEC Rounds (NRRs) gather the winners of all LRs that are part of an NRR. They usually last for two to four days and, in total, they reach over 400 students.

• EBEC Final gets together for one week the best engineering competitors in Europe – all participants are granted with the certificate form that attests their knowledge, skills and participation, proven by the ECTS scores that can be transferred to the home university system.

Every year new universities in Europe are pinned to the EBEC map and more students experienced the EBEC atmosphere. The project has grown from 51 local rounds and 80 participants in Ghent during the final round of 2009 edition to 87 local rounds and 120 58 BEST Services

participants in the final round in Riga in 2014.

Over 25.000 students have teamed up in the local rounds from the past five years and the EBEC project has had to think bigger and to come up with fresh and innovative ideas for real life situations. Be it as simple as building a bridge with unconventional materials or challenging students to come up with sustainable ideas for decreasing traffic in big European cities, the goals of EBEC have always been oriented towards students and their development throughout the three rounds. EBEC is a project that targets all engineering students, no matter what their field of study is, and is able to offer them good quality content that can help them develop themselves in an international environment.

Besides the technical skills that students have the chance to use and improve during the events, they also get the opportunity to develop their soft skills either through the training sessions that they are delivered before the Final round or through the working methods that they need to use during the competition itself. During both Case Study and Team Design competitions, the participants compete in teams of 4 people and like this they learn how to work in a team, how to trust each other and communicate efficiently. The evaluation of EBEC 2011 showed that more than half of the participants from the Final event in Istanbul considered that they improved their teamwork skills during the participation in the project.

But how did the five past EBEC editions

actually look like and what made each one special?

EBEC 2009 FINAL GHENT The first edition covered the period from spring 2008 to summer 2009 by CHALLENGES to walk the road from concept to reality, defying the many hidden traps on the unknown road.

The six cornerstones for this success by BEST were: • Organisational: flexible cooperation between the different bodies of BEST; • The enthusiasm of over 30 LBGs organising local rounds for the first time; • Media: for the first time in BEST pro-active cooperation with media to ensure visibility (pre-social media era); • Cooperation with the United Nations Environmental Programme; • Flexibility: a first edition faces many last minute changes. Dealing with these and looking for a solution ensured the realisation of all local, national and final level. UNEP had troubles providing the main Team Design topic, therefore the organisers of the event had to develop the main topic in 24h; • EU support as partner in the European Year of Creativity and Innovation.

EBEC 2010 FINAL CLUJ-NAPOCA The project was integrated for the first

time into the EEC structure. Using the experience from the previous edition the human resources needed for the project were allocated in 4 different groups, structure which was used in the following years in a similar way: Competitions Team / Management (CompeTeam), Topic Group, Media Group, EBEC Local Core Team. BESTies from different countries around Europe were involved in these teams and supported the project throughout the year.

Alongside the day to day activities related to the competitions, CompeTeam developed the initial rules in order to ensure the right level of competitions and the topics’ convergence. This was done to keep a good image of BEST competitions in front of students, universities and companies.

The Youth in Action Programme of the European Commission supported the organisation of the national rounds of EBEC all around Europe. The number of finalists increased in this edition to 104 students who joined the event in Cluj-Napoca. The Final round had a great visibility in media, gathering in total over 200 appearances in European media. The first NECREC meeting took place in Cluj and was meant to train the future NEC/REC coordinators.

EBEC 2011 FINAL ISTANBUL The project started to get more and more attention from the LBGs and committees and discussions on EBEC Sustainability and EBEC Visual Identity started being included in the main BEST internal BEST Services 59

events. Given that CompeTeam’s main activities were related to the EBEC competitions, it was commonly agreed with EEC that the team’s name should change to EBEC Team and EEC was going to look after the Seasonal BEST Engineering Competitions which were more similar to a course.

Being an external event of BEST, the need of including EBEC in the Vivaldi Handbook was raised and an EBEC section was included in this document at GA Belgrade.

The Final in Istanbul was a memorable event full of energy and dedication from all involved offering memorable moments to all 104 participants. The event got a lot of support and attention from the university and big local / national institutions.

EBEC 2012 FINAL ZAGREB August of 2012 in BEST was highlighted by the fourth edition of EBEC Final.

This edition of EBEC was emphasised by establishment of regulatory framework as an outflow of existed bases of the project functioning. Furthermore, the EBEC Team concentrated on the creation of materials directed to fostering the improvement of Case Study and Team Design area equally to actual advanced provision of the theoretical / technical support from the Topic Group side.

The conclusive round in Zagreb hosted 96 finalists from all over Europe and the EBEC project seized 80 top technical universities of Europe within 62 BEST Services

13 national/regional rounds.

The fourth edition of Final event was awarded by the highest form of support from UNESCO, a patronage.

It is granted to demonstrate the organisation’s moral endorsement of an exceptional activity. The event of EBEC also obtained grants from prestigious foundations, such as IEEE and Youth in Action.

EBEC 2013 FINAL WARSAW 2013 brought us to the fifth edition of EBEC with its final event hosted

by Warsaw. The project involved 83 Technical Universities in Europe with 15 national and regional rounds that eventually brought 104 finalists to compete for the name of the ‘Best Engineer in Europe’.

The EBEC Team started by highlighting the EBEC project’s integrity by renaming the levels of the pyramid and bringing EBEC rounds closer to each another.

For the second year in a row, the EBEC project helped to build a sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information by being supported and granted a patronage of UNESCO. EBEC 2014 FINAL RIGA The sixth edition of EBEC project is currently heading towards its Final event that will take place in Riga, Latvia. The project continues walking

towards fresh developments, positive changes and improvements that bring EBEC to its new level. This year the EBEC Team hit the road with progress towards Guidelines for European BEST Engineering Competition pyramid and EBEC Visual Identity. The main focus of the current year was also directed at the improvement of the EBEC webpage together with setting quality standards for the topics of the project on different levels. The final edition of EBEC 2014 is expected to host 120 participants coming from 87 Local Rounds from 32 European countries.

All in all, the EBEC experience offers everyone involved the chance to live truly memorable moments. Every year, the project is an improved version of the previous one, thus we strive to grow and become stronger, keep on developing and discovering new opportunities and making us all curious to see it in 10 years from now, so let’s keep dreaming and get this project to the next level!

“EBEC is the biggest project in BEST, involving all the bodies of BEST, making the decisions harder. It’s a great opportunity to discover how BEST works with having your own team of people. Working for it and being involved in the future development of EBEC, is the best experience I had in BEST. Take care of EBEC and add your piece to the puzzle”.

- Rafael Feito Kiczak, LBG Brussels ULB – EBEC 2010 Coordinator

“EBEC is a perfect playground for learning and experiencing new real life situations and a great chance to make true friends all around Europe. The EBEC experience offered to everyone involved, students, professors, companies and BESTIes, the chance to live truly memorable moments!”

- Alexandra Enea, LBG Bucharest – EBEC 2011 Coordinator

“EBEC is one of those challenges we face in our entire life to test ourselves, to disprove the existence of obstacles, fear and pressure on our way, frontiers that hold us back by simply going beyond them, advancing them. And after reaching the finish line we know that tomorrow we will make it to climb higher, starch our hands farther and push ourselves upwards only.”

- Alla Kliushnyk, LBG ZP – EBEC 2012 Coordinator

“BEST has been vividly enjoying the EBEC experience recently. The project welcomes anyone who wants to develop the largest engineering contest which is organised for students, by students. It is a unique platform that enables you to reveal your skills, sharpen your perception in various matters and eventually reinforcing your character with certain equipments that are seldomly acquired in daily life.”

- Çağrı Başaran, LBG Istanbul – EBEC 2014 Coordinator

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03 WORKING METHODS METHODS & TOOLS.

01

PRIVATE AREA &UNIFYING OUR SYSTEMS he “Private Area” (PA) started from some static web pages in 1995 and progressed to a number of Lotus Notes components in 1998. A new version of PA was launched in late 2002. People realised that it’s impossible to keep an organisation such as BEST working when you don’t have the contacts of all the members of it. How could people possibly move on with projects if they didn’t know e-mail addresses or phone numbers of people in the other side of Europe?

The first idea of a centralised contact list of all active BEST members with their possible areas of responsibilities appeared during PM 1995 in Trondheim, and people agreed that it would be made available by GA 1996 and updated at every GA and PM. This list was indeed available at the specified time and was included in the BESTMAG versions that were produced once per year. Moreover, a list was also circulating during GMs.

66 Working Methods

In the beginning of the nineties, many students did not have their own email address, but were contacted through the email of the LBG. BEST soon realised that such a list in a printed document is not so usable, mostly because information tends to change quite often. For this reason, an online way of managing this information was sought.

At GA 1998, the Information Technology Strategy Group presented a proposal of how the information should be structured in a database.

Information related to BEST members (such as names, e-mail, passwords, study information etc.) was defined and structured. An archive and a system to apply to internal events were also introduced. During PM 1998, ITC presented in their Half Annual Report all the progress that was done until that moment. The new archives system was ready in October of that year, while the new mail exchanger was working by the beginning of November (for the mailing lists). Both systems were based on Lotus

Notes. Moreover, after GA1998, a BEST registration page was available that allowed BEST members to apply to internal events.

The Lotus Notes intranet was a great progress for communicating and sharing documents within BEST, but was not entirely user friendly. New members rarely used any part other than the internal events application page. At the same time, ITC did not have the full control to be able to improve the system.

A decision was made to re-implement it with Java / SQL. Moreover, they decided to merge the private area with the other BEST systems ( Johnny and Minerva) into one, so that people would no longer need 3 passwords to access BEST services, and have all their information in one place. The main aim was to stimulate the members to use the Private Area more and give everyone a better overview and tools for interaction.

The new PA was launched in November 2002, with the same content as in the Lotus Notes system, but with a more intuitive way of accessing it: • The Archive: a repository of official BEST documents, growing with approximately 100 documents per year.

• Over 25 document repositories for international groups (e.g. committees, the board).

• International group data management (including over 50 email lists, essential in BEST communication).

• Support for applying to internal events (Workshops, statutory meetings), handling around 500 applications yearly to 2 statutory meetings and around 10

smaller events.

• Members’ data with essential contact and other information for all BESTies.

• LBG contact information, with snail mail addresses, phone numbers and university information.

• Committee pages, for informing BESTies about Committees’ activities and ways to join them.

Specifically for the archives, a special exporter was written to fetch all documents with attachments from the Lotus Notes into a new MySQL database.

Since then, a lot of development from ITC side has been done, to improve the current features and also to include more.

Private Area is the most important tool for the development of the organisation, since it aids communication between BEST members, gathers the knowledge and gives useful information for all aspects of the organisation.

During ITC Summer Meeting 2009, the Usability project was started. The aim of this project was to change PA to make it more user friendly. The project was divided in 3 steps: Paprika (the navigation of PA was changed and presented in PM 2009), Carrot (most used tools are redesigned) and Banana (all the tools are redesigned and userfriendly).

After GA France 2011, PA entered Paprika phase and is currently in it. The first tool to be redesigned was Document Archives and currently Task Manager is being redesigned.

During ITC Summer Meeting 2013, Working Methods 67

PA suffered a new major change with the first step of implementation of customised PA Access Rights for LBGs which will end up giving freedom to LBGs to define how their members access PA tools and features.

UNIFYING OUR SYSTEMS When the BEST online systems – Johnny/BAS, Minerva/BCC and Private Area – where re-programmed in Makumba and launched in 2002, each system still had their own separate log-in. From the start of Makumba development (2001), the designers in ITC had planned to merge these systems into one – using only one log-in. This would require a “merger” – bringing all the data together and deleting duplicate data. At the same time it needed to be intuitive for the users and ITC needed to ensure that no data would be lost.

The first designs of this merger tool were made in WS Trondheim in 2001, but it took until 2003 for the first programming to start. However, it turned out more complicated than expected - the design had to be re-thought several times as there were many issues regarding access and visibility of information. In 2004, it was decided to focus the first merger on BESTies only. BESTies would understand if their accounts did not function properly for a while or if some data error would happen, whereas any error could damage our image to the external world. After intense programming and testing, the merger could finally be presented at the GA 2005.

BESTies were invited to enter and merge all their accounts into one. After that, all new BEST members would have only one account, giving access to all BEST systems while having the personal data accessible on one page.

However, the non-BESTies still needed separate accounts to gain access to BEST services. It took until 2007 for the unification process to begin. While the idea itself was older, the actual design for unifying all the services we offer to students (on our website) started in the beginning of 2007. After GA 2007, all committees were involved in restructuring the public pages, while ITC focused mainly on implementing the new system.

The project was developed during several events (Budapest Developers’ Meeting, Vienna Unification Meeting and ITC Winter Meeting Eindhoven), while various IT tasks were handled on the mailing list.

New features were implemented: • New visual design, also improved with a site-wide search engine (added after the launch) • Students require only one account for all parts of our system, including a single set of pages for viewing and editing the personal information • Dedicated public pages for different users (student, academic, company), with a universal login that redirects to the appropriate account directly • Redesigned interface for the academic account (contains both the University Centre representative and Working Methods 69

the BAS professor account details) • Unified administration of student accounts, for BAS and PA administrators (added after the launch) The new system was launched as planned, in January 2008. Apart from a couple of minor bugs, everything went fine with the launch and developers have kept improving the system since then. There are many more ideas of which ITC is keeping track of and will be considered individually for future implementation.

70 Working Methods

04 MAKUMBA

akumba is the main technolog y used in BEST IT systems, like BEST Application System, BEST Career Centre, Private Area and the Public website. It is a technology specialised in producing WWW views of data stored in databases. The developers and designers can engage with Makumba at three levels, in order of complexity, known as Makumba Data Definition (mdd), Java Server Pages tag libraries (jsp) and Business Logic (BL).Makumba is a query-centric technology designed

by BEST that helps users to rapidly develop web applications that keep their data in a database (i.e. data driven web applications). It is implemented in Java and offers a JSP tag library and a Java API to the web application developer.

The technology, which started off as a thesis from a BESTie, has been in use since late 2001, and is being further developed, based on users’ experience and requests. Makumba started off with

a very limited amount of features - only the ones that are needed for BEST. This allows users with little experience to write and adapt applications. Since BEST students usually stay up to 3 years in the organisation this is a very important aspect.With the departure of the Makumba development generation from BEST during the first decade and with the breakthrough of other frameworks like “ruby on rails”, multiple discussion about changing the technology have arisen. However the development of the Makumba technology is active. Several meetings were organised resulting in version 0.9.8.1 version of Makumba in February 2014. After so many years, Makumba proved to be a very reliable and appropriate technology for BEST. Since the beginning of Makumba, numerous different applications were developed using it. These applications are used daily by BESTies, and are the necessary tools for the current development of the organisation. You can find out more about Makumba at www.makumba.org

Working Methods 71

05

LONG TERM STRATEGIC PLAN ear BESTie, You will now read the story of a project which involved a lot of passion, dedication, creativity and new practices, in which many people have been involved. We, Iustina & Mario, will tell you the story of how the strategy was created and how the implementation went in the first year.

The long-term strategic project (LTSP) was born as a result of intensive work with two different boards, an extensive experience in BEST, learning from other non-profit partners and visionary moments right before running for president in GA Belgrade. It was an idea to which the whole management, LBGs and following presidents committed to transform into reality.

LTSP was needed because during the 5 years I (Iustina), being a member of BEST, I haven’t seen a strong commitment to a long-term strategy.

Each board had been setting a different strategy, changing the development

72 Working Methods

direction every year. This didn’t make sense for such a great organisation as BEST and therefore the 2011-2012 management took the challenge to work on creating a long-term strategy.

It was an ambitious decision, some people believed it was not possible to have such a strategy in place, but the 6 months of hard work showed that this was a desired thing in BEST and that difficult initiatives are possible to be finalised if you really believe in them!

The process of creating the LTSP had a very strong focus on transparency, collaboration, diversity of people involved and experiences, a great mixture of activities to provide a complex input for the strategy. It was an initiative which started without any clear view on how to proceed and ended up with a document created through the commitment of many people and approved by GA France.

The LTSP creation process was a masterpiece of fruitful collaboration and communication with the NGO partners, corporate partners of BEST,

alumni, which contributed to this through feedback and support.

A great start of the project was the help of a strategy management consultant who was present in EBEC Istanbul and offered to help us with the process for setting a strategy. He provided a book to read and feedback on the initially crafted process and this was the moment when the hard work started. In parallel, the history of long term planning in BEST was analysed in order to learn from past mistakes. Alumni of BEST were involved in explaining how they

to get the answer to some questions and the highlight was the participation of P&G representatives and the feedback received from them.

The workshop was organised in March, had around 20 participants from various regions of Europe, with various experience in BEST and having in common a big motivation: to create the strategy. Five days of intensive but enjoyable work were needed to craft what we now call the 2012-2015 BEST Strategic Plan. Another week of intensive work was needed in order to

“A successful strategy is one that committed people infuse with energy; they make it good by making it real- and perhaps making it themselves.”

- Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through The Wilds of Strategic Management had tried to do such a plan in the past.

In PM Copenhagen, the intention to create such a plan was presented in order to get the feeling of the presidents.

Really positive feedback was received, therefore a few weeks later a strategy mailing list was created and targeted discussions were generated in order to get continuous input from interested members of BEST. The workshop was afterwards set, the coordinator was chosen and the work for preparing a very productive workshop started.

During International Projects’ Forum (IPF), a session was organised in order

define the regulations that would apply for the long-term strategic practice. A lot of presentations, a lot of questions answered, a lot of feedback, even more work and more presentations in GA is what made a huge dream reality on the 21st of April 2012: GA France approved the strategic plan and the regulations associated to it.

The approval of the plan was a big success, not only for the people who worked on creating it, but for the whole BEST and we knew that this would mean a new beginning for BEST, with new challenges.

Working Methods 73

The approval of the plan during GA helped clarify the direction that BEST should take during the upcoming years.

The decision of how to achieve these goals was left to the upcoming three generations. This happened to be one of the main challenges my Board and I (Mario) had during the first year of the strategic plan. There was a clean slate and we had to figure out how to turn a GA decision into an actual practice of the organisation.

During the first year, we focused on creating a solid foundation aimed at making the strategic plan something inherently part of BEST’s working methods.

Early on we figured out that the success of the strategic plan relied on making sure that future generations understood and developed the work of their predecessors. Therefore, we documented our experiences in an effort to standardise how annual goals setting, reporting, evaluation and knowledge transfer took place. Apart from this, we also devoted our time to kicking off all the major initiatives of the strategic plan. It ended being a very demanding task but we are happy that the outcomes of our work have been used in the following years to achieve the strategic plan.

We would like to thank to all the people who have been involved in creating the LTSP and making it work. We believe this is what will help BEST get more momentum on the long-term and we are looking forward to coming to the alumni meetings in a couple of years and hearing that the 2nd, 3rd,… strategic 74 Working Methods

plan will have been created.

All the documentation can be found on the Strategy Wiki page on Private Area.

06

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT h e K nowledge Group (KanGaroos) was created at GA France 2007 as a result of the restructuring of the Training Interested Group. Its main goal was to ‘Collect and organize the Knowledge in BEST. A WorkShop in Paris hosted

by LBG Paris Ecole Polytechnique in 2006 had been the starting point of the restructuring of the knowledge inside BEST. After GA France in 2007, the decision was final: a new team was to be born to restructure all of the knowledge that BEST accumulated during its 18 years of existence. The team consisted in people interested about the knowledge management of BEST, but it was necessary for them to be trainers.

Before 2007, only TiGro members were taking part in the restructuring of knowledge inside BEST, but this restriction disappeared afterwards.

After a few years, KG defined several projects that their members were working on: Knowledge Collection,

LBG Materials, LBG HandBook, Games Database and History of BEST. The activity of this WG ended in 2012. However as BEST is developing continuously, having all of the knowledge structured in a simple way to help us not reinvent the wheel, was still a priority for the organisation.

Therefore, one of the focus areas of the newly created Long Term Strategic Plan 2012-2015 was Knowledge Management. The objectives of this focus area included having a wellstructured, sustainable, and easily accessible Knowledge Management System, and promoting a culture of documenting our work, sharing knowledge, as well as using and developing existing knowledge.

In March 2013, the Knowledge Management workshop took place in Riga, as a first step towards achieving the goals of the LTSP KM focus area.

The WS had a very direct impact on how BESTies work, in any scope of their activity - from new members joining LBGs, to trainers, committee members

Working Methods 75

and the international management.

The concrete outcome of the workshop was a set of 24 projects that were planned to be implemented in the remaining 2 years of the LTSP, under the Knowledge Management Project.

Each year, several projects were selected to be worked upon.

Some of these projects were addressing the KM infrastructure on PA: designing a page dedicated to KM in BEST, mapping the knowledge of BEST, building a tool that will facilitate access to knowledge (BEST Library), redesigning the committee pages, improving the wiki input and more.

Others were aimed at improving the social aspect of KM: redesigning the KM training delivered to BEST members, introducing knowledge fairs as a form of sharing on BEST events, redefining the purpose of common sharing mailing lists, creating a generic knowledge management system for LBGs and promoting a sharing culture on all levels of the organisation.

The full implementation of the 24 projects will likely take several years.

Thus, Knowledge Management is sure to stay a hot topic in BEST for quite some time!

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07 HELPDESK

he BEST Helpdesk team is a group of BEST members belonging to the different committees and working groups of BEST. All bodies of BEST are represented here.

They are responsible for answering the requests, questions and doubts submitted through our web-based Helpdesk system (www.best.eu.org/helpdesk and private. best.eu.org/helpdesk).

Helpdesk was created in 2000 by Gwenael Alizon from Ecole Centrale, and was running on PHP. Gwen was the first coordinator in 2001/2002 and there have been 9 more coordinators since then. After 2003, Helpdesk was running under Makumba. The purpose of Helpdesk (HD) is pretty simple: it’s a platform that allows users of our IT systems and people interested in BEST to have contact with the organisation, in case they have some problem or question that they cannot solve or cannot find information about on our website. The Helpdesk infrastructure

was created for having the functionality to track the progress of the requests, so that questions and problems are not lost as time passes by.

At IPF’12 Gdansk, it was decided to increase the scope of Helpdesk so it would not only deal with technical issues but also serve as a platform where any BESTie can ask any question regarding the services and work of BEST. Therefore, the LBG Helpdesk was created and a new pool of solvers was recruited in order to cover these new types of Helpdesk requests.

List of coordinators of Helpdesk: Gwen - 2001/02 David Gonzalez - 2002/03 Unknown - 2003/04 Tyna - 2004/05 Tarzan - 2005/06 Panos - 2006/08 Melania Dinescu - 2008/09 Junior - 2009/12 Ola Kesy - 2012/14 Paco Gordillo - 2014/?

Working Methods 77

04 BEST STRUCTURE

FROM BOTOM TO TOP.

01 BOARDS OF BEST

s BEST s t a r t e d officially in 1989, there was a need of a general coordination, someone to take care of the organisation, to ensure that members gather, and to structure and prepare all the meetings regarding BEST status.Moreover, as a young organisation its general direction needed to be set while taking account the legal aspects of its foundation. Part of the French law required that in order to gain legal existence, an association must have a ‘council of administration’, which was translated inside BEST as the Board. The first board consisted of the following positions: President, VicePresident, Treasurer, Vice-Treasurer and Secretary. The President, the Vicepresident and the secretary were the legal representatives of the association.

The board were: 1st advisory Committee: April 89/Oct 89 • President: Ida Lau - NTH

80 BEST Structure

(Trondheim) • Vice-president: Christophe Fitemont - INPG (Grenoble) • Treasurer: Yngve Kristiansen NTH (Trondheim) • Secretary: Jacob Lopy - T.U. Berlin Their tasks at that time, as they were defined in the statutes of BEST, were: • The president had to choose the secretariat, that was responsible for writing and distributing a report on the events of the previous meetings • The president had to send the invitation and agenda for the General Assemblies to all active members of the association • The president with the assistance of the board was guiding the General Assembly and presented the biannual report.

• The treasurer was presenting the financial report.

Until 1991 the tasks and the definition

of the board changed in almost every general assembly. However, the ‘boards’ of BEST started to be called “Advisory Committees”. The only reason to justify this so far, is that the members had the impression that it wasn’t an official body. After that year however, the old advisory committees changed their names into Boards of BEST, when it was clearly seened by the plenary in GA 1991 Lisbon that; the board is a power body which aids the president considerably when working as a team as wells as presenting the organisation towards the external world.

EVOLUTION OF THE STRUCTURE From 1989 until 2014 a lot of changes happened both inside the organisation as well as in Europe. In the beginning, every 3-4 years there was a change in the structure of the Board.

The most noticeable changes regarding structure that happened in the last 25 years are: • From April 1989 till October 1991, BEST had 5 ‘advisory committees’, with a 6 month mandate from GA to GA • From October 1991 till April 1995, the first 7 boards had a 6 month mandate from GA to GA. • Since May 1995, each board has a one year mandate, initially that was from GA • till GA. The first one year serving board was the VIII Board.

• During GA1998, a Proposal

for a new management structure for BEST was made for the regulation of committees • Since XII Board the mandate has changed to from 1 June till 31 July.

That makes the XI Board the longest serving board in BEST history.

• From the V Advisory Committee till VII consisted of President, VicePresident, Treasurer, Secretary and (next) GA Organiser.

• From Board VIII till XI consisted of President, 2 Vice-Presidents, Treasurer, and Secretary. The VicePresidents would look after the topical work that is nowadays covered by committees. The organisational concept of committees was started around that time.

• From Board XII till XVII consisted of President, Treasurer, Secretary (executive board) and all coordinators of committees (‘VicePresidents’). This was to give more power and visibility to the emerging committees.

• Since the GA 2005, the current structure of the board is President, Treasurer, Secretary (executive board) and 3 Vice-Presidents (for ‘External Services’, ‘Internal Support’ and ‘Local Group Support’).

The first big steps towards a change in the structure of the board were made during GA1994 in Timisoara where there was a proposal to add one more position in the board of BEST and to also make the mandates of the boards 1 year long, instead of 6 months that it was before. However, the board made BEST Structure 81

a proposal for adding the new position in the board already from GA1994, in order to motivate people and not to wait for 6 months for the new rules to be applied, because they saw the need for it right away. Therefore, if the proposal was approved, then the new statutes would be valid right after that GA, which would be unconventional and controversial to the tradition of bringing decisions to effect. Consequently, most of the LBGs reacted critically to the proposal, saying that such a proposal was illegal, since it was against the current statutes of BEST. After long discussions the board had to withdraw their proposal and the proposal was not voted upon.The next big step happened in GA1998 Romania in April, when there was a proposal by the board to change the structure of it.

The main reason that there was a need for a more stable structure that would allow better definition of responsibilities at the international level, and at the same time improve the involvement of the local BEST groups. This would lead to a better communication and ensure better knowledge transfer inside the whole association. Furthermore, it would allow the board to work more efficiently on management tasks.

The change was not proposed for the same GA, but it was in a form of mandate for the next board to refine the management structure and also to try to find improvement points in the proposed solution. They also had to analyse the statutes in order to find what should be changed. In the end the proposal was approved, and the XI board managed to accomplish all the 82  BEST Structure

points of the mandate. Therefore the structure was changed once again in GA1999 in Lisbon.

After a long period of no changes in structure of the board, a new proposal came to shake the waters of the structure. It was proposed as a mandate for the XVII board to investigate the working structure of BEST. Some of the things they wanted to investigate were: Again, a lot of time has passed since the last structure change of the organisation and again the structure was shaky and not fuffilling its purpose.

Several questions were raised by BESTies in 2004 so they asked the board to find a solution.After a year of discussions, questionnaires, meetings and discussions again, the board proposed the new structure of the board and of BEST: The board would consist of 6 positions (President, Treasurer, Secretary, Vice President for External Services, Internal Support and Local Group Support) and the coordinators would not be part of the board any more.

It was the first time that the number of people in the board was reduces, but that was also one of the points in the mandate, since the board was getting too crowded and too difficult to manage.

As history would already teach us, a lot of time has passed since the 2005 till 2014, competitions and EBEC emerged inside the organisation but the structure of it remained the same. There were several workshops organise as well as discussions about how can the internal structure support our services yet as it was seened, it’s hard to find a solution to such a massive organisation.

Therefore, at the creation of this History Book the board decided to once again evaluate the structure of the organisation and adapt it to better fuffill its needs. We hope that the outcomes will develop the structure of BEST and that we will be able to read more about the evolution of the structure in the next History Book.

LIST OF INTERNATIONAL BOARDS OF BEST I Advisory Committee of BEST April 1988 - Oct.1989 President: Ida Lau Borch - Trondheim Vice-President: Christophe Fitemont INPG Grenoble Secretary: Jacob Lopy - TUB Budapest Treasurer: Yngve Kristiansen - NTH Trondheim II Advisory Committee of BEST Oct. 1989 - April 1990 President: Yngve Kristiansen - NTH Trondheim Vice-President: Csilla Kolhemi - TUB Budapest Treasurer: Hens Erik Vetne - NTH Trondheim Vice-Treasurer: Attila Nagy - TUB Budapest III Advisory Committee of BEST April 1990 - Oct. 1990 President: Gabor David - TUB Budapest Vice-President: David Ensell – ICL Treasurer: Attila Nagy - TUB Budapest

Secretary: David Boras - ICL IV Advisory Committee of BEST Oct.90 - April 1991 President: Gabor David - TUB Budapest Vice-President: Thierry Geoffroy ENSAM Paris Treasurer: Attila Nagy - TUB Budapest Secretary: Matthieu Nerzic - ENSAM Paris V Advisory Committee of BEST April 1991 - Oct. 1991 President: Hanne Gröndal - NTH Trondheim Vice-President: Gabor David - TUB Budapest Treasurer:Kim van Roy -ENSAM Paris Secretary: Bernat Albinyana - UPC Barcelona GA Organizer: Duarte S. Lopes - IST Lisbon I int. Board of BEST Oct. 1991 - April 1992 President: Bernat Albinyana - UPC Barcelona Vice-President: Andrea Selvaggi - Turin Treasurer: Eric Verbrugge ( Jazz) ENSAM Paris Secretary: Kaur Lohk - Tallin GA Organizer: Anne Nummila Helsinki II int. Board of BEST April 1992 - Oct. 1992 President: Duarte S. Lopes - IST Lisbon BEST Structure 83

Vice-President: Andrea Selvaggi - Turin Treasurer: Astrid Skarheim - NTH Trondheim Secretary: Maciek Bud-Gusaim Warsaw GA Organiser: Thierry Wiertz - Liege III int. Board of BEST Oct. 1992 - April 1993 President: Anders Berglund - Lund Vice-President: Oriabel Parisis ENSAM Paris Treasurer: Oskar Ahlberg - Stockholm Secretary: Andrea Grosso - Turin GA Organiser: Tomas Martinec – STU IV int. Board of BEST April 1993 - Oct. 1993 President: Katrin Lervik - NTH Trondheim Vice-President: Dusan Meszaros - STU Treasurer: Julien Desjardins - ENSAM Paris Secretary: Nathalie Quentin - Ecole Centrale Paris GA Organiser: Maciek Bud-Gusaim Warsaw V int. Board of BEST Oct. 1993 - April 1994 President: Jari Nisula - Helsinki Vice-President: Ovidiu Sandor Timisoara Treasurer: Isa van Grunderbeek Supelec Secretary: Anders Josefsson - Lund GA Organiser: Paolo Bianco - Turin

84 BEST Structure

VI int. Board of BEST April 1994 - Oct. 1994 President: Filippo Catalano - Turin Vice-President: Claus a. Fantoni Andersen - Copenhagen Treasurer: Matthieu Jopin - Paris Secretary: Katrin F Madison Stockholm GA Organiser: Cristian Bogdan Timisoara VII int. Board of BEST Oct. 1994 - April 1995 President: Michelangelo Calabresi Roma Vice-President: Pirre Salonen - Helsinki Secretary: Ciprian Zah - Timisoara Treasurer: Petra Posselius - Lund GA Organiser: Doros Isidoros - Patras VIII int. Board of BEST April 1995 - April 1996 President: Flemming Wessmann – Trondheim Vice-President: Manuel Tiago - Lisbon Vice-President: Busse Pettersson - Lund Secretary: Margherita Bruni - Napoli Treasurer: Alfredo Loreto - Roma IX int. Board of BEST April 1996 - April 1997 President: Jonas Murby - Chalmers (Gothenburg) Vice-President: Morten Uttgård - NTH Trondheim Vice-President: Carla Carvalho - IST Lisbon 86 BEST Structure

Secretary: Luca Nosetti - Turin Treasurer: Anna Lipowska - Warsaw X int. Board of BEST April 1997 - June 1998 President: Vitor Santiago Nunes Coimbra Vice-President: Guy Brusselmans Ghent Vice-President: Luis Miguel Munoz Valladolid Secretary: Theodoros Mastrokostopoulos - Chania Treasurer: Christian Amor Kvalheim Trondheim GA Organiser: Aurelian Bria -Bucharest XI int. Board of BEST 1998-1999 President: Vitor Santiago Nunes Coimbra Vice-President: Andrei Hohan Bucharest Vice-President: Clara Edman Stockholm Treasurer: Ana Luisa Pinto - Porto Secretary: Valerica Telcean - Timisoara Associated member: The SPOC Coordinator Urska Demsar (May-Nov98) - Ljublijana Viktor Iklodi (Nov98-May99) - Budapest XII int. Board of BEST 1999-2000 President: Georgia K. Rouni - Athens Treasurer: Giovanni Alfredo Camorali - Turin Secretary: Elisabeth Modin - Stockholm

VP-EduCo Coordinator:Lucia Gregorio - Valladolid VP-ITC Coordinator: Paolo CraveroTurin VP - SPOC Coordinator: Risto Koivunen - Helsinki VP-TIGro Coordinator: Kasia Lech Krakow XIII int. Board of BEST 2000-2001 President: Anna Håkansson - Stockholm Treasurer: Hugo Ramos - Porto Secretary: Frederik Habils - Ghent VP - EduCo Coordinator: Pim Bonne - Ghent VP - ITC Coordinator: Stefan Baebler - Ljubljana VP - SPOC Coordinator: Bozo Frajman - Ljubljana VP - TIGro Coordinator: Riinu Lepa - Tallinn Minerva Coordinator: Andrea Casamassima - Rome markeTeam Coordinator: Yiannis Zevgolis - Athens XIV int. Board of BEST 2001-2002 President: Peter Zvirinsky - Kosice Treasurer: Carlo Spellucci - Rome Secretary: Maria Håkansson - Lulea VP - EduCo Coordinator: Isabel Arribas - Madrid VP - ITC Coordinator: Josefin Berg Uppsala VP - SPOC Coordinator: Claudia Chituc - Bucharest VP - TIGro Coordinator: Lubomir

Ziak - Kosice Minerva Coordinator: Chronopoulou - Patras markeTeam Coordinator: Chauveau - Grenoble

Niki Nicolas

XV int. Board of BEST 2002-2003 President: Wim Farasyn - Leuven Treasurer: Magda Neagoe - Bucharest Secretary: Céline Guivarch - Ecole Polytechnique VP - EduCo Coordinator: Juan Manuel Ortiz - Valladolid VP-ITC Coordinator: Priit Potter Tallinn VP-SPOC Coordinator: Ludovic Charpentier - Grenoble VP-TIGro Coordinator: Irene Escolar - Madrid VP-Minerva: Thanasis Vlahogiannis Athens XVI int. Board of BEST 2003-2004 President: Wouter Schaekers - Leuven Treasurer: Kristjan Mitt - Tallinn Secretary: Tina Toni - Ljubljana VP for Internal Education: Aneta Blaszczyk - Lodz VP for Educational Matters: Iulia Gherasim - Bucharest VP for Complementary Education: Gabriela Popescu - Bucharest VP for Information Technology: Gwenael Alizon - LBG Lund VP for PR and Marketing: Tarvi Olli Tallinn VP for Career Support: Piotr Bryk-Lodz BEST Structure 87

XVII int. Board of BEST aka Flowers 2004-2005 President : Miha Pelko - Ljubljana Secretary : Eva Sturtewagen - Ghent Treasurer Stefan Hallez - Ghent VP Complementary Education : Giorgos Athanasopoulos - Patras VP Educational Involvement: João Rei - Almada VP Career Support: Panagiotis Isigonis - Chania VP Internal Education: Angela Scaueru - Bucharest VP for Information Technologies: Vilius Benetis - Copenhagen VP for Public Relations: Gregoire Toussaint - Grenoble XVIII int. Board of BEST aka Jazzers 2005-2006

Secretary: Bram Simons - Eindhoven VP External Services: Tzveta Dimitrova - Sofia VP Internal Support: Manuel Gay- Lyon VP Local Group Support: Katy Vanbrabant -Brussels XX int. Board of BEST aka Lemons 2007-2008 President: Ömer Hantal - Istanbul Treasurer: Seger Decombel - Ghent Secretary: Peter Verwilst - Ghent VP External Services: Adriana Garboan - Bucharest VP Internal Support: Cristina Dumitru - Bucharest VP Local Group Support: Giulio D’Aversa - Rome XXI int. Board of BEST aka Bunnies 2008-2009

President: Nadina Busuioc - Bucharest Treasurer: Jihad R’Baiti - ENSTA Secretary: Susan Langer - Copenhagen VP External Services: Elina Seppänen - Tampere VP Internal Support: Michal Wojtera Lodz VP Local Group Support: Xavier Rondé-Oustau - Ecole Centrale/ Helsinki/Stockholm

President: Tim Govaert- Ghent Treasurer: Cristian Arteni - Bucharest Secretary: Triin Lohmus - Tallinn VP External Services: Tassos Natsakis - Thessaloniki VP Internal Support: Karina Herman - Timisoara VP Local Group Support: Xavier Duchatel - Paris, Ecole Politechnique

XIX int. Board of BEST aka Sailors 2006-2007

XXII int. Board of BEST aka Surfers 2009-2010

President: Bartosz Lipnicki - Gdansk Treasurer: Luka Vidmar - Ljubljana 88 BEST Structure

President: David Salamon - Budapest Treasurer: Andres Ütt - Tallinn

Secretary: Nataliia Gurianova - Lviv VP External Services: Lucien Romagnoli - Ghent VP Internal Support: Vladimir Bulgaru - Chisinau VP Local Group Support: Paal Lohne - Trondheim XXIII int Board of BEST aka Atomics 2010 - 2011 President: Monica Kviljo - Trondheim Treasurer: Laura Hellebrandt -Budapest Secretary: Matija Lukic - Belgrade VP External Services: Miriam Teicher - Vienna VP Internal Support: Christophe Jouret - Ghent VP Local Group Support: Andrei Ganci - Bucharest XXIV int Board of BEST aka Dolphins 2011 - 2012 President: Iustina Pop - Bucharest Treasurer: Mariya Koteva - Sofia Secretary: Melinda Bajai - Budapest VP External Services: Bogdan Bucur Cluj-Napoca VP Internal Support: Anca Fulger Cluj-Napoca VP Local Group Support: Leonid Kholkin - Porto XXV int Board of BEST aka Band 2012 - 2013 President: Mario Nzualo - Lisbon

Treasurer: Mateusz Treder - Gdansk Secretary: Magdalena Mrozowska Warsaw VP External Services: Wieke Willerius - Ghent VP Internal Support: Piotr Skoracki Gdansk VP Local Group Support: Gert Willems - Ghent XXVI int Board of BEST aka Aviators 2013 - 2014 President: Mihai Tociu - Bucharest Treasurer: Patricia Diaconu - Timisoara Secretary: Katerina Koutsonikoli Athens VP External Services: Klemen Krulec - Maribor VP Internal Support: Javier Martin Valladolid VP Local Group Support: Vicente Mauricio - Las Palmas XXVII int Board of BEST aka Submarine 2014-2015 President: Mathieu Vandenberghe Ghent Treasurer: Olav Ingvaldsen Bengtson Trondheim Secretary: Ioana Jivet - Delft VP External Services: Ou Yan Zhou Milan VP Internal Support: Oscar Marginean – Timisoara VP Local Group Support: Maren Elise Ruud – Trondheim

BEST Structure 89

02 COMMITTEES

DUCATIONAL COMMITTEE (EDUCO)

In the light of the efforts to make students’ opinions heard in an environment willing to improve the educational systems in Europe, the Educational Committee of BEST was created. Since then it has managed to foster good relations between students, universities and companies, resulting in interesting outcomes which have had an impact on engineering education.

Early stages In 1995, SMILE, the committee created inside BEST to think about the future and to create our “3 year plan”, decided to include the following aim for the organisation: “BEST will represent European students of technolog y

90 BEST Structure

in the matters concerning students”. In 1996, an opportunity appeared, after an invitation from two academic associations, SEFI and CESEAR, to join a Thematic Network which was a new EU project at the time.

A new European Thematic Network dealing with engineering education called Higher Engineering Education in Europe (H3E) was started by three organisations. This was the first time that our organisation had the chance of supplying the student perspective to international educational discussions.

For this reason an educational committee was created inside BEST under the name BCTN (BEST Coordination for Thematic Networks). After a while this was changed into EduCo (Educational Committee).

Some of the pioneers of this committee were active at international level, and some of the committee’s members were part of the international Board. An interesting thing is that at the beginning, Educo was not a committee opened to everybody. At most, there were 5 or 6

EduCos, the project coordinators and the rest of the education interested people were observers. From the first pioneers of education, we can mention: Jonas Murby (President of BEST), Guy Brusselmans (Vice-President of BEST), Olivier Cuisenaire, Giuseppe Garripoli, Laurent Hendrichs and Paolo Bianco.

In 1996, when the H3E project started, it was not clear yet to BESTies which path was the right one to follow. With the help of some people from the academic organisations, BEST learned a lot about educational matter in the first years of H3E. Inside the Educational Committee it was decided to set some clear guidelines on the role of educational matters in BEST. The result was the so-called Educational Programme and the first strategic plan on educational matters.

More information about this topic is in the article on Educational Involvement.

Structure Only after GA 2002 in Paris, EduCo became an open committee, anyone could join, not only the ones that wanted to become projects coordinators. Before that all committee members were elected by the General Assembly of BEST. The committee coordinator was a full member of the Board of BEST and had the title Vice-President for Educational Policies. Thanks to these changes to the regulations of EduCo, lots of members have joined it in the past years, increasing the quality of EoEs. Moreover, in the first years, EduCo coordinator was the only coordinator

that was elected directly from the plenary during GAs. The reason for this was that the EduCo coordinator was representing whole BEST when attending various conferences.

However, this changed in PM06, since a common framework was voted for all the committees, and the voting procedure for the coordinator changed to follow the rest of the committees.

Projects Throughout the years EduCo has worked upon many different projects.

Starting in 1996 BEST organised Events on Education. In the early years these seminars were called IBS (International BEST session) and lasted for three days gathering students from around the Europe. Eventually, they grew bigger gaining importance as the committee became richer in experience and knowledge. Currently there are two types of the Events on Education: Educational Symposia and BEST Academics and Companies forum.

More details about those events can be found in the article about Educational Involvement since these activities are at its core.

At the summer meeting in Athens in 2005, the idea of Local Events on Education was discussed for the first time. EduCo’s involvement and some guidelines for the organising LBG were set during that meeting. These events are organised by LBGs with the help of the LEoE Task Force, a project which emerged in 2009 as a response to a need to identify the capabilities of LEoEs and BEST Structure 91

the extent to which they are organised

by LBGs. Another project that BEST educational committee decided to work upon is Recognition. Its aim is to help students attending BEST courses to have those courses recognised in their universities as part of their curricula and thereby get credits for attending BEST courses.

At PM 2005, the first issue of Educational Times, a magazine focusing on the educational experiences and matters of students, was published.

In late 2010, an idea about EduCo creating its own Thematic Network was born and it emerged in project called EduCo 2.0. The aim was to gather input from students, companies and university representatives on many modern engineering education topics, in order to improve the education process in an efficient and direct way.

During the Spring Meeting Prague 2011, the project got name BEP (BEST Educational Platform). In spite of initial difficulties, the project was executed in smaller format through a working group called 4C (LEoE Task Force) and new life was breathed into it in 2013.

EXTERNAL EVENTS COMMITTEE (EEC) The External Events Committee (EEC) was the result of merging two other existing groups: the Season Program Optimising Committee (also known as SPOC) and the Competitions Working Group (CWG). You can read about them in the previous pages and may know SPOC dates back from 1996 (General 92  BEST Structure

Assembly Tallinn) and CWG from 2002 (Presidents’ Meeting Bucharest).

In the General Assembly 2005 in Greece, CWG declared in their semi-annual action report the will to establish a strong and effectively working committee together with SPOC; after all, they had been dealing with BECs that could be counted together with the courses for the 3-course rule and 8-season rule.

The beginning of the merging process of SPOC and Competitions Working Group was done by approving the framework of the new External Events Committee. After a transition period, the committee and the working group were officially merged starting from the 1st of July 2005.

During the months after merging, EEC had one very important summer meeting (SM) in Timisoara, intended to define working methods and a new structure for the new committee (after all the current team originated from the merging of two bodies with different practices). After this meeting, the framework of EEC was presented in PM 05 Ljubljana and this included the objectives of EEC. In a brief description, these objectives can be put in order as: • Development of the issues of the complementary education that BEST is providing for students from BEST universities; • Management of the Vivaldi procedure, including coordination of Vivaldi seasons (in 2005, there were three seasons: Spring, Summer and Winter) and taking care of the tools used in Vivaldi procedure;

• Assurance and improvement of the quality of Vivaldi events; • Providing support to LBGs organising an external event (courses, leisure events, engineering competitions, etc.).

This long history reveals that EEC and its predecessors have always been essential parts of BEST’s structure through the decisions, proposals and development they put into practice.

EEC does its work with the general responsibilities and heritage that it got from SPOC and CWG: the continuous improvement, coordination and quality assurance of the BEST Programme of Complementary Education. These responsibilities will continue, even if the name and the framework of the committee change: the main idea and the essential structure stay the same.

EEC has retained the same objectives since 2005, but has always strived to find better ways to achieve them, mainly through numerous innovative projects and processes that help developing external events. The projects of the committee and its evolution are presented below:

The Vivaldi Seasons

The concept of Vivaldi seasons started in 1992 with just a single one: the Summer Season. A few years later, it was decided to spread events to other periods of the year and so the Spring, Autumn and Winter Seasons were implemented in 1998. Autumn Season BEST Structure 93

was discontinued afterwards, but it had an impressive return in 2007 and now there are four seasons to cover the whole year: Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring. Each Season has a Coordinator to take care of it and support the Main Organisers of all events in order to offer the best experience to participating students.

EEC is also cooperating with markeTeam for the promotion of Vivaldi seasons.

Vivaldi Handbook The Vivaldi Handbook originated with the beginning of courses and has continuously been updated with the new rules and guidelines that were proposed in GMs and approved by LBGs. Any BEST member (and mainly event organisers) can download it as a digital file, but it is also possible to see it in the EEC webpage in PA. As of 2014 it is in its 5th version, after two historical moments. The first one happened in PM Valladolid 2007: it was decided to split the Vivaldi Handbook into two volumes, one with rules and one with guidelines. The purpose of this change was to make the whole package more user-friendly and easier to consult.

Another historical moment happened in GA France 2012 when the Vivaldi Handbook was once again split in two documents in order to finally separate the part about competitions from the part about seasons. This created the EBEC Handbook and Vivaldi Handbook.

EEC keeps managing and updating 94  BEST Structure

these documents and tries to make them as user-friendly as possible.

BEST Application System (BAS) The BEST Application System is a joint project of ITC and EEC that started in 1996 on the Vivaldi server called Johnny, which had all the information about programs and applications stored in a database.

The next step was made at the end of 2002, with the new login system that was used for the optimisation of courses and for the new validation procedures. From that moment, SPOC (and afterwards EEC) started working closely on the development of Johnny.

Finally, the name Johnny was changed to BEST Application System (BAS) in PM Portugal 2004, in order to ensure better communication with the external world. This would be the last significant decision of SPOC before merging with CWG into EEC. In 2007, after the unification of all BEST information systems, students could take advantage of many different features, including career related ones.

From the external events side, they could apply to events, share important info such as arrival and departure data and much more.

During 2010-2011, new features were implemented in BAS: anonymous applications and the new rule of maximum of three confirmed optimised events.

To help LBGs, EEC has constantly developed new features to increase the quality of external events. Now there is

the possibility to (through BAS) make BEST learning events and approve materials available for participants, ECTS credits for their students. After create events, start mailing lists, a long period focused on developing the evaluate the course from the organisers materials to support recognition (such perspective and keep track of the as Information Forms for all types of deposit return, along with many other academic events and Certificates of useful tools.

Attendance) it was decided to develop After the success of BAS, TAS (Team a solid cooperation between universities Application System) is a platform and LBGs concerning external events created by ITC together with EBEC and ECTS, both in issuing and team in 2010, where students can apply recognising them. to all team activities organised by BEST. In 2012, the Recognition Booklet was TAS became mandatory for the EBEC created, containing guidelines to help National/Regional Rounds in 2013 and LBGs in the process of recognition. a new mailing list, TAS@BEST.eu.org, After IPF Ghent 2013, EEC took was created in order to be the working full responsibility of the Recognition space between interested people from project.

EEC, EBEC Team and ITC.

Competitions

BEST Teacher Area (formerly Professors@ Competitions have continued to evolve BAS) with EEC, by providing LBGs with as much support as possible in different Since BAS was developed for students ways, including handbooks and EEC and BEST members, the opportunity contact persons. Following the increase to involve teachers even more in BEST of their quality, it was decided in PM events was created. By giving them a Valladolid 2007 to make the process teacher account they had the possibility of organising competitions easier and to make materials available for students, from then on they no longer needed to be part of the mailing list (if the LBG to be approved by EEC one month chooses so) and even evaluate the event before being public to students. Parallel from their perspective. to this, a Competition Task Database was created to encourage the sharing Recognition Project of tasks created by LBGs, and to give them a good source of ideas to try and In GA Sweden 2000 another significant develop. project was started - recognition of the learning events towards universities. “The development of new levels of competitions Ever since then, EEC (together with (mainly at the local level) resulted in the EduCo) has been working on getting National/Regional Finals and finally in more and more universities to recognise the first European BEST Engineering BEST Structure 95

Competition in Ghent in 2009 which gathered all the winners from the National/Regional Rounds.”

By this time the EBEC project was becoming quite large and, in PM Lviv 2009, the EBEC Final was defined as an external event of BEST and therefore was included in the 4/8 season rule for the organising LBG. Therefore, different rules and regulations regarding competitions and EBEC project were continually developed in order to assure the quality of these events for both participants and the organising LBGs. In 2012, the regulations regarding competitions were moved from Vivaldi Handbook to the newly created EBEC Handbook. In the same year it was decided to change the name of Seasonal BEST Engineering Competition to BEST Course on Applied Engineering, in order to distinguish between the engineering competitions organised as part of the EBEC pyramid and those organised as seasonal events.

In 2012-2013, the designation National/ Regional Rounds (NRRs) started to be used instead of NECs/RECs for the EBEC project.

Quality Project

In 2004, LBGs decided to cancel the application of the Green Apple Procedure (mainly aimed at organisational requirements), since all events already met these quality standards. Three years later, in 2007, EEC created the Quality Project with the goal of assessing the quality of the 96 BEST Structure

existing events and later, closely monitor their quality evolution. This was done with a proactive attitude of promoting new and better methods to develop external events, including challenges of having higher academic levels and the use of new tools.

More attention started to be given to the Quality project and, in 2011, the first Quality Short Intensive Meeting took place in Krakow. This was when the development of Red Apple started. This quality assurance tool aimed at engaging LBGs in a competition aimed at raising the academic quality of courses. Other tools for quality assurance, such as Course Information Forms, certificate templates, evaluations, mentoring, account validation and BAS, were continuously improved and developed.

In 2014, the work to implement Red Apple 2.0 started! It consists of a more robust version of the old Red Apple in which the competing LBGs have to fulfil as many requirements from a list as possible to receive the so desired Red Apple.

Support to LBGs EEC has always worked to better support LBGs organising external events, not only through the development of materials (including handbooks), but also by providing experienced contact persons and always being available to answer LBG requests. In 2008, EEC and TiGro developed a new concept of local training sessions for one or for a small group of LBGs focused on external events organisation, keeping in mind the

Vivaldi rules and guidelines, as well as the specific needs of each LBG. At first this concept was called local beREADY, but in 2009, this project was renamed to getSTRONGER. However, only one getSTRONGER was organised and it took place in Saint Petersburg. In 2010, it was decided that TiGro would be fully responsible for the project due to its training-related nature.

From Winter Season 2010 on, a new mailing list courses@ started to work. It was created to share tips and experiences related to the organisation of courses. Later on, in 2012, courses@ started to be facilitated in order to ensure the quality and quantity of the topics raised there.

Quantity Project (former project)

The former Flexibility Project evolved into Quantity Project in 2007, aimed at increasing the number of participants who took part in BEST events. This goal was achieved by giving LBGs more chances to organise external events with flexible deadlines and by encouraging them to have more students in their events. In order to guarantee the participation of more students in BEST courses, it became mandatory to have 22 participants in each course instead of 20.

However, in 2009, during EEC Spring Meeting in Lisbon, it was decided that Quantity should no longer be a project of EEC but instead should be turned into an ongoing process. Nevertheless, it was emphasised that the ideas of the project should not be forgotten and should be integrated in the work of EEC BEST Structure 97

and the season coordinator.

Mentors The External Events Committee has always been working on improving the organisation of courses. In order to help LBGs with this organisation and to ensure the good quality of these courses, EEC has been providing experienced EECers as mentors for courses according to the need of LBGs and in December 2012 a mentoring group was created. The need of mentors for competition was also investigated.

FINTEAM - FINANCIAL TEAM Hello European Engineers!

I am finTeam, your BEST Corporate Relations team! We are bringing the money into the piggy bank of BEST. We are in charge of: • Ensuring the financial stability of BEST International • Taking care of the money all the members of finTeam obtain with their hard work • Contacting companies • Assuring a constant income of funds • Distributing the resources and supporting fundraising for International Events Now you know my task, it’s time for you to hear my memories. This is the story of where I came from, an amazing adventure in which the original fun Committee turned into our actual 98 BEST Structure

finTeam, keeping the fun and the hard work, improving every day, and getting bigger and bigger.

Our travelling starts in Romania, land of Dracula, where I was born. It was the year 1998 and I was visiting Bucharest with some friends, going from pub to pub trying to discover what a “mongolian” was. I found a crazy group of students dancing to a song that sounded something like “tunak, tunak”.

I went to them to ask what was going on “we are from BEST”, they said “and we are on pub crawling!” I asked more about what this BEST was... they told me it was the BEST friends, the BEST people, the BEST atmosphere, and the BEST parties! They said it had been founded in 1989, and it had worked perfectly since then, supported by the hard work of all the members. But that year they were running out of funds and things were getting difficult. So we created a team of people from all over Europe who would make sure the funds would never run out again: finTeamers.

FunCommittee they called us, because everyone enjoyed our company. In this team there would be a treasurer, taking care of the numbers, making sure there was a constant income and that money was spent wisely. And a lot of highly motivated people, who contacted companies, suited up, and took me to meetings in all the cities in Europe.

I was witness to the closing of the first three year support contract in 1995 between BEST and ENSPM (Ecole Nationale Superieure du Petrole et des Moteurs), which assured important funding to BEST. During these trips, we

also found some friends in the biggest companies, friends who accepted to collaborate with us yearly, becoming our partners. Together with companies, that I loved more than other we decided to create Support Group, in 1999 in December, the group of BESTies and companies that helped us to become richer! The official meeting took place in London at PricewaterhouseCoopers headquarter. Members of Support Group at the time were P&G, American Management Systems and PWC. As years passed by, my mates, the other members of the team had to leave, as they finished their careers and started new lives in different places. This left me quite alone... and my job was getting difficult with none to support me. But with time... as General Assemblies and Meetings passed by, there was always someone left by my side. Always someone with whom I could travel, live, enjoy life, and help maintain the financial stability of BEST. In May 2002, in the Hague, a great event took place: First Round Table, then known as Support Group Meeting.

The companies that attended were the members of the Support Group: PWC, AMS and P&G. The same year, in the General Assembly that took place in Stockholm, the group was revitalised with new ideas and concepts. Different levels of partnership were conceived, and a mailing list where all BEST members could interact and keep in contact, even if they were separated by miles.

After few successful Support Group meetings cooperation with Support

Group was collapsing. However, at PM 2001 in Madrid, a new idea appeared. Exactly then different levels of cooperation were created. At GA 2002 in France, I was present at the great event. It was the next step in cooperation with companies: Second Round Table meeting. Some companies like me so much, that still, after 7 years, worked with me: Bombardier, P&G and Shell.

2002 was supposed to be the year for the Support Group to grow up. So, at the same GA, the Support Group became a team and started to work immediately after returning back from France. I loved all our team members so much that decided to make one more event to see them, to work together and, of course, to have craziest parties together.

Where could we do this? Of course, at finTeam Summer Meeting. Our dear friends, the Masters of job fairs from bonding, hosted the Support Group Team in Baumhaus in Hofgeismar.

That’s why I like beer since 2002.

Back then, finTeam was known as Support Group Team. From GA 2003 in Bratislava onwards, the Financial Team of BEST got it’s current name: finTeam.

Besides, this Financial Team wanted to provide support for the fundraising for BEST internal events and provide advice and material to LBGs. So, at the next Summer Meeting 2003 at Bucharest the idea of fundraising Trainshop appeared in order to help LBGs to make their own little piggy banks bigger and heavier. We called it “be Raise Incomes by Cooperating Honestly with External Resources” or shortly beRICHER. The first one took BEST Structure 99

place in March 2004 in Thessaloniki.

At international level, just in 2003, we had 8 partners (if we count previous years together, a few times more and all companies that were in contact) ohh!

You couldn’t even imagine how many letters and numbers were in my little piggy head. That’s why at GA Denmark 2004 finTeam Company database was created and programmed in Makumba to centralise info about companies.

In April of the next year, our piggy bank became bigger by 29.000 Euro from an European Grant. Around 2005, we also had the first University Partner of BEST: Delft University of Technology. Now you are ready and its time to tell you one of the most excitement moments in my life. At Presidents’ Meeting in Ljubljana 2005, finTeam became a Committee.

Hooray!!!

One day in 2008, I realised that I was too hot so I decided to move to Tallinn and enjoy their amazing GA. One of those nights, I met FReddy that, as you already know, became my BEST friend and I expect to keep it that way. We had lots of fun there in the middle of Vana Tallinn people that motivated us to keep working in BEST. By this time, a new breed of finTeamers began. Although these were not money makers but rather treasure hunters for grants. They started to search and search until, BAM!, 33.000 EUR in an Annual Operating Grant. FReddy realised then our new allies: Grants Working Group, under umbrella of finTeam!

At Bucharest the biggest budget for a PM so far was presented: 37.000 EUR! 100 BEST Structure

finTeam and GWG are hitting jackpots but we need to keep finTeamers ready for anything. Yet careers started to be promoted by BEST partners all over.

Even one more type of service is about to begin, local Career events appear in the map now. There was a BEST Career Support responsible position created in order to coordinate and develop the career support opportunities provided to students all over Europe as benefits from the partnerships with partners of BEST! By the end of 2008 FReddy gained a new ally, the BCS Responsible.

Starting 2009, FReddy became the rockstar of corporate world and started to get so many interviews at career fairs.

The first European BEST Engineering Competition took place in 2009 organised by Eindhoven and Ghent … finTeamers were in charge of fundraising for a new type of international event with more than 8 company partners involved! finTeam brought 6 of them and 20.000 EUR for 1st EBEC edition.

Many companies were interested in cooperation as well as EBEC FR was just starting. So in order to boost up the negotiations and properly present our new service, a Round Table (RT) was organised with ~7-8 companies. Yet PM in Lviv came with only 3 partners and 13.000 EUR. The early days of the EBEC FR kickedoff in a second edition with 7 company partners which brought 23.000 EUR. EBEC began to get bigger and bigger, so it was officially approved as one of the international events such as GMs in 2010. In this year, Vlerick became the second University Partner of BEST. PM

Krakow invited FReddy to the land of nice Polish girls, who filled his stomach with tasty Vifon noodles. While this happened, finTeam got 12.000 EUR for PM. After that, GA Belgrade got 7 company partners and 32.500 EUR! During 2011, there was for the first time a university at a GM: KTH. EBEC Final Istanbul 2011 in its 3rd edition, got 4 CPYs (of which two were new)…

10.000 EUR and 11 000 EUR for PM 2011 Copenhagen with 3 companies from finTeam side. Nowadays Task

was 95% fulfilled. Yet, during the event FReddy worked some magic and 2 more companies signed with BEST, finally getting over 100% of the budget!

Announcements now sounded and then at plenary, unexpectedly it materialise into the most powerful FR motto of alltime: “fT never stops!”.

On 2012 and 2013, BEST Career Day resulted from the evolution of an event bringing together “hundreds of students and thousands of futures” and was initiated by the eagerness to organise an international career day for external

“I asked more about what this BEST was... they told me it was the BEST friends, the BEST people, the BEST atmosphere, ...”

Partnership and Promotion offers are part of the FundRaising magic of finTeamers since fT SM 2012.

We had PM in Timisoara in 2012. So after visiting all his friends in eastern Europe, FReddy brought finTeamers to FR for a more romantic GM in Paris: GA France 2012. Here, the second highest Fund Raising BEST European record was accomplished since Budapest 2009 with 49.000 EUR raised by finTeam!

During 2012, even more universities partnered to join GA and to become University Annual Partners.

In 2011/2012, we had very successful year with ~10 new partners (including Project Partners). During GA12, while presenting fT Annual Action Report finTeam mentioned that the budget

students and offer them career support in person. In this way, we improve our service towards our stakeholders - fitting as a well tailored suit to our partners’ needs.

During 2013, finTeamers became workaholic and brought 3 Career Support Partners more: Facebook, MOL Group and Ingersoll Rand. We got Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, since FReddy and finTeam were having a nice time in Las Ramblas among Brazilian batucadas and football stars. GA Valladolid raised 14.000 EUR by finTeam. For EBEC Warsaw 2013, 15.000 EUR were obtained. PM Brno arrived with 9.000 brought by 4 companies via finTeam.

It seems that now FReddy has began to BEST Structure 101

wander from Poland to Russia to Italy and beyond. Still, during his absence finTeam suits up and keeps on FRing like pros. GA Bucharest comes closer.

Gold setting starts to appear as a raising method for EBEC Final in Riga lately in 2014.

Social media posts have become become so important for companies and universities, that FReddy even opened his FaceBook profile to finally reconnect with his old gambling pals and of course. Even Twitter is now everywhere, so FReddy must keep suit up even at finTeam shower parties!

So this story comes to a pause. I must say that a sweet end to a sweet start, when fT met Mongolian back in the beginning in the land of Dracula.

One thing is sure, with the current gamification of budget, stroh80 and party showers, who wouldn’t like to join the BEST Corporate Relations team; the finTeam? Perhaps FReddy will come back one day. In the mean time, finTeamers keep focus on their most important challenge: we are here to support the financial sustainability of BEST.

restricted access. Grenoble was more or less the centre to which everyone was sending applications for Vivaldi.

The first program was written in C and everyone inserted their application into a computer for two days and then they got some results. In 1996, the first committees (SPOC & BTNC) appeared with the idea to have an online network.

ITC was started due to a need for an informational system (messenger pigeons were already tired!).

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE (ITC)

History of IT infrastructure

Communication and IT in the pre-ITC era The communication was initially done through fax and they had sessions in GA which also meant plenty of paper.

Then short emails appeared. In the beginning, e-mail communication was very weird because people had little and 102 BEST Structure

Forming of the committee and its pioneers The IT Committee was formed at BEST’s 15th GA in Belgium and its framework was adopted one year later, at the Romanian GA. Its tasks were to maintain and develop the technical facilities that BEST needs. The following people were actively involved in the first activities of the committee: Cristian Bogdan (Cristi), Paolo Cravero ( Jumpinghologram), Thomas Laroche (Toto), Evangelos Sakkopulos (Vangelis) and Marta Sabau (Dog).

This committee was referred to as both technical committee and ITC.

In 1997, a technical revolution happened with the EVS: Electronic Voting System. The Internet domain started and a version in Lotus Notes was started by a French girl, but it wasn’t used in production and the base for ITC – more for technical use. Somewhere between 1998 and 1999 a new server started to work – its name was Anna.

The machine is still in the BEST office in Tallinn (offline). The machine ran DNS servers and mailing-lists. Zoltan bought the server Malaka (Stockholm) four days before GA 2000. The HDD crashed in 2002 during the mandate to 2003 (Priit’s mandate). The server ran Lotus Notes with the first PA (or the second official implementation).

Sometime in the last part of 2003, a new server ‘Tallinn’ was bought without any official decision from the board.

However it was bought, fortunately, one month before the crash of Malaka.

In the following years different maintenance restructures happened, involving buying new servers, hard drives and also receiving them through LBG donations from their universities.

In 2012 (during Joao’s mandate), a new server ( Jaeger) was rented in order to become the new production environment. During the following year it was set up and it is ready to start working.

After the several server issues, experienced during Alejandro’s mandate, a thorough redistribution and change in administration strategy will start to be worked upon.

the same database can be accessed both via a Lotus Notes client and a Web browser, without losing flexibility and features. Unfortunately the Web interface of Lotus Notes systems cannot be completely customised; therefore we had to stick to its “empty”, self-generated Web pages. On the other hand, while access rights can be set in a very precise way even for every single registered person, the spirit is not to restrict people from putting in / seeing data.

History of technologies

Karamba Dare to imagine: One single username and password to remember for the whole system (including Johnny, Minerva, archives, address book); each member sees what he/she is most interested in: committee members see their committee-related stuff, LBG members see info about his/her LBG,

Lotus Notes Lotus Notes was the first technology used by BEST. Notes based systems allow the maintenance of several databases, both discussion and archives, with a customisable access rights list.

Moreover, a dual interface is possible:

Makumba Sometime around ‘99 the first version of Makumba appeared (it was called Meta-Data and later Makumba) with implementation in PA and Johnny.

Around 2000, Helpdesk was done using PHP and Makumba started to be used in 2001 in the PA. The idea of Makumba is that all code would be implemented with one programming language which is easy to learn and use.

Makumba is implemented as JSP tag lib. There was a joke about a French fighter pilot crashing his plane in the jungle. The natives found him and gave him the choice: “Makumba or death”. He bravely chose death, so they gave him “Makumba till death”.

BEST Structure 103

“

The communication was initially done which also meant plenty of paper. Then e-mail communication was very weird beca

e through fax and they had sessions in GA short emails appeared. In the beginning, ause people had little and restricted access.�

see who else is online at the moment, each one sees his own calendar (with marked common events) and to-do list, all emails sent to him/her through best.eu.org mail servers. In 2000 Stefan Beabler, Thomas Laroche and Cristian Bogdan introduced the idea of Karamba, as a dream of a perfect informational system. Karamba would be the new private area of BEST. It started as a patch up of several systems, using different tools, offering different reliability and interface. In the first stage all currently used systems were integrated into a common database, enabling us to share the information among these, avoiding redundancy and conflicting data and ease the access via uniform interface to all of it.

Web applications Private Area The Private Area is the tool that every new member of BEST wants to use.

Its history dates back to 1995, when members of the Technical Committee prepared some static pages that evolved in 1998 into Lotus Notes components.

Starting from the list of active members of BEST around Europe, in GA 1998 the Information Technology Strategy Group, presented a proposal consisting in gathering all of this information in a database. Information related to BEST members (such as names, e-mail, passwords, study information etc. etc.) was defined and structured. After GA 1998, a registration page was available for all BEST members that allowed them to apply to internal events. Until 106 BEST Structure

PM 1998 BEST had a functional mail exchanger. All of these systems were based in Lotus Notes. Because Lotus Notes wasn’t totally under control, pages were implemented in Java/ SQL, merging all the systems ( Johnny, Minerva, Archives, address book) into one. The new PA was launched in November 2002.

Johnny / BAS BEST Application System, also known as BAS, is the newer name of Johnny, the online application that enabled students to apply to our events online through the Internet. The name started being used after PM 2004, where there was a proposal to change its name to its current one, so it represents better what it is, and is also easier for people to understand and remember it. Since BAS was the continuation of Johnny, all its features were kept the same; only thing that changed was the name (in fact, in the Makumba Data Definitions, the system is still called Johnny. It wasn’t changed due to refactoring difficulties).

Minerva / BCC The first idea of Minerva was born prior to the GA 1997, when the organisers were thinking of several ways of fundraising. They were thinking of creating a forum on the Internet where students and companies could meet.

Because of the little time left, the GA organisers couldn’t implement their idea until the GA. Companies were pleased about the new approach. For BEST, this was a new way of collaboration with the companies ... In 1998, a girl

from Bucharest finished implementing Minerva with Lotus Notes as her diploma project. The idea was good, but because Lotus Notes was not a language designed to supplement these features, the ITC members decided to drop the project in that format and turn to newer and user friendly technologies ( Java and SQL) which let them do a better Web layout, and fully control the technology.

In 2004, Minerva received a new name: BEST Career Centre.

Public website The public website is the compilation of pages that provide information to the public about our organisation. This information can be either about our activities, or services, or internal news, like elections or decisions made. Having said all this, the Public Website is a very useful tool to spread information about BEST to the public. The first public website of BEST appeared in 1995.

MARKETING TEAM (MARKETEAM) markeTeam history As all good stories get born in an unconventional way, this story is not an exception. This one came to life at London Luton airport around 1999, when Sten Augsburg and Mitja Pirc discussed the idea of starting a new Committee in BEST, a committee responsible to develop marketing strategies and to take care of the image of BEST. At GA 1999 Lisbon, a new working group was created.

However, it seems that BEST was not prepared for such a big step forward yet, so markeTeam was limited to work on promotion materials. They had a few meetings during 1999-2000 in Copenhagen, Ljubljana, Lisbon and Chania to work on different projects like BEST toolbox, logo redesign, promotion materials, etc…

As every group has its identity, mT needed a logo to represent theirs. It couldn’t be any different for a CMT, whose purpose is to take care of the image of BEST. markeTeam logo happened to be drawn on a napkin somewhere in 2000 during a designer’s meeting in Ljubljana by Amand Gril. It was scanned, transferred to a computer and eventually adopted as the logo of our team.

Time passed by and Yiannis Zevgolis took over the group, which was already turning into a “CMT under trial period”. At GA 2000 the first effort to change the BEST logo was made as it became obvious for marketing people in BEST that the logo we had until then was not accomplishing its role: it was complicated, its message was not thoroughly clear and what is probably the worst, the logos were different among LBGs. Of course, there were many BESTies with strong sentiments towards the old one and unfortunately the brand new CMT, still in its trial period, was totally unprepared to face LBGs and didn’t manage to push the idea through.

GA Ljubljana arrived and Nicolas Chauveau became the coordinator of the freshly voted official CMT: BEST Structure 107

markeTeam. This moment was also a little bit stressful for Yiannis, as a couple of hours before the ending ceremony he was informed that there was a tradition of all coordinators conveying a gift to the new coordinator. So, he had to come up with something and he had to do it fast. He opened his suitcase, but the only thing he found that could fit the purpose was a pair of blue belts. The alternatives would have been a pair of used socks, or underwear. So, Yiannis wrote his name upon the pair of belts and eventually, during that night, gave them to Nicolas.

Since then every new coordinator gets these belts with the names of previous coordinators on it.

Time went by and Stjepan Pavlek became the next coordinator. Thanks to him the “rainbow warriors” concept popped up. Since then markeTeam got an image of a funky and kinky CMT. At this time the committee had already realised that making a new image for the whole organisation takes more than just presenting a new design solution developed by the designers’ team, so more effort was put into training BEST members regarding marketing matters. At this point markeTeam started to prepare for the first marketing Trainshop for LBGs. In the period of 2003-2004, Tarvi Olli started with the goal to establish the Common Image of BEST. The first step was to give BESTies PR & marketing training; therefore the PRIME (PR and Image Event) Trainshop was organised.

Not only did it broadened the BESTies` knowledge, but it also gave a boost to the development of the committee 108 BEST Structure

itself. The outdated Graphical Profile from GA2000 was replaced by a new document describing the elements of the logo, use of local symbols in the logo and dark-green was voted to be part of the logo.

The year for Gregou (Gregoire Toussaint) started with the purpose of contining to develop the image of BEST. Before GA 2005, markeTeam came up with complete set of common design elements that LBGs can use in all material: the Shields. It’s important to mention here Martin Varvas (Mumu), who played a huge catalytic role from 2004 to 2007 mainly as designer and conceptionist. This was the period when Shields and its derivatives were made public.

At GA 2005 Chania, the next coordinator Harilaos Vasiliadis took charge of the CMT and another big chapter of changes started. MarkeTeam and webTeam were merged and made a giant committee with around 80 members and many projects, some of them huge and important, like the Annual Report, and some smaller but still essential, like leaflets. This change led to renaming the CMT, and since GA 2005 the official name was PRteam.

Website redesign had started again and finished much later with a huge input from Marian Buhnici. That was also the period when the first market analysis was conducted to see how many students were interested in Career services.

The next one to lead the team was Marian Buhnici. Since his summer meeting the committee, he started to think more and more about what makes

the difference between marketing and PR. Since then every new markeTeam coordinator can expect the question “What is the difference between PR and marketing?” at GA after his/her speech.

The name of the CMT changed back to markeTeam and the committee started making steps towards becoming marketing and not just a promotion committee. The first step towards this was starting the Market Research project and this led to another very important project for BEST, which was started during the Summer Meeting of 2006: the Visual Identity project. Even though it wasn’t officially a project of markeTeam, it was mainly carried out by markeTeam members.

In 2007, Kluska (Katarzyna Sieklucka) was voted as the next coordinator.

During this year Market Research became one of the biggest projects in BEST. Overall in March 2008, after the interviewing process finished, markeTeam analysed the gathered data. As time went by, the Visual Identity project continued and finally after seven years of different attempts, at Presidents’ Meeting 2007, the Visual Identity of BEST was finally approved and the BEST logo changed. Since then, markeTeam has focused on its implementation in all promotional material that have been produced and has ensured the consistent public image of our organisation. In addition to the hard work, there has been room for fun as well and a new concept of a party was introduced called Mi Scusi. This is one of those non-existing CMT parties where everybody come out extremely BEST Structure 109

happy. If you wonder where our beloved Pupi comes from, that’s beKNOWN3 invention!

Then, we reached the 2008-2009 period, where Diana Wosik became the coordinator. The Annual Reports were delivered finally on time after a few years of scheduling problems – this can be probably regarded as the biggest achievement of the year.

The outcomes from the previously conducted Market Research served as a key to develop the Marketing Strategy of BEST (led by Mart Partna) aiming to take the promotion of BEST and its services to the next level. In 2009, BEST reached an important milestone, namely the 20th Anniversary. The celebration gave a boost to strengthen our image, tell the world about our accomplishments, connect the past to the present by creating special material.

Among others the idea of the History Book of BEST popped up. Due to the growing impact of multimedia, BEST got its official YouTube channel in order to strengthen the promotion of our services through videos. By this time the research started to register our newly voted logo as a trademark in EU countries to avoid any kind of abuse of BEST identity.

In 2009, Teele Kundla took charge and already starting from the summer meeting the members started to realise how connected all our projects actually are, with at the centre the almighty Marketing Strategy. By following the path of creating a common image of BEST, the designs were becoming more and more coherent and having a clear 110 BEST Structure

message behind them. BESTtime was launched this year as well as the History Book of BEST. It was clear after the first cornerstones were set with the creation of newsTeam in 2008 and the EBEC PR team in 2009 that BEST needed a more thorough and organised control over Media Contacting and BEST needed to develop its Public Relations practices in order to grow a stronger external image. As a consequence, the PR Project started in 2009 and we started promoting BEST via social media channels and looking for media partners to cover our big events.

During Liis Elmi’s year in 2010/11 the examination of the logo registration finished in February and our logo was published in the EU as an official trademark. By the increasing number of material published, a growing demand appeared on the scene to raise the level of English texts. Later on during mT WM, the idea was born to gather people who has a good level of English knowledge and also familiar with copywriting, so Text Editors team aka TEDs was created. Time brought changes in the life of PR Project also and after one and a half years of unsuccessful research to find the BEST Facebook page admins, they created the new official page for BEST and developed one for season events promotion also. The year of 2010 was also a breakthrough in the field of media when BEST got its first media partner, Young Innovations Europe Magazine, where we have published articles about PM and Trainers’ Forum.

At GA 2011 Belgrade the new coordinator, Chris (Krzysztof

Kobyłecki) was elected. During his Summer Meeting designers@ was revived with the purpose of creating a more effective working place to graphic designers and encouraging them to share their knowledge. Without clearly defined goals the Marketing Strategy Project couldn’t move forward so after long discussions about the purpose of the project on mT SM, it was decided that the project should be hibernated at least until the results of the Services Evaluation WS. That year the BEST Blog was finalised waiting for all BAS users to post and share their experiences and in the meanwhile BESTtimes was decided to shut down. During 2011, the PR Project renewed the previous media partnership and got two more.

Since EBEC was growing fast it needed a coherent image to be easily recognisable as a 3-level competition around Europe, so EBEC VI workshop happened in Istanbul with the aim to create the Visual Identity of EBEC. During this year, together with TiGro, we managed to create a new Trainshop, called Graphic Design Camp. GDC is aimed at BESTies interested in Graphic Design who are willing to develop in this field and who want to become skilled designers to help their LBGs fulfil their needs.

The year of Marija Gogic started with introducing a new mT Management structure by adding one more HR position and restructuring the responsibilities of HR and secretary positions. As the result of LTSP objective – BEST brand –, during markeTeam Summer Meeting, it has been decided

to take relevant actions and kick-off the Marketing Project to discover a unified image of our organisation, research to see market positioning and create the marketing plan to clarify the key marketing elements of our services and create a path to follow for LBGs. BEST Brands Manual was better defined and renamed to BEST Visual Identity and the changes were accepted at VIP. The need for technical training popped up in the training system, especially when it comes to the need of CMTs therefore a format of a new event was born. markeTeam had its first generation of tutors graduating from Technical Tutor Academy in 2013. New ideas and opportunities came to life by promoting the first edition of BEST Career Day and Market Research Survey. 2013 was also the year of preparation for a special occasion: the 25th Anniversary of BEST. The promotion started through our channels and mT started to create material and get ready for various activities happening during the upcoming year.

As the time goes by in the blink of an eye for markeTeam with lots of challenges overcome and new challenges to be overcome, the period 2013/2014 was pointing at Judit Gyenese from Budapest as new markeTeam coordinator. During this period, Marketing Strategy documents from the previous years were re-examined and they were updated according to the demands of the stakeholders as well as changing dynamics of BEST as an organisation. As a consistent visual identity plays a significant role BEST Structure 111

in the way an organisation presents itself to its stakeholders, we created the set of Common Design Elements.

The aim of this guideline is to create a coherent image for our materials on all levels and also to ease the creation of these materials by providing design elements and inspiration. To respond to the current social media trends which are evolving at a high pace, a strategy on how to use LinkedIn effectively was established and clear lines on how to take advantage of this channel were drawn. Being already registered and acknowledged by the relevant official EU bodies, the logo of BEST had to be also recognised by non-EU countries and the period 2013/2014 was the time when these efforts were launched.

TRAINING INTERESTED GROUP (TIGRO) / TRAINING GROUP (TIGRO) “BEST will provide adequate training to its members, in order to ensure they contribute to the association in an effective way and that they develop skills useful in their future professions” -PM 1995 in Trondheim, proposal by Busse Pettersson, VIII Board

The Pioneers The text of the proposal by Busse marks the first milestone for the history of TIGro (Training Interested Group).

It would anyway take quite some time before this would become a real body of BEST, but it was a sign. This text was to become the statement of purpose of the

112 BEST Structure

committee.

During 1996, some trainings took place during internal events, such as a workshop, and it was only at the GA of ‘97 that the Board would focus on internal education as an organisational need. This led to TRAC (Training Committee) coordinated by Luca Nosetti. This was similar to a discussion group than a committee and it raised very much the awareness about this topic, and a webpage was presented at PM 97, featuring the name “TIGro”.

During PM, there was the shift from discussion to action: Krisztian Stancz from Budapest announced the first Trainshop, an actual training event for BESTies. Also the mailing list of TIGro was created during that PM. After the great success of the 1st Trainshop – that involved both experienced BESTies and professional trainers – more people joined the mailing list and this lead to a motivated group of people coming to GA 98 willing to establish a training system in BEST. 1998 was a decisive year for TIGro: during the GA the proposal of establishing TIGro as committee was unanimously accepted, endowing the team with a serious image, and following the GA a BEST webpage and a BEST mailing list were given to the committee. Later, the 1st Jamboree took place, a big gathering for BESTies in which many trainings were delivered.

During PM, the sharing of training material between TIGro and bonding our German partners started. The idea of having a summer camp to educated

BESTies to become trainers became concrete and finally the first coordinator of TIGro was elected: Krisztian Stancz.

The establishment and growth In GA 1999, following a board structure change, Kasia Lech, became the first TIGro coordinator to become a member of the Board of BEST. That summer, the first TRAP took place in Krakow and in autumn the second edition of Jamboree, already becoming a tradition, in which the TRAP graduates delivered trainings. In those years TIGro started to have more events: its own Summer Meeting like other committees, Trainshop started to take place during the year and a system to try to keep track of the training happening around Europe was started.

In the following years, 2002 and 2003, TIGro went on to be from a young committee to a fully mature body of BEST and to also improve its image, due to the fact that people remembered the light part such as games, and TIGro established a more professional image. More focus was given to train LBG rather than internationally active members and also to developing extensive material useful for even young LBG members.

More and more active trainers coming from TRAP were out delivering trainings around BEST, TRAMs (Trainers Meeting) were taking place to discuss training matters and sometimes also committee related topics, and also a refund policy for trainers travelling to deliver trainings upon request was

established.

In this time the cooperation between TIGro and bonding was flourishing: trainers were closely in touch, participating both as trainer and participants to events of both organisations, and during this time many BEST events were organised by bonding groups.

In 2003, after the formalisation of the Regions in BEST, the Regional Meetings (RMs) became a usual appointment for LBGs of the same region just before the General Meetings.

This was an especially big demand for TIGro as many training sessions were delivered to BESTies during these events taking place at the same time all around Europe.

From 2004, the Trainshops, now all named like “beABLE” or “beRICHER” became a more structured and several editions of the same Trainshop which continuously developing upon the previous editions were starting to take place year after year. The longest running Trainshop is on FR whose last edition was the “beRICHER 7”, and the youngest one: “Graphic Design Camp” aka GDC, which was organised the first time in 2012 (hosted by LBG Maribor) in cooperation with markeTeam.

A time of change In 2005, the GA approved a major change, in which committee coordinators are no longer part of the Board, like it was in the first year of existence of TIGro. Federico “Fred” Pisanu was the first coordinator BEST Structure 113

of TIGro in the structure of the international management that still now working.

In those years, although there was a constant growth of training activity around Europe, the committee was internally divided. TIGro indeed was made by both trainers, who attended TRAP, and also other members interested in Human Resources and soft-skills but without a thorough background from attending TRAP and field experience. After two years trying to tackle this issue, it was decided to put to an end to this unsustainable situation.

In GA 2007, it was decided to separate the two “souls” by dissolving the committee and creating two working groups: the new TIGro would gather only trainers and the Knowledge Group (KT) would deal with knowledge management and HR interested people.

The rebirth of the committee The new TiGro, now named Training Group, kept running all the training events such as TRAP, Trainshops, thus becoming even more effective without having to deal with other matters.

Many experienced trainers, since there was no coordinator at time, helped to build the foundations of the new TiGro during the Summer Meeting 07 in Serbia and define the new framework of the committee with more focused with the training activities compared to the previous committee. After a short transition period in GA 08, TiGro became a committee again.

In recent years a big project started in 114 BEST Structure

2005 finally saw the light: the Training Database which keeps track of all the training sessions delivered in BEST since its beginning. This tool has been in use for a few years now, with the most recent addition of the “Training Knowledge Center”, which, after all its planned features are implemented, will provide a centralised means of storing training knowledge, reports and evaluations.

The recent years also saw an improvement of the external relations, for instance with bonding, such as attending and being trainers in each other events including organising the cross-organisation Trainshop: beREIT. The number of Trainers’ Meetings rose again, including the organisation of three editions of an event called “Trainers’ Forum” (organised by LBGs Budapest, Vienna and Ljubljana) as a means for trainers from student NGOs to network and share best practices.

This is yet one more step to “provide adequate training to BEST members, in order to ensure they contribute to the association in an effective way, and that they develop skills useful in their future professions”; the very mission of TiGro. List of TIGro/TiGro coordinators 1998/1999 - Krisztian Stancz (Krisz) Coordinator of TIGro 1999/2000 - Kasia Lech VP of the XIIth Board 2000/2001 - Riinu Lepa

VP of the XIIIth Board 2001/2002 - Lubomir Ziak (Kubo) VP of the XIVth Board 2002/2003 - Irene Escolar VP of the XVth Board 2003/2004 - Aneta Blaszczyk VP of the XVIth Board 2004/2005 - Angela Scaueru VP of the XVIIth Board 2005 - Federico Pisanu (Fred) Coordinator of TIGro 2006 - Ana-Cristina Dumitru (Creatza) Coordinator of TIGro 2006/2007 - Herve Tunga (Rv) Coordinator of TIGro 2007/2008 - Ligia Martin (Gilly) Coordinator of TiGro 2008/2009 - Jasper Van Bourgognie Coordinator of TiGro 2009/2010 - Peter Kun (Kuni) Coordinator of TiGro 2010/2011 - Robert Cserti (Robi) Coordinator of TiGro 2011/2012 - Pia Liszt Coordinator of TiGro 2012/2013 - Stefan Vintila Coordinator of TiGro 2013/2014 - Harald Rupprechter

(Harry) Coordinator of TiGro 2014/2015 - Cathleen Heimberg Cordinator of TiGro Made in TIGro: The story of Jamboree Jamboree! This is probably a word that evokes many memories in almost every single BEST Member. Who hasn’t participated in at least one Jamboree?

Currently Jamboree is the largest BEST event in terms number of participants gathering from the whole Europe in one room. But how did it all start?

Well, exactly for this purpose: to get the magic feeling of having the whole Europe in one room! Let’s jump back to 1998, a mighty year for TIGro. Krisz had the idea of this big gathering to show all the BESTies, especially the young ones, the aforementioned feeling and also give the chance for them to know a bit more about BEST through basic trainings and other light activities, like a BEST rally to show the structure of the organisation to the newbies. As Krisz was promoting the idea it first took place in Hungary, and all the other active TIGro members helped in the design and the organisation of the activities. The first Jam was “only” 110 participants, back then second only to the GA. Initially it involved mainly the LBGs in that area but quite fast it grew bigger and bigger coming now to include the whole Europe, up to the record-JAM 2005 in Skopje with about 700 participants. Trainers have always been present in numbers at Jamborees BEST Structure 115

taking care of activities, games, training, ensuring the BEST motto “work hard, party hard” come true in every edition.

Made in TIGro: Welcome to the Jungle!

It was the 9th of April 1998, and in the heart of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca the General Assembly was taking place.

On that day Krisz, Riki and Ursa were doing the presentation of TIGro, with its brand new framework. Now, not only did they decide to make a more informal presentation with leaflets instead of the usual slideshow, but they wanted to have a nice PR image to show the delegates. Rushing on the moment, the choice fell on a tiger paw, and that, alongside with other tigers’ image, was how it was presented to the delegates.

The motto used back then would have a life much longer its creators expected.

“Welcome to the Jungle” from that day in 1998 was for long time the big headline in the TIGro pages inside Private Area, and the exact sentence written in the email that welcomed a new member in the committee. From this a whole new culture grew around it: the members of the committee were designated as “TIGers”, the mailing list of the active member was “The Jungle”, a training event visiting LBGs was “the caravan” with a Camel as logo, the alumni mailing list was “the Desert” and the paw was on any TIGro made material.

It is no surprise that upon becoming coordinator of TIGro coordinators receive a puppet of TIGer, the gift that is passed coordinator to coordinator. As the SPOC committee had the unofficial 116 BEST Structure

mascot of a chicken, (a nice meal for a Tiger!) there was a friendly rivalry between the two committees who would never miss a chance in internal events such as GMs, ICFs or even RMs to joke with each other through their slideshows, presentations, or even promotional materials.

In recent years, the “Welcome to the Jungle” theme stayed, however it became a theme of the whole Trainers’ Community, which constitutes “The Jungle”, and the different species living in the Jungle (like e.g. Mosquitoes, Dragons, Llamas and Wolves) indicating a generation of TRAP graduates. The paw nowadays symbolises the whole Trainers’ Community (as in “touched

by TiGro”, taking care of Trainers’ Community), whereas since 2012 TiGro has a separate logo which can be viewed on its committee pages.

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03 REGIONAL ADVISORS

he concept of Regional Advisers was invented around 2004 in BEST as Regional Training Adviser (RTAs). They had to communicate with LBGs about their training needs and coordinate the training aspect of the Regional Meetings.

At GA 2005 Greece, the position of Regional Adviser (as 3rd ring of the management) was established when the structure of BEST changed. The RA position was introduced as a mixture of the RTA and some responsibilities of the Board. From that moment, the Regional Adviser had to ensure the communication between the LBGs and international teams, prepare the Regional Meetings, follow up on the situation in the LBGs and help those with problems.

From the beginning, Regional Advisers have been elected directly by the LBGs of the region of interest. The first

118 BEST Structure

election took place in June-July 2005.

So far, there have been ten generations of Regional Advisers.

TEAM OF REGIONAL ADVISERS Looking at BEST, we could say that the team of the RAs is quite unique.

They are elected all at the same time, coming from different LBGs. They are intensively KT’d by their predecessors and at the Regional Advisers’ Meeting (RAM) at the start of their mandate.

They coordinate two events during their mandate with 60-70 people attending each event and they work mostly in a virtual environment.

We often only think about the coordination of RMs, but the RAs also work in a team on general projects.

These depend on the focus of the generation; sometimes they choose to focus on smaller issues, while other generations have many projects.

A few examples of these general

projects include: creating handbooks (RA, Nursing, organising RM etc.), adjusting the Regional Division, evaluating and improving the concept of Regional Meetings, finding hosts for JBTs, improving the membership system etc. Usually, in order to work more effectively on these projects, one Short Intensive Meeting is organised in the middle of the RAs’ mandate, focused on the most important issues.

More information can be found in the Regional Advisers’ Handbook (on PA).

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04 BEST REGIONS

ince the beginning, BEST has consisted of the LBGs supported by international teams. With people working separately on the local and international level, communication mainly happened only during General Meetings. This proved to be ineffective in reaching all the BESTies.

THE UNOFFICIAL BEGINNING: 2001 To improve the communication, the Board divided Europe (47 LBGs) amongst themselves in 2001. Each of them took a certain region under their wing, where they would keep close contact with the LBGs, make sure local and international goals match and communicate things clearly and on time.

At the same time, TIGro was also splitting the LBGs when they created the Main Trainers. Each of them had to

120  BEST Structure

communicate with a set of LBGs about their training needs.

A third party that was splitting Europe were the LBGs. Although not officially, LBGs gathered in regions like Iberian, Lowlands, Nordic and later CASH (Croatia, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary + Skopje and Belgrade).

Spring 2003 brought the first full set of eight Regional Meetings, which were used for preparing the GA delegates.

The content of these events was prepared by the Boardie responsible for the specific region, and the training sessions were coordinated by the Main Trainer of the region.

In 2004, the overlap between the Board and Main Trainers was spotted and corrected. The Main Trainers were renamed Regional Training Advisers, or Regional Advisers on Training (RATs).

THE OFFICIAL BEGINNING: 2004 - 2005 In 2003-2004, BEST started considering

changing the working structure because it was not sustainable anymore with the contemporary size of BEST (59 LBGs).

After a whole year working on it, the big changes were approved at GA 2005 Greece.

At that point, the tasks were distributed among 6 International Boardies, 6 Committees’ Coordinators and 8 Regional Advisers, instead of 9 Boardies.

The Regional Advisers were now going to take care of the new regions. LBGs decided after GA 2005 that there would be 8 regions.

THE FIRST CHANGE: GA 2005-2006 In March 2006, at the first Regional Advisers Meeting, new regions were evaluated and discussed to further improve them. Several ideas popped up, among one was the idea of concentric regions, where central LBGs would be region 1, the first ring around them region 2, and so on until the last region which would contain Trondheim, Reykjavik, Lisbon, Naples, Chania, Istanbul, Ekaterinburg etc. Although it may sound crazy, there was some reasoning behind this, as the regions would now empower diversity as well, not just make neighbouring LBGs even closer and separated from the others.

In the end, the solution presented had 8 regions, trying to avoid high concentration of the same language/ culture. This proposed change was accepted by the LBGs at GA 2006 Zagreb.

The second change: 2007-2008 The second generation of RAs didn’t have an RA Meeting and also didn’t work on changing the regions; therefore the same regions were passed to their successors. Good for knowledge transfer, but bad for flexibility. One more year after, when the Board decided to make some minor adjustments to the regional division, hell broke loose.

In 2007, BEST had grown to 65 LBGs due to a lot of Turkish and Serbian LBGs joining BEST in a short time.

As a consequence, South-East had now become almost double in size than some of the other regions and it made sense to do something about it. But now, the regional spirit of South East and the sense of belonging of the Central LBGs made it almost impossible to reach a concession. In the end, South East became South (8 LBGs) and Central South (6 LBGs). Just as it had happened at the last division, it took about one month for things to cool down and people to stop complaining.

THE THIRD CHANGE: 2010-2011 Since 2007, BEST kept growing fast and the regional division had to follow.

In March 2010, the XXII Board held a workshop on structure evaluation and it concluded that the regions had to be drastically changed to deal with the changed reality (84 LBGs). A small change like the previous time would not solve the issues.

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Following up on the outcomes of the workshop, the XXIII Board started working on a new regional division.

The four criteria – established in IPF 2010 Istanbul - were used: Accessibility, Diversity, Balance and Size (more information is on PA/Regions).

As usual, the Regional Advisers were working on drafting the new regions and after IPF Tallinn, a draft division with 11 regions was sent to the LBGs. Similar to the 1st and 2nd change, BEST was on fire, e.g., “How did the board dare to change the regions?”. The mailing list which was used to gather feedback, was probably one of the most intensive MLs in recent history of BEST. More than 250-300 mails in less than 2 weeks and 5 new division proposals popped up.

Finally, after a lot of discussions at GA 2011 Belgrade, all 88 BEST Groups (Observers, Babies and Full Members) voted for the final division (an updated version of the IPF Draft). The new division took effect after the GA. YEARLY EVALUATION AND ADJUSTMENT 2011 - 2012 & 2012 - 2013 During the first year of the new regions, the Board and Regional Advisers worked upon an evaluation to see the impact of the change. The outcome of the evaluation survey was surprising: over 80% of the LBGs were happy with the new division, surprisingly considering the burning situation at GA Belgrade.

The evaluation also pointed out some issues in the division and with small 122 BEST Structure

changes the situation was improved.

As continuous evaluation allows the issues to be solved quicker, the next Board and Regional Advisers (20122013) did an evaluation once again.

Although some new and recurring issues of the previous year were solved, others could not. The need for a bigger regional re-division was identified as changing a little aspect is very hard.

One could almost speak of the “butterfly effect”.

The continuous evaluation also showed that people are happy and changing the Regional Division doesn’t harm BEST as organisation. We remain flexible and adjust very quickly to new circumstances. Exactly how the regional concept was envisioned at its creation.

WHAT WILL THE FUTURE BRING? Regions are an inherent part of the structure of BEST, they are supposed to follow our working methods despite the emotional attachment to it sometimes.

Structure and working methods in general are consequences of choices. In the future BEST will keep on having to make choices about what kind of organisation it wants to be, what organisational culture it wants to have.

Will BEST remain a strongly connected organisation or will it become more a network? Will the decision making remain close to the local scope or will there be national/regional decision making levels in between?

These questions will remain and future BESTies will keep on having interesting

discussions about them.

For the short term, BEST has made its choice. Aiming at remaining a strongly connected organisation with decision making decided by the local level, BEST is preparing for the future by changing its structure and creating a new Regional Division.

What tools will we use to make a new draft division? Will the discussions on the new division set BEST again on fire?

Will the emotions cool down as fast as in the past? Only time will tell!

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05 WORKING GROUPS

RANTS WORKING GROUP Group works mainly focuses on fundraising through grants.

GWG supports BEST in providing financial resources to support the structure and annual work of BEST, General Meetings, EBEC and other events and projects.

It all started in 2005, when GWG was created as a project of finTeam. This team became a working group inside of finTeam headed by a coordinator in 2007 and, since then, GWG has developed more and more through the efforts of its members. From 2010 onwards, GWG achieved great progress in its structure, human resources system, working methods and tools, getting its own Wiki and Archive systems on Private Area and generally

124 BEST Structure

becoming an independent Working Group. The management team started to be composed of a coordinator and a human resources responsible.

The foundation and development of the Grants Working Group was important for ensuring the financial stability of BEST. With the economic crisis in Europe, corporate support became unstable and the number of grants opportunities increased, so the creation of GWG was important for keeping BEST finances secure.

Currently, GWG plans and develops its projects autonomously, though always by working closely with the Treasurer. The main projects of this team include cooperation with foundations and preparations of grant applications and reports; all to support BEST’s international work. Also, this team invests resources on creating and improving grants supporting materials for LBGs. The team consists of around twenty members divided into experienced

and baby members. Currently the team has twelve alumni members, all of them experienced members from previous years. GWG members (GWGers) annually write around five grants applications and support BEST with around 50.000 Euro per year on average. Besides this, GWGers work on the establishment and maintenance of cooperation with international funding programmes, especially from the European Union (e.g. Youth in Action, Erasmus+) and European Youth Foundation from the Council of Europe.

Grants Working Group meets annually during the Grants Short Intensive Meeting, where its members and other BESTies interested in grants set the goals of the team for the upcoming year, attend training sessions and discuss current and future projects. As a fun fact, back in Grants SIM 2012, GWG’s motto became “Czech it and Polish it”, referring to improvement of applications by checking and polishing their texts in order to submit top notch grant applications. In 2014, Grants SIM was on its fifth edition!

GWG is still a young team, so there is lots of space for improvement and growth.

For this reason, future plans for GWG include investing in its sustainability in human resources, growing a network of foundations it cooperates with, increasing its recognition inside BEST and fundraising as much as possible through grants in order to ensure the financial sustainability of BEST.

COMPETITION WORKING GROUP Competition Working Group was the team dealing with Engineering Competitions, which have been a real part of BEST since the beginning in 2002. The first real experience of BESTies with an Engineering Competition (EC) came in March 2002 when some BESTies went to the Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC). They came back very enthusiastic and started to promote the idea for this kind of BEST event. On ICF 2002, GA 2002 and some summer courses in 2002, small team designs and debates were organised.

The board saw that the idea was appreciated a lot and asked David Gonzalez (one of the BESTies who had been on the CEC2002) to create an international working group and to work out the idea in more detail. A call was made in the end of August 2002 to all BESTies and soon an enthusiastic group of BESTies started to create the first EC-Handbook.

In PM 02 this EC-Handbook was presented and Competition Working Group (CWG) was founded in PM 02 with the goal to develop the concept of Engineering Competitions inside BEST. It was decided to let this working group organise the first BEST Engineering Competition (BEC) (at that time called BEST European Engineering Competition or BEEC) together with an LBG. LBG Eindhoven and LBG Ghent BEST Structure 125

organised this first B(E)EC together with CWG and it was a great success and inspiration for the future engineering competitions. After that CWG got requests from several LBGs to organise a BEC together with them.

But the board decided to organise also in 2004 only 1 big B(E)EC, in order to give CWG time to work out a second version of the EC-HB and to work out a scenario of how to continue with this project in BEST. The second B(E)EC was organised by LBG Warsaw and CWG, with help from baby member Gdansk from 8 till 16 October 2004 in Poland.

CWG successfully coordinated the tasks of the first two BEST European Engineering Competitions. In PM 04 a new concept was presented and approved. In this new concept for BEST Engineering Competitions, the LBG would have to take care of the complete event, as well as organising the competition content of the event.

This transformed CWG from a task developing working group to a working group that kept the overview over the BEST Engineering Competitions, and gave feedback to BEC-organising LBGs. In the year 2005, 3 more BECs took place in spring and summer seasons.

After this year, more and more LBGs organised BEST Engineering Competitions as these were dynamic events, full of challenges that gave the students a practical and new experience.

With the competitions concept well underway, CWG’s function as a separate body was over: later that same 126 BEST Structure

year, CWG was merged with Season Program Optimisation Committee (SPOC), creating the External Events Committee (EEC).

NEWSTEAM NewsTeam was the Working Group supported by the markeTeam Committee. The purpose of creating this WG was to have someone who took care about making BEST events more visible to our stakeholders by publishing press releases and establishing media contacts. Another responsibility of this group was preparing the BESTtimes editions - the official internal magazine of BEST edited and published on a digital format.

Before BESTtimes, the BEST magazine was produced, although there were only paper versions which could be found in many LBGs’ offices (no digital versions).

The idea of BESTtimes started in the XV Board, but Tina Toni, secretary in the XVI board, was the first one to implement it. Then Eva Sturtewagen (Secretary of the Flowers Board) took care of it afterward and improved it by creating something similar to a newspaper, almost a monthly edition.

Later it was managed only by the Secretary with the help of no more than two other people. The XVIII had it as well, but less frequent. They also started the international and external newsletter.

As the things started to move, the group had other responsibilities. In 2009, the group took care of all external and internal news (BESTimes and the news

in PA and Public Web Site news) and it was responsible for the contact that BEST had with the media.

The idea of having the NewsTeam was changed in the same year, with the integration into PR Project.

WEBTEAM On September 1998 Dionysios Synodinos (Dio), who was, by that time, responsible of the public international web pages of BEST sent a mail to bestint@ (the mailing list that later became lbgs@) asking for the e-mail address of the people taking care of the sites of local groups. The response was great and some weeks later he put all those addresses on webmaster@, the purpose being to create a group of people that would assist him to maintain the international site.

“This group was recognized after GA Lisbon in 1999. There the Webmaster Group had a couple of places. What I do remember is that, there, a meeting on a new site took place and that a member of the Board attended. In that GA Dio was elected (again) web responsible.”

- Dani Buxeres

In the summer of 1999, most of the members of the Webmaster Group attended a SC in Athens about Java.

There, they had some meetings about the new look of the website, all in parallel with regular activities of the SC. This group of people didn’t have access to the FTP server where the pages were hosted, but instead had to send the

updates to Dio, who uploaded them to the server. After some time, the way of working changed and instructions were sent on the mailing list (by Cristi Bogdan from LBG Timisoara) on how to update the pages on the server autonomously.

At PM 1999, the Board asked Dani Buxeres to lead the group until GA, where they would have to vote on a new coordinator. In the weeks after he took the responsibility of keeping the site updated (by that time the site was designed in a way that it needed frequent updates).

After some time, a restructuring of the group was made: the first thing the members did was to clean up the mailing list, remove all the people who were not active at all and send a mail to LBGs@, inviting interested people to join the group. A new group was about to be born. We had at least one person for coding, writing and designing.

We also had good contacts with other committees but the group lacked some tradition, structure and the knowledge of how to do things. This structure was settled at a meeting hosted by LBG Brussels, and a training on web technologies was also made at that time.

“At GA Sweden, in 2000 the new site project was re-launched (we had a working group where we recruited important new members such as Pietro Dolcini and we created a mailing list dedicated to the project), delegates realised that the web site was an important tool for the external image of the association and Daniel Buxeres was officially elected Webmaster coordinator.”

- Dani Buxeres, LBG Barcelona

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Pietro Dolcini took the responsibility of this new project and for the first months he did most of the work. From that point on, people were working hard at the new website.

At ICF Warsaw in January 2001, the Webmasters Group worked on the layout of the website and invited other committees to make the content of their pages.

Before GA 2001, the working group had to elect a coordinator, which the GA could give the mandate to coordinate the group for the following twelve months.

Maria Alandes was the new coordinator of the group. In GA Ljubljana, the design was almost finished and was presented it to the delegates.

But the site was not public yet; the group wanted to publish it before winter season ‘00-01, but this wasn’t managed.

The same happened for spring’01, but it was decided that the publishing had to be done on the day of the summer season’01 announcement.

WebTeam consisted of a group of people trying to put all their efforts together to offer this virtual window, the first website of BEST. In their words: “We believe that close contacts with the other parts of the organisation, LBGs and committees, are of the utmost importance to create a better reflection of our world. A lively cooperation where their activities have a direct echo on the web pages is our target.”

Later on, the task was not finished, because the public web site needed to be updated from time to time. The site got more complex, and many features were 128 BEST Structure

added afterwards. The group remained active and listened to the needs of the organisation. In 2003, the site was finally finished.

At the end of the next year (2004), the public website was once again redesigned and launched.

The final time that webTeam redesigned the website was redesigned was in January 2008. This time, the WebTeam worked hard and fulfilled their goal: merging all of BEST systems in the public website was a success! BAS, BCC and BEST Teachers’ Area all worked properly, making it possible to promote only one unified website at all our stakeholders.

The website that webTeam created in 2008 would be used for over five years.

As this book is being written, a new Public Website Project is in progress, with an expected completion date of GA 2015. May it serve us as long as the products of webTeam!

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06 PROJECTS

UROPEAN TRAVELLERS’ GUIDE This project started as the Guide Project.

ETG was a virtual working group meant to guide all the readers, either members or students from universities, through the cities of Europe. The expected outcome was supposed to be a complete travelling guide for European students.

In order to be as complete as possible, this was work that gathered a lot of members from various committees.

For quite a while, LBGs were updating this guide with information about money issues, weather, hostels, places to have fun, transportations and any information to appreciate the town in the BEST way.

As of June 2012, the project is officially considered inactive, mostly because of the lack of activity since 2008 and no real evolution or updates occurring.

Despite this, we can not say that in the

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future we won’t go back to this topic again!

MARKET RESEARCH PROJECT In 2012, already approaching the 25th year of BEST, External Services became the center of focus, this time from a different perspective. The perspective of the external world.

During the past years, External Services kept developing, growing and taking shape. The number of students of technology participating in them was growing as well, and BEST managed to get well-known among European universities for the Services it provided.

BEST was developing an internal system in order to evaluate the quality of these services and activities and monitor them on their performance and quality.

What was missing from the equation was the input from the external world, regarding a potential need of change.

In 2012, the XXIV Board of BEST (Dolphins) identified the need of assessing the external environment,

and decided to start from the most important stakeholder: the students.

An online survey related to external services reaches about 800 students and this was the first attempt to collect data from our basic stakeholder. However, due to some omissions of the design and implementation process, the sample was evaluated to be non-representative and the information was not used.

This was not an obstacle for the idea to be developed, as with the Dolphins in Long Term Strategic Plan (LTSP) 20122015 it not only states that assessment of the external environment is a necessity, but it also states that it should become a systematic practice. The relevant parts can be found in Focus Area 5: Services Management, Objective 1: “Make it a practice to assess our environment and the needs of our stakeholders”.

- Vice President (VP) for External Services at that point was Bogdan Bucur (LBG Cluj-Napoca).

The following year, under the XXV Board of BEST (Band), the external environment assessment began with the Market Research Project. The Vice President for External Services was Wieke Villerius (LBG Ghent) and Coordinator of the project was Alexia Spyridonidou (LBG Thessaloniki).

Definition: “Market research, is the systematic gathering and interpretation of information about individuals or organisations using the statistical and analytical methods and techniques of the applied sciences to gain insight or support

decision making.”

- ICC/ESOMAR International Code on Market and Social Research

For BEST, Market Research is the project through which we aim to: a) Identify and gather the needs of our market (being its stakeholders and competitors e.g. other student NGOs) by using tools that serve the relevant purpose in the best possible way (e.g. online surveys, interviews etc.), b) Communicate the input to relevant BEST bodies about the current needs and interpret it with their help and c) Support the decisionmaking process regarding the External Services Strategy.

The Market Research Project is structured according to the three stakeholders: Students, Companies & Universities, and it started with the Students’ part. In February 2013, the BEST Student’ Survey was launched with the goal of gathering insight concerning their experience and expectations towards complementary education, educational involvement and career support. In total, 2.922 students were reached throughout Europe. The large volume of data and the complexity of the analysis applied allowed for only basic data elaboration, since for further elaboration more sophisticated methods were required.

The following year under the mandate of XXVI Board of BEST (Aviators), when the Vice President for External Services was Klemen Krulec (LBG Maribor), the project continued with the same coordinator, but with a new

BEST Structure 131

team and two new responsibles for the parts of Universities and Companies.

Responsible for Universities’ Research was Ou Yan Zhou (LBG Milan) and for Companies’ Research was Majd Mekouar Ouazzani Touhami (LBG Barcelona).

The data of Students’ Survey was processed by the team following methods that best fit the complexity and the volume of the sample.

Universities were reached through interviews. The aim was to assess their perceptions on the impact student organisations should have towards university, to investigate what services such organisations should provide and seek for opportunities for future collaboration. The interesting part of this survey is that LBGs were highly involved in the process, as they reached their university themselves and forwarded the information to the Market Research team.

Finally, Companies were approached through phone call interviews, done by members of Financial Team of BEST, with the intention of assessing the contribution student organisations have and to seek potential cooperation in other fields. The research targeted towards companies didn’t reach a satisfactory number of companies and was therefore dropped at the end of the XXVI Board mandate.

In 2014-2015, under the mandate of XXVII Board of BEST (Submarine), having Ou Yan Zhou (LBG Milan) as Vice President for External Services, the project is closing its cycle and the Market Research team of the previous 132 BEST Structure

year is supporting the Board to use selectively the data from Students’ and Universities’ surveys in order to support better informed decisions regarding the Services’ Strategy and Long Term Strategic Planning, and to understand better the external environment (to the extent that these surveys allow).

Another goal is to collect the technical knowledge gained and document the process and the methods followed for future generations to be able to refer to them, if they find it useful.

This exercise has shown that Market Research is a challenge which requires a lot of willingness and people with various technical backgrounds, and it is difficult to be “KTed”. Since it’s our bridge towards understanding the external world, it would make sense to build up on the knowledge and the experience gathered and to search for optimised procedures which would allow the external environment to be assessed in a sophisticated and reliable way.

BEST UNIVERSITY CENTRE BEST University Centre made its first appearance in the very first BEST Meeting, Grenoble in March 1988. It was decided that this new association would have a lot of aims, but one philosophy: “Promote Europe amongst Europeans”. For this reason, the V.I.A. (Very Important Aims) were set: Make available clear information about every university in the European

Association of Universities (EAU) to all interested parties.

Mediate between universities in the EAU and between universities and companies.

To support student initiatives concerning European-orientated affairs when possible.

It is clear that the very first Aim of BEST was to spread information about universities among students, something that still is the main purpose of BEST University Centre. However, the next step took some time until it happened. In a Workshop in Paris (ENSTA) in 1995, the concept of the Information Centre appeared again. The idea was to have a new WWW page for all the LBGs containing the necessary information for students coming from abroad to study in their university (general introduction, university matters and practical information).

All the pages were to be prepared and kept updated by the local level in each LBG and should have the same structure so that the student could easily find what they needed as well as equivalent information for comparing different universities. To make it very simple, a skeleton to be filled following this common structure was prepared: it contained explanations and examples that just needed to be substituted by the text and the links that referred to your university.

Half a year later, this idea was proposed to be approved on GA Tallinn 1996.

The proposal was about approving the structure of data discussed at WorkShop Paris (and getting a coordinator for the

Information Centre). LBGs should have their information centre in operation

by PM ‘96, and the list of universities should be updated yearly. BEST should also collect and publish information about possibilities of having a thesis abroad, and all this information should be updated regularly and as often as there are updates. However these actions were not followed and it seemed that this idea died for a few years.

The next time the topic was brought up, was during a WorkShop in 2000 in Bucharest. There the Minerva discussion group made a few proposals on how the co-operation between universities and Minerva should be arranged. It was desired to have a web page within the Minerva site, dedicated to universities.

This page would contain information about universities and activities that would take place at a specific university.

All this information was information that someone could usually find on the university’s web page, but the idea was to have it more systematically classified.

The activities organised by a university would be in this web page as well.

To achieve this it was decided at the GA2000 that it will be beneficial for the project if Minerva could have a contact person in each LBG who would provide this information for the web pages.

Later on, in a Workshop in 2001 in ClujNapoca, specifications for the project were set, however the project froze again. After this “frozen” period, from GA 2002 until PM 2002, the project entered an active state again. New motivated members showed the interest to continue the important work that had BEST Structure 133

already been done. The problems we faced, like licence for the software on which we would develop the database and lack of will from the side of LBGs for help were solved during the workshop in Lisbon in December 2002. A new action plan was ready. With help especially to EduCo for the willingness to help and their valuable remarks! However for the third time, the project didn’t move on much, thus de-motivating the members of the Working Group. This time it lasted till October 2005, when a new Mailing List was again created, to start discussing about possibilities for the project.

The reason why this project kept being frozen was that it always seemed to develop into something that got out of hand. At least this is what happened since 2005 and the same thing happened before also. The idea was always to make something really simple and easy to fill in. However, the concept always grew into something that was too much for the LBGs to bother with or keep fully updated and ended up demotivating the people involved.

The reason the XVIII board and coordinators decided to revive the project in 2005 was that there was a university wanting to be sponsor of BEST. They wanted us to promote them like we promote companies on our webpage. The problem was that it would look very strange for us to especially promote one university, which was not even a member of the BEST network, above all the others within the network.

So, we wanted to provide some basic means for all the member universities 134 BEST Structure

to present themselves for free, while at the same time the same service could be sold to universities that didn’t belong to BEST. So, the aim of reviving the University Centre in 2005 was to have universities as sponsors alongside companies.

“In 2005-06 we managed to somehow keep the information structure small and push towards a fast implementation. The project kept together this time and the implementation was finished by the XIX management. Then again, in some ways the idea of the centre got out of hand again. This was never meant to be something compulsory for all LBGs, but simply a tool that helps us fundraise while providing equal opportunities for the BEST universities to present themselves on our pages.”

- Elina Seppaen, LBG Tampere

In 2006, the dissolution of CaSCo caused the project to slow down one more time but in the end, the platform got successfully coded, and in October the first university profile was filled.

At the end of the year the system was launched for testing and promoted during RMs and GA in 2007. A larger wave of promotion was conducted during September 2007 but it became evident how difficult it was to push LBGs to fill in their university profiles.

During PM 2008, a proposal to make filling these profiles compulsory was put forward, however it was rejected. By the beginning of January 2009, we had just 27 university profiles online.

Afterwards the project once again

entered a period of hiatus where the project slowly died. In 2012 it was decided that the platform would disappear in the upcoming new iteration of BEST Public Website, though no specific fate for it was decided. Two years later, in 2014, it was finally decided that BUC would be used for University FR and would then be taken care of by finTeam as a part of BCS. After a long time, BEST University Centre has finally found a purpose inside the organisation. While the original concept was fitting to what we aimed to achieve in 1988, BEST has changed over time and so did our services. More than 25 years later, universities will have a proper place inside the organisation and the triangle of our stakeholders is finally fulfilled.

GROWTH OF BEST BEST has always strived for diversity and sustainability and therefore has always welcomed new groups while simultaneously ensuring the stability of our existing groups. New groups bring fresh perspectives and new ideas to the organisation.

Since the first meeting in Grenoble in 1988, just in one year BEST was established in 14 European cities.

The original 14 included Barcelona, Budapest, Eindhoven, ENSAM, Grenoble, Helsinki, Lisbon, Ljubljana, Louvain-la-Neuve, Paris Ecole Centrale, Stockholm, Trondheim, Turin, and Warsaw. BEST started to gain recognition and attention. In 1994, 5 years after the establishment of the

first LBGs, the number of Full Member LBGs doubled in number, plus there were 13 new Baby Member LBGs and one Observer Group.

The exponential growth led the organisation to the current numbers. In just 25 years, BEST expanded on the map of Europe to 82 new universities, which together with 13 of the original 14 (Eindhoven is no longer part of BEST since GA Bucharest 2014) makes 95 groups. BEST expands exponentially: with 95 LBGs to present, that makes a ratio of more than 3 new LBGs every year. Also, the activity at GMs is growing, reaching its peak and record of 11 membership changes on PM2011 in Copenhagen.

Unfortunately the group that in the beginning shows interest in joining, isn’t always able to create and develop a sustainable organisation. For different reasons, we are no longer able to find on BEST map the cities of Cambridge, Dublin, Eindhoven, London, Lulea, Miskolc, Newcastle, Padova, Sarajevo, Sopron, Southampton, Stuttgart, Ulster, and Yerevan.

After a quarter of a century it’s time to take a step back and examine the overview of what has happened in the previous 25 years regarding the Growth of BEST, but most importantly WHY and HOW it happened?

As you can see, BEST has started with a handful of groups and 25 years later it consists of 95 groups. Below you can find a graph that is representing this growth. Since 1995 BEST has been growing with 4 groups each year on average.

BEST Structure 135

proposals to control the growth, this in the following way: 14

1989 12

80

95

LOCAL BEST GROUPS 1994 1999 2004 2009 COUNTRIES

2014

30

33

31

18

46

64

20

26

On a side note, there have been many times discussions on what is the maximum size of BEST. Lately the consensus among (ex-) International Board members is that it is hard to state a maximum size to the organisation.

With every increase, the organisation will adapt its structures and its working methods. However it is possible to state that growth of the organisation which is too fast is dangerous, especially when the structure and working methods cannot follow.

The beginning 1990-2000 As everyone knows, BEST was established as an organisation in 1989.

From the reports of the first minutes, we can read what ideas the people already had back then. Together with defining the focus and activities of the organisation, discussions about where and how BEST should grow were also happening.

However, it took until 1995 before an official decision was made concerning the growth of the organisation.

At PM Trondheim 1995 there were 136 BEST Structure

• There would be a limit in the amount of observers applications accepted (instead of the limit on baby applications).

• This limit would be a maximum of 3 per General Meeting.

Around 1997 there were discussions going on about the potentially maximum size of BEST. Back then they had the opinion BEST would exist maximum of 70 LBGs. They used several ideas to cope with bigger GMs and a bigger organisation – ideas which have been re-occurring up to the present day.

At GA Stockholm 2000 there were once again many discussions in the organisation related to how we should grow.

The first discussion point was the debate regarding what kind of organisation we should grow to: an elitist organisation or a widespread network.

[Historical note: we have become an elitist organisation, meaning we are mainly present in the top universities of Europe and not in all the universities.]

Another discussion was related to the speed at which BEST was growing.

This can be seen as a kind of follow up on the 1995 strategy. In 2000, it was opted for a limited growth in order for the organisation to be able to cope with the changes related to growth.

BEST Structure 137

Adjusting Growth 2004-2008 For some years the growth topic was silent, only to return in GA Copenhagen 2004.

The main outcomes were a difference in strategy with the guidelines for the geographical growth of BEST. From this point forwards, there was a list of priority countries (where no BEST group was present) and it was stated that there should not be a pro-active approach in order for BEST to be fair in the evaluation of the applications.

In GA Zagreb 2006, there was a proposal to better define the geographical guidelines and the target group for BEST was set there. The countries eligible included everything west of “the nearest longitude degree east of Ekaterinburg”.

At GA Bucharest 2008, there was a proposal by LBG Porto to remove the “non-proactive approach”. This was the last adjustment to the growth strategy of BEST. Growth Project 2009-2013 In 2009 a project was started, under supervision of the Board, aiming to: • Increase the coverage of countries (for example the missing countries of Germany, Switzerland, Ireland etc.).

• Balance the coverage of countries where groups already exist.

• Have interested groups applying 138 BEST Structure

for the right reasons by informing them what BEST is about.

• Have good quality applications of groups by coaching them.

As a result, effort was put in the development of high quality materials disseminating the proper image and information about BEST to potentially interested groups as well as a coaching system for already interested groups intending to apply for Observers.

During the time that the project was running, there was a proactive approach from BEST towards universities in the targeted countries including virtual contacts as well as live presentations sometimes. Nevertheless, no significant results emerged from the aforementioned attempts. However, the coaching and support for BEST Interested Groups (BIG) proved to be highly effective.

After a change in BEST cooperation agreement with bonding that stopped the participation of bonding students in BEST courses (until 2011, bonding students were able to be participants in BEST courses but due to the fact that BEST intended to expand in Germany, this cooperation agreement changed and bonding members are only able to be co-organisers from then and on), there was a high interest of German students who previously attended BEST courses to keep being able to use BEST services. Therefore, quite a lot of them approached BEST, in order to get help in the creation of a Local BEST Group and Growth Coaches took over the communication and support.

As a result of this process, an interested group from Erlangen-Nuremberg University was accepted as BEST Observer in July 2012 and became baby member in GA Valladolid 2013. History was made and BEST established its presence in Germany! In 2014, BEST established a second group in Germany (Aachen), extending its reach in the country, providing its services to an even wider audience and developing further relationships with German universities.

The Growth project ran from 2009 until 2013, its estimated end date.

The XXV Board of BEST revised the project after the establishment of BEST groups in Germany. Through relevant discussions and a mini-workshop in GA 2013, it was evaluated that it had reached the maximum it could offer to the organisation in this state and some alternative ways of supporting interested groups can be examined.

agreed that limiting the growth of the organisation is a possible improvement and would offer solutions for numerous problems.

As a result of the above and the research made by the XXVI Board of BEST, in GA Bucharest 2014, there was a proposal to change the calculation of the maximum number of acceptable Observer Groups per General Meeting, taking into account the groups that are under the nursing process as well.

According to this, the total number of groups under nursing (Observers, Babies, Suspended and Under Monitoring) cannot exceed the 15% of the number of Full Member LBGs after any GM. Therefore, the decision about the selection of new Observer Groups (that happens after the relevant GM) should happen based on this calculation.

Latest evaluation 2013-present

Well, that is an interesting question!

Who knows what will happen? Maybe the borders of BEST will need to be reestablished again, maybe the new travel possibilities will bring new opportunities for the organisation, maybe Europe will change or maybe BEST will change … the ideas are endless and so is the potential. How do you see BEST in the next 25 years?!

At Regional Advisers’ Meeting Delft and IPF Ghent 2013, there were discussions concerning the growth of BEST and the impact on the organisation related to membership. Three scenarios were presented as possible solutions: • Pausing the growth • Limiting growth • Establishing a stricter membership system in the organisation

What is next?

After thorough analysis of strong and weak points for each of them, it was BEST Structure 139

07 ALUMNI NET

irst ideas related to alumni networks were discussed at GA2002, where the Local Alumni Network WG stressed the importance of preserving the communication and relations between LBGs and their alumni. The idea was embraced by everyone, and not long time after, another great idea popped up: to make a giant European network of BEST alumni.

In 2005, a group of alumni took the initiative in creating the link between all of the alumni of BEST. The main purpose was to ensure the communication between BEST and Alumni.

So, for coordinating this network, AlumniNet was created. The WG was founded in 2005 by Anna Travesset, Wouter Schaekers, Gregoire Toussaint, Mirjam Zwanenburg and Gabriela Popescu.

For this to be a success a strategy was needed and some responsibilities were

140  BEST Structure

created. Therefore they were thinking about defining some responsibilities that would help the network to grow by focusing on some key points. The main three responsibles would have to focus on promotion, IT problems and the coordination of the entire network.

One of their main interests was to promote the project so more and more alumni join the network. For this, they needed a common playground; so they focused in implementing an interface on PA. The profile contained personal info, current job/university + job/ university history, studies and alumni involvement. After GA Zagreb, at every GM, AlumniNet was taking care of Alumni Meeting and having some discussions how to improve the Alumni Network and the collaboration with active BEST members.

Only from 2006, after the Alumni Short Intensive Meeting in London, they defined several important projects like: AlumniNet public website, AlumniNet PA pages, AlumniNet Gallery and AlumniTimes. Gaining

in image, alumni network benefited of the support of the International Boards and the number of the alumni joining the network grew more and more. An official alumni mailing list was created where hot topics were discussed. This way, alumni established a simple and good way of communicating with BEST and offering support in different matters.

The first issue of AlumniTimes appeared in June 2006, and it was supposed to be a biannual magazine. Until now, four editions have been published and savoured by BEST alumni and members.

The major project of AlumniNet was organising an event for alumni similar

the chance to present their business ideas and start-up projects, discuss various business related topics and network with their friends and colleagues which took place in Berlin. After such a success there were other editions to follow in Barcelona and Brussels.

Throughout the years the working methods of the alumni network have changed and the action plan has varied from coordinator to coordinator. It’s interesting to observe how differently the alumni interact between each other and how they still keep connected to BEST.

“In 2005, a group of alumni took the initiative in creating the link between all of the alumni of BEST.” to the BEST courses: BEST Alumni Network Event On Sustainable Energy (BANTSE). For this, there were several presentations made, a schedule and prepared all of the details of the event.

AlumniNet was present at GA 2008 with a presentation of the development of the network and ways to improve the collaboration.

Besides AlumniNet some individual projects have emerged from the initiatives of several alumni. In 2011, Tassos Natsakis from LBG Thessaloniki and Filip Kis from LBG Zagreb created the first ABC (Alumni Business Camp), a three day event where participants had BEST Structure 141

05 BEST INTERNAL EVENTS WORKING TOGETHER.

01 INTERNAL EVENTS SUPPORT The History

his is a category in the annual budget of BEST, made for two reasons: to ensure that any LBG can organise a BEST Internal event without affecting their budget for External Events and to give every LBG the possibility of coming into contact with the larger scope of BEST. This support was created with the intent of being offered to LBGs which are not sustainable enough to organise an internal event and have limited funds for it. It was not meant to be offered to all LBGs and the approach behind it is similar to receiving a grant from an external institution.

The history starts before 2009, when the need for smaller LBGs to organise internal events was emphasised, since only larger LBGs were organising several events during one year. The category was approved at GA Budapest 2009 in the budget proposal for 20092010. The amount granted for each event proposed was calculated as 4 euro/

144  BEST Internal Events

person/day since that was the minimum requirement for organising such events.

Furthermore, the money was meant to be a support and not to cover all the expenses of the budget. No LBG should receive more than the amount specified in the budget and other events than those specified shouldn`t be budgeted at all. Additionally, the overall category was budgeted as 60% of the planned events since not all LBGs would need the support.

In 2010-2011, the amount budgeted was the same as in the previous year, however, there were still no specific rules on how to get the support. The procedure followed was that the LBG applying for the event support should send their budget to the treasurer of BEST and he/she would assess the final amount based on the overall budget, financial situation of the LBG and the amount of events already budgeted.

Also, an LBG was not entitled to receive the support more than once per year, in order to ensure that more LBGs received it and not just the same ones.

In 2011, 2012 and 2013 the procedure was more or less kept the same, however the amount of requests kept increasing every year and most LBGs organising an Internal Event were requesting it.

This is why granting the support started being stricter, with more emphasis put on the financial situation of the LBG and their overall annual budget.

Also a bigger support for RMs, IPF and GMs appeared due to the Framework Agreement (the annual grant received for 3 years). This provided separate support that was supposed to be granted without assessing the needs of the LBG receiving it.

In 2013-2014, requests increased further, therefore, during PM Brno a discussion group took place for evaluating this support. The main outcome that was applied for the rest of the year (and also for the upcoming year) was that the support should be according to the invoices and bills the LBGs uploads after an event. For example, if the budget of the event is 2.500 EUR and the granted percentage is 20%, then the amount available to grant will be 500 EUR (less than the maximum amount budgeted though). However, if at the end of the event the LBG doesn’t upload bills amounting to 2.500 EUR, the granted amount will be 20% of the money they actually spent.

As a final note, it was concluded that the Internal Events Support is extremely beneficial for the LBGs and for internal events in general. However, the perception on the need of receiving it is still something that needs to be worked upon in the future.

BEST Internal Events 145

02 WORKSHOPS orkshops (WS) are work-oriented events. In BEST there is a need to discuss, plan and develop projects.

That’s why WS were created. A way to fulfil these needs, by getting involved in ongoing projects during face-toface meetings. They one of the oldest internal BEST events actually running.

Because the purpose of this face-toface is to gather in the same place as many people as possible involved internationally in that particular project, WS are spread all over Europe, connecting around 20 members.

The Workshops have two main goals: to gather input from a wide range of active members related to work on BEST project and to provide continuous training for participants.

One of the main difficulties of the BEST work process is the distance between the members. With these events is possible to tackle some problems which arise from working virtually and work on the 3 or 4 topics depending on the

146 BEST Internal Events

importance of the topics at that time.

Historically, the first WS was hosted at LBG Turin, in 1993. Since then, many WS were planned and hosted all around Europe. Although there is no official documents about it, is known that the first ones were mostly about management: strategy, growth, the 3 year plan, international development and so on.

Throughout the years, the focus of WS have changed from gathering people to work to gathering people to focus on one topic and to discuss and develop it. Now we have an average of two per year, and since 1993, BEST has already organised 88 Workshops.

03 SHORT INTENSIVE MEETINGS AND SHORT INTENSIVE TRAININGS HORT INTENSIVE MEETINGS (SIMS) From time to time there is the need to work on specific projects. The purpose of this is to have face-to-face meetings to increase the efficiency of the work. This kind of events are very similar to the workshops, the main difference is the focus on one particular project and it, on average, involves fewer participants (usually around 10). Furthermore, they are planned only some weeks before the event itself, this way it is possible to adjust the SIM to the needs of the projects. SIMs are not the oldest events in BEST. The first time we saw it was in 2003 with Minerva Development SIM hosted by LBG Leuven. It was the first of many.

SIMs are meant for working, SITs are oriented towards the learning process and also towards knowledge transfer.

With these short events, usually no more than three days, the members of the organisation can learn and improve their skills in a specific topic. Right now these kind of events are not very clearly separated from SIMs. We can still find SITs embedded in SIMs. The first time we saw these particular events was in November 2009 where a SIT was hosted

by LBG Timisoara in order to train the fT members.

SHORT INTENSIVE TRAININGS (SITS) Like a SIM, SITs are meant to be short and with an intensive workload. While

BEST Internal Events 147

04 COMMITTEE MEETINGS (CMT MEETINGS) n order to be able to plan the goals for the next year, each Committee has a Summer Meeting in August during which all important topics are discussed, all ongoing projects are evaluated and, in the end, the goals of the committee are set.

Six months later, Committees usually have a Winter Meeting to evaluate the work done so far, adjust the goals of the Committee and continue working on the most important projects. Also, Committees prepare for International Projects’ Forum which is usually right after the Winter Meetings.

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 the European level. The first event which was actually organised by a committee was the SPOC Meeting in Chania 1996.

The number of participants on a Winter Meeting varies according to the members of the international team and the availability of the members etc., but they usually gather 6-20 participants and the whole event lasts around one week.

The first CMT Meeting took place in Helsinki in 1994 and it was about

Developers’ Meetings are events in which ITC members gather together in order to code and improve the way PA works, fix bugs, add new features and develop whole new projects.

148 BEST Internal Events

Apart from the two fixed meetings per year, it might prove necessary to have some additional meetings to work on more complex topics which cannot be worked upon online. Among these you can include the Developers’ Meetings powered by ITC and the Trainers’ Meetings by TiGro.

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 organised to develop a new Trainshop or to train the trainers on a specific topic that needs to be delivered during other BEST events.

BEST Internal Events 149

05 GENERAL MEETINGS n 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

150 BEST Internal Events

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 plentiful. These discussions led to the first 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.

The presence of at least 50% + 1 of the members is necessary to validate the decisions.

The decisions are made by absolute majority of members present unless otherwise specified.

The president with the assistance of the board guides the assembly and presents the biannual report. The treasurer presents the financial report. Both reports have to be approved by the GA. The GA elects the new board according to the IR.”

in October of 1995 in Trondheim. The new meeting was called ‘Presidents’ Meeting’ and only one delegate from each LBG was invited. Having this event doubled the family of the decision making bodies of BEST since decisions could be taken during the Presidents’ Meetings as well. It was decided that more important decisions would be voted only during a General Assembly, such as changes in statutes, elections of the Board etc.

Since the proposed statutes were approved by the people attending the Working Reunion, they were automatically turned into the General Assembly of BEST, making it the first official BEST event in the history. The vision and the powers of that very first General Assembly of BEST still remains the same today and it’s proud to be the longest living body in BEST.

Even though the core of the General Meetings remained the same after 20 years, there are some things that changed the way General Meetings happened. Here is a short timeline of important changes concerning the General Meetings:

FIRST PRESIDENTS’ MEETINGS After seven continuous years of successful General Assemblies in BEST, a new idea was dropped on the table: since the organisation was already getting well established, and since the Board would have from now on a one year long mandate, why not organising only one General Assembly during the year, and replace the second General Assembly with a smaller one, where there would only be one delegate from each LBG? This idea came to life for the first time

DEVELOPMENT OF GENERAL MEETINGS

• 1989 First GA of BEST • 1989 in GA Vienna - Work done in subgroups • 1991 in GA Paris: Homework is given to each LBG. They had to work on the topic they received and present the outcomes in the next GA • 1991 in GA Lisbon: Speakers’ Corner appears for the first time • 1992 in GA Helsinki-Tallinn: The Board presents their half annual report • 1994 in GA Timisoara: First attempt to tell the history of BEST • 1995 in PM Trondheim: First Presidents’ Meeting • 1997 in PM Warsaw: Committee BEST Internal Events 151

presentations slowly appear • 1998 in GA Romania: The focus of the meeting switched from working to informing, that’s why Discussion Groups instead of Working Groups were scheduled • 1998 in PM in Torino: First time LBG Reports appear.

• 1999 in PM in Chania: Training for the delegates is delivered • 2000 in PM in Budapest: LBG Therapy is applied: Tips and tricks are given to LBGs that need them. Also evaluation of the event appears for the first time • 2001 in GA in Ljubljana: A Committee Rally is organised in order to help people understand what the work of the committees is.

• 2003 in GA Slovakia: LBGs have the chance to show what they are proud of during the LBG Show session • 2004 in GA Oresund: First GM that is covered by live video streaming.

• 2006 in GA Zagreb Gala awards are given to LBGs • 2007 in PM Valladolid: The wake-up hour is moved one hour later.

This proved to be very efficient for the whole meeting • 2008 in PM Bucharest: Alumni are invited to attend the plenary sessions • 2009 in GA Budapest: Parallel plenary appeared for the first time • 2009 in PM Lviv: The PM was postponed due to the swine flu. Also, it was the last GM where voting happened with ‘Mouse’, a special voting system.

• 2010 in GA Warsaw: the ‘Mouse’ system is broken so for the electronic voting there is an Excel based solution 152 BEST Internal Events

with a small army of vote counters.

In addition, OST (Open Space Technology) happens for the first time in a GM. It also happened the following year in GA 2011 Belgrade.

• 2011 in GA Belgrade: The VIP voting is used for the first time in a GM. Also, Proposals Forum is introduced.

• 2011 in PM Copenhagen: A totally low-cost GM (gym used as an accommodation hall) which didn’t affect the content at all.

• 2013 - 2 GAs occurred. GA Valladolid (in April 2013) where LBGs voted for the Transfer of Seat to Belgium and then GA Belgium (in June 2013) due to that.

• 2013 in GA Valladolid: The first edition of BEST Career Day took place.

Also, it was the first GA with 6 rows of seats in the plenary.

• 2013 in PM Brno: Alumni Networking Session happens for the first time.

• 2014 in GA Bucharest: First time that “commissions” are being used in a GM. Also, Project Reports are being introduced to the binder.

NEW DEVELOPMENT IN DECISION MAKING IN BEST After 25 years, BEST is proud to have organised 32 General Assemblies and 19 Presidents’ Meetings. However, things are moving and new technology has given us the right tools to change the way of making decisions in BEST. In GA2009 in Budapest, after three years of working, a new decision making body was made official in BEST: Virtual

International Plenary! More about this can be read in another paragraph.

Furthermore, as the years go by and BEST is growing, it is more and more difficult to organise GMs with so many delegates. Therefore, it is getting harder to find locations big enough for a U-shape and other solutions are being used (PM Copenhagen 2011, GA Valladolid 2013). Also, alternatives are used for accommodation as well (PM Krakow 2010, PM Copenhagen 2011).

Let’s see what the future will bring!

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06 REGIONAL MEETINGS ntil 2003, R e g i o n a l Meetings (RMs) were sporadic events, where the organising LBGs invited the groups they perceived were in the same region as them, as there were no official regions. These perceived regions where mostly connected to nationalities or geographically close LBGs. The LBGs met to prepare themselves for the upcoming General Meeting.

In spring 2003 the first round of RMs, where a boardie attended and prepared the content of each RM, took place.

There were eight regions and eight Regional Meetings. The Main Trainer, coming from TIGro, of the region prepared the training of each of the events. In 2004, these trainers changed name and were called Regional Training Advisers.

In 2005 the structure of the board changed and there were only 6 boardies, which led to a new position popping up, the Regional Adviser which replaced

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the RTAs. Each of the 8 regions had a Regional Advisor (RA). Which coordinated two RMs, supported the LBGs and stayed in contact with the new position of the board called Vice President for Local Group Support. This new position in the board led to a better and more centralised coordination of the 11 RMs. In 2008 one of the regions had grown so big that it was split into two regions, this meant one more region and one more RM for the boardies to attend each round of RMs. In 2011, the Regional Division underwent a big change. At IPF that year, the regions were changed due to the increase in the number of LBGs. As a result, the LBGs were split into 11 different regions in Europe in GA 2011. These new regions were planned according to LBGs proximity to each other, but also chosen to empower diversity. This meant two more Regional Meetings to coordinate and for the boardies to attend.

Now in 2014 the position of VP LGS

and RAs are still the same and we have 11 regions that are carefully overviewed.

The main purpose of the Regional Meetings is still the same as it has always been, to prepare LBGs for the upcoming General Meeting. One LBG from each region organises a RM before every GM, one in spring and one in autumn. There the participants get to know, discuss and provide feedback for the proposals for the upcoming GM. Over the years other goals of RMs have appeared. There are training sessions to train the members of the region.

Committees prepare sessions where the delegates get knowledge to implement in their LBGs and get a taste of what the committees do. Regional Meetings are also a great place to inform the organisation of what is going on internationally in BEST, which is done mostly through presentations. Delegates that come home to their LBGs from RMs are usually very motivated, and such these events are a great place to motivate BESTies to work even harder.

The future?

Will the Regional Meetings look the same in five years? Will they have the same purpose? Only time will tell.

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07 TRAINSHOPS rainShops are events that usually last six working days, during which 16-20 participants get trained and gain knowledge on a particular topic.

Every year, five to six TSs are organised.

LBG Budapest had the honour of organising 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. Now each kind of Trainshop is organised once or twice a year.

At the moment TrainShops on the following topics are organised: • Leadership(bePROUD) • HR and recruiting(beMORE) • Fundraising (beRICHER) • Graphic Design Camp (GDC) • PR & Marketing (beKNOWN, earlier: PRIME), which included

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graphic design until GDC • Fundraising (beRICHER).

One edition of each Trainshop is organised each year, occasionally in case of high demand and an LBG is eager to host a Trainshop, an additional one is organised.

08 4TS - TRAIN THE TECHNICAL TRAINER AND TECHNICAL TUTOR ACADEMY he 4Ts were a series of 2-3 working day-events between 2008 and 2009 in which experienced committee members got trained in order to deliver technical training sessions in fields like: design, marketing, IT or fundraising to ensure that technical knowledge inside the committees was transferred continuously. No further editions were organised since the focus of participants of these events shifted from delivering sessions on committee related technical topics to soft-skills, which was the focus of the significantly longer TRAP. It wasn’t until 2012 when the need for another event providing experienced committee members with training on how to design and deliver effective sessions (tutorials) to ensure good working knowledge management within the committees. Technical Tutor Academies were organised in Summer 2012 for finTeam and ITC, and Winter 2013 and Winter 2014 for markeTeam.

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09 TRAINERS’ EVENTS r a i n e r s ’ Meetings are events with variable length (normally between 2-3 working days) where trainers meet to discuss, share and work on a training related issues (for instance TRAM on beRICHER or TRAP).

T-TRAMs on the other hand are events where trainers get trained on certain topics, for instance Transactional Analysis or Personality Types, to deliver sessions on these topics to BESTies.

TRAiner camP (TRAP) The Trainer Camp is one of the possible first steps towards becoming an recognised BEST trainer. It is an 11daysevent for 16 participants, consisting of several training sessions aiming to equip the participants with all the skills and tools they will need in their BEST trainer career.

The objectives, among others, include how to facilitate group learning, how individuals communicate and interact in groups and what are the most effective ways of designing and

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delivering training sessions. Apart from these skills, the future trainers also get introduced to the role of trainers within the organisation, tools to use and further development opportunities for trainers within the organisation.

The course contains both theory and practice, including delivering a training session towards the end of the event.

The first Trainer’s camp was organized in 1999, and until GA Bucharest, 20 TRAP editions have happened, which have provided BEST with a trainers’ community with over 450 members, of which around 100 are actively delivering. The purpose of the event is to ensure the sustainability of the training system of BEST.

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11 INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS’ FORUM AND INTER COMMITTEE’ FORUM nternational Projects’ Forum (IPF) is a yearly meeting where BEST members from international working bodies gather to work on their specific projects as well as 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 as 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 common projects. LBG Warsaw was the first organising LBG of such an event. The main topics discussed were about the Future of BEST, the development of Karamba and the Vivaldi programme, and discussions about the collaboration with and

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structure of other student organisations.

The second edition got the name ICF and was hosted by LBG Tallinn in 2002. In the following years, LBGs like Timisoara, Ghent, and Bucharest hosted the following editions. The Inter Committee’ Forum was prepared to be a meeting for people active at the international level of BEST. For four days 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 organised by LBG Riga, and as of 2014, LBGs like Lund, Skopje, Zagreb, Istanbul, Tallinn, Gdansk, Ghent and Lisbon helped BEST plan its activity for the following year.

In addition to the na me change and additional participants invited for IPF, a major change occurred in the way the schedule was handled.

For ICF, the schedule was committeeoriented; each team having its day of discussion with another team. It was more or less up to them to manage their time and fit all their topics in the given time. IPF, on the other hand, has a clear pre-defined schedule for each person participating. The sessions are projectoriented 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 brings pays off immensely.

Now, in 2014, the event gathers 60-70 of the most active members of BEST. It is one of the most important internal working events that BEST has and in four days its participants can work on over 30 different projects.

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06 BEST PARTNERS

STRONGER TOGETHER.

01

EXTERNAL RELATIONS LSA Being a large European organisation, BEST comes into contact with quite some legal questions (international as well as local). For this reason, in 2011, we started approaching the European Law Students Association (ELSA) for an official cooperation. As it happened ELSA was in need of technical and IT expertise at the time, generally considered one of BEST’s stronger areas.

After the first contact, a cooperation revolved around mutual sharing, kicked off quite naturally. At PM Copenhagen 2011, a memorandum of understanding between ELSA and BEST was approved by the plenary. Since then we have been in contact and shared information with each other.

In recent times (2013), the cooperation with ELSA is taking on new forms, as the initial collaboration projects have been reviewed. The future likely revolves around the sharing and

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collaboration on other areas besides legal and technical, though perhaps in a less formal form.

ESTIEM The ‘European Students of Industrial Engineering and Management’ (ESTIEM for short) are a slightly younger organisation than BEST (having started in 1990). Their main goal is “to establish and foster relations between students across Europe and to support them in their personal and professional development”, a statement of purpose they execute within their primary target group of students of Industrial Engineering and Management.

Given the very similar objectives and working methods (but largely different target areas), ESTIEM and BEST are natural partners.

At PM Copenhagen 2011, a memorandum of understanding between ESTIEM and BEST was approved. Since then, we have been in contact and shared information with

each other. While it took some time to get to know each other properly and recognise areas for cooperation, the collaboration has improved greatly over the years and nowadays a great deal of internal and external event invitations are exchanged, as well as lot of sharing about each other’s working methods.

AEGEE AEGEE has been a partner of BEST since GA Warsaw 2010, when the cooperation agreement was signed. The cooperation agreement was renewed at GA France 2012.

As Europe’s largest interdisciplinary student organisation, which “strives for a democratic, diverse and borderless Europe”, AEGEE pulls quite some weight in the European Union and many European commissions. This is how BEST first got into contact with them, and ever since, we’ve been collaborating on a variety of topics.

Despite a pretty young cooperation, BEST and AEGEE have already collaborated on quite some projects together, often around training (such as the Fundraising European School in 2011).

Additionally, in late 2013, a joint grant between BEST, AEGEE and YEU for training was accepted. It will cover a series of seven training events over the course of the next two years. Besides this, AEGEE and BEST shared quite some invitations and information over the years.

Additionally BEST and AEGEE have intermittently been in contact on matters

of grant applications, organisational structure and quality assurance.

BONDING bonding is our partner student organisation in Germany, that was founded in 1988 by some committed students of engineering and sciences of the technical university of Aachen. Even though their goal is to create contact between students and companies, and even though they were born in the same period as BEST, our roads didn’t cross until the mid-90s. Since May ‘94 LBG Turin has had contacts with a German technology student organisation called “bonding”.

Back then, bonding contacted BEST for help in the promotion of the European workshop held in September 1994 in Aachen. Since many universities in Germany were target universities for the growth of BEST, it was a great way to connect with German students. After this contact, more and more LBG Turin members went to Germany during bonding company fairs and bonding members attended BEST workshops. The first cooperation plan between BEST and bonding was voted upon in GA 1997 in Belgium. It mentioned cooperation in promotion of the organisations, participation of bonding students to BEST events, and representation of BEST and bonding, in bonding and BEST General Meetings respectively. This cooperation plan also helped the establishment of the first joint project of the two organisations, which was a workshop called ‘Dasa’, BEST Partners 165

organised in Turin. This event was attended by Turin and Berlin students and a German company called Dasa participated and did a case study for these students.

Since this event was characterised as a success, new projects started running, with the next big one being the first European Workshop (the same concept as a Summer Course) organised by a bonding group. The event happened in summer 1998 and it was organised by bonding Berlin. However, only 10 participants from BEST universities attended the event, so sadly it was not recognised as a learning event.

At the same time, BEST and bonding started collaborating in more areas than those mentioned in the cooperation plan. bonding members were present at the beginning of the Minerva project in 1997 and they introduced Lotus Notes to BEST. BEST members joined a lot of job fairs in Germany and got experience in organising them, while at the same time more courses started getting organised by bonding groups. Lastly, the cooperation in training matters also started rising, and in the summer of 2000 TRAP II was organised in Dresden in cooperation of TiGro and Con Moto, the bonding group dealing with training.

Until summer 2003, more than 500 students from bonding applied to BEST courses and 200 of them had the chance to live the BEST spirit, while at the same time around 150 students from BEST universities had the chance to attend one of the 7 courses organised by bonding groups. A full scale 166  BEST Partners

cooperation went on running with more additions to the initial cooperation plan such as promotion of Minerva in the job-fair catalogues of bonding and a lot of Trainshops being attended and organised by BESTies and members of bonding. Furthermore, full access of bonding to Private Area and public archives was permitted.

During PM 2003 in Belgium, a crack in the cooperation with bonding appeared.

Several BEST members questioned our cooperation and made a proposal to revoke the right from students who are coming from bonding associated universities to apply for BEST Season Courses. This proposal was rejected and a suggested timeline was approved in order to improve the cooperation with bonding.

Later on, besides the official events between the two organisations, several cultural exchanges between LBGs and bonding groups were realised, bringing the students from BEST and bonding closer. All those contacts proved that BEST and bonding can cooperate to realise joint projects and especially to exchange know-how that helps the development of both organisations.

For several years since 2003, no change was made in the cooperation plans.

However, a decrease of knowledge (less people attending bonding job fairs and less German students attending internal BEST events) and people exchange (less courses organised by bonding and less German students sent to BEST Courses) between the two organisations started occurring. A search for new projects was started, such as the discussions

about a big International Engineering Competition which started in GA2006 in Zagreb (a project which would ultimately be abandoned).

In the end of 2008, a workshop was organised to evaluate the cooperation between BEST and bonding. As the cooperation was found to be unbalanced, several proposals were submitted during the General Assembly 2009 in Budapest. Many of the LBGs agreed with the concerns stipulated in the workshop. Nevertheless, they insisted on having a live meeting with bonding to see how the balance can be regained, which came in the form of another workshop (this time with bonding present) in 2009.

The main outcomes of the workshops in 2008 and 2009 were a set of changes to be made in the cooperation agreement with bonding: bonding would no longer be able to organise BEST courses, and BEST would be allowed to reinvigorate its quest to have German LBGs. These changes were approved in PM 2011, and an additional change (bonding students would no longer be allowed to be participants in courses, but just coorganisers) was added in late 2011.

In the years afterwards, the cooperation with bonding has more or less normalised and the written text has not changed anymore. The arrival of the first BEST observer groups in Germany (Erlangen in 2011, and Aachen in 2012) caused an additional bump in the cooperation, however after some initial tensions, the local groups from both organisations turned out to be quite happy to co-exist, and even work with

and support each other.

In addition, the exchange of people between both organisations in 2013 is still going strong with bonding being our strongest partner on this front.

Overall, the cooperation between BEST and bonding has had its ups and downs, but ultimately the two organisations now have had more than 15 years of cooperation to look back on and still counting.

CFES BEST was officially introduced to the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students (CFES) in Spring 2000 at the GA in Stockholm, where the President of CFES (Amitabh Saxena) did a presentation of the CFES for the members of BEST. No project however was defined there for the organisations to cooperate on. Since January of 2001, discussions were initiated and CFES started thinking of their own courses programme. In spring 2001 and during GA 2001 in Ljubljana, serious discussions on how to cooperate on projects took place and the main exchange activities, complementary education courses and Engineering competitions, were identified. CFES was also interested in a Career Support programme for its members, but this interest disappeared after some time.

The cooperation went one step further in 2002, when in March teams from BEST went to Quebec City in Canada, in order to compete in the Canadian Engineering Competition. (The bad news is that one of them won the Team 168 BEST Partners

Design category and the Canadian sponsors were not really happy about it.) At the same time, the first international workshop took place with representatives of bonding and NAESC (National Association of Engineering Student Councils, USA).

After two years of collaboration with CFES, BEST was also ready to take one big step in its history: to organise the first demonstration of a competition during GA2002 in Paris, where representatives from CFES were present. At the same time, the representatives of CFES got the very handy electronic voting system that BESTies had developed few years ago, and brought it back to Canada to use in their own voting sessions; it was named ‘votrön’.

2003 was a very important year for the cooperation of BEST and CFES. It was the year that the first education course and the first full scale competition was organised by CFES and BEST accordingly. All the experience and knowledge sharing was extremely fruitful in the end, with two very successful events. BEST and CFES proved that an intercontinental cooperation between two organisations can have good results. The first course of CFES was organised in summer 2003

by Ryerson Polytechnical.

After the very successful events, new ideas for collaboration between BEST and CFES started to get developed.

One of them was the Sister schools pairs and it was introduced in GA2003 in Slovakia. For such an idea to proceed though, a cooperation plan between BEST and CFES had to be adopted.

After almost 1 year, this new idea started functioning and the first two pairs were selected. They were Lund - Sherbrooke and Patras - Calgary.

However the “Sister schools pairs” idea was not developed further and no more pairs got selected. This was also one reason why BESTies and CFES members tried to find a new common working project.

After a lot of discussion the idea of an International Engineering Competition (IEC) together with bonding was brought in GA2006 in Zagreb. After long discussions and planning, the event was planned to happen in 2010 (due to the complexity of the event and quality standards involved) to have a good competition. However as mentioned above, the project still proved too ambitious in terms of the resources required from BEST and bonding. In the end the project was discontinued in 2007, and went off the radar for quite some time.

Then in 2013, CFES organised the first successful edition of the International Engineering Competition happened in Calgary, Canada. Organising it was done entirely by CFES, though BEST engaged in promoting the event in Europe, thus ensuring sufficient European participants (many from inside the EBEC pyramid). The event was a great success and will be held a few more times in Canada before consideration is given to bringing it outside of Canada.

The cooperation of BEST and CFES is a good example of a fruitful cooperation.

It has resulted in big projects and a lot of improvements and new ideas

in both organisations, regardless of the big distance and the relatively few exchanges between members. Let’s see what the future holds!

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02 BEST AND COMPANIES

REHISTORY Grenoble, 1988. The organisation named EAU was just getting the idea to change its name to BEST. Those were great times. Those were the times when the show just begun!

The show must go on, and the organisation need money to keep going.

To make it happen a short term goal of the association was to get companies interested in the EAU. The short term goal to get companies interested worked smooth. Already during the next meeting in Vienna in 1989, BEST was in contact with P&G, Schlumberger, Fiat and Thompson.

The very first company meeting took place in 1991 with P&G during the BEST Conference and Members Meeting - GA - organised by ENSAM, but it wasn’t one without problems.

Strangely enough the problem was in choosing the BEST members that would attend the meeting. Eventually, the arguments ended and four people

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were chosen, but this started another discussion: Would BEST need to elect a board?

In preparation of this meeting, the GA delegates also held a brainstorming session on what BEST could offer to the companies and what the companies could offer in return - and so the first fundraising strategy was formed!

Yet, money was not the only thing the EAU was expecting to get from the companies. Another goal, in the long term, was to create international job fairs where “foreign firms” (as they were called) would propose jobs to students. This dream (goal) came true 24 years later with the BEST Career Day, a live event which enables students and companies to meet each other in a warm atmosphere.

THE INDUSTRIAL ERA One of the first steps taken towards contacting companies was BIN (BEST Industry Network) born during GA Liege 1992. It was meant to be a tool

through which LBGs would share contacts of Industrial Partners with each other and with Global BEST — BEST International — We might say this was the first Company Database of BEST! … though it never really developed.

GA Liege also brought along the first set of guidelines and limitations regarding Global Partners, such as not advertising products, or not cooperating with companies in the cigarettes, alcohol and arms industries.

Another wheel was invented for the

Partnership with the Industry) which could be looked upon as the first wheel for the later Support Group and Partnership Levels. This project was led by one of the committees of the time: The Industry Subgroup.

By PM Timisoara 1994, STED, GPI and BIN had become things of the past.

So much so, that a discussion group was already reinventing the wheel when they proposed that a Global partner should get promotion in all local groups.

The Dark Ages ended quickly, and

“Another wheel was invented for the first time in GA Warsaw 1993: STED (Students of Technology European Database) The very first mention of a CV database!” first time in GA Warsaw 1993: STED (Students of Technology European Database) - the very first mention of a CV database! Ethical limitations were imposed here as well, the strongest one being: “The personal data of the members of the database cannot be given to any Company”.

The idea was for the companies to read the competencies of the student, and only if they decide he or she was interesting would member of the STED team facilitate the contact.

Of course, a CV database so early in the Internet era was not very feasible, so the idea died quite soon after.

At the same GA in Warsaw, a new project was launched: GPI (Global

already in 1995 huge steps were being made. The first fundraising handbook for LBGs got released in GA Patras, and ... tam-ta-raaaaam! The first Global Partnership! And not just any kind, but a three-year contract with ENSPM (École Nationale Supérieure de Pétrole et des Moteurs). A huge step, but it was still not a company.

During GA Patras, the brave new Treasurer, Alfredo Loreto, stated that he would start a new committee to deal with global fundraising. No more than one year later, in GA Tallinn the GFC (Global Fundraising Committee) was established after a set of the strong proposals as follows: BEST Partners 171

Proposal 1 (in PM Trondheim ‘95): To allow the Treasurer to speak to potential partners on behalf of all LBGs. He would be allowed to give tasks to LBGs according to what the global sponsors required. These tasks would range from collecting CVs or questionnaires to even organising company seminars.

Proposal 2 (in GA Tallinn ‘96): Every LBG will have a Global Fundraising Responsible.

These local responsibles are to be used for implementing what the companies require e.g. work on the local level (such as promotion or events). As a benefit to the LBGs, if a company wants to have a local partnership, the GFC member will establish the contact, and the money will be divided between the LBG and BEST International.

LBGs had one month to elect a GF responsible and communicate the name to the Treasurer.

The GFC (Global Fundraising Committee) was formed by none of these responsibles, but of very experienced BESTies (current and former boardies) who were aided at the local level by the GF responsibles in cases where a partner needed some local promotion.

Still, with all of this, one year later, in 1997 there was still no partnerships signed apart from the one with ENSPM. This could be attributed to several factors: lack of selling points to offer to companies, lack of company contacts, 172 BEST Partners

and lack of international FR experience.

But then, in PM Warsaw 1997, this weakness disappeared! MINERVA was born! The dream of STED (long time forgotten) was now becoming a reality and BEST was building an international CV database.

By 1999, MINERVA was up and running and Fiat became the very first company to pay for access to the CVs. In the same year, we also had another tool up and running: the Support Group. As it was envisioned, the member companies worked together with BEST for the same purpose of offering personal and professional development to students. The companies’ involvement was not also limited to money (though this was also a part of it) but also to give input and support the design of new initiatives.

The members of the SG were P&G, Price Waterhouse Coopers and American Management Systems.

THE GREAT WARS Much like human history, BEST financial history had its Great Wars too.

THE FIRST GREAT WAR Alcohol, Cigarettes and Guns If you remember the prehistory part of this story, in 1992, a GA had decided that BEST should not cooperate with companies from the above mentioned industries.

Well, in 1999 when MINERVA and the SG were just picking up, a very simple and clear proposal made by LBG

Budapest removed that limitation from our Internal Regulations. There were no heavy discussions on the topic, just a clear vote that would remove a rule people were not so sure about.

Of course, a hot topic like this couldn’t stay dormant for long, and in GA Greece 2005 it picked up again. Proposals and counter proposals with one or more options were pouring in. We shouldn’t cooperate with alcohol producers ... cigarette producers ... arms producers ... or any company that did not have good ethics. Things got hot there. Between all the ethics and the shades of grey, the option for no limitation was voted in.

The reasons that popped up were: • It’s very hard to draw a line between ethical and non-ethical companies • It’s hard to define “working with arms”, as many make software for arms.

• We are non-political so we shouldn’t discriminate • Some LBGs are part of Military Universities • We promote career opportunities, not the products For now, this war is over, and remains, quiet.

THE SECOND GREAT WAR BEST is not a company This war was not nearly as dramatic or hot as the first one on the one hand, but it is surely not over on the other. We could say it is a cold war.

BESTies are aware their organisation

is built and structured after following the examples and input of several companies, and that many of its training topics and organisational knowledge have come from the industrial world.

They are surely also aware of its value.

On the other hand, BESTies are afraid of the companies’ influence on their spirit and pureness of heart. They get suspicious when a company gives input on a session in plenary, feeling like the company is trying to elbow its way into our way of working. They get defensive when a company proposes organising an event, because we shouldn’t organise what the companies want (this is part of the IRE since 1992). Trying to make a point about BEST work by giving an example from a company or corporation is a sure way to lose an argument in plenary.

This is a war that will never be over (hopefully) and the balance will be kept, as neither way is a good way to go in itself.

THE CORPORATE ERA At the change of the Millennium, BEST international FR was on the rise.

MINERVA was launching and going seemingly well, the Support Group had 3 companies at all times ... BEST could finally afford travel refunds and administrative expenses.

In 2000, in The Hague, BEST held its very first Partners Round Table... (entitled Support Group Meeting). It’s interesting to see that the structure of this meeting is the same as the one being used in BEST Partners’ Round BEST Partners 173

Tables today: presentations about BEST structure, activities, and opportunities for companies, plus input on 2-3 hot topics in BEST. In 2003, the “Support Group Team” officially became “finTeam” and soon after Partnership Levels were born to replace the “Support Group”.

BEST developed several tools for providing career support, such as “Career/Study Newsletter”, “Public Website career pages” and “CV Database” year after year these tools were named several times such as MINERVA, STED and finally BEST Career Centre (BCC) with partners lining up to access these tools.

Even more tools were developed for the companies and local groups, one of which was LCE - Local Career Events (former Jimmy). This is a place where all LBGs can upload their upcoming events so that companies from all over Europe can get the info quickly and possibly attend. This tool also enable European students to discover great events happening in different sides of Europe.

FROM BEST UNIVERSITY CENTRE TO UNIVERSITY FR BEST University Centre is a project which is old as BEST, this project aims to provide information about all BEST Universities in order to promote these universities among university students. LBGs were able to upload study programmes, study opportunities and essential information about their university. In the beginning the project was fruitful.

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After years of cooperating with universities, the lucky BESTies also found out that BEST could get money from them. In 2004, TU Delft — a nonBEST University in 2004 — contacted BEST to promote their master’s degrees via the organisation, so the story of fundraising from universities began. So after this cooperation, BESTies decided to extend this project to non-BEST Universities and sell it as an offer to those universities. But every story has an end and BUC project stopped because of lack of support from LBGs, nevertheless finTeam is aware that universities have potential so they decided to continue fundraising from universities. In 2014, BEST had two annual University Partners.

ANOTHER PROJECT FOR FUNDRAISING KICKED-OFF EBEC In 2008, the committee which dealt with the FR side of projects was ready to face a new challenge, a new event to fundraise from companies. Everyone knows the event that gather best engineers around Europe and creates an environment that lets them compete with each other. Yes, it is EBEC! Finally the Engineering competition project started! The first Final event of EBEC happened in 2009 in one of the first cities where B(E)EC was organised, in Ghent! finTeam did what they knew best and brought 8 partners to EBEC 2009.

Since then finTeam has kept doing what they do BEST.

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03 EDUCATIONAL PARTNERS s members of BEST, we value the ongoing interaction between our members on a daily basis and truly believe in complementary education as a necessity in higher education. The students are able to put their ideas into practice and receive feedback from professors, industry and fellow students. At Events on Education more specifically, it has been proven several times in the past that students of technology have an opinion and they want it to be transmitted.

Educational Partners play a big role in students’ development within the activities of BEST, because being a part of this organisation is more than fun and learning, it is life-changing.

One of the things that we, as BEST members, strive for is to offer students the highest amount of possibilities to express their opinion and talk about their education. As a students’ organisation, we find educational matters very important for us. In this

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matter, BEST collaborated and still keeps in touch with Thematic Networks such as ERABEE, EUGENE, PROVIP, EUVIP and StartPro and currently with educational organisations like SEFI, FEANI, IFEES and UNESCO. BEST members attend conferences organised by our partners in order to be in touch with new methods in engineering education and its improvements as well as to present the scientific work that has been done in BEST. In order for students to have the opportunity to express opinions and provide input on educational matters, BEST organises Events on Education.

These 5-6 day long events involve 20-25 students, BEST members and representatives from European educational projects, universities and in some cases representatives from industry. The topics vary on different educational issues. They are prepared among the different stakeholders of the high education: students, local and international professors, experts, Thematic Networks and companies,

with the aim of gathering their input about educational issues.

Education is in a continuous process of development and in order to identify and implement the needed changes that will influence future students, several actors have to gather and discuss. BEST is in the first line debating the biggest topics of interest in European Engineering Education, by gathering input from students and communicating it to the right multipliers and the concerned institutions.

After each Event on Education, BEST prepares a report with the outcomes and shares it with our partners and the professors that have participated.

Furthermore, we strive to disseminate the outcomes to the relevant Academic Networks. Apart from the Events on Education, we gather students’ input through surveys. This way, we reach many students from European universities and get valuable input.

On top of the engineering education conferences, BEST members attend partner meetings and workshops of thematic networks and other educational partners. Those meetings are a part of the administrative work within the thematic network and BEST is attending them in order to contribute to the development of the projects as well as provide student’s input on given topic.

Partnerships allow BEST to strive to the greater heights in the context of European Engineering Education.

BEST is a powerful network which reaches a specific group of students, eager to develop themselves and striving

to make a difference.

We enhance the benefits for professionals who cooperate with BEST in our Events on Education. By networking with the host university of the event, international academics, thematic network representatives and with BEST, experts learn about their methods and projects and find a way to collaborate in the future. Moreover, by participating in active sharing sessions with students from all over Europe the opportunity for of finding someone for a PhD or collaboration in a research programme is increased during our events. Last, but far from least, professionals have the chance to receive students’ feedback about their work. We consider this to be an essential factor to take into consideration when dealing with educational matters. All details of these events are compiled in a report and sent to our partners who collaborate with us.

Study experiences abroad, exchange programmes or virtual placements broaden the horizon and offer different opportunities and perspectives. Over 20 years’ experience of BEST in organising courses puts us in a great position for providing useful ideas on the topic of mobility and virtual placements. This is why BEST has been contributing to the PROVIP Thematic Network.

Efficiency is the key word nowadays and in order to be competitive, everyone and everything has to constantly improve.

What has to change in European Engineering Education to make it more competitive? BEST is helping other European Institutions inside the BEST Partners 177

EUGENE Thematic Network to give an answer to this intriguing question.

Thematic Networks are one of the places where we work on gathering input about how well the students are prepared for the work life after studies and how easy is the access for students to appropriate jobs after graduating. In this matter and also because of the relevancy of the study curriculum towards the needs of the engineering industry, BEST is bringing students, academics and companies into one common discussion platform to discuss the link between students and employment.

The Educational Committee of BEST is always striving to collaborate with other educational institutions interested in students’ opinions. Consequently, BEST is able to increase the awareness of technology students on current educational issues, in order to help students with their self-development.

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BEST Partners 179

04 INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERS EANI FEANI (Fédération E u r o p é e n n e d’Associations Nationales d’Ingénieurs / European Federation of National Engineering Associations) is a federation of national professional bodies representing engineering in European countries. Founded in 1951, it aims to promote the recognition, mobility and interests of Europe’s engineering profession. It maintains a database of recognised engineering qualifications and also maintains a (non-comprehensive) register of professionally qualified engineers from member countries.

The cooperation between BEST and FEANI has been established for quite some years that by 98’ our members were regularly invited to attend their General Meetings.

In 2006, our two organisations signed an official memorandum of understanding document which states that the two organisations will regularly exchange

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information about the upcoming events and projects as well as regularly sending invitations to each others events.

The biggest change in the cooperation dynamics happened in 2012 when FEANI proposed to share part of their office with BEST in Brussels. Therefore in GA Valladolid 2013 the plenary decided that BEST will change its address from Grenoble to Brussels.

The cooperation have developed significantly and we are looking forward to see the next potential areas FEANI and BEST can collaborate in.

SEFI The European Society for European Education, commonly know as SEFI is an international non-governmental organisation which aims to contribute to the improvement of engineering education in Europe and reinforce the position of engineering professionals in society.

BEST’s first contact with SEFI started in 1996 after our organisation received

an invitation to join a thematic network which was a new EU project at that time.

After a successful collaboration, both organisations started to regularly send invitation to attend each others events.

Due to the fact that there was more and more communication and collaboration between SEFI and BEST in 2007, EduCo proposed to formalise the cooperation which was agreed by the delegates.

In 2011, SEFI hosted the first Engineering Education Flash Week which was part of the fifth IFEES Global Engineering Education Summit.

Since, the organisers wanted to attract also students to Flash Week they asked BEST to promote the event as well as send delegates to the event.

After another successful project collaboration, SEFI decided to engage BEST more in their events and therefore in 2012 and 2013 BEST has actively contributing by bringing students to SEFI’s Annual Conference which took place in Thessaloniki and Leuven, respectively.

These collaborations have been effective mainly due to the fact that their events mostly happened in the cities were LBGs exist.

However, in 2014 and 2015, the SEFI Annual Conference will take place in Birmingham and Orleans, respectively, where the presence of LBGs is nonexistent at the moment. Therefore BEST is trying to figure out how be involved in these events from other perspectives and how can we push the collaboration further with SEFI.

IFEES The International Federation of Engineering Education Societies (IFEES) is an umbrella organisation with aims towards effective engineering education processes of high quality around the world to assure a global supply of well-prepared engineering graduates.

In 2007, Nicolò Wojewoda and Andrej Bulat approached BEST and asked if it wanted to be a founding member of this organisation. Since European engineering education was quite new and still in development at the time, BEST accepted the offer.

Since then, BEST has tried to be present in the events organised by IFEES yet sadly it was not always possible due to the fact that IFEES is a global organisation with organises events all over the world.

Luckily BEST has been able to attend in 2010 the World Engineering Education Forum (WEEF) organised by IFEES in Shangai and the one in 2013 in Catargena with the help of several industry partners.

WEEF 2015 will take place in Florence, Italy and currently BEST is investigating the possibility of organis an event inside this event.

Most probably we will find out this information in 2014 but sadly this story will only be in the next history book.

YFJ The European Youth Forum is an international organisation established by national youth councils and BEST Partners 181

international non-governmental youth organisations in Europe. It strives to serve the interests of young people from all over Europe, promoting their active participation in the construction of a common Europe.

In February 2011, Monica Kviljo together with Iustina Pop, the current President and ambassador at that time scheduled a meeting with the Membership representative in order to investigate the benefits of BEST being part of YFJ. After checking the membership criteria as well as the benefits for BEST of being part of this platform, in 2013 the Board decided to apply as an Observer Member in YFJ and in GA Valladolid the plenary accepted the proposal to become an observer member of YFJ.

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07 BEST CULTURE

TRADITIONS. TRADITIONS.

01

INTERNATIONAL EVENING If you are a BEST member, attending an International Evening is one of the things that either you already have done, or you are really close to doing!

International Evening has its first historical references in BEST from GA Tallinn 1996. The idea was introduced

by Busse Pettersson, the Vice President of the VIII board of BEST, who had the chance of experiencing an international evening at the Erasmus Student Network Annual General Meeting.

International evening (IE) is a traditional party that mostly happens in every type of event in which people from different countries gather with the aim of promoting the diversity among us in Europe. Each of the countries has a place reserved on a table, in which participants place the most typical food and drinks from their countries.

A traditional IE has a moderator who facilitates the evening and the official participants that do the honorary Tour as a gratitude for their work inside BEST

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(Event Main Organiser / Coordinator / LBG President / BEST boardie). Each country is presented step by step and the beverages are served to the participants of the Tour. After a funny song or a dance is performed (not mandatory), they move to the next table. After all the countries are finished, everyone can start enjoying the IE. Over time, International Evenings have become a tradition in each event that we do, being one of the parties that represents us, one that leads to a lot of stories and memories that can be fully recovered by only checking the pictures afterwards.

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02

HONORARY MEMBERS OF BEST ccording to the statutes, BEST is able to grant Honorary Membership upon people having rendered important services to the organisation. Honorary Membership is form of recognition of excellence for contributing to the development of the organisation.

No special privileges are connected to the title of Honorary Member of BEST. Only on very special and rare occasions in the past have Honorary Membership been awarded. As of 2014, there are only four Honorary Members of BEST.

Is also one of the founding members of BEST, 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). Gabor, alumnus of LBG Budapest, 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.

IDA LAU BORCH

JEAN FRANÇOIS PICARD

Is one of the founding members 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.

Is a former businessman of Procter & Gamble and he’s also known as JFP. Jean François has largely contributed to the development of the BEST by offering support in organising events and by delivering training on soft skills to our members.

He has served as a kind of advisor to

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GABOR DAVID

BEST and has attended several General Meetings of BEST in the first half of the 1990s and was elected Honorary Member of BEST at the General Assembly 1993 in Bratislava.

PHILIPPE D. GROSJEAN Is a consultant and former secretarygeneral of CESAER. Mr. Grosjean was the person who involved BEST in educational matters, when the organisation was invited to join the H3E project in 1996. During the lifetime of the project, he always supported students’ interests and paid special attention to our BEST members in order to integrate them in the discussions related to European Engineering Education.

Philippe D. Grosjean was known in the academic circle as a controversial person due to his straightfor­ward style and outspoken opinions.

At the XVIII General Assembly in Stockholm in 2000, he was elected Honorary Member of BEST. 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.

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03 TUNAK TUNAK ost student organisations have got some songs and dances which are automatically associated with them. It doesn’t depend on place around the world - every BESTie who hears the ‘Tunak Tunak’ song just stops doing work and starts dancing. Two rows of people, three rounds of common moves, over a dozen people moving from one end to another – this is what it all is about. Right now a common tradition is to dance Tunak during every BEST party, trip or even on some promotion events. How did it happen that banhgra song by Daler Mehndi become ‘anthem’ of BEST? The history of traditions such as this are still a mystery.

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04 SIMPLY THE BEST call you, when I need you my hearts on fire You come to me, come to me, wild and wild You come to me, give me everything

I need Give me a lifetime of promises and a world of dreams Speak the language of love like you know what it means And it can’t be wrong, take my heart and make it strong, baby” There is something that shaped and still shapes the heart of every BEST member, and of the people that attended one of the BEST events. If BEST had a hymn, then this song would most probably be it. If BEST had a wish, it would be to have Tina Turner joining a General Assembly. If BEST had an official movie, it would be the video clip.

We’re talking of course about ‘Simply the BEST’ as sang by Tina Turner!

“The Best” a.k.a. “Simply The Best” is a song written by Mike Chapman and

Holly Knight. The song was originally released in 1988 by Bonnie Tyler on the album Hide Your Heart a.k.a. Notes From America in the United States, and later was re-released as a highly successful single by Tina Turner in 1989 on her hit album Foreign Affair.

This version was made widely popular inside BEST. It is not known when exactly the tradition started, but there seems to be a strong connection between the date that BEST was founded, and the release date of the song. An interview with Mrs. Turner would clear it all out, but we just didn’t get the chance to meet her yet. However, for some reason the song became very popular and it is THE soundtrack that connects everyone who tasted BEST. Is it the passionate lyrics?

Is it the magnificent saxophone? Is it the repetition of the word ‘BEST’? No one knows, but whenever the guitar starts playing the rhythm of the song everybody grabs each other and they all start jumping up and down, forgetting all the tiredness, the disappointments,

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the bad moments of the day, just celebrating life and the joy of being in a BEST event!

“And you’re the best, better than all the rest, better than anyone, anyone I’ve ever met!

I’m stuck on your heart, I hang on every word you say Tear us apart, baby I would rather be dead, ooh you’re the best!”

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05 BEST STORIES AJLOSH’S MOTHER On Monday 16th of July 2007, something came that would change the life of every Helpdesk member active at that moment. It was a request that no equal to it had ever appeared, and that its solution would require the mobilisation of the whole BEST mechanism. The request was submitted and it was like this: “Hi, I’m Majlosh’s (from Czech Republic) mother.

Because I have no chance to contact him (probably he is abroad with his friends from BEST), please send him a message, if it is possible: - His mobile phone should be ready for roaming using.

- He must switch it off primarily and switch it on next.

- If the provider isn’t applied automatically, it is necessary to try it by MENU handy.

- In other case he should contact me by e-mail (“e-mail removed for privacy issues’’).

Thank you very much and tell him please of calling me immediately. (“phone removed for privacy issues’’) With kind regards, Majlosh’s Mother (the real name is omitted)” In the few minutes that followed, a lot of e-mails were exchanged between BEST members, with the result of tracking Majlosh down in Ljubljana, and letting him know that his mother was looking for him. The request was proposed for ‘request of the summer of 2007’. Another successful operation by the Helpdesk team!

THE TRAGEDY OF MS ESTONIA Not all stories in BEST are happy … even so, all stories are pieces of BEST’s life.

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In the beginning of October 1994, LBG Lund organised a Workshop that gathered many participants, especially from northern Europe. The Estonian delegation consisting of four members who were planning to attend the workshop and boarded on the ferry MS Estonia, on September 28th, to reach Sweden. That night, while cruising in the Baltic Sea, the ferry sunk, claiming 852 lives, among which included some members from LBG Tallinn. The ones that perished in the tragedy were VicePresident Andres Avekukk and member Merle Juust and the lucky survivors were President Maiko Kalvet and member Marek Kaasik.

“I was at the workshop in Lund at that time, and I remember the unreal atmosphere … suddenly cheerful students were confronted first hand with the tragedy.”

- Michelangelo Calabresi, participant of WS Lund, 1994

Many years have passed since then, but we have not forgotten. Rest in peace!

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06 GENERAL MEETINGS TRADITIONS WEN! Everybody knows the story behind Murphy ...

When things can go wrong, they will go wrong. And again, everybody knows that technology fails you when you mostly need it ...

Combining these two together, mixing with a bit of BEST spirit and adding a lot of fun makes us... what else: Gwen!

The story is like this: Back in GA2004 in Oresund, Gwen was the VP of ITC in the board for that year. As each selfrespecting board table has to have one little geek behind it, so did that table in Oresund. The geek of the table is responsible for all kind of technology that is around: microphones, computers, server links, presentations, USB keys and much more. That computer though was a bit more ‘naughty’ than the usual ones.

When things got a bit messy, mighty Gwen tried to solve things out...

However as things were talking a bit longer to be fixed, plenary started to

become anxious. It was then when they all slowly started saying rhythmically the magic word: “Gwen!... Gwen!...

Gwen!... Gwen!...” As eye witnesses have described his face was just indescribable, and thus it is left up to your imagination.

Ever since, when difficulties appear and technical problems are to be found, people are calling the old magic words hoping that the problems will be fixed ASAP: ‘Gwen...! Gwen...! Gwen...!’

SPEAKERS’ CORNER Getting the idea from the pretty famous corner in Hyde Park, London, where all kinds of people can stand up and talk about whatever they want. Other people can, of course, listen to them or, (and it seems to happen more often) boo at them.

Based on this corner, a similar idea was developed during GA1991 in Lisbon in a form of a session. People had the chance to get in the middle of the plenary and talk about anything they wanted to share and talk about. Of course, some

BEST Culture 195

of the time, the ‘booing’ was inevitable, but most of the times, BESTies were touching topics that couldn’t be touched during the sessions and whole new ideas got developed in this unique way. The Speakers’ Corner has been going on in every General Meeting since 1991, and it’s the responsibility of the speakers to facilitate and organise it. So, do you have something that you want to share with the rest of the BEST world? Then go ahead and attend the next Speaker’s Corner in a General Meeting near you!

I FOOLLY/FULLY SUPPORT As usual, during GA 2007 in France there were some presentation of the candidates to organise next PM. It was just after the presentation of LBG Madrid for PM08, when Patri from LBG Valladolid read twice the same sentence of her “Fully Support Statement” with Fully support inside. After that, everybody started to Fully Support everything. It also got used when the delegate of the LBG nurse of an observer/baby LBG spoke about all the great progress and potential of their nurse… and how they fully support them.

After a while, the sentence “We fully support the LBG XYZ to become a baby/full member” came almost every time and became an expression.

Nowadays, when you agree with someone’s idea, you can just say/ write “fully support”... However, during PM07 in Valladolid, a new form of the statement appeared in the plenary.

Various people started holding signs with the words “Foolly support” written on 196 BEST Culture

them, just to make fun of the tendency of BESTies to support all the ideas that appear, while at the same time playing with the word “fully” that existed in the famous sentence.

Last but not least, T-shirts were produced with both expressions on them (one in front and one in the back) in order to be used whenever is needed.

PASSING GIFTS One of the oldest traditions inside BEST is the passing of gifts from person to person. The first things that were transferred had a very important role.

It was the archives of BEST, back then in paper, and they had to be transferred from one Board to the next. Without them a lot of working hours would go for nothing, as it was the only way to store and transfer information back in 1989.

Later on, other objects started getting transferred, but with a more symbolic character. The President’s wooden whip was the only gift that was passed by the current President to the new one during every election. It was first given in 1992 and it was used to symbolise the authority of the President. The words that are usually said while the whip changes hands are: “so you can handle your Board”. BEST Presidents engrave their name on the handle of the whip.

Some say that at some point, one of the presidents though was playing too much with it, and it resulted in fracturing the whip in the middle. Other say that the whip broke for the first time during transportation, not by playing. It was finally repaired, but no other president

dared to use it again …

Of course, not only the President can pass gifts. One other special person present during the General Meetings is the Speaker, and (s)he is also in need of authority and power.

In order to symbolise this power, a wooden hammer was needed and so a hammer was found. It was first used in GA1995 by the Speaker and since then it is transferred from Speaker to Speaker. Like the President’s whip, the hammer has engraved names on the handle. However, since the Speaker cannot always travel to the next General Meeting, tradition says that the delegates of the LBG of the previous Speaker have to bring the hammer to the next General Meeting and deliver it during the opening session to the new Speaker.

After some time, a lot of other people started following this idea and began passing gifts. A lot of items including small pigs, weights, little chickens and teddy bears were transferred over the years. However, only the whip and the hammer are the original old ones.

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07 ZOLTAN’S MOTHER s many people know, during each GA, Zoltan’s Mother is proposed for President, and she never confirms. Few of us know where it comes from, so here it is. The history has been told by Ludovic Charpentier on alumni@ and junk@.

“I can tell you as I am the author of this joke (with Jesus Hidalgo’s help) during GA02 in Paris.

At the first plenary session, delegates have to introduce themselves, which can be quite a boring exercise except when some of them put some fun. After N presentations of “Hi my name is ..., I come from LBG ...” it’s Zoltan Bartalis’s turn and his famous: “Hi, my name is Zoltan Bartalis, LBG Lulea, and I want to thank my mother!”. A few rounds after, it’s Jesus Hidalgo’s turn, saying: “Hi, my name is Jesus Hidalgo, LBG Barcelona, and I also want to thank Zoltan’s mother!”.

So, naturally, during the first nomination

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round for the board candidates, I’ve nominated Zoltan’s mother for President. Unfortunately, Zoltan’s mum resigned and Zoltan read the delegates a nice letter when she said she was too busy taking care of her lovely son to run...

As Zoltan also attended GA03, she was also nominated there ... but I didn’t expect her to get nominated again, and again, even when Zoltan stopped attending GAs.” Zoltan’s mother was also nominated in GA09 in Budapest, when she also got a first name: the people editing the Excel file with the nominations suggested the name Boglarka Bartalis for Zoltan’s mother, but this was never confirmed.

The last time Zoltan’s mother was nominated was GA12 France, a few GMs before this book was written. But who knows: perhaps the days of Zoltan’s mother will come once again…

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08 LOCAL BEST GROUPS ALL AS ONE.

AACHEN

BABY MEMBER: PM 2013 Brno RWTH Aachen

a c h e n is deeply connected to the History of BEST. In 1987, students of the RWTH Aachen University participated in the International Week in Stockholm.

The BEST Spirit disappeared in Aachen only to be found again in the end of 2012, when Stefan Süßmaier returned from his ERASMUS in Lyon.

The statute of the Aachen group was signed on the 26th of November, the same day when the application for observer membership was handed in to the international board. Yet the BEST Spirit needed to be discovered so he and three founding members went to the Alpine Jam near Torino.

The group got accepted by the international board on 4th January 2013 and Norman Schaffer and Viktoria von Drachenfels represented the Observer BEST Group successfully at the General Assembly 2013 Valladolid. Afterwards the first official local General Assembly took place, where the current board of 5 members got elected.

The Observer BEST Group organised its first local event, a Joint Board Trainning, lead by the MO Freya Sternkopf in August 2013, which was a 202 Local BEST Groups

2012 great success.The group proudly hosted the international board for their BAM in September 2013, which wouldn’t have been possible without the MO Tobias Fusenig. Those events were acknowledged at the Presidents’ Meeting 2013 Brno, when Norman Schaffer and Dario Sarik presented their group’s application for membership successfully.

The mascot of Baby LBG Aachen is the squirrel Vicky, named in honour of most fluffy member so far, and represents flexibility, planning ahead, diligence and fluffyness. The origin of the squirrel is a skype conversation and it found its way in every unofficial document of the group.

1999

AALBORG

FULL MEMBER: PM 2001 Madrid Aalborg University

ome say size matters.

We would not know because we have always been relative small. However LBG Aalborg is the definitive proof that quantity and quality not necessarily are proportional! LBG Aalborg has been organising high quality events since 2000. Furthermore, we are the only LBG to have been suspended three times -- but we are still going strong! Stronger than ever! Despite our troubled history we are very focused on offering BEST something special. Our university are infamously known for the “Problem Based Learning”-model (PBL), our group inherits this way of thinking and working. Everything we do we approach in a problem-oriented manner that help us bring the team spirit from our university groups into our organisation, thus enabling us to work in high performance teams. All our external events are based on this model hence we offers something quite different.

The Aalborg philosophy is simple:

• Smile! Share your happiness!

In LBG Aalborg we always put fun and friendship before everything else. When things tend to get serious, LBG Aalborg spices it up with some of our retarded humor. Because as we say “Our formula for living is quite simple. We get up in the morning and we go to bed at night.

In between we enjoy ourselves as BEST as we can.”

-Slightly modified Cary Grant quote

• Everything we do, we do for fun • Team work over individual achievements Local BEST Groups 203

ALMADA

FULL MEMBER: PM 2004 Portugal Universidade Nova de Lisnoa

t all started in 2002 when a group of friends heard about the BEST Courses at Lisbon University and discovered that the Nova University students couldn’t apply to these courses or any of the BEST activities because their university didn’t have a Local BEST Group. Upset with that, this group of friends decided to create one, and LBG Almada was born!

With the help and assistance of LBG Lisbon, in November 2002, Almada became officially an Observer BEST Group during the PM Bucharest, Romania!!! Between the 6th and the 14th of April. Almada became a BEST Baby Member at GA Gabcikovo, Slovakia 2003.

Together with LBG Lisbon and LBG Porto, from the 10th to the 16th November, we organised PM Portugal 2004 in Santa Maria da Feira. It was great, not only because we hosted in Portugal 130 participants from all over Europe, but also because we finally became Full Members of BEST! A lot of events have been organised since we were “born”. The First National Competition in 2006, the Iberian RM 2007, the EduCo SM 2012, 204 Local BEST Groups

2002

the Portuguese Joint LBG Training and Joint Board Training 2013, are some examples of one long list of Coursess, Local and National EBECs, Company Days and a variety of other events.

Up until 2013 Almada’s local events got more than 1200 participants while the external events got more than 800 participants.

At this moment, LBG Almada has more members than any other time in its history and will finally get enough stability to grow and organise even more, and better, events for the students.

2006

ANKARA

FULL MEMBER: GA 2008 Tallinn Middle East Technical University

n 2006, when Prof.

Dr. Mustafa Tokyay, our Engineering Faculty Dean then, member of the board of SEFI, became aware of BEST, he advised to some of our friends to join the BACo as an observer.

In summer 2006, we prepared our application and then BEST Ankara was officially invited to Presidents’ Meeting 2006. Something new for BEST occured at this meeting. LBG Ankara was the first local BEST group whose observer and baby member statuses were accepted at the same meeting. Our first event was a workshop organised in 2007, also in this workshop, OST (Open Space Technology) was used in BEST for the first time.

In GA2008, LBG Ankara became a full member. Now we have about 100 members including experienced members and newer generations.

Besides BEST spirit, one of the things keeping us together is “Teras” where we go after every weekly meeting together to have dinner. EBEC is one of our major events. We are becoming more professional in terms of organising it year by year, and we are good at supplying our financial support. Our

summer courses are very accomplished academically and filled with endless quantity of fun.

We organise autumn course as a leisure event in an unique way.It provides its participants and organisers with the experience of many extreme activities in one of the most beautiful beaches in Turkey.We have organised Cultural Exchange for two years,and we are ready to present our culture to more local BEST groups.

Also, we are eager to be active internationally and organise an internal event.We have started to improve ourselves in terms of international involvement .We have some members starting to work on some intenational projects and work for international committees.

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ATHENS

FULL MEMBER: PM 1998 Turin National Technical University of Athens

he idea of BEST Athens started back in 1994 from a team of students of National Technical University of Athens. Some months later, in May 1995, Patras organised the first General Assembly in Greece, and the Local Group was accepted as Observer Member in the organisation, with Patras as its Nurse.

However, motivation wasn’t strong enough, and the ambition of creating a Local BEST Group, or LBG, soon wore off. It wasn’t until December 1996, when some first-year students heard about BEST, and decided to resurrect the idea of an LBG in Athens. Soon, BEST spirit grew stronger and in PM98 in Turin, BEST Athens earned the full member status.

Since then, time has been very generous to LBG Athens. We are responsible for 23 external events, 20 internal events, 19 local boards, four-time representation in the international board, one more in the management and we are still counting. Special moment was of course the organisation of Greek GA in 2005, along with LBG Chania and Thessaloniki.

Currently, our LBG consists of 17 206 Local BEST Groups

1996

motivated full members, more than 20 enthusiastic baby members, 104 proud Alumni and has a strong impact on NTUA as well as on its approximately 13.000 students. At the same time, our members enjoy high recognition in the international level, and we are proud of their continuous presence in International Teams, Projects as well as the Management.

As BEST celebrates 25 years, 2013 marks also the 15th anniversary of BEST Athens which we celebrated this May, remembering some of the most important moments of the LBG’s history.

May more similar moments come both for BEST and for BEST Athens!

2008

AVEIRO

FULL MEMBER: PM 2011 Copenhagen University of Aveiro

hey say birth is one of the most traumatic experiences ever. We don’t know about that, but we surely had a shaky start. We, cod lovers, are born triers.

Not even an exclusion in 2009 was enough to keep us at bay. All thanks to the great spirit of union and friendship we developed throughout the Regional Meeting in Madrid 2009, from which we returned full of ideas. One of those soon turned into bePROUD9 in 2010, which we managed to organise as a group of only 10 organisers back in the day. We fully exceeded both ours and the participants’ expectations.

Afterwards, we organised the greatest Summer Course there’s ever been!

These achievements were the stepping stones to our full membership in 2011.

LBG Porto backed us up all the way until this point.

Still, we thought we were destined to greater things. As such, we hosted the Regional Meeting Aveiro in 2012 and the national stage of European BEST Engineering Competition in 2013. This was amazing, because we managed to improve the cooperation among the Portuguese LBGs in order to have a

seamless organisation of this particular event, whilst we met a whole bunch of new faces!

Needless to say, 2013 was a great year to broaden our minds. We also organised an Event on Education by the end of the summer, where both locals and guests were fully committed, allowing it to be the remarkable success it came to be. It also put us in contact with EduCo, thus extending our bonds over Europe.

Last but not least, we may be the most hardworking committed people around, but rest assured: we know how to make some noise!

So, if you’re interested in meeting charm and wits whilst sunbathing in our wonderful beaches under a warm welcoming sun, come to Aveiro! You’ll be received with open arms!

We say goodbye with a very special sing-along chant: Eu adoro bacalhau! Eu adoro bacalhau! Eu adoro, ei! Eu adoro, ei! Eu adoro bacalhau!

Local BEST Groups 207

BARCELONA FULL MEMBER: GA 1989 Berlin Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

BG Barcelona was one of the LBG founders of BEST. Since then Barcelona has been one of the most important LBG’s in BEST being the nurse of Valladolid (1994) and Lyon in (1999).

We organised our first course in 1993 about traffic Management In a Big City.

25 years later we are still kicking with one external event per year! Indeed we also organise a Cultural Exchange per year since we were an LBG. The Regional Meeting in 2012 and 2005 was hosted by LBG Barcelona and we tried to organise a Presidents Meeting in 2009.

To fundraise ourselves LBG Barcelona organises an engineering competition every year, which is actually called WEC (Week of Engineering Competition).

Within this competition Barcelona is organising every year the local round of EBEC since 2008.

Nowadays Barcelona is a big family with a great atmosphere and the best spirit to keep going on! With more and more events to reach every year more students. For instance, in 2012 Barcelona beat the record regarding the 208 Local BEST Groups

1989

number of students sent to courses.

Our “vulture” members are very known in all Europe, as soon will be our mascot!

2003

BELGRADE

FULL MEMBER: PM 2004 Portugal University of Belgrade

EST Belgrade officially became an Observer of BEST in spring 2003, at the General Assembly that took place in Slovakia. After that, we were eager to reach new successes. With enormous help from our Nurse LBG Zagreb, we managed to become a baby member of BEST in only six months, in autumn 2003, on the Presidents’ Meeting in Belgium. Only a year later, in autumn 2004, on Presidents’ Meeting in Portugal, BEST Belgrade became a Full member of BEST. During the ten-years old period we managed to organise numerous events: 11 seasonal courses, JobFairs, 6 local and 2 regional engineering competitions, 3 seminars of design and branding, BEST Design Week, 2 Jamborees, General Assembly, regional meetings, summer meetings, motivation weekends, Cultural Exchanges and many more.

Yet, what we are most proud of is having organized 9 annual career fairs “JobFair Create your own future!” with the partner organisation EESTEC, where more than 40 companies participated each year. Furthermore, LBG Belgrade is proud to have organized the 29th.

General Assembly in April 2011 with more than 300 students from all local BEST groups, as well as Jamboree in December 2007, setting a new record with 400 participants. Moreover, what made us feel lofty is that we helped Novi Sad, Niš and Mostar to form their own BEST groups.

We had members in International Boards and Managements of BEST:

• Marija Gogić - markeTeam Coordinator (2012–2013) • Matija Lukić -Secretary in the XXIII Board (2010-2011) • Gorana Bosić -EduCo Coordinator (2009-2010) In the next 10 years we want to become even more BEST than we’re now!

Local BEST Groups 209

BRASOV

FULL MEMBER: PM 2000 Budapest Transilvania University of Brasove

hat makes us special?

Starting on a more serious note and bragging with several things only we do, we can say a few words about: • PC party – the biggest IT festival in the whole country. We organized 7 editions over the years and they had a huge success among students.

• BEST Film Festival - Reaching its 6th edition, BFF is a cultural event, dedicated to film and arts connected to cinematography.

Going on the next level, let’s see what we’ve accomplished internationally: • ITC Developers Meeting in 2006, beREADY Trainshop in 2007, BAS and BCD Developers Meeting in 2008, NEC REC Meeting in 2009, TRAiners’ camP 19 in 2012, 3 Regional Meetings (in 2005, 2007, 2011) and we will be organising our fourth one in 2014.

• Internationally involved members: 1 who participated in the creation of the currently used BEST logo, a member in BEST’s helpdesk, 3 members in international commitees (1 in Marketing Team, 1 in IT Committee, 1 in Financial Team) and a BEST 210 Local BEST Groups

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trainer.

As you may have suspected, we have a mascot. It’s a stuffed, green dragon named Ghandi. We are very attached to him and we bring him along at each event we attend to, all over Europe.

We also treasure a couple of special songs. Our local anthem is “Aștept iubire” which means “Waiting for love”. We sing it everywhere we go, along with the international anthem “Simply the BEST”

by Tina Turner. Also, when celebrating a member’s birthday, we sing a song called “Long live your mother”.

1990

BRATISLAVA

FULL MEMBER: GA 1991 Paris Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava

he year was 1990 when we applied for baby membership, during the 4th GA in Budapest. A group of very enthusiastic people worked very hard and one year later we became full member at the 5th GA in Paris in 1991 with all rights. Also we made the decision to organize GA in Bratislava in 1993. In the same year 1993, LBG Bratislava organized the BEST General Assembly with Tomas Martinec as a main organizer.

Dusan Martinec was involved in the 4th Board of BEST as one of the Vice-Presidents (4th Board April ‘93/ October ‘93). That was the beginning of a perspective growth of our local group.

After 10 years, in the year 2003 LBG Bratislava together with LBG Kosice organised GA Slovakia in Gabcikovo.

During many years we organised a lot of external, internal and local events, worked hard on students’ development and empowering diversity.

In the year 2009 we organised our first BEST engineering competition in Bratislava and since then we organise an engineering competition every year.

In 2013 LBG Bratislava celebrated 21st birthday and not only that. We

also celebrated the success which we accomplished. In the past years we increased the number of events delivered to students.

We are a group of around 20 active members, but we can make amazing things. We created a leisure event for 100 BEST members, called Tatra Jam, two months later we organised the biggest engineering competition in the history of LBG Bratislava, three weeks later we organised RM spring Bratislava.

At the end of June we had summer course on robotics and after the course we closed our school year at Pohoda festival where we had a lot of activities on our stage. The new school year was very dynamic, because after our first LBG meeting we organized JBT in the Tatra mountains. But it was not enough for us. We also organized Training Day for local students and we decided to host EBEC central.

Local BEST Groups 211

BRNO

FULL MEMBER: GA 2007 France Brno University of Technology

he year 2013 was a year of the Dragon! From now on, PM Brno will be written in History Books of BEST. LBG Brno fulfilled their dream and organized an event for nearly 200 people, Presidents’ Meeting.

We started to build up the desire to organize an event this big back in 2008, during the ruling of the 4th board of LBG Brno, who also started the tradition of naming the boards. They were called Smurfs and since then, we’ve had Mafia, Unicorns, Patients, Virgins, and current Delinquents.

Each board worked hard not just on their yearly goals but also on this greater legacy we were passing from board to board and member to member, until the dream finally came true. It was great to see our founder, Mik, who brought BEST Spirit to Brno after his return from Erasmus and started the LBG, present at PM we organized 8 years after we became observer of BEST. Yes, LBG Brno was founded in 2005, our nurse was LBG Bratislava, which helped us to establish our structure and helped us to make the first steps. There are lots of great stories from these days, but I’m afraid we won’t have enought 212 Local BEST Groups

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space for them here. We managed to establish a deeper friendship between the two LBGs, which lasts till present day.

LBG Brno also gave the BEST world the famous Alpa, a drink that is served with a cube of sugar, that will make your breath smell fresh like a mountain spring. We got our name and our mascot from a famous tale of Brno, about a mighty dragon who tortured local people. You can still find him at the old city hall, if you dare to look.

1993

BRUSSELS

FULL MEMBER: PM 1995 Trondheim Vrije Universiteit Brussel

BG Brussels is situated at the campus of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in the heart of Brussels.

Every year, we welcome our p a r t i c i p a n t s and cooperate with the engineering and science departments to prepare our Summer Course.

Being a member of LBG Brussels brings a lot of fun with friends and meeting many European students, that pass by spontaneously in our beautiful city.

In 1993, a group of students at the faculty of Applied Sciences wanted to organise a cultural exchange. Browsing through the net they discovered BEST and from that point BEST Brussels was founded.

Already during the summer of 1994 the first Summer Course was organised, entitled “Management for Engineers”.

Due to the success of this course, BEST Brussels became officially accepted as Baby member in November 1994 at the General Assembly in Timisoara.

During the summer of 1995 we organised our second summer course with the subject “Electric and Hybrid Vehicles in Cities”. Shortly after, we received the Full member status during the Presidents Meeting of November

1995 in Trondheim (Norway). From that day on, BEST Brussels has organised yearly a successful Summer Course, touching diverse technological topics in cooperation with many departments of the university.

BEST Brussels has also largely contributed to the international activity of BEST. Our biggest challenge was organising the General Assembly in 1997, in cooperation with the four Belgian BEST groups at that moment.

Besides organising internal events, many of our members have been or are internationally active in several committees.

Local BEST Groups 213

2006

BRUSSELS ULB FULL MEMBER: GA 2008 Tallinn Université Libre de Bruxelles

006 - 2008: the birth.

Created in 2006, our group is nursed by our dear neighbors, BEST Brussels, with whom we still have very good connections today.

First course, first success, university supports us a lot, some members are already internationally involved, everything goes well and plenary voted massively for us.

2008 - 2010: the flight. An official BEST group. Time to take our responsibility. First event, a regional meeting in collaboration with BEST Brussels. Among our members, two regional advisers in a row and an EBEC coordinator initiating the Belgian cooperation and working on the Belgian FR. It was such an honor for a young group like ours to have so great representatives in the international BEST world.

By that time, we were simply used to “fly over the rainbow, so high” with our great mascot Jimmy, a little (and strange) orange tiger.

2010 ­ - 2012: the lowering. After an amazing start, we had to face our first big generation gap. From September 2010 till September 2012, several little mistakes had quite serious consequences: 214 Local BEST Groups

demotivation, lack of knowledge and human resources, not following the “8 seasons” rules for the course, ...

September 2012: the rebirth. We decide to try hard to make this LBG survive. One lucky happening makes one of our members regional adviser and we decide to put the LBG under monitoring. BEST Riga is designated to be our nurse, for the greater good, and we ask for a mentor to help us organize a course. Such a great team taking care of us.

April 2013: we are proposed for suspension at GA Valladolid but with all the work and support we had, motivation is back, new members also and plenary votes against our suspension. Since then, we have a super motivated board, new members to complete the team, a fresh new trainer, people involved in committees, ... ! We are back on track and ready for the BEST adventures !

1995

BUCHAREST FULL MEMBER: PM 1997 Belgium University Politehnica of Bucharest

t was the year of 1994 and BESTies gathered from all ‘round the world in Timisoara. As they almost closed the doors, a couple of students rushed to get in. Nobody knew from where they were from, but everybody saw that they had a kindred spirit about them.

through the city at night.

And as years passed, they always found new ideas for events. A 24-hour engineering marathon in a mall? A career event where you could chit-chat with the employers? Every time when they were asked how they did it, the Bucharest BESTies answered...

“We’re from Bucharest, not far from here”, they said. “And we want to join BEST! We think that we’d make great friends with all of you, y’know?”.

“I see you have the spirit in you”, said the board. “People, shall we give them a shot?”.

“Yes!”, cheered the crowd.

“As of now you are the newest members, sort of a... baby BEST group. We shall meet again next year and see your progress.”

It was the same answer that they gave in the years 2002 and 2008 when they organized two Presidents’ Meetings.

And it was the same 5 years later, in 2013 when they came to Valladolid and said...

And progress they saw, because one year later LBG Bucharest was officially founded and two years after that they became full members. But how did they do it?

Well, everyone in BEST is unique in his or her way and so was LBG Bucharest.

Even if it is the land of milk and honey, in Bucharest you will always be greeted with a glass of “mizerie” and a car ride

“Because we can!”

“We want to organize the next General Assembly!”

Younger members than the ones from 19 years ago, but they had the same smiles and confidence. If you know history, you know that it repeats itself...

And so it is that this year, BEST Bucharest will organize the 33rd General Assembly and the 25th Anniversary of BEST. From this point on we turn the page to the next chapter, as history is in the making...

Local BEST Groups 215

BUDAPEST

FULL MEMBER: GA 1989 Berlin

1989

Budapest University of Technology and Economics

BG Budapest welcomes those who didn’t lose their interest at Ankara or Bucharest!

Despite being one of the „founding fathers” of BEST, we didn’t get old-fashioned during these 25 years.

We are proud to have a lot of baby and some newbie full members, filled with pure motivation and determination. We also feel lucky that we’re in the center of Eastern Europe, so we can make new friendships with those who travel across our beautiful country.

Our most companionable member is definitely our mascot, Endre, who spends more time abroad than with us. No matter where he is, we always manage to get him home.

Budapest is one of the most active LBGs, hosting 32 internal events so far, including two GAs, one PM, several SIMs and comittee meetings. The LBG was also the first to organize a Jamboree, which became a tradition all over Europe.

Our group is also active on the international level, sending several members to international teams and management. We are very proud of them and their hard work. Most of them 216 Local BEST Groups

are alumnis now, along with more than 130 others. The current and former members have a good opportunity to meet on the yearly alumni evenings.

The LBG’s most important tradition is the SC every year, and the engineering competitions. Both of them are considered very successful, and a lot of fun.

Lots of hungarian students apply to courses, maybe a soon-to-be besties like them would wind up in your city soon!

Don’t be afraid to get blinded by their spirit (and pálinka) Last, but not least: LBG Budapest is proud to host the spring RM of 2014.

Come, work hard and party harder with us!

1994

CHANIA

FULL MEMBER: GA 1996 Veszprem Technical University of Crete

ey you!

Looks like something important is missing from your life! Aaah yes, right. Seems you haven’t tasted Paradise yet!

Fear not, cause you are about to get a feeling of it.

Once upon a time in a place far away, in the frontiers of Europe & the depths of Mediterranean, BEST discovered Paradise! In GA Patras our team was known, in GA Trondheim our LBG was named and in GA Veszprém 1996 our presence was established!

Through 20 years of experiences, we take quite a pride in what our LBG has achieved and the level it has reached so far.

Quite high, as some would say.

Till today we reflect the values of BEST and take them at heart.We started with intensive steps till 1998 with 2 International Workshops and a Committee meeting and as a result, we built the liability of hosting the PM of 1999. Going to the next brilliant set of years (and of course without neglecting the rest), in the period of ‘03-’06 we organised a Committee Meeting, an Alumni Sailing Week, a Regional

Meeting, a Board Meeting + an Alumni meeting and proudly hosted in our fertile ground GA Greece 2006.

Travelling ahead, we honored our dedication by hosting the last International Jamboree of BEST in 2010.Our flexibility has ensured sustainability to our LBG and thus, we have overcome external risks brought by the current economical crisis.

BEST structure has grown to be similar to companies, but it’s not corporate relations that keep our members close! It’s the beach fires we set during summer nights! The laughs, stories and experiences we share together! The common adventures that make us feel united!

Colourful echoes on the streets whisper of the events meant to come. Brace Yourself... for the time is nigh!

Local BEST Groups 217

CHISINAU

FULL MEMBER: PM 2009 Lviv Technical University of Moldova

he story says that three guys go into a bar... and they come out of there with the idea of creating a BEST group in Chisinau. Those three guys were Vladimir Bulgaru (later becoming the first president of LBG Chisinau), Pavel Borta (an active member of LBG Iasi at that time) and Alexandru Badiceanu (later became the first VP for FR in LBG Chisinau).

Back in the days, our nurse LBG Iasi gave us a very cute little penguin as a mascot, since then he joins us at our Motivational Weekends and photo bombs most of the pictures.

We ourselves have had a nursing responsibility towards LBG Vinnitsa in their pursue of becoming a BEST group. In GA Valladolid, 2013 we said bye-bye to our nurse position, as LBG Vinnytsia was voted to become a full member.

One important thing you should learn about LBG Chisinau is how it is pronounced! It is not Si-si-nau, Cheesynow or Kiss-me-now. It is pronounced: [kiʃi’nəw] or kɪʃi`naʊ. If you still get troubles learning how to pronounce it, just approach any of our members or delegates and they will be more than 218 Local BEST Groups

2007 happy to teach you, while sharing a super-sweet Bucuria candy.

Remember Vladimir Bulgaru, the LBG founder? Well, he took another challenge later on, and in 2009 he became the Vice-President for Internal Support in the international board.

For the year 2013-2014, we have another LBG member internationally involved.

He is Victor Bujoreanu, who is part of the TiGro management team, taking care of all the training events in BEST, being a Training Supervisor.

So far, BEST Chisinau has hosted 2 Regional Meetings: one in 2010 for the 10th Mongolian Meeting and the second one in 2012 for the Pirate-Bay Region.

These were the main points we could fit in the assigned space, but it is important to know your history in order to build your future!

1995

CLUJ-NAPOCA FULL MEMBER: GA 1997 Warsaw Technical University of Cluj-Napoca

twas somewhere around December 1994, when Cristi Bogdan and Lucia Cristolovean came to Cluj and succeeded to convince Cluj-Napoca students about BEST Spirit and to found their local group in Cluj-Napoca.

In January 1995, the organisation was officially registered in Romania and LBG Timisoara became our nurse. In the same year we managed to organise our first job fair, JobShop®, proving from the beginning how much we valued the mission of International BEST: developing students.

1996 marks the first seasonal event organized by BEST Cluj-Napoca: “Cooperation through Internet” and from there on the path to success was ensured. Our main focus got divided in two areas: Organising events that offer students the opportunity to travel, get to know a lot of European colleagues , to strengthen their education through training and engineering competitions: EBEC, BEST Training Week, BattleLab Robotica and many others.

Developing ourselves as an organisation, through participation in and hosting of internal events: General Assembly

1998, Regional Meetings, international workshops and trainshops (bePROUD, beReit), Cultural Exchanges.

As a local group we managed to stand out in many occasions through initiative and innovation like: launching eJobShop – an online job fair (2003), 2007 – first edition of GreenWeek, due to the worldwide alert about global warming; the tradition to “adopt” fresh recruited members into families, to make the integration process smoother.

After 18 years, this purple LBG has counted dozens of internal events, hundreds of local events, tens of internationally involved members, nursed two other LBGs and keeps taking on a lot of challenges.

Local BEST Groups 219

COIMBRA

FULL MEMBER: PM 1993 Warsaw University of Coimbra

he story of LBG Coimbra starts in November 1992, by invitation from Local BEST Group Lisbon, in the Faculty of Science of the University of Coimbra, since then, BEST Coimbra has represented the University of Coimbra in BEST International.

Initially BEST-UC belonged to the Engineering Association of the University of Coimbra, but in 2001 it became an independent association with the name Local BEST Group Coimbra, becoming a member of the National Registry of Juvenile Associations in 1992.

BEST-UC strives to provide support to students who want to be more internationally minded, promote contact with other European cultures, as well as share Portuguese culture with other European students. To achieve these goals, BEST-UC interacts with other LBGs from different countries, giving the members of the group the opportunity to exchange experiences and knowledge. This is achieved by organising events like spring, summer, autumn and winter BEST Courses, Cultural, Exchanges… Also, our LBG has a very good relationship 220 Local BEST Groups

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with the Order of Engineers of the Central Region of Portugal, which has helped with the acknowledgment and improvement of our relationship with the University of Coimbra and companies during the years.

Locally, BEST-UC organises activities to develop students and create contacts between University, Students and Companies by organising events such as Engineering Competitions, Company Days, WorkShops.

1991

COPENHAGEN

FULL MEMBER: GA 1992 Liége Technical University of Denmark

he story of LBG Copenhagen begins in the year 1991, where we first got introduced to BEST. One year later our journey began as full members at GA Liege, and since then Copenhagen has established itself as a strong, innovating and at times slightly crazy LBG. Starting in 1994 a summer course has been held in Copenhagen every year, often being one of most applied for and cooperating with leading Danish companies such as Lego. Noteworthy summer courses include the one in 2003, which took place in Greenland, and the one in 2007 which had 60 participants!

LBG Copenhagen has hosted almost all of the big events there is to host for an LBG. These include the GA in 2004, which was hosted in cooperation with LBG Lund. Here everything was built from scratch, e.g. the sports hall was used as a giant sleeping hall.

But even though this GA was not hosted in a big hotel (as most of the recent GAs have been) it is still remembered as one of the BEST GAs ever. Maybe because of the atmosphere you get from sharing sleeping and shower facilities with some 250 people.

In 2011 LBG Copenhagen hosted PM, repeating the success of using the sports hall as sleeping hall. LBG Copenhagen is in many ways a pioneering LBG. We were the first to host a Joint Board Training event for the Nordic LBGs, and we were the first to host the EBEC Nordic finals in 2010, back then called NORDBEC. This year we are repeating the success by hosting EBEC Nordic again.

Over time, LBG Copenhagen has had a strong international involvement, having members from our LBG represented in the XVI, XVII and XVIII boards of BEST, and currently having members in the international committees.

LBG Copenhagen is a very international LBG, often having more foreign students at the meetings than Danish, and often having foreign students in the board.

Local BEST Groups 221

DELFT

FULL MEMBER: GA 2011 Belgrade Technical University of Delft

2008

his Local Best Group from the tiny country of the Netherlands obtained their observer status in 2008.

And grew into a full member in 2011 at the general assembly in Belgrade. It has successfully organized a regional meeting, two board winter meetings and consistently organized courses since 2012. Off course it has met many challenges in its short lifetime, and facing more so in the future. With its big brother In Eindhoven closing shop.

The noble task of keeping BEST alive in the Netherlands now rests on this feisty LBG. And we believe we are up for this challenge. We have our own little Dutch quirks, but still represent the values of BEST. And isn’t that what it is all about within BEST, cooperating across borders and cultures. We hold many mascots dear, and if you mess with our mascot’s you mess with our members. And we will come for them!

LBG Delft, home of gold strike and the infamous golden Mongolian. Want to learn more? Drop by anytime, all are always welcome!

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1988

EINDHOVEN

FULL MEMBER: GA 1989 Berlin Eindhoven University of Technology

Our group was founded just before the European Week in Einhoven in 1988.

Since then our group has always been unique, inventive, creative and extremely flexible. Although BEST evolved to a bigger organisation, our group still kept its core values.

These values are also present in our long history: • Together with LBG Ghent we brought engineering competitions to Europe (Now known as EBEC); • Further we were the first group with a mascot: Nijntje Pluijs, she was given by former SC participants; • We have a highly effective summer courses. From the last three courses many participants applied for a job/internship at a sponsoring company and some are still working for these companies; • We love to work extremely hard, but this enable us to party even harder.

Local BEST Groups 223

EKATERINBURG

FULL MEMBER: 2000 Sweden Urals State University of Railway Transport

e are the oldest group in Russia.

At the beginning one student (his name is Marat) of our university heard about BEST and he and his friends decided to organise a local group in Ekaterinburg.

But people from the international board made a mistake thinking Ekaterinburg is the same city as Sankt-Peterburg and they agreed. Later they understood that our Ekaterinburg is too far from Europe and it isn’t even in Europe. Marat proved by mathematical way that our university is actually in the european part. Thanks to Marat, we are still in BEST. The first event that we usually organise is recruitment of new members. To make it clear what it means to have a board position in our group we make for new members a self-management day, where they can take the responsibilities of our boardies and our boardies for one meeting can relax.

Also in our BEST group we have a mascot - panda Rita. She is always traveling around the world by visiting other Local BEST groups!

In summer we like to organise a leisure event and it’s our tradition to have 224 Local BEST Groups

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rowing in the river. Our participants enjoy Russian culture and nature forest, river, guitar songs, rowing, rowing and rowing!

The first leisure event was organised in 2005 year and it was called “B4: Boats Between Bears and Beers”. Since then we keep the “b” (and the number is increasing from year to year). For example, the leisure event of summer’13 was called “b12-discovering yourself”.

BEST discovered us, BEST will discover others and BEST helps discover yourself.

2003 EKATERINBURG URFU

FULL MEMBER: GA 2006 Zagreb University – Ural Federal University

t was an excessively cold February of 2002, when two young students from Ekaterinburg were out for a walk together.

Anton Farlenkov and Maria Shevelyova (Maria was at the time President of LBG Ekaterinburg) were constantly chatting about BEST. Maria asked “Why don’t you create a BEST group in your university?” This idea immediately lodged in Anton’s head. Anton said “I made a BEST presentation for the International Office and for the Students Union. They approved my idea and assured me that I can count on their support.”

Soon his application for a membership in BEST was sent, and Anton started plannning his work on the new LBG, but, unfortunately his application was refused. Anton decided to keep going on this path, despite obstacles or discouragements. From now on his purpose was to achieve the rights to present Ural Federal University on an international level.

He was faced with a lot of hard and arduous work, but he decided to try his luck again. This time with the

support of the International Office he made a great presentation. Finally the effort was rewarded – he got invited to General Assembly as a candidate.

The very first day of Assembly 2003 (in Slovakia) can be considered as the day of the foundation of our LBG! What have we done since then: • 6 Tri-Lateral Cultural Exchanges with Chania, Madrid, Valladolid, Athens, Saint Petersburg, Napoli, Paris Politechnique, Istanbul Yildiz, Gdansk, Rome, Turin, Delft • 8 BEST Winter Courses • 7 Engineering Competitions • 2 Regional Meetings – Spring 2010 and 2011 • 1 Trainer Camp – November 2011 • 1 Local Event On Education (Vesna UrFU) – May 2012 Since the foundation of the LBG, five of our members are involved in international work of BEST more or less. For example, Daria Polozova was in TiGro Management 2012-2013.

Local BEST Groups 225

ENSAM

FULL MEMBER: GA 1989 Berlin École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers

he École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers (ENSAM) is one of the most prestigious universities in the fields of mechanics and industrial engineering in France.

The school has trained 85,000 engineers since its foundation in 1780 by the Duke of La Rochefoucauld. If ENSAM university has the specificity to be located in 8 cities, today you’ll find the most active BESTies in Paris, Bordeaux and Lille. Also known as “Gadz”, ENSAM students are famous for their folklore including nicknames, traditional clothing, songs and beard.

ENSAM is one of the 8 founding members of BEST and many ENSAM students were involved in the international board in the early 1990’s.

Since, between one and three courses are organized every year by the LBG. From 1990s to 2000s, it also offered BESTies to take part of leisure events organized by all ENSAMstudents: Croisière AM (sailing cruise week) and Skiozart (Ski week, see the “Eat Me, I’m A Strawberry” origin).

In 1991, LBG ENSAM organised in Paris the GA on its campus. Since 2002, all French LBGs decided to work 226 Local BEST Groups

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together to host the GM. A very good relationship between them has been the key of the GA2002, 2007 and 2012 success! ENSAM students always had key positions in the organisation of these GA, including the 3 MO. Often compared to Woodstock, the GA2007 took place with tents facilities inside the ENSAM campus of Cluny, an abbey from the Xth century.

5 years later, GA2012 was announced to be the GApocalypse, true apocalyptic weather conditions allowed some crazy snow battles between sessions!

Today, LBG ENSAM is composed of 25 active members and 258 alumni. It is one of the most dynamic LBG with 14 internal, 43 local and 53 external events so far.

1991

ENSTA PARISTECH

BG ENSTA was born at the beginning of BEST. From Spring 1999 to Winter 2001, non academic events were organised at ENSTA. Since GA 2002, every winter has been lit up by a Winter Course. The themes of the courses have been various. The last ones have been based on energy issues. In 1995, we organised WS95 during which BEST University center was born.

Within years, we developed collaboration with the other French LBGs. In 2005, ENSTA hosted the board training, right after Jiji had been elected as treasurer of the international Board, after being active in FinTeam since 2004. In 2006, Alice joined EduCo and Cecile became French RA. We also organised the Corporate Relations Round Table in 2006 at ENSTA and Cultural Exchanges with Cluj-Napoca and Lodz in 2005. The LBG has been renamed ENSTA ParisTech in 2008.

After these golden years, we entered a short period called the “lean cows”.

At PM08, our LBG was suspended because of logistics problems during the WC2008 but at GA09 we became full

FULL MEMBER: GA 1991 Paris ENSTA ParisTech

member again!

In 2010, two new company events were created, the Consulting Meeting in October and the Days on Energies (two company days during our WC). It’s now the third edition for both of them.

In 2011 we celebrated our 20th anniversary with crazy Besties in Paris.

In 2012, ENSTA moved near Polytechnique which made us rethink our logistics for events. We are now close to them since we are their nurse.

In October 2012, we hosted the Regional Meeting in Versailles. Within two years, the members of our LBG became boardies of the French Association of the LBGs: ALFA. Since 2012, we have a mascot Célestine (a frog!) which travelled a lot (because of kidnappings). The last theft was at PM13.

Finally, if you come here you will see men doing “la danse du Limousin”, a French dance and song and learn how to “French kiss” the best way!

Local BEST Groups 227

ERLANGEN

FULL MEMBER: GA 2013 Valladolid Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

n March 2012, some brave students from FAU decided to broaden their horizons and founded a new group in the BEST network. On their path, they mastered all problems they encountered and did not only learn how to act in such a great organisation, but also how to make friends along the way…

The start of all successful events was the first Motivation Weekend, where for the first time trainers were welcomed in Erlangen. With the the help of our nurse, LBG Wroclaw, and support from our beloved RA Charlotte, it was possible to gain more and more insight and prepare for the baby member application.

Therefore the TRAM on beRicher was organised in a glorious location next to the Brombach-Lake. As promised, the participants were able to enjoy sausages for every meal every day.

This tradition of enjoying food is shown in the culinary expertise in our group.

We strive for the perfect meal in every event for we are what we eat.

The last and biggest event ever organised was the Regional Meeting of the NorthWest Region in Autumn 2013. With lots of fun and love we managed to create an 228 Local BEST Groups

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atmosphere of friendship, worked hard and partied harder.

This now leaves the question: And what now? Now it´s time that we create our future.. ...with more events, like our first EBEC round and first Summer Course next year. ... with more friends to be found all over Europe ... with hope for incredible parties that no one ever saw before ... with the idea of Europe that we can all form and see together ... with the BEST spirit!

With love from Germany, LBG Erlangen

1995

FARO ALGARVE FULL MEMBER: GA 2012 France

ho never read: Kisses from sunny Faro?

Or Heard about the Portuguese Scarf?

And Never Forget that: Faro é Faro, e em Faro é Tudo à Grande!

Believe it or not, the history of LBG Faro Algarve began many miles away from Faro, in Poland to be precise, where our founder, during an Erasmus experience, came across this magnificent world! He returned to Faro, totally immersed in the BEST Spirit, “pulled off some strings” and soon was born an Observer Group in a magical place (somewhere between the Middle Earth and Hogwarts), the sunny city of Faro! LBG Lisbon became our Nurse - and such supportive and cute Nurses they were - aiding us achieving the Full group status! We are now one of the youngest LBGs in BEST and every year we work harder and harder (and party way much harder) in order to raise our (already high) standards and grow up solid as a family!

Events:

• BEST Educational Committee Summer Meeting (2010) • Local BEST Engineering

University of Algarve

Competition (2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013) • BEST Engineering Week (2011 and 2012); • 3 Summer Courses – “Energised by the Sea...TheTidalPower”(2011) “Energy:The Answer is Blowing in the Wind!” (2012) “007-The SUN is More Than Enough!” (2013) • Quality SIM (2013)

Local BEST Groups 229

GDANSK

FULL MEMBER: GA 2005 Ljubljana Gdansk University of Technology

During spring 2003, a student of Gdansk University of Technology, Bartosz Lipnicki participated in a job fair organized

by BEST Warsaw. Impressed by this event, Bartosz came back to Gdansk with an idea of founding a new LBG. After summer full of preparations, an Observer application was sent to the International Board of BEST. September 30th, 2003 marks the date when Gdansk officially gained the Observer status. A year later, at PM 2004 in Portugal, the LBG joined BEST as a Baby Member followed by full membership granted at PM 2005 in Ljubljana. Bartosz Lipnicki, Dominika Markowska and Wojciech Syrocki were members of the very first board.

The first event made by LBG Gdansk was FOKA 2004, the Student Organizations’ Fair. Later that year, our group organized an RM for Mongolia and a CE with LBG Berlin and LBG Turin.Together with LBG Warsaw we made the first BEC happen in 2004.

Since then, many things have changed and after the name unification in 2012 the competition is now called EBEC. In spring 2015, Gdansk along with 230 Local BEST Groups

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other five polish LBGs will organize 9th edition of EBEC Poland, which is a national round of EBEC. LBG Gdansk organized many internal events, such as trainshops, international teams meetings and regional meetings.

Some of them include CaSCo Meeting in 2005, beRICHER9 in 2010, IPF in 2012 and TiGro WM in 2013. We are also proud organizers of the PM 2014.

Apart from the international events, BEST Gdansk organizes many events for local students, with the most prominent examples of a very successful Engineer Job Fair, the aforementioned Student Organizations’ Fair FOKA, career days and multiple leisure events.

Over the years, members of BEST Gdansk have built a strong identity of the LBG. A significant part of it is a rubber crocodile mascot called Croco.

Despite being kidnapped on numerous occasions, Croco stays with us since 2007.

As for the beginning of 2015, LBG Gdansk consists of 20 Observers, 14 Baby Members, 36 Full Members and has a constantly growing network of Alumni, which now creates a sum of 93 people that support us in organizing our activities.

1995

GHENT

FULL MEMBER: GA1997 Belgium Universiteit Gent

nce ruled by kings and knights in great castles, the city of Ghent has now largly been taken over by students whose presence can be felt from numerous student organisations, the sound of cantus almost every night and thousands of bicycles scattered around the streets.

Looking for international experiences and new challenges, some bold members of the local engineering student union went to PM Trondheim in 1995 to become a BEST observer group. To demonstrate their BEST spirit (and because it’s just fun too) they organised their first (unofficial) course before even obtaining their observer status!

LBG Ghent became a full member on GA 1997 while they were organising that very event. It was also here that the first Ghentie joined the international level and many others after him.

Throughout the years, Ghenties have been an innovative group never afraid of a little challenge. Milestones would be the organisation of the first engineering competition in BEST (BEEC) together with LBG Eindhoven in 2003, the first final round of its successor EBEC in 2009 and of course the legendary PM in 2006 where no one other than HRH

Prince Laurent attended the official opening and the BEST logo illuminated the whole student quarter at night. Since the last edition of the BEST history book, we can also proudly add the organisation of IPF in 2012 (including a real cantus) to our list of Internal Events.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

Today, LBG Ghent consists of around 30 young enthusiasts, ready to rock another 25 years of BEST! What will be our next move? seluR tnehG!

Local BEST Groups 231

GLIWICE

FULL MEMBER: GA 1997 Belgium Silesian University of Technology

wenty years ago, when not so many countries knew about BEST and students didn’t have such great opportunities to travel abroad and meet other cultures, an exciting idea came to Gliwice. An ambitious group of students with a strong determination for selfdevelopment and a creative approach to their education founded Silesia B.E.S.T. Thanks to them, in the same year in Timisoara, a third Polish LBG (after Warsaw and Krakow) became Observer of BEST (and a year later in Patras proud Member of BEST).

Throughout these 20 years the number of members has increased from 15 to around 60 members and the name has been changed to LBG Gliwice.

LBG Gliwice is proud of many achievements, e.g: • We work hard! Probably because we’re the group with the highest number of two courses organised per season (Course + Leisure) – 2004, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2013, • We’re the origin of Mongolia.

We were there when the legend was born! That’s why our official mascot is Mongolian, 232 Local BEST Groups

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In our LBG’s history appear people as markeTeam coordinator and member of TiGro management We had a great pleasure to host Trainer Camp twice - in 2002 and in 2012, In 2010 we’re hosting BEC Poland final and this Spring – 2014 we’re hosting it again as EBEC Poland final!

We’re group of friends eager for new challenges all the time, And much more...

If you want to know more about LBG Gliwice, check out our website www. bestgliwice.pl or visit us!

1992

GOTHENBURG FULL MEMBER: GA 1993 Warsaw Chalmers University of Technology

othenburg (from the Swedish city Göteborg) dates back to 1992 when it was elected as a baby member in GA Liege, having LBG Stockholm as a nurse. One year later, in GA Warsaw, LBG Gothenburg was proudly raised to full member and has since then been an active LBG with annually recurring Seasonal Courses. In 1996, LBG Gothenburg contributed with their first international boardie; Jonas Murby was chosen to be President of BEST. Three years later, in 1999, Anna Nielsen contributed as the GM Secretary, and in 2000 LBG Gothenburg joined forces with the other Swedish LBGs to organize GA Sweden.

Since then the LBG has been involved in conducting Workshops, Regional Meetings, Cultural Exchanges, Leisure Events and plenty more.

Starting 2014, the LBG will be more separated from the University Students’ Union, giving the group autonomy and potential to grow for the future.

Local BEST Groups 233

GRAZ

FULL MEMBER: GA 2008 Tallinn Graz University of Technology

he roots of LBG Graz reach to the far west of Europe. In Lisbon, a young motivated student from Graz got to know BEST and fell in love with the organisation. Back at home, he started to look for other motivated people.

The first meetings were held in their apartments in 2005. They applied to become an observer group and at GA Zagreb (2006) their hopes became reality. With the help of LBG Vienna as nurse only half a year later, at PM Ghent, the small group of random students became LBG Graz, a baby member of BEST. They were ready for their first big project: a course! In February 2008 under the topic: “Don’t fear the Error: Statistics and Measurements” 21 student from all over Europe came to Graz. The course was a full success and so at GA Tallinn in 2008 LBG Graz was rewarded and became a full member of BEST. Now LBG Graz was ready to take on more challenges. Until the end of 2013 LBG Graz has organised six consecutive winter courses, two Central Regional Meetings and four ITC Developers meetings; as two people from recent 234 Local BEST Groups

2006

ITC management have their roots in Graz. Additionally, LBG Graz has been organising EBEC every year since 2009; highlighted by hosting the regional final in 2011.

Locally, the group is also known for organising an annual career consulting event and booze stands at the university that are from time to time populated by members of neighboring LBGs, who enjoy the local beverages and the good company. LBG Graz has never been a big BEST group, but the mix of motivation and dedication has always enabled us to spread a huge amount of BEST spirit at Graz Technical University.

1989

GRENOBLE

FULL MEMBER: GA 1989 Berlin Grenoble Institute of Technology

f BEST was a family, then BEST Grenoble would be your enjoyable grandpa. He does not speak well, his jokes are not always funny, but he is surely spirited and you will always forgive his mistakes, because, we all like him, old papy BEST Grenoble.

BEST Grenoble is known as the primary source of life: first French local group to organise a course on technology and a local EBEC, nest to the glorious beSENIOR, creator of local group Nancy, nurse of local group Lyon.

BEST Grenoble also took, and still takes, an important role (relatively to other French LBGs at least ) in the international level of BEST, with numerous Boardies & Committee coordinators and members, RAs, Trainers…

As night and day dance in the corridor of time and space, BEST Grenoble also experienced periods of darkness, also known as the “Middle Ages of BEST Grenoble”, in the mid 90s and in 2004, when members were really low (going as low as 0 in 1997), and when historical archives were destroyed by filthy barbarians.

Each year is unique, but events remain: MWs, CEs, training weekends (with newbies and invited guests from other associations), beSENIOR, SpC (or WC in case of a traditional GA France which happens every five years), and local GA. BEST Grenoble does not fall behind traditions, proud to have its own ones : boulet spirit, French shower 2.0, visual identity non-compliance, mountain cottage weekends, cheese & chartreuse & nuts.

Local BEST Groups 235

HELSINKI

FULL MEMBER: GA 1989 Berlin Aalto University

EST Helsinki was one of the founding members of the BEST organisation.

The LBG’s influence was emphasized during the early years when Helsinki organized GA in 1992 with LBG Tallinn. Helsinki has had four BEST boardies so far, and has nursed several LBGs in the nineties. These include Tallinn in 1992, Tampere in 1995 and Riga in 1997.

Helsinki and Tampere have been the only Finnish LBGs for the time being.

In 1995 Helsinki and Louvain-la-Neuve visited each other aiming to learn from the two cultures, possibly starting the CE culture in BEST. The LBG had its highest number of active members, 32, in 2003. Although the capital and member quantities have fluctuated greatly during the years, the support of the student union has always been strong and the requirements for a full membership have been fulfilled continuously. Our mascot, the white rabbit Väinö Yrjö Kyllikki, was introduced in 2010. As any other LBG mascot also Väinö Yrjö Kyllikki has been captured to other LBGs several times and involuntarily visited places such as Trondheim, Barcelona and 236 Local BEST Groups

1989

Istanbul. In June 2013 the LBG finally got their first wristbands which exhibit wintery themes and our two local specialties, Sauna Crawling and the Minttu liqueur, the former being a focal part of the annual Pre-Christmas Party since 2004.

Like the whole organisation, LBG Helsinki will be celebrating their 25th anniversary in 2014. The heritage of a quarter of a century will be preserved and passed on, and LBG Helsinki’s current board has a mindset of keeping the LBG vital today and for the many years to come.

1998

IASI

FULL MEMBER: GA 2002 France “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi

f it wasn’t for a girl that went on Erasmus at the University of Stockholm in 1997 who knows when BEST would have arrived in Iasi. There she met two Romanians that were already in BEST and soon they convinced her how BEST can help the students from Iasi. Struck by BEST values, she soon started dreaming about the possibility of the University of Iasi joining the organisation. The path that BEST Iasi needed to take was a rocky one: after applying in fall 1998 and spring 1999 just to be rejected as a observer of BEST, the group from Iasi didn’t give up and decided to register the NGO and applied for a third time to become part of BEST at PM Budapest 2000.

Gaining the support of the University, involving many more students and registering the association in Iasi, year 2000 turned out to be yet another time a lucky one. Iasi was accepted as an observer of BEST in 2000. In the next years BEST Iasi became soon baby and with the guidance of LBG Timisoara, a full member in 2002 at GA France.

From then, the number of members grew more and more, and the LBG developed into a strong and united

group. From year to year, the students from Iasi University found in the Job fairs, BEST Courses, Technical Festivals and Competition organised

by BEST Iasi another chance to follow their dream, to have fun, learn and improve their skills.

At the same time the LBG wanted to give something in return to BEST and started to apply for hosting different internal events. Reaching the maturity needed, LBG Iasi took another challenge and decided to help new group from Chisinau to find their own path through the BEST family.

After 13 years of existence, more than 100 members and alumni can say: “we are proud to be a part of BEST Iasi!”

Local BEST Groups 237

ISTANBUL

FULL MEMBER: PM 2005 Ljubljana Istanbul technical University

n a sunny day, of June 2000,some students of Istanbul Technical University got together and founded a student organisation.After 3 successful years they decided to apply to BEST in June 2003.3 months after hearing the name of BEST,the group became Observer Istanbul (PM2003).One year passed with hard job of establishing a Local Group,organizing a mini CE for LBG Stockholm and a RM for East Region,after them,making the T-Shirts of GA2004 was another success story of the Observer Istanbul.After a great summer we became a LBG. After visited by LBG Athens in winter 2005,we made our first promotion for SCs where we got the third position of the applications in the whole BEST world.Then, the first SC arrived.

Although it was a first course ever done by us,It was a remarkable event .The success also came with 11 couples happened during the event too.This became also one of the causes of becoming full member of BEST in PM 2005.Beside all other great events such as BACo,CEs,RMs,etc.,the year 200708 became a remarkable year in the history of BEST where LBG Istanbul is 238 Local BEST Groups

2000

the first and only LBG who organized 5 Season Courses in a row and BeRicher V in 5 Seasons!Amazing huh?

IPF Istanbul 2010 and EBEC Final Istanbul 2011 were milestones of both LBG Istanbul and BEST.Except for LEoE 2013 we took every internal event that we applied.

Our lovely mascot “Baykuş” (Mr. Owl) always gives us motivation to involve international level.Till today 2 markeTeam,2 finTeam,1 EduCo management members,1 EBEC Coordinator and 1 President of BEST contributed to the development of BEST.What can we do sometimes (GA huh?)

2005

ISTANBUL YILDIZ FULL MEMBER: PM 2009 Lviv Yildiz Technical University

tudents in Yildiz Technical University started their interest in BEST the first moment they heard about it. The applied to international board on 2005 to be a part of it. However commitee rejected the application in consequence of thinking the group is weak and it is not possible to set up a strong structuring. Later on in last quarter of year 2007, a brand new student group formed a union to put Yildiz name on the list of European Universities that are involved in BEST. Union took place in students’ organisation: IAESTE and just in a while group produced a strong core team to drive its own path. With weekly meetings and other events after all these two organisations got seperated for sure. Following days gave birth to a acception because of the new structuring and substructuring of future days. On May 2008 Yildiz was selected as the 78º member of BEST in GA Tallinn. Afterwards with every kind of advertising we reached students and gain power by numbers. Those numbers presented us on courses they were selected.

LBG Yildiz hosted its nurse, LBG Bucharest to get more information

about BEST and raise awareness and knowledge on May 2008, And on October 2008 with participants from Greece, Romania and Macedonia, Yildiz hosted a Regional Meeting.

Instead of just trainings given by qualified and experienced members, local problems on BEST and new ideas were discussed.

Although LBG Yildiz didn’t run a huge advertisement campaign from different majors and groups joining BEST family grew up to 50 active member. BEST future in Yildiz was reaching many different ideas from a variable types of students and a new structure was being set up witih a strong management system.

Local BEST Groups 239

IZMIR

FULL MEMBER: PM 2011 Copenhagen Ege University

s the forth LBG of Turkey in BEST, our foundation filled with remarkable milestones. LBG Izmir became the cross road of passionate technology students who were eager to fulfill expectations of the organisation . We worked hard and we put all our effort that we can to improve our organisation with a single goal; ‘reaching a sustainable level’. On our way to this goal, first milestone was GA 2008 Budapest where our group joined BEST, then this opportunity followed with the second step at GA Warsaw where LBG Izmir stood in plenary as a baby member. The next round of this journey was PM 2011 Copenhagen where LBG Izmir took his place among full members of BEST with support from all LBGs, yet, it is not the final destination. Every single day, we get stronger while seeking new opportunities to contribute this organisation. Since we are getting more motivated with every obstacle that we face, we assure that we will seek for new challenges and keep our BEST spirit alive with promising new members as a loyal member of BEST world.

240 Local BEST Groups

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MILESTONES While we were an observer member; we organized National round of EBEC for the first time. We organized 3 different events in a row in 22 days. AC’12, beRICHER13 and JAM Sultan vol. I with great success. We organized the first “Jamboree” in Turkey. In order to obtain a sustainable archiving system we created our online tool ‘Asfalya’.

LOCAL GROUP TRADITIONS We celebrate our full membership annually. We organise MW Turkey to gather all Turkish LBGs together to boost up national cooperation. We flip a coin when we can’t decide or don’t agree on something. That’s why we have coin responsible aka “asking to ATA”.

INTERNATIONAL INVOLVEMENT EEC HR - Cansu GORGUN Our two magnificent trainers, Mert OZDEN and Cenk USLUSOY. We have currently 8 members in international teams.

LBG Nickname: The Pearl of Aegean

2004

KAUNAS

FULL MEMBER: PM2006 Ghent Kaunas University of Technology

o begin with, in spring 2014 LBG Kaunas will have its anniversary –there are 10 years after this local BEST group in Kaunas was established! Step by step this group becomes stronger and stronger, spreads its innovative ideas all around and invites a lot of new people to enjoy this BEST family. But, at first, how did it start?

12th of March, 2004 three motivated girls from Kaunas University of Technology went to RM that was in Riga to tell about an idea to establish new LBG in Kaunas. And well, after GA 2004 in Copenhagen LBG Kaunas became an observer of BEST. But it was only a beginning. During GA 2005 in Greece was decided that BEST Kaunas can become a baby member. And the last step was PM 2006 in Ghent, where this local group became a full member.

These years from establishing LBG Kaunas were full of events: Nordic JAM 2004, Jamaica RM 2005, from 2006 were developing main events such as yearly academic courses, local EBEC stages and cultural exchanges, then followed RM’09, finTeam Summer meeting’10, BaBEC’11, also, from this year was developing an idea of yearly

City Rally for students of Kaunas University of Technology, next year was organized RAM’12, JBT’12 and 2013 was known by BSM’13.

Of course, LBG Kaunas does not forget about socializations. That‘s why there are lots of traditions such as BEST Christmas parties, weekly food workshops, hitchhiking somewhere in Lithuania every year, movie evenings, birthdays and cultural activities.

Finally, all of us hope, that LBG Kaunas will not stop developing and creating a colourful history. But, as we love to say, “If you can dream it, you can do it!”...

Local BEST Groups 241

KIEV

FULL MEMBER: GA 2010 Warsaw National Technical University of Ukraine

ur story has started in spring of 2007 when the first people from our university discovered BEST while attending Motivation Weekend in Zaporizhzhya.

We officially got the status of an Observer in July of 2008. Preceding year was tough and challenging for us: we were not an LBG officially, but practically worked our way into being one. That had a positive outcome, as we built our team, worked hard and pushed forward to keep our motivation high till we finally became a local BEST group with a status of an Observer, and, being strong enough, we ran for Baby status in only a couple of months from then.

Having only about 10 people we became BEST Kiev. When we heard the good news, we couldn’t wait till reunion of all the members, as at that moment almost all the members were at different Summer Courses as co-organizers!

During PM Bucharest we have attained Baby membership and started looking forward to becoming more! Then we organized a LEC as a round of EBEC. Moreover, the same year we organized our first Summer Course “To the Moon and Back: Airspace Technologies for the Future”, and the 9th Regional 242 Local BEST Groups

2008

Meeting of Mongolia, also known as the Central-East Region. And on GA 2010 in Warsaw we successfully got a Full status. In total since the moment of the founding we organized more than 25 Local events, 3 Internal and 5 External events. We have our authentic projects, like iGreen – environment Project, and IT-competition named Int20H. However, there are so many plans and so much motivation to implement them!

We are proud of our amazing mascot - dragon Kai ! Actually, his history started since our Spring Course 2011 “Catch the wave”, when one of our participants Kai Xiong wasn’t let into the country from Kyiv’s airport due to some visa issues. And he had to go back home. But, dragon Kai successfully replaced him on all lectures, parties and on all photos from the course. He even got tagged at the pictures! Since then, Kai has become our awesome mascot.

But Kai has been missing. Who knows, maybe, he came back to the real Kai. Besides the mascot, we are famous of our easy and funny LBG dance by the song of “Verka Serduchka “! It is really fun and everyone attending an event in Kiev is welcome to learn it to feel the positive, rebellious, cheerful spirit of heart of Ukraine!

2008

KOSICE

FULL MEMBER: GA 1996 Tallinn Technical University of Kosice

e are BEST Group with long tradition and we are indeed happy our LBG is still growing. Our University, Technical University of Košice, is situated in second biggest city in Slovakia.

Our very first external event was Summer Course called Industry and Ecology in 1995. Long time has passed and current number of activities LBG Kosice organised is 19. The last course we prepared in cooperation with Faculty of Aeronautics with name Fly in the sky! in Februray 2014. We do not focus only on external events but also internal. In Autumn 2013 we organised Regional Meeting of Mongolia and we had also took a challenge to host Board Meeting in 2012 to spread international spirit among our members .

In cooperation with LBG Bratislava, LBG Prague and LBG Brno we prepare local czech-slovak meetings twice per year called KeBaAB. However there is also one more leisure event popular among many BESTies we organise with LBG Bratislava. It is New Year´s Eve called TatraJam. In 2013 it was very first time we enjoyed EBEC pyramide. For our LBG, EBEC

was love at first sight and we did not organise only local round, but also regional round EBEC Central 2013.

Moreover Coordinator for EBEC Central 2014 was elected our member Michal Dic. Anyway we are also proud of our member Peter Lukac, who became Regional Adviser of Mongolia for 2013/2014.

We keep on BEST motto „Work hard, play harder“ and believe our BEST Spirit will increase every year.

Local BEST Groups 243

KRAKOW

1994

FULL MEMBER: GA 1997 Belgium AGH – University of Science and Technology

ong long time ago… In deeply, dark nineties, few years after big revolution in Poland someone got a brilliant idea. The heroes was Jacek Zięba and he wanted to do something more than just studying. So, Jacek claimed a wish of Krakow joining the Board of European Students of Technology organisation.

And that’s how it started. In 1994 Krakow became Baby Member.

Everything was good for a short time period but after that Jacek finished his studies and baby LBG Krakow vanished as fast as it appeared. But till then…One sunny day a beautiful girl Monika found a hidden treasure. She magically found few boxes with papers which left after Jacek with all the information about BEST. She examined them thoroughly and told about to some friends and they were as excited as Monika. So this group of people was so enthusiastic to this idea that they bring to life baby LBG Krakow back to international area.That was about our hard beginning but after that everything was going better and better. Krakow became a Full Member of the organisation on GA Belgium 1997 and now we will celebrate our 244 Local BEST Groups

20 anniversary. The whole amount of people involved in BEST AGH Kraków since the begining reaches five hundred.

Now we are a big group of 80 people with common values and goals. Big step in our history has happened in 1998 when we started organising Engineering Job Fairs which are now one of the biggest in our region. We are part of EBEC pyramid, we are part of EBEC Poland.

Every year we organise Summer Course succesfully and last year we organised first since 10 years Leisure Event.

The key to our success is a perfectly developed recruitment system – thanks to it we can choose BESTies who feels the BEST Spirit from their first weeks in the organisation.

We have really big amount of people internationally involved in all committees. Every year we organise internal event to increase knowledge about international bodies of BEST among our members. In 2010 we organised Presidents Meeting, which was really important step in our history.

We are recognizable for our famous Polish phrases, and our pretty mascot Kurenka- a big, yellow chicken!

There is only one conclusion: Come to Kraków and meet us: a fairy tale come true!

2010

LAS PALMAS

FULL MEMBER: PM2013 Brno University of Las Palmas of Gran Canaria (ULPGC)

BG Las Palmas is the most southwestern group in Europe. The city, even with its beaches and pleasant climate, wasn’t complete until we discovered BEST. It all started in 2010 when a student returned from spending an exchange year in UC3M. During that year, he discovered BEST, was in contact with LBG Madrid Carlos III, but also met other BESTies, and participated in a SC in Lodz.

Once he was back to the island, he told some university students that this was the best experience of his life, and had to do something so that everyone could enjoy a similar one.

In December, during Spanish MW 2010, we received the news that we had been accepted as Observer. Thereafter, all our efforts were focused on our first event, the Growth SIM which took place during March 2011 . After this, we organized a MW with LBG Madrid Carlos III, both for nursing sessions and teambuilding with our mentors.

During PM Copenhagen 2011 we became Baby members of BEST. Then, our first Local EBEC came, and our

efforts were focused both in establishing ourselves as local association and to grow and accomplish our next goal: an event that would allow us to become a Full LBG. However, we had time to organize the Autumn South-West RM 2012.

We held our first external event, SC, in July 2013. We worked very hard, and the results certainly made it worthy.

Both organizers and participants lived an unforgettable experience thanks to all the effort invested. Recently, we became Full members of BEST during PM Brno 2013. Now, we consider that we should set new goals and continue working hard to reach them.

Local BEST Groups 245

LEUVEN

FULL MEMBER: GA 2002 Paris KU Leuven

nce upon a time in the Central West…

Leuven, September 2000 to be precise, the story starts with some engineering students responding to a flyer to have a drink with international students. Not knowing what BEST stands for, they dive in, organise the Lowlands meeting in October and send two members to join PM in Budapest.

We’re writing November 2000, the official start of LBG Leuven.

Two years later, at the GA in Paris, LBG Leuven becomes a full member and on top of that our President at the time, Wim Farasyn (Farry), gets elected to be international President!

Fast forward a few years in which BEST Leuven gets their own electricity deficient, humid, but Wifi equipped office (a co-operation with the local Euroavia division), organises the ninth PM in Natoye together with Louvain-laNeuve, takes their local EBEC to whole new level by organising it on a Saturday instead of a Wednesday afternoon – thus hosting more competing teams – and provides the cherished office with a makeover – think electricity, heating, paint, cosy sofas and design furniture!

Somewhere in there, our legendary 246 Local BEST Groups

2000 mascot Yassine-the-beaver is born, conceived during a company visit and aptly named after one of the then board members.

So, can you tell? BEST Leuven has been gradually growing bigger (and dare we say, better?): The number of members has been on a rise, since 2013 we include students from the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering and more participants are finding their way to our terrific town of Stella, chocolate and awesome Summer Courses. So awesome in fact, that we were evaluated as being the host of the best Summer Course of 2013. Talk about the cherry on the cake, right?

Furthermore, we’ve started this tradition to host all the Spring RM of the Central West Region. And 14 years after introducing Cantus into BEST, we’re working on a much anticipated codex-project, which you will hear more about, soon, in an LBG near you!

So as you can see, we’re far from galloping off into the sunset and living happily ever after. On the contrary, my dear, we’ve only just picked up our lassos!

1991

LIÈGE

FULL MEMBER: PM 1991 Lisbon ULg (University of Liège)

ounded in 1988 by three students at the University of Liège, the ‘Cercle Europe Ingénieur – Liège’ was a student union dealing with the organisation of European travelrelated activities. In the early 90’s, it seemed natural to integrate BEST. That’s how, in 1991, a few students created LBG Liege: Baby member in Paris and Full member in GA Lisbon the same year. Years after years, LBG Liege organized Summer Courses, Committee Meetings and even General Assemblies under the well-known BEST motto: Work hard, party harder!

Indeed, LBG Liege has had the great opportunity to organize the 8th General Assembly which was taking place on the same week as the 2nd European Congress which led to the organisation of joint parties gathering thousands of students!

In January 2008, LBG Liege became a ‘Non-Profit Organisation’, BEST Liege asbl, standing thus on its own feet! This new legal status has given the LBG a better security, a stronger position regarding our relationships with industrial partners but also higher legal responsibilities.

At PM2011 Copenhagen, LGB Liege was suspended. This was the result of a lack of KT and of a general ‘shyness’ of the LBG, better known as the ‘ghost LBG’ at the time. LBG Liege chose LBG Ghent as a nurse for its strong position in the BEST landscape. All the work which was made during the year 2011-2012 led the LBG back to its full membership at PM2012 Timisoara.

From that date, the LBG has completely recovered and is now among the largest LBGs in Belgium. The main lack of the LBG is its relative confidentiality on the European level. Indeed, few members are active at a higher level than the local one, but the change is still ongoing.

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LISBON

1989

FULL MEMBER: GA 1989 Berlin Lisbon Institute of Technology, University of Lisbon

EST Lisbon is one of the founding Local BEST Groups. In this 25 year time span we were always one of the most active groups locally and internationally with a myriad of milestones.

In 1991 we hosted the 6th General Assembly of BEST and in the following year we organized our first Summer Course. Another landmark came in 1998 with the organisation of BLAME(BEST Lisbon Alumni Meeting).In 1999 we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our LBG by bringing the GA back to Lisbon. 1999 was also the year we took the leap and organized two courses in the same year, a Summer Course and a Winter course! In 2004, along with the rest of Portuguese LBG’s, BEST Lisbon worked towards hosting PM Portugal.

2007 was the year we did our first Leisure Event ever, by organizing a Surf Course. In 2007 and 2010 BEST Lisbon organized the Regional Meeting of the now extinct Iberian Region. Finally, in 2012 we rode the wave once more for the second edition of BEST Lisbon’s Surf Course and hosted a trainshop for the first time - bePROUD11 !

Of course, in 25 years of history, a lot 248 Local BEST Groups

of traditions started in our LBG but the ones we are most proud of are the Portuguese Scarf, which started at the Lisbon Summer Course, in 2005, and the dance “Garagem da Vizinha” which soon became a national tradition in Portuguese LBGs and spread all across Europe.

1989

LJUBLJANA FULL MEMBER: GA 1989 Berlin University of Ljubljana

ur path begins on GA 1989 when we became full members. After that we had more and more active members every year.

Here we started developing our vision.

New projects were born and friendships were made. Through years we were connecting students, our university and companies so we have created quite a brand in our little country. Currently we have around 25 active members. Team spirit, motivation and commitment to common goals are creating special climate, which drives us from one project to another.

We are active on local and international level. For local students we are organizing engineering competition called MacGyver and BDTN (BEST local days of technology and sciences).

Besides that, there were some other interesting events during year like flash mobs, recruitment weekends, different excursions and round tables.

For international students we organize a summer course every year, where we choose an interesting topic which fits in our environment.

We take good care of our members with motivational weekends, training weekends, different dinners and sports

activities. But we don’t forget about our friends abroad. We have organized a lot of international events for our comities, regional, president’s and general meetings. Our members have a vision to contribute to international benefit of BEST. And what are we famous for?

Everyone knows our special drink from blueberries »bottled« by LBG Ljubljana and our song about Slovenia. Our local students also know us by our mascot the Swiss knife for promotion of EBEC. Our members love to travel around as much as they can and we love to host others.

If you are in Slovenia, don’t hesitate to call us!

Local BEST Groups 249

LODZ

FULL MEMBER: PM 1999 Chania Technical University of Lodz

EST Lodz was founded in 1997 by 3 students: Witek Pawlak, Przemek Korona and Dawid Solecki and was established while studying in Denmark. Michal, Nadia and Przemek came into contact with BEST and decided to set it up in Lodz. They wrote on a small sheet of paper to their friend Witek: “We want to create BEST in Lodz, are you in?”. Of course the answer was “YES!” (this note is still exposed in our office as a remembrance of the beginning of the great adventure).

Like each LBG we have a Mascot – Teddy Bear Mark, who was kidnapped in 2009 at Polish Meeting. Since that time we are trying to find him. Why he was so special? Our small Mark has a pierced ear and always wore tailormade BEST T-shirts that were specially ordered for him.

And our unique ritual is “KwaKwa”fresh members have to dance like a duck and drink special beverage.

Every year we organize job fair (ATP), incredible EBEC contest in cooperation with other Polish LBGs & memorable course.

On our list of unforgettable events are: TRAP 2001, Board Summer Meetings 250 Local BEST Groups

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2003 and 2004, one of the biggest BEST events–Jamboree 2003, IT Meeting 2005, beRICHER3 in 2005, bePROUD in 2009, beKNOWN7 in 2010, RM 2008 and 2012.

We had CE with Liege, Leuven, Paris, Cluj–Napoca, Ekaterinburg, Rome and Lviv.

It’s also worth mentioning that between 2003 and 2004 our 2 BESTies Aneta Blaszczyk and Piotr Bryk were members of the Intenational Board. Next year Michal Wojtera was a Board member as well.

Current XVI Board–BEST Titans: President: Marta Wadowska Secretary: Barbara Zoltowska Treasurer: Jan Karniewski Vice-President for PR: Piotr Jeziorny Vice-President for HR: Marta Starkowska Vice-President for FR: Aleksandra Kaluzna

1989

LOUVAIN-LANEUVE FULL MEMBER: GA 1989 Berlin Catholic University of Louvain

elcome to Louvain - La Neuve (LLN)! Our student city is wellknown for its folklore and the famous “Calotte”, a hat that some of our students wear! Maybe you heard the song “Louvain-La-Neuve” by Edouard Priem which describes perfectly the city (English translation is on the way)!

BEST LLN is one of the founding Local Group of BEST in 1989. Since 1992, we are organizing at least one course every year with the great support of professors from the university. And since 2008, we also organize every year an engineering competition, as part of the EBEC pyramid! Every year, we are also taking part in the organisation of the National Round of EBEC, together with other Belgian LBGs. Since the creation of BEST Louvain-la-Neuve, we organized several internal event, one trainshop and few Regional Meetings but also the General Assembly in 1997 and the President Meeting in 2003.

At local level, we get more and more involved in the International contact of the faculty of engineering over the years.

We take care of the exchange student when they arrive on the campus, and we try to promote Europe to the Belgian

students. Since 2002, we are part of the main student association of the faculty which give us many advantages, increase our visibility and anchor our presence in the city.

As an old LBG, we like to keep in touch with our Alumni, that’s why we meet all together twice a year to practice adfundum and share anecdotes!

Our group faced ups and downs through the year, but BEST spirit has always been there!

Local BEST Groups 251

LUND

FULL MEMBER: GA 1992 Helsinki/Tallinn Lund University

t all began in 1991 when LBG Lund became a baby member at GA in Lisbon.

Our enthusiastic president Anders Berglund worked hard to get the group accepted. Anders later also became president of the BEST board (92/93). After arranging two courses LBG Lund was proposed full member at GA 1992 in Helsinki/Tallin. With the voting result 17 against 0, the journey now began for real.

The next year 1993 LBG Lund arranged three summer courses in parallel and so the activities were on…

In 1999 LBG Lund introduced the “wine masters” whose duty is to make Lund Sangria (a special local variation of homemade wine/sangria).

By today Lund have since the start arranged 25 Summer courses, Been (co-)organizing 3 GA arrangements (2000,2004,2012). On top of that there have been a number of RM:s ,Motivation Weekends, Engineering competitions and lot of other internal events.

WHIP:s (Wild Huge International Party) was a concept of successful a local parties two times a year for international students.The first WHIP 252 Local BEST Groups

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at time called Big International Party was held in 2004. During a few years these parties became a very well known brand in Lund’s party scene and BEST Lund became famous. Sadly those successful parties had to end in 2012 due to political reasons (as they got too successful).

In 2013 both the successful teams from Lund won the European EBEC final (in both categories). Best Lund is still going strong and looking forward for the next 23 years

2002

LVIV

FULL MEMBER: GA 2005 Chania Lviv Polytechnic National University

BG Lviv was established in 2002, being elected as Observer group in GA France. Growing up without fears with the help of LBG Krakow, we moved to Baby Member in GA Slovakia 2003. At GA 2005 in Chania we became a Full Member.

Our Mascot is a little lion Levko Tupcyalo. The favourite game - Jungle Speed, song - Tunak. Our slogan: “Stop being better, start being BEST!” LBG Lviv is one of the most productive and biggest LBGs in Ukraine considering the number of its members and organised projects. Now when we are 12 years old, we have 65 members and 76 alumni. What was done so far: Computer Festival DE:CODED, first launched in 2006 had its 3 editions till 2009 organised by BESTies and later on was transformed into independent from our LBG Ukrainian IT-movement and Festival coordinated by alumni.

LBG Lviv proudly hosted the XV Presidents’ Meeting of BEST on 3-9th of December 2009. We organised 4 RMs - RM of UPS Region 2003, another for Jamaica Region in 2008 and for Mongolia in 2005 and 2010.

Other internal events - beRicher11 in

2011 and GDC2 in 2013.

There were 6 EBEC Local rounds since 2009. In 2014 LBG Lviv will host EBEC Ukraine. Engineering Job Fairs have been organised for 7 years in raw, since autumn 2007. In 2013 new project for students was launched - BEST Training Week. We also hosted 2nd UkrJam. From 2003 we organised 3 Leisure Events, 2 Events on Education and 8 Seasonal courses. After hard work our members are having CEs with Liege, Barcelona, Coimbra and Delft. In 2012 we happily celebrated our 10th Anniversary. Each year we have trips to the sea, ski trip in mountains, balls and NY celebrations.

Currently there are 7 internationally involved members from Lviv. In past there were 2 RAs from Lviv and one member in International Board.

Local BEST Groups 253

LYON

FULL MEMBER: PM 2010 Krakow INSA de Lyon

rising from the ashes of its predecessors, a long-lived bird that cyclically regenerated, the Phoenix.

Our history couldn`t start in another way than a myth. As the father of the neighbor of my cousin told me, the myth says, a long time ago, a random Erasmus student called Piotr Senator brought the idea of BEST to Lyon. That’s how the Phoenix was born.

Just after breaking the shell of its egg during GA Lisbon 1999 he became a baby bird under the wings of LBG Barcelona in GA Sweden.

But the joy wasn’t lived long enough, after a short moment of life, the phoenix died for the first time… However the destiny wanted something else from us. Another page of our history book was written at GA France 2002 when we reborn, more powerful than ever before. Then LBG Lyon opened its wings and started another flight with an IBS - International BEST Symposium, in order to become Baby member at GA Slovakia 2003.

The first Summer course took place in 2004 and in PM Portugal (this mythical land), Lyon became a grown up Full 254 Local BEST Groups

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Member of BEST (kaboom, fireworks and a kamehamehaa...).

During the next few years our LBG developed a lot. We organized 3 RMs, a beREIT, a GA France and 5 BEST Courses.

But life can be cruel, the phoenix died again and during GA Budapest 2009 we got suspended under the wings of LBG Grenoble.

Hopefully, it was just a bad step of the phoenix. In PM Krakow 2010 we got free and we started a flight with a new pair of wings. This time, the fire was out of control, we organised 4 BEST courses, 4 EBECs Lyon, 2 EBECs France, we gave a big help in GA France 2012 and we were the home of 2 RAs (PAts, 2010-2011 and Dudu, 2012-2013).

After so much development the Phoenix became an eagle on fire and now is destroying everything.

A Lyon, on boit que de l`eau, a Lyon, on boit que de l`eau… Et du sirop

1996

MADRID

FULL MEMBER: PM1997 Warsaw Technical University of Madrid

BG Madrid was established in 1996, being elected as Observer group in GA Tallinn. We then grew, fearless, hand in hand with LBG Valladolid, we upgraded to Baby member in PM Veszprem 1996, and reached Full membership in PM Warsaw 1997. With the University’s support, more people involved and better fund raising and budgets, LBG Madrid was able to organise up to two external events per year (even three in a row in 2009: spring, summer and autumn), doing our BEST when organising PM 2001 in a castle in Toledo. In 2003, after having some issues with the Student Union, we split and established on our own, as an independent youth association.

Since this rebirth, LBG Madrid has grown tremendously and has organised a wide range of events, covering a wide range from Cultural Exchanges, BEST Symposiums on Education and BEST Courses, to BEST Engineering Competitions, a JAMboree (with 400 pax!), Local Engineering Competitions, National Engineering Competitions, Regional Meetings, Jobfairs and much more. In 2006 we celebrated our X Anniversary with a great party, and LBG

Madrid Carlos III was born and grew by our side. The strong collaboration and good mood among all the Spanish LBGs has given its outcomes as the BEST Spain project and now, we are part of the BEST Spain Federation since 2011.

As LBG Madrid Carlos III, Carlinhos, grew up we decided to adopt a new baby group, so we took the challenge of being LBG Valencia’s nurse in 2011. And just as it had happened 5 years earlier with Carlinhos, as soon as they were born they came straight from Valencia to witness our XV Anniversary, an event where we gathered over 100 BESTies from every generation. But our recent history is not only about Anniversaries and nursing.

In 2012 we decided to play a major role shaping the future of BEST and we hosted the Long Term Strategic Planning Workshop, where the focus areas of the following 3 years of our organisation were defined. Nowadays, we are of age and we have a very stable LBG with around 50 members since 2008 and being stronger day by day, counting 10 members in average involved in international teams and working groups. With the dedicated support of the University, full of energy, full of motivation, the Great LBG Madrid is ready to take any challenge.

Nobody can stop us!

Local BEST Groups 255

MADRID CARLOS III FULL MEMBER: PM2007 Valladolid

2005

University Carlos III of Madrid

ur history starts in 2005, when a brave group of students came with an idea and decided to start this adventure. Nine years later, we are a stable and solid group, a group that dares to accept bigger and bigger challenges.

During this last nine years, a lot of people have joined this dream, becoming part of our group and allowing us to organize more challenging events. Since our first event, we have organized several kinds of events. We are part of the EBEC Pyramid since 2007, hosting every year our local EBEC round and several times the national round. Also, we have shown how great our courses can be, when in 2012 our Summer Course was rated as the best one. Furthermore, year after year we are in the top ranking of applications, maybe because of the good weather or maybe just the fame.

Last but not least, we have already organized two Regional Meetings and we are preparing to host a third one. We are getting better and better organizing events and improving our knowledge system in order to go for a really big event!

One important point in our history is LBG Las Palmas, or as we call them 256 Local BEST Groups

platanitos, of whom we are nurses and we are really proud of. We’ve shared so many stories together and we’ve become really good friends.

The word that defines best our group is CARLINHO. This word contains in itself the magic of our powerful history.

Carlinho is our mascot, a cute cat which comes with us to every event one of our members attends, but it also represents a greater concept. Carlinho means real friendship, a sincere smile, a warm hug.

Carlinho is our definition, our dream, our spirit and we are really proud of belonging to this group

2000

MARIBOR

FULL MEMBER: PM 2003 Belgium University of Maribor

group of fun and party loving individuals, the members of LBG Maribor have been working tirelessly to spread the BEST ideals for already 13 years, ever since we first banded up together with the crazy idea of starting an LBG and eventually became full members in 2003.

We hold different kinds of courses every year but we’re especially proud of hosting EBEC Alpe-Adria last year and organizing a Graphic Design Camp 2 years ago; both events were very successful and we had a great time while doing them. Our traditional game is Slovenia F#ck Yeah; it’s a fun way to learn a couple of things about our country that will definitely make you laugh out loud more than once.

As for our involvement with BEST on a more international level, a number of our members are actively working on international teams. Our expresident Klemen Krulec for example, is the current vice president of the international board.

And although generations may come and go, the BEST spirit lives forever in LBG Maribor!

Local BEST Groups 257

MESSINA

FULL MEMBER: PM 2011 Copenhagen University of Messina

t started some years ago in the summer of 2005 when an Engineering student at University of Messina, surfing on internet found the website of an European association: it was BEST! They were very enthusiast and full of motivation, so they started working, gathering information and contacting the University that was happy to support the request.

In December 2007 the group was accepted as Observer and LBG Naples became their Nurse: they have just reached their BEST dream!

In 2008 they enstablished the group, they obtained an office at University and few days later they accepted to organise their first event: Spring Alpine Regional Meeting in April 2008.

The history continued with courses and other events, that had success thanks also to local institutions, promoting the name of Messina and Sicily around Europe.

Till now they organised 5 BEST courses, 4 local engineering competitions and 1 national final, 3 internal events, 1 cultural exchange and many other local events, where all participants were able to discover the beauties of this sunny 258 Local BEST Groups

2008

and hospitable island.

Now the group is growing even more and they have great will to do.

A lot of traditions have been enstablished during these years: arancino meeting, ceremony of initialization of newbies, blessings for full members, bullshit internal magazine, social games like buffalo and imbuto, dancing Tunak and King Kong.

The Sicilian song “Vitti ‘na crozza” became the anthem of the LBG together with more international ones like “Roll me over” and “Simply the best”, they even have a motto from a sicilian expression: APNN. Recently they participated to a local traditional game, where the members gained a small yellow lion, named Apie, who became the LBG’s mascot.

1995 EST Milan moved its first steps when, in 1995, Giovanni Brianza came back to Politecnico di Milano after a European Week in Paris. The seeds of BEST were planted in him and that’s the start of one of the most amazing experiences our university is able to offer. In GA 1997 BEST Milan became baby member and in PM 1998 magic started becoming full member of BEST! After getting suspended, BEST Milan got back on track thanks to really motivated members and their will to show to entire Europe how big their ambition could be. Being focused on this, BEST Milan won during GA 2007 the prize for the BEST LBG of the year.

You may think it was enough. Well it wasn’t! The motivation kept on growing, the people were just eager to be the BEST of the BEST and after years of great successes with courses such as Nature as muse: innovation to use! and Design 360°: Fashion, interior and communication design and internal events such as Trainers Meeting in 2009 and a RM in 2011 we were finally able to get ranked as first in the overall ranking of the spring courses in 2013. The 2013

MILAN

FULL MEMBER: PM 1998 Turin Politecnico di Milano

year ended with the organisation of an awesome Autumn RM! As you could read before, BEST Milan wasn’t active only on local level but also on the international one. So in 2010-2011, our beloved Michele Alberti was coordinator of EEC. Since that moment on we had a new trainer (Bruno Calidonna) and new members of finTeam (Pietro Bonato, Michele Damato); ITC (Elio Ermini, Eva Lendaro, Laura Kutha) and EduCo (Ou Yan Zhou).

Now that you’ve got a bigger knowledge of our LBG, it is the right time to introduce you our most famous tradition: our drinking team called Banana Republic. Born during a MW in 2011, it has collected the craziest people of our LBG to show everyone else how to party properly. It is a real brotherhood and selection criteria are really strict. Maybe you also heard of cantuses. Although we aren’t Belgian, we love cantus and we have a really famous senior: il Sardo!

Local BEST Groups 259

MOSCOW

2006

FULL MEMBER: PM 2009 Lviv Bauman Moscow State Technical University

nce upon a time, in far 2006, a new observer BEST Group Moscow was founded! In one year, at GA2007 France we were given Baby member status. It pushed us to the first challenge in BEST world – to host RM2007. And at PM2009 Lviv we became Full members!

In LBG Moscow, as well as in Russia, we respect traditions and traditional attributes.

First of all, our beloved mascot Cheburashka. He is a fluffy creature with big round ears and happy smile.

Do you hear Waka Waka song? Then you will definitely see LBG Moscow dancing somewhere! It is our traditional song, we have special energetic dance for it!

Another feature you can notice in our design is khokhloma, which is traditional Russian decorative painting since XVII century.

RM2007 was the first, but not the last milestone for us! EBEC Baltic 2012 took place in Moscow, and only in one year we were proud to host RM2013. The next internal event is knocking at our doors! We are glad to welcome finTeam in Moscow on February 2014!

From year to year we organize two 260 Local BEST Groups

biggest events: amazing Moscow Spring Course and EBEC Moscow, local round of EBEC pyramid.

Our international involvement is constantly growing. We have representatives in almost all BEST committees: EduCo, EEC, markeTeam, Trainers` Community and finTeam.

And our member, Mikhail Tikhonov, has been officially ratified as EduCo coordinator at PM2013 Brno!

LBG Moscow is constantly growing, spreading BEST spirit among students of BMSTU. We are 49 observers, 18 baby and 24 full members, who are part of our huge BEST family, and we are not gonna stop leading LBG Moscow to new heights!

2011 n 2011 few students from “University of Džemal Bijedić, Mostar” got in touch with BEST and decided to establish first BEST group in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Same year they officially became Observer group of BEST on PM in Copenhagen.

From that moment they got chance to develop themselves, learn a new things on different way, get friends from all over the Europe and strive together with them to achiev their goal - empowered diversity.

But they were not alone during this process, they have had LBG Belgrade for Nursers. Although their countries in the past fought, members of their LBGs decided not to look in the past but focus on making a new bright common history, demolishing together all prejudices in their mind.

After 5 working days of their first internal event, 7 participants, one rented flat for sleeping and working under the worst weather circumstances ever in Mostar, members of BEST Mostar became aware of their great success. GA France 2012 was just official confirmation of their deserved baby status.

Next challenge on their way to full

MOSTAR

FULL MEMBER: PM 2013 Brno University Dzemal Bijedic

membership was organising BEST course Even they have prepared everything for this event, they had some unexpected situation such as robbery of the dormitory two days before the event, sewer blockage in the middle of the event,etc. But at the end, organisers managed everything successfully, participants gave positive feedback, and EEC stamped course.

On PM Brno 2013 majority of the delegates officially told BEST Mostar: WELCOME TO FAMILY OF FULL BEST MEMBERS!

Local BEST Groups 261

NANCY

FULL MEMBER: PM 2003 Belgium University of Lorraine

2001

BG Nancy is different from the others. We do not gather together only people from our school, but we reunite student of technology from the engineering schools of the entire town. It brings us diversity in the knowledge: generalistic, mechanics, chemistry… and in the way of thinking, to act creative every year. In compensation, the relationship with the numerous administrations is complicated. But this brings us experience!

And so we organized a course last autumn. The theme was “Pursuit of Water: from the river to your home”. Learning more about fluids mechanics of water during its journey, what treatments have to be carried out, and also french food/drinks and frenchies! Everybody has had fun, especially the organisers, and some participants are still in contact today.

262 Local BEST Groups

1994

NAPLES

FULL MEMBER: GA1995 Patras University of Naples “Federico II”

n Anno Domini 1994 two different groups of students heard about a student association called BEST. These brave guys decided together to establish a new group: everything happened in the room “N” (N as Naples, is it just a coincidence?) at the Faculty of Engineering. The heat of Vesuvius and sun gave us the strength to organize all the amazing events and live to the fullest all the special moments that we keep in our hearts: First Italian General Assembly, 19 courses, 3 committee meetings, 2 regional meetings, 1 Board Training, 1 Italian General Meeting, 1 Short Intensive Training, 1 Short Intensive Meeting, 6 Local Engineering Competitions, 2 National Engineering Competitions and 4 Cultural Exchange.

Moreover we became Nurse of LBG Messina in 2007 and helped them to become Full Member.

In 2004 the international Board of BEST, during the Annual Board Training, gave us a baseball bat as a present signed by all participants and organizers. That baseball bat has been passed by in our group from president to president until today, and it will be passed by until the end of days!

Mr Porcinella, our mascot, conquered all the hearts and microphones around Europe and his “oink” echoes in all the BEST General Meetings.

Our hospitality and warmth are well known among all the students who visited us, thanks to the strong friendship among us. Only after seeing the landscape with the marvelous gulf and tasting delicious food you can understand the meaning of “see Naples and then die”. The BEST Spirit flame will keep on burning and neither thousands of Group Showers will extinguish it.

Local BEST Groups 263

NIS

FULL MEMBER: GA 2009 Budapest University of Niš

ver since we joined the BEST family in 2007, our goal has been to sustain that image of BEST and to recreate it here, making our LBG one big family.

Having been the first Observer group to ever organize an internal event, ITCdm in 2007, we have proven ourselves to both us and our BEST family throughout Europe, that LBG from the city of Merak is capable of great things.

We even got into an ITC song back then! :) And this is how the saga began for us.

Later, after becoming baby, we went on with fullfilling the vision of connecting and developing the students of Europe.

We organised our first SC in 2008, with more of those following later. We didn’t have a summer without a course since then, and consecutive Red Apple awards prove our committment to the BEST ideals. Since then, we organized three RMs, a number of Cultural Exchanges, and many other internal events. In addition , we try to really be one big family and to help our local students as well. We held numerous events for them, such as workshops, educations weeks, and of course five of our JobFairs, each being more successful than the one before. Now we can clearly see some big 264 Local BEST Groups

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projects standing in line for us. We hope for greater and bigger challenges, and we are well on our way towards making BEST a respectable trademark of our city, hand in hand with pljeskavica and burek J.

2005

NOVI SAD

FULL MEMBER: GA 2007 France University of Novi Sad

Roots of LBG Novi Sad lead us back to September 19th 2005 when several students decided to form a new BEST group. The opportunity to spread the ideas of BEST among other students of the University of Novi Sad was gained through the Observer status on PM in Ljubljana in 2005. After our first event: the regional meeting in Zobnatica (April 2006) we joined the BEST kindergarden on GA in Zagreb (2006) we became a baby member. In March 2007 the first academic event titled “Brainspotting” was organized! After this successful event BEST Novi Sad gained a full membership in BEST on GA in France 2007. After this we had many projects which include 7 academic courses During our second course “beCeramical” participants made ceramic pieces which were integrated in a fountain in the center of campus. That fountain is now the main meeting point of all students of our University. After this event we boosted our reputation in the international BEST and made this course a turning-point for future courses.

Engineering competitions:

• “Green Chalenge - Lift me up” was held at the EXIT Festival 2009. in cooperation with the LBGs Belgrade and Nis. • “Balkan REC” • “PraviTi” - local engineering competitions for all students at the University of Novi Sad and students of local high schools. The main goal of this competition was to introduce the University and faculties to high school students which are going to enroll next year.

Developer competitions: “Five days in Java” and “In the network”. Furthermore we organized more than 10 internal events as well as many trainings and motivational weekends. We have a new mascot, a peacock named Gari (which means dude in Serbian). He already packed his bags and went on a Eurotrip.

Our previous mascots were a puli dog and an alien called Pišta. Our LBG is famous for its chill out parties, which are not chill out at all. Members of our LBG are so friendly, eager to travel and meet new friends. That’s why many of them are internationally involved!

You are welcome to visit us any time and enjoy our national cuisine next to the Danube river!

Vidimo se!

Local BEST Groups 265

PARIS ÉCOLE CENTRALE

FULL MEMBER: GA 1998 Romania University of Porto

1996

he LBG of Centrale Paris was one of the founding members in Berlin in 1989, so this year we celebrate our 25th anniversary just as BEST

does.

You usually stay at this French school for a mere two years, which implies that our team changes completely every second year! So you won’t find old foxes here, but rather motivated newbies, who get to know BEST in the first and manage the LBG in the second year!

After all, maybe it’s only Centrale Paris where you can run for president after being in BEST for 6 months...

There are a number of things this LBG has to be proud of: a GA organized in 2000, a RM in 2014, the best sangria in the world, Spain included (just kidding), folk dances and a beer pong team champion of the University #Asthmatix.

Come to Centrale and just try to remember our unforgettable parties!

266 Local BEST Groups

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PARIS POLYTECHINQUE FULL MEMBER: PM 2011 Copenhagen University of Aveiro

he

Ecole

Polytechnique, commonly known as X, was established in 1794 and became a military academy in 1804. Every student carries with him the weight of two centuries of history and traditions. Its motto “Pour la Patrie, les Sciences et la Gloire”, For the Fatherland, Sciences and Glory, has been driving generations of scientists and engineers who have generously contributed in shaping the scientific world. The foundation of the Local BEST Group Paris Polytechnique allowed Polytechnicians to open themselves to a vast and amazing network full of opportunities.

Since its foundation in 2000, our LBG has gone a long way but never forgot its spirit and traditions. Through the organisation of several General Assemblies in 2002, 2007 and 2012, LBG Paris Polytechnique has made its mark on the history of BEST. So, what about our traditions? Well, most of them are well-kept secrets… You can only hope to feel and experience our spirit through a full immersion, so your only chance will be to come and meet us! But I guess I can try to give you an

insight. First, I have the mention the universally known song “Le Limousin”.

Did you know that our dear comrade Louis Vaneau invented it in 1830 to motivate his fellows and push back the invaders? Since then, it is sung again and again as a warmful welcome or as a sign of recognition. But this song is nothing without a glass of wine, a pastis, a flaming shot of Cointreau and a team of crazy French people fond of wild parties. Our military status has provided us with countless military traditions and has enabled us to make our own.

Our courses are always related to innovation, and mostly greenovation, because we believe that science students may be the key to a better future, that tomorrow’s world will be shaped by today’s minds. BEST is broadening our minds and our horizons by gathering students from all over Europe. What more do we need?

Local BEST Groups 267

PATRAS

FULL MEMBER: GA Helsinki/Tallin 1992 University of Patras

1991

BG Patras in one of the oldest BEST Groups since it became full member at GA 1992 in Helsinki/ Tallin and is the first BEST Group in Greece. In these years BEST Patras has organized five Internal Events and eighteen External Events and many more local events. One of the major events that BEST Patras organized was GA Patras 1995 and South Meeting Patras 2009. In LBG Patras at the moment are 13 full members, around 6 new members and 2 internationally involved members. Every year we are organizing local BEST Engineering Competition, Summer Course and three Conferences about Health and Safety in Working Place.

268  Local BEST Groups

2011

PODGORICA BABY MEMBER: GA2012 France University of Montenegro

ocal BEST Group Podgorica is relatively new group, formed in August 2011 by group of enthusiastic students from various technical faculties on University of Montenegro. In early stages group gained prominent attention among students. With help of our Nurses, LBG Cluj-Napoca, we became baby group in April 2012, on GA France. Following period is characterized by several successful local projects, including organizing our very first local EBEC. We have participated in organizing of Balkan EBEC, even having team from our university on final competition.

On summer 2013 we had our biggest achievement so far – we organized our first Academic Course Get Up Start Up. Thanks to Ministry of education of Montenegro, who saw the importance of our organisation, more than 50 participants and organizers spent amazing 9 days at Montenegrin seaside. With events organized so far we gained prominence on University and among companies, as well as attention from media, which raised our will to grow and develop more. Our plans include development and realization

of numerous projects, and successful running for full member of BEST family.

Local BEST Groups 269

PORTO

FULL MEMBER: GA 1998 Romania University of Porto

Porto is a city of traditions: the remarkable Porto Wine, the tasteful Francesinha, the astonishing landscape of Ribeira, our notable bridges and, not to mention, the Historic Centre, considered a World Heritage Site by UNESCO since 1996, same year of the foundation of our LBG. Porto is the place to be!

Our first event was a Workshop in 1997.

In 1998, we organised our first Summer Course. It turned out to be a success and all people involved had a great time! Therefore, doing summer courses became a local tradition. Since then, we’ve organised 17 courses and just two of them were in spring season. We also have the tradition of organising, at least, one internal event per year in order to help the improvement of BEST. Among the most significant ones, we can name PM Portugal 2004 (with Almada, Coimbra and Lisbon), beRICHER 2006 and some RMs as well.

Another strong tradition here are the engineering competitions. We organised our first LEC in 2004. We hosted ptBEC (current EBEC Portugal) in 2008 and 2011. In 2009, we came up with 2 innovations: not only we organised the 270 Local BEST Groups

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first 24h Engineering Competition, as we also created a Competitions Team in our LBG, which has a coordinator and a working place, with all the tools, components and materials needed to be successful! At PM Brno 2013, we presented another cool innovation: EBEC Porto was recognised with 1,5 ECTS for every participant! Can you guess what comes next?

Porto is called The Unvanquished City (Cidade Invicta, in portuguese).

This strong title echoes in History transmitting the value and will power of our people. Inside our LBG it couldn’t be different. We’re restless. We’re tough.

We’re undefeatable. We’re LBG Invictus!

2009

PRAGUE

FULL MEMBER: PM 2012 Timisoara Czech Technical University in Prague

BG Prague is a young, but fast growing BEST group from the heart of Europe, Prague, which is the capital of the Czech Republic. It was established back in 2009 by a group of CTU students from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering. However, we have been growing during all these years and now our membership base includes students from almost all faculties.

We are known around Europe as Prague Lions! Our yellow hoodies with a mighty beast on them are famous for brightening every BEST event. Our spirit is also represented with our cute plush mascot, who is overwatching us from a special place during every meeting. A Lion Hug from one of our members will mean a joyful life for you! Although there is one more special tradition of ours, which we slowly try to implement in the BEST world, not everyone seems to be ready for that yet...

We started with organising events such as committees’ meetings, but then we decided to take bigger challenges. We have organised two courses: Spring Course “Be biomediCOOL” and Summer Course “Let’s Walk Together Over The Vltava River”. We are also keen on

organising different engineering competitions. We have prepared two quite successful EBEC local rounds and also two rounds of Local Engineering Competition.

Currently we have two internationally involved members in EEC and finTeam.

The most important international event organised by us was so far the Central Regional Meeting in November 2012.

Moreover, we are proud that we printed and packaged the External Event Posters for season 2013/2014, Lion Hugs and Lion Kisses to all the readers from LBG Prague!

Local BEST Groups 271

REYKJAVIK

FULL MEMBER: GA 2007 France University of Iceland

2005

BG Reykjavík is a small LBG located in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, in the great city of Reykjavík, Iceland. Our country has often been linked to both ice and fire, we have the largest glacier in Europe, lot of snow and many earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Since LBG Reykjavík became full member of the BEST family in 2007 we have hosted 5 courses and two RMs. In autumn 2012 we took the challenge of hosting the Nordic regional meeting and then we hosted a spring course in march 2013. Since Iceland only has 320.000 inhabitants LBG Reykjavík has always been a small LBG. Although we have few members all of them are strong people with viking blood running through their veins. If you ever meet a member of LBG Reykjavík he will probably have with him some true Icelandic delicacy like dry fish, rotten shark, boiled sheep heads and sour sheep testicles. If all that traditional Icelandic food makes you thirsty you can wash it down with some Brennivín which literally means wine of fire. If you are lucky you also might run into our mascot the puffin Puff Daddy but he has been on a road trip around Europe for some time now.

272 Local BEST Groups

1993 orn twice, LBG Riga has tended to grow and develop. Remember our story in 2008? – That was just reherseal! This year for us was full of BEST spirit and international involvement. We decided to stop waiting and start acting right now – so 2013 in LBG Riga is a year named „It’s time!”

Remember us, first hosting PRIME I (first PR and Image Event), than BaBEC in 2009, EoE in 2011 and this year wasn’t exception – we were the first who hosted Knowledge Management Workshop!

Still one member is unchangeable – our permanent member mascot Chupa, brought to us by our beloved nurses LBG Tallinn. Like a real bestie he is eager for learning and traveling. One day he dissapeared and our LBG was threatened by Chupas Banditos. Luckily now he is in Riga in safe hands. Besides that, we have his small representative – Chupita. They both have the legacy of our LBG. Our well recognized mascot got huge popularity inside BEST world, but he is not the only bestie from Riga, that you know, isn’t he?

In our LBG have born notable

RIGA

FULL MEMBER: GA 2002 Paris Riga Technical University

fundraisers, trainers, grant writers (more than 12 times organised CE and received grants!), PR masters and performers like dancing group „R U Stupid” (official horeographers of official Jamaican region dance!), songwriters (official Jamaican region anthem!), IT masters (sending ML of hosting EBEC Final in 1 minute before DL!) and many others…

And you know, it’s impossible to name all the incredible members we have and what kind of events we took part!

One thing that we are sure about, that in the next milestones of BEST we will write about hosting EBEC Final. With huge support of all LBG and especially our alumni members we have dared to organise EBEC Final in Riga.

We are not just group of people - we are a team, one family who has passion for challenges and willingness to work as hard as needed to carry out the proud name of BEST and then celebrate our success the way it can be done only in Riga!

Local BEST Groups 273

ROME

FULL MEMBER: GA 1994 Turin Sapienza University of Romeo

n the 8th of February 1994, 8 brave boys became our founder fathers. In the same year, BEST Rome became full member and 6 months later one of us was elected President of BEST. After that, we’ve run from success to success, always grounding on traditional good values: for example our Winter Course 2005 ‘Speak as you eat! - A tasty introduction to EATalian language’ received 762 applications, what a record!

We have always taken care of the international involvement and the growth of BEST: we have got 5 International Boardies, 5 Trainers and 3 Regional Advisers; we have organized 6 Internal Events; we have nursed LBG RomeTor Vergata.

We count about 20 active members and we are proud to be first of all a group of friends! We strongly believe also in the cooperation with the other Italian LBGs: for example in 2013 we hosted EBEC Italy, which received by our President of Republic a medal for the high cultural level.

We have many traditions!

We use to hand down funny objects for every charge in our Board: for Presidents 274 Local BEST Groups

1994 it’s an axe, also used to upgrade the membership status...after imbuto!

Our mentoring system is family-based: you can’t imagine how complicated now the relationships are!

Our office is a glass cube in a corridor of our Faculty, so it’s called Gabbiotto (funny cage). It can host up to 2 people, but once we filled it with 27!

Twice a year we go to a typical restaurant called Fraschetta: we eat porchetta (roasted pork meat) and drink a lot of wine, while singing traditional songs.

Last but not least, our mascotte is called Colossus and was a gift from LBG Stockholm: he is a Roman gladiator, who will protect and favour BEST Rome forever.

2003

ROME TOR VERGATA FULL MEMBER: PM 2005 Ljubljana University of Rome Tor Vergata

ur Past...

It was a cold night of January 2002, a night that changed the history of Rome Tor Vergata University, a night that changed the lives of its students, the one in which LBG Rome Tor Vergata was born. That night, Roberto Spellucci found his house invaded by a group of BESTies visiting his brother, a member of LBG Rome Sapienza, and, experiencing for the first time what BEST was, immediately fell in love with it. After that experience, to be honest, the LBG existed only in Roberto’s head, who, with the help of his brother and a group of brave fellow students, decided to take the challenge and begin to work to bring BEST also in our university. It has not been easy, but after a lot of effort and work, on the 10 of February 2003 LBG Rome Tor Vergata finally became an observer group of BEST and, a few months later, baby member. But it was only after many other days, many other nights spent discussing and working, many successes and also disappointments that the LBG Rome Tor Vergata finally became a full member of BEST.

Now, we celebrated our 10th anniversary from the baby membership.

Our LBG Rome Tor Vergata counts 25 active members and regularly organizes a Summer Course and EBEC Local Round. This year we will also organize National EBEC Round.

From that night of January many people joined our LBG, while other left, but each of them gave, in a way or in another, a contribution to turn a dream into a strong tangible reality, nevertheless through work and enthusiasm. In this years our group managed to enrich and expand his “resume”, undertaking many projects and hosting many activities, always spreading the BEST spirit in our university and giving the chance to our colleagues to take part in this amazingly beautiful thing called BEST.

… and our present and future...

Local BEST Groups 275

SAINT PETERSBURG FULL MEMBER: PM 2010 Krakow

2008

Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University​ ast time we wrote our story for BEST History Book we were just a one year old LBG, overwhelmed by the desire to discover a mystery called “BEST world”. However we were not yet sure of what our future would look like and why we “did BEST” at all… But once at that distant Presidents Meeting 2010 in Krakow we dared to become Full member LBG of BEST, after that there was no way out.

Things cleared up in our minds and we started our amazing journey through BEST years, very young and ambitious.

During five years we had built up a big group of brave BESTies and finally has obtained the respect and recognition in our University.Besides our local achievements we are lucky to get a lot of great friends in BEST. We’re very proud to be a part of our amazing Jamaican Region and grateful to LBG Tallinn for being our nurses. Besides, we have bonded close ties and became very good friends with LBGs Napoli, Valladolid, Zagreb, Belgrad, Grenoble and many others all over Europe, who are also a part of our history from now on.

Now you may know LBG St.Petersburg for: 276 Local BEST Groups

• Good quality of organized events • Internationally involved members almost in each committee of BEST • Our hospitability for all BESTies passing through our city • Legendary 2-days long local General Meetings • Our mascot Ruslan • Amazing Horse dance • And plenty of other things!

Furthermore there are quite some things by now that we are really proud of. Once called “LBG of Success” we keep on moving forward to achieving greater goals and fulfilling our ambitious dreams. We have already made first steps to get the recognition at the International level by organizing such events as TRAP13, Board Winter Meeting, EBEC Baltic and beMORE6.

Though…it’s just the beginning and you are sure to hear more about us in the future!

So, see you at General Assembly St.Petersburg one day!

2001

SKOPJE

FULL MEMBER: PM 2003 Belgium University “Ss. Cyril and Methodius”

he very first idea of founding BEST in Skopje came in 2001 by a few IAESTE members, that came in contact with BEST and they immidiatelly saw a wonderful opportunity for even better student exchanges, travelling, improvement and fun.

So, LBG Skopje had been founded on 9th of March 2002. Not long after that, specifically in April 2002 Skopje obtained the status of observer in BEST. The same year, after completing all the required conditions, on 8th of November at the President Meeting in Bucharest, we obtained the status baby member. One year after, on the 4th of November 2003 on the Presidents Meeting in Belgium, LBG Skopje obtained the status full member and since than LBG Skopje is organizing academic courses every summer.

Also, in 2003 LBG Skopje organized its first internal event – CASH Regional Meeting. Still, the event that LBG Skopje is most proud of is, of course, the biggest event in the whole BEST history – Jamboree 2005. It was an event with more than 600 BESTies from all around Europe, enjoying increduble 4 days of

trainings and parties on the beautiful Ohrid Lake.

In 2005, LBG Skopje organized its first Job Fair which continues to be organized every year and we are honored to say that this year it’s going to be the 10th Anniversary of the event. Our LBG troughout the years organized number of events, among which we want to mention IPF 2007, International Board to Board training 2008, Authum Regional Meeting 2010, CE between Skopje-Barcelona-Warsaw 2012, 10th Anniversary od LBG Skopje 2012, beKNOWN9 trainshop 2012, Spring Aegean Regional Meeting 2013 and a number of unforgettable motivational weekends.

Another great experience for LBG Skopje was the nursing of LBG Nis. It was a great opportunity to return the favour – supporting a new BEST Group. It is also great way to learn even more about BEST, and of course even bigger pleasure to see how they grow into a strong and valuable LBG. LBG SkopYEAH is determined to keep spreading the BEST spirit – now and for generations to come!

Local BEST Groups 277

SOFIA

FULL MEMBER: GA 1998 Romania University of Porto

1996

BG Sofia is a very versatile local group which history goes from organizing the first Job Fair in Bulgaria to hosting the infamous “More Jamboree” in 2010. If there is one thing in particular about LBG Sofia that you should know it would be – “We never seize to surprise and stop doing what we do BEST!” Every Tuesday evening the members of LBG Sofia meet to talk about BEST and after that go out to a very special restaurant to have a hot meal and chat over a beer or two. Our mascot - “Spas” – a friendly beaver who likes collecting BEST bracelets from events and LBGs! We organized bePROUD2, bePROUD5, RM Sofia’13, EBEC Balkan and Membership SIM Sofia’14.

Sofia has had quite an impact on international BEST, as we’ve had a few international board members, also Sofia was one of the first LBGs to ever organize an engineering competition.

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STOCKHOLM

FULL MEMBER: GA 1989 Berlin Royal Institute of Technology

his is where it all started and where the idea of BEST was born.

A few students met up in Stockholm for the first International Week and later, inside the university’s big sauna, they decided to start creating BEST. Stockholm was part of the first group of universities that got an LBG, making it one of the few groups that has existed as long as BEST itself.

Throughout the years, LBG Stockholm has hosted many events, both internal and external. This includes the biggest event within BEST, the General Assembly. In fact, GA Sweden was hosted there in the year of 2000.

LBG Stockholm has always been known to be very diverse and international.

Its official language is English and only about one fifth of its members can actually speak Swedish. Due to the high number of non-Swedes, LBGStockholm’s members are proud to say that they can have more than 15 tables in an International Evening just within their group.

Since 2007, LBG have had Belgian, Turkish, Indian, Italian, and Swedish presidents.

One last thing to add is that they have

recently gotten an addition to LBG Stockholm, in the form of a new mascot.

Apparently this mascot, named Washie Elgarsdottir, is “the cutest little raccoon that has ever set foot on this planet”.

Please be nice to her if you ever meet her in Europe.

Local BEST Groups 279

SUPÉLEC

FULL MEMBER: GA 1993 Warsaw Ecole Supérieure d’Electricité (Supélec)

ur group was created in 1988, under the name “Cercle Europe”. Then we heard about BEST and realised it fit our expectations and values, so we tried to join this organisation and became baby member in GA 1992 Liège.

Every year, we organise a course in March. We were also involved in the organisation of GA France 2002, 2007 and 2012. We organised North-West spring Regional Meeting in 2013. We had Cultural Exchanges with Cluj Napoca and Ljubljana, Patras, Rome and Athens. We did a beTasty in 2011 and a beAwesome in 2012.

Some of our members are involved in the french LBGs cooperation. For example one of us was president of ALFA (association of active french LBGs), whose aim is to coordinate french work and to organize JBTs, JLTs, french meetings and EBEC France.

This year we also launched a new project in order to bind the four parisian LBG’s, LBG Centrale, LBG Ensta, LBG Polytechnique and LBG Supélec. We coorganized a local BEC. Since it worked startlingly well and enabled to get the LBG’s closer, we are 280 Local BEST Groups

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now planning to make it a yearly event.

It opens a perspective of a beneficial cooperation between these LBG’s we coulf be helpful to the four of us.

We have a lot of traditions in our LBG. For examples we have several choregraphies that we teach to our participants and that we dance all the time. We also sing a song called “Margot”, which is a famous french bawdy song. On each of our events, the main organizer has to do the “dance du Limousin” (at least once).

1991 BG Tallinn - time goes on, but spirit stays.

LBG Tallinn was founded in 1991, when eight Tallinn University of Technology students decided to do something memorable, not just to ease their way through the university years.

The first meeting was held on 8th of January 1991. Tallinn was elected to become a full member at BEST General Assembly’91 in Paris. Since then LBG has grown fast and today it has more than 100 members, including 50 active members, who deal with BEST on a daily basis.

From the beginning they have organised every year a career days called Võti Tulevikku and also a traditional summer course. LBG Tallinn is really proud of three international BEST General Assemblies organised in Estonia in 1992, 1996 and 2008.

They are not afraid to take ideas from sky and to make extreme thoughts real; it can be an attempt to break Guinness Record in the biggest number of blind dates or it can be restarting the radio of TUT in 1995. LBG Tallinn likes to keep traditions like the Winter Days at Mõedaku, the biggest party called

TALLINN

FULL MEMBER: GA 1991 Paris Tallinn University of Technology

Viitna to celebrate the new board of BEST-Estonia and Survival Game which includes orienteering in forest in the night with BESTies.

Year to year people change, events grow bigger and the goals get higher. But the spirit of members stays. Emotions from seeing a European friend after a year on following BEST event, satisfaction after achieving goals by hard work with good team or pushing yourself to get a maximum result in every action - the few of numerous feelings that make members to come to BEST office from day to day. BEST gives a lifetime experience!

Local BEST Groups 281

TAMPERE

FULL MEMBER: PM 1995 Trondheim Tampere University of Technology

It all began when Riku Aho was elected as an international responsible of Tampere University of Technology board. Riku got invited to participate in a Workshop organized by LBG Helsinki in January of 1994. The same year Riku was invited to GA in Turin and there Tampere became a baby member and Helsinki agreed to be the Nurse for just born LBG Tampere.

In the beginning Tampere was a small group consisting of a few enthusiastic people. During that time Tampere participated in the Timisoara GA in 1994, the GA in Patras in 1995. Tampere organized its first ever summer course “DisCo Around the Clock” in August of 1995. The Course received over 400 applications! The same year LBG Tampere became a full member in PM Trondheim.

During years 1997 - 1999 Tampere was active member of BEST’s EU funded project Higher Engineering Education in Europe. Hanna Kivelä participated actively in this international and highly ambitious project. Other internationally active members of Tampere have been Elina Seppänen who was in the 282 Local BEST Groups

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XVIII International Board as VicePresident for External Services in 2005 - 2006, and Edda Nömmela, the Nordic Regional Advisor 2011- 2012.

On top of the BEST courses Tampere has also arranged internal events such as Work Shops, TrainShops, Cultural Exchanges and Regional Meetings. In recent years LBG Tampere has tried to offer more events to TUT students as well. The Snow Football tournament is one of these and it has been arranged since 2007.

1999

THESSALONIKI FULL MEMBER: PM 2001 Madrid Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

t the beginning there was The Chaos, students in Thessaloniki were feeling lost and had no way to connect with the rest of the Europe. And then there was light, as a group of engineering students defied all the difficulties and decided to found the fourth local BEST group in Greece. And then there was BEST. From the moment lbg Thessaloniki became a full member, in 2001, has been trying to establish the organisation in our University and to offer to the students and to the local community.

Great chance for us was to organise, in cooperation with the other greek LBGs, the General Assembly of 2005.

The following years Thessaloniki accepted the challenge to organise many events for the first time. During 2011, in TRAP18 frappe generation of trainers was born, and a big number of crashers was there to celebrate. In SEFI Annual Conference 2012, 100 students and 300 professors gathered to discuss for future of engineering education.

In “theRMaikos” South East Autumn Meeting 70 BESTies met, strengthened the spirit of our Region and marked the

start of an inspiring year. Looking back, as LBG Thessaloniki is at its teenageprime (almost 15), it is counting 13 external events, 12 internal and almost 40 local events.

Inseparable part of our LBG were always its mascots. Firstly there was Νiki and now Arrostia, our sickness, an unidentified kind of creature that despite the various times she has been kidnapped is still with us.

Ever since LBG Thessaloniki (or Sexalokinky) was created, the structure and the character of the team has changed many times, following each time the personality of every generation, but the thing that remained the same was the dedication of the members towards the team and their determination to offer, to have fun and to MAKE IT BIG!

Local BEST Groups 283

TIMISOARA

FULL MEMBER: GA 1992 Helsinki/Tallinn tPolitehnica University of Timisoara

t was the 27th of May 1991 when a group of enthusiastic students decided that they wanted something more for the students, so they founded BEST Timisoara.

In almost 23 years of existence, we have organized more than 150 events which brought to us a greater desire to improve the help provided for the students.

Every new year means another Summer Course, another EBEC and JobShop® - event that was created in 1993 in Timisoara. Throughout the years, we have organized 28 internal events.

Our achievements are always completed by the great contribution our LBG’s members bring to the international teams. At the moment, 18 members from Timișoara are involved internationally and one of our biggest prides is Cristian Bogdan, the one who started the PA project.

In the last few years we have made a habit out of caroling all our colaborators. Equipped with a guitar, joy and our prettiest voices, we spread the spirit of Christmas. Another tradition of LBG Timisoara is BEST Friday, once a month, where alumni and members meet wishing to create 284 Local BEST Groups

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stronger connections and to learn more from one another. Once in a while we travel to all kinds of events... and it is already well-known that Timisoara’s BESTies hitchhike a lot. 30 BESTies hitchhiked hundred of km all the way to Motivational Weekend and back and the story repeated at RoJAM. After more than two decades, LBG Timisoara has the same aim as in the beginning: to develop students in a multicultural environment. While doing that, we manage to improve our personalities as well. This is what makes us true BESTies!

2011

TRENTO

BABY MEMBER: PM 2012 Timisoara Università degli Studi di Trento

e are a very new group but we are motivated and we are trying to create or own identity.

For now, the only tradition that we have, is a rite of passage from Observer Member to Baby Member done with “imbuto” (thanks Torino) in the central square of Trento.

Our goal is to create a close-knit group during this academic year, with new traditions to pass on to new members.

We have organized 3 important event since our foundation, they are: • Graphic Designers SIM in 2012 • iGM: Italian General Meeting with 50 participants, 6 LBG attended and supported by 1 Italian core team • EBEC Trento (Local Round) 1st edition with 14 teams (80 participants) In 2014 we will organize our first course and in 2015 we want to become full members!

Local BEST Groups 285

TRONDHEIM FULL MEMBER: GA 1989 Berlin Norwegian University of Science and Technology

ur story began many years ago, when Ida L. Borch was invited on behalf of the Student Council at NTH (later NTNU) to the first BEST-meeting in Grenoble, March 1988. This event lit a spark of enthusiasm in Ida. Full of anticipation she put up an advertisement at campus Gløshaugen and managed to recruit two motivated people, Morten Fjeld and Jan Erik Saugstad. Together they started LBG Trondheim, and Ida went on to become the first international President of BEST! As one of the founding LBGs, Trondheim has been very active. We have given BEST 12 international board members, six being international presidents, and we always strive to have internationally involved members. We hosted GA in 1990, PM in 1995, our 1st Local EBEC in March 2009, Nordic EBEC in 2012, several RMs, two SITs, four WorkShops, TRAP, three TrainShops, two committee meetings, and many local events.

In 2007, we got our first mascot, Mr.Pig. This emperor penguin was stolen from us and never returned, but now we have two other penguins - Mr. Pig Jr. and Kanka. LBG Trondheim is one 286 Local BEST Groups

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big family with 40 international and Norwegian members. We love to talk English and plan our events down to the last detail. Two of our biggest traditions are breakfast on our Constitution Day and a lovely Christmas Table. We love to add Norwegian tradition to events with Russefest and Viking Cantus everyone should visit Trondheim and experience them!

1989

TURIN

FULL MEMBER: GA 1989 Berlin Polytechnic of Turin

EST Turin is one of the founding fathers of BEST in 1989, and in 1988 one of our members, Giuseppe Margriote, proposed the letter “B” to enhance the original idea of an “EST” organisation, giving birth to what we all know today as “BEST”.

In 1996 BEST Turin became “nurse” of BEST Milano.

Our LBG hosted 2 General Meetings: GA in 1994 and PM in 1998. It also was the first group to organize a JAM (Alpine Jam) in 2005, and now it’s a tradition in which hundreds of BESTies are hosted every year in the scenario of the Alps. In 2013 we reached the ninth edition of the Alpine Jam. BEST Turin has a rigid regulamentation in membership status upgrade and every step is associated with a symbol. In fact every full member receives the official hoodie and every alumni receives a silver ring as gift.

One of main important tradition that BEST Turin created and spreaded among Europe is the use of the IMBUTO for every kind of celebration or ceremony and for partying, too.

BEST Turin mascotte is ManiKINO, a

dummy.

During its history BEST Turin was able to organize 20 BEST courses and to receive more than one red apples.

Local BEST Groups 287

UPPSALA

FULL MEMBER: GA 2000 Budapest Uppsala University

he LBG U p p s a l a saga began in year of 1999, when two students at Uppsala University who had been inspired by a group of BESTies in Stockholm, decided to send in their own application to start a local group in Uppsala. When they went to their first event as observers to the general assembly in Lisbon they had already mobilized a little gathering of Uppsala students who had the interest in making friends with other European students. Their first step as a group was to organize an Uppsala weekend as an activity for BEST Stockholm’s summer course participants, with great success, and the group was on the go!

The preparations for the next general assembly, GA 2000 in Stockholm started and our group succeeded in upgraded their status from observers to baby members at presidents meeting in Chania. Since Uppsala became a full member in GA 2000 in Budapest, we have continuously worked for making the world a better place! Thus the main focus of our courses has been renewable energies, a popular subject that has made Uppsala a popular destination among applicants! Another proud 288 Local BEST Groups

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tradition is the “Uppsala Dance” and we will continue to keep looking for new ways to grow, share and spread the “Uppsala Spirit” to YOU amazing Europe!

2010

VALENCIA

FULL MEMBER: GA 2012 France Universitat Politècnica de València

nce upon a time, in 2010, there was a lesson in the Industrial Engineering Technical School in Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, in which two guys met: Albert, who was just back from an Erasmus year in Paris, and Badr, a french guy that had begun his Erasmus in Valencia. In a time-break, they started talking and suddenly, they realised that both of them had been BEST members in France! Then they came up with the idea to create a BEST group in Valencia.

Some days later they gathered together with BESTies that were studying in Valencia (Sasho, Ursa and Alesh) and they decided to start an action plan.

With their effort our BEST group became a reality. It was early summer in 2011 when we had the greatest news: we were officially an Observer BEST Group and Madrid would be our Nurse!

By the end of the summer, we had a structured organisation, a board and we made the official presentation during PM 2011 - Copenhagen. Our first event was the Board Winter Meeting in December 2011. Our university fully supported this event and it was a huge success.

We started working on the organisation of the 1st engineering competition in Valencia, in order to get more known in the university and also to show the rest of BEST that we were ready to be one more of them!

In April 2012, in the General Assembly France, Valencia ran for Baby Status, getting it with the 100% of votes! After that, we have still been working hard: our first Course on Technology, our first EBECValencia, a Regional Meeting...

BEST Valencia feels ready to be successFULL in Bucharest, where we will try to become Full Members.

Kind Regards from LBG Valencia and our mascot Tarongeta!

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VALLADOLID FULL MEMBER: GA 1996 Tallinn University of Valladolid

In 1993, an Hungarian Erasmus student decided to move to Spain and bring to Valladolid not only lots of bottles of Palinka but also his BEST Spirit.

As a result, a small group of students organised an unofficial Spring Course.

Few months later, Valladolid decided not to live on the wrong side of the law anymore and became Baby member in GA Timisoara 1994.

Thanks to those initial efforts and others made by lots of students later, LBG Valladolid became Full member in GA Tallinn 1996.

The association started growing, organising all kind of BEST internal and external events and taking challenges like the first edition in 1999 of its well-known job fair FiBEST. After 15 consecutive editions and an International version in 2013, we can say it was a good idea.

The new millenium brought back to BEST Valladolid its original outlaw spirit. Perversion came and divided the members in two groups: castos and perverts, both of them contributing to spice up the most well known parties in Europe. Now the pervert spirit remains 290 Local BEST Groups

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active and we proclaimed as ours “the throne”.

LBG Valladolid had not only proved that it could organise the craziest parties but every new proposed challenge. A proof of it is that, during the last years, we had the honor to host a General Meeting of BEST in two occasions: The first one being in November 2007 with the XIII Presidents’ Meeting. But it wasn’t enough for us and Europe wanted more, so we took care of the organisation of the XXXI General Assembly of BEST, which was held in April 2013.

Is there any life after such a great event?

Of course! After accomplishing a big challenge new times have to come, but still our spirit is the same and willing for more! We face this 2014 full of energy and willing to write a new page in BEST Valladolid’s History. This year will be our XX Anniversary and we are looking back to old generations of alumni who support us, the new ones, to make an event to be remembered for ages. Sitting in the throne since 1994...

1991

VESZPRÉM

FULL MEMBER: GA 1992 Helsinki Tallinn University of Pannonia

e are a small and happy LBG in the heart of Europe in the South (Trololo) region. Our color is yellow and we love ducks, they are smiling on every material we create :) We organised our first first awesome Summer Course in 1992 and had a lot since then, almost every year. LBG Veszprem Hosted PM (1996), Central Meeting (2011), Trololo JBT (2012), International Motivation Weekend, WS, beKNOWN, had 15 CE-s so far with other awesome LBG-s and a lot more events.

Veszprém is called the “city of queens”, we have the biggest lake in Central Europe called Balaton, it’s 209 km around, we sing “Nád a házam teteje, teteje” and our girls and boys attend the Sausage festival every year! Our famous Suicide Commando drinks Suicide Tequila until death and we invented the drinking funnel that has multiple ends.

Oh, and MarkeTeam’s “Gay Bar” song became known after beKNOWN in Veszprém.

Moscot: we miss U little hairy Ducky, where are you?

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VIENNA

FULL MEMBER: GA 2004 Copenhagen Vienna University of Technology

ienna, located in central Europe, is also one of its most beautiful cities. It stood to reason that the BEST spirit would influence its Technical University. In 2002, four brave students from TU Wien came together and started the observer BEST group Vienna. It didn`t take long, being very active, motivated and trying hard, until we became a full member of BEST at GA2004 in Copenhagen. Now after almost 12 years LBG Vienna has organised more than 50 local events, 15 external events and has climbed to 12th place in the LBG ranking for hosting 20 internal events. We are very proud of having successfully organised Courses on Technology nine years in a row, especially organising a Summer Course and an Event on Education in autumn 2012 within four months. Members from Vienna like to be internationally involved. Among other positions, two TiGro Coordinators and one international Boardie have been arisen from our lovely LBG. We are able to run an International Evening by ourselves thanks to the 17 different citizenships of our 32 active members! Due to this diversity our 292  Local BEST Groups

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working language is English and we learn how to work internationally even on local level. This has led to our annual tradition, an international barbeque.

Once a year during May we invite all LBGs to join us in Vienna for a weekend to chill out together and to exchange experiences next to the Danube.

Every single thing LBG Vienna has done and every single member who has been involved with LBG Vienna makes us special and successful, as we have been in the past, are today and will be in the future!

2010

VINNYTSIA

FULL MEMBER: GA 2013 Valladolid Vinnytsia National Technical University

he idea to found our LBG was born in 2009, but the application was written and sent in summer 2010. We have got a status of Observer group and LBG Chisinau became our Nurse. BEST life delayed our head from that moment. Hosting of EEC spring meeting was our first event, which charged us with BEST Spirit. Then, after a series of events and RM we have got the status of baby member at GA Belgrade. After that we were waiting for familiarity with EBEC, and we hosted the national round of competitions in the first year of our “life”. Next year we organised our first autumn course, and it was memorable as a first kiss.

On the way to the status of full member we did our best in order to satisfy all requirements: hard work (for example, our second summer course which has got Red Apple), entertainment (relax parties, CE), learning and improvement (training sessions and English club).

Also we have one special event and we are proud of it. This event is IT contest REVOLUTION. Its feature is that event is non stop programming during 24 hours. Even eye bags and extreme fatigue is nothing in comparison with all

those emotions which REVOLUTION gives us.

Our Mascot is a Bear Vinnie - gift of our former Nurses. He loves to travel a lot and always gets into some interesting adventures from which we have to rescue him. For example, one secret funny adventure on cultural exchange in Lyon! ;) The main speciality of our LBG is that most of us are able to have fun without alcohol. And our 4th board exclusively consists of not drinking girls.

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WARSAW

FULL MEMBER: GA 1989 Berlin Warsaw University of Technology

BG Warsaw as the founder didn’t have nurse.

However, we’ve got our mother. It’s Dominika Herburt-Heybowicz – women who as the representant of the only University from country behind the iron curtain participated in the meeting in Berlin.

25 years of our history were full of important moments for the whole organisation. In 1993 Grzegorz Szczepański (known as the father of LBG) made one of the first GAs here.

He was also present in creating the Statement of Purpose of BEST. We were also hosts of PM ’97 and GA 2010.

Although, the biggest challenge came to us in 2013. We had pleasure to organize EBEC Final and together celebrate 5th anniversary of that project.

Over 60 BESTies every year create events for students. Some of them we organize since 21 years like Engineering Job Fairs. Some of them are quite new, but still well recognized among students, like urban game City of Riddles or BEST Gamers Tournament. We know how to work hard and party hard while doing that. If you ask how it is possible, you should check how looks like carnival 294 Local BEST Groups

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ball for 800 students in the Main Hall of our university. We also don’t forget about our Alumni. Through our history we prepared twice Congress of Alumni where we had possibility to get to know with the old times of BEST. However, BEST for us is more than just projects. BEST becames the way of life. That’s why through 25 years we created a lot of traditions. Pointing all of them would take a lot of time, but the most worth to be mentioned are: special ceremony for becoming full member, Boardies insignia, organizing Local Assembly by the seaside. We’re also proud of being monoclaps inventors!

2009

WROCLAW

FULL MEMBER: PM 2011 Copenhagen Wroclaw University of Technology

BG Wroclaw came into being in 21st of December and in that day became a Observer Group in the whole BEST family. The honor of being an official Baby Member was given to us in 6. May of 2010. Right after it, we were growing ever since and reached the Full Member status in 2011 at PM Copenhagen. That wouldn’t have been possible without LBG Krakow as our Nurse!

Now, as a stabile group, we are known in some circles as a Legendary BEST Group Wroclaw. For a long time we were in Region of Mongolia, and now we feel truly responsible for upholding the tradition of great Mongolian. After changing our Region to Central, our members (Mlody etc.) had big input in creating the Curva Regional Identity ;-).

One of our greatest proud is EBEC Poland. In May 2013 (except organising EBEC Local, which we do every year) we had a great chance to organize final of EBEC Poland. To our achievements we can add making some Internal Events such as ITC Spring Meeting 2010, Central Autumn Meeting 2011, or finTeam Summer Meeting 2013.

Now, we are spreading BEST knowledge

gathered through these years by nursing baby group Erlangen.

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ZAGREB

FULL MEMBER: GA 2000 Sweden University of Zagreb

he origins of LBG Zagreb can be found on the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture in 1998, where a small group of dedicated students began their quest to bring BEST into Croatia (and Croatia into BEST). The first event we ever organised was a WorkShop in the Autumn of 1999, under the watchful eyes of our nurse LBG Ljubljana, and in the same year we recieved official recognition as a student organisation.

In 2000, we were accepted in the BEST community as a full member during GA2000.

Being a country with a wonderful coastline, we have always gravitated towards organising Spring and Summer courses, and taking our participants to the sea during the weekend trips. Our first course was a Summer Course in 2000, under the name „B-Connected (New Technologies in Telecommunications“.

The same year we organised our first two cultural exchanges – with Budapest and Bucharest.

Now entering our 15th year as a Local BEST Group, we have grown in numbers, with over 200 alumni, we organised the first massive Jamboree 296 Local BEST Groups

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in BEST in 2002 (when we accepted everybody who applied), the first BEST Academics and Companies Forum in 2005, IPF and EoE in 2009, EBEC Final in 2012, and this Spring will mark our 12th BEST Course on Technology.

Apart from these events, we have a long tradition of week-long events called BEST Engineering Days, which is a combination of a Job Fair, Training Day, and the local round of EBEC, all in one.

Also, our projects have gained support and recognition by the President of the Republic of Croatia, dr. Ivo Josipović.

2006

ZAPORIZHZHIA

FULL MEMBER: PM 2008 Bucharest Zaporizhzhya National Technical University

reatest thanks and honors goes to our inspirer and creators to Alexandru Aleman, the Regional Advisor of Mongolia region at the year of 2006 and Roman Rokhmatulin, Alexandra Dolgaya, Inna Granishevska, Vitaly Balakhonov, Karina Zalavska and Tatiana Fedoronchak. Among those are the one who went on a first event in Lviv and came back caught by BEST-spirit, some of them were over first board.

With their help everything has become a kaleidoscope of events, memories, emotions and people.

After bright becoming baby-members we took the initiative to hold a Regional Meeting 2007 in ZP. In a time after these we had a lot of events both internal and external, like workshops, courses, different local events. We became a full member in 2008, so to keep on rolling we brought engineering competition to Ukraine and held nationals the year after. That was also a year when mustaches joke (before it has became too pop) was born in ZP as it is related to one of the actors image, still we are taking every chance to make fun of it. Now we are a strong part of our

university that makes difference. Both students union and rector appreciates and proud of work done by LBG. We are happy to be called ZP-family. As one of the oldest traditions says: when observer become a baby member he will get a parent to guide him as well as he has to drink a milk from a natural looking made up container with diaper on his head, that’s how we learn at mother’s (or dad’s) knees what BEST is, so the one will never forget! It’s been seven years but it’s only beginning still, just wait for some time to hear much more about Zaporizhzhya rocking!

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Board of European Students of Technology

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EST, Board of European Students of Technology is a constantly growing non-profit and non-political organisation.

Since 1989 we provide communication, co-operation and exchange possibilities for students all over Europe.

96 Local BEST Groups (LBGs) in 33 countries are creating a growing, well organised, powerful, young and innovative student network.

BEST strives to help European students of technology to become more internationally minded, by reaching a better understanding of European cultures and developing capacities to work on an international basis. Therefore we create opportunities for the students to meet and learn from one another through our academic and non-academic events and educational symposia. "Learning makes the master", but the final goal is a good working place, therefore we offer services like an international career centre to broaden the horizons for the choice on the job market.

Our priority is to offer high quality services for students all over Europe. Thus, we manage to bring all the partners in the "student - company - university" triangle closer.

BOARD OF EUROPEAN STUDENTS OF TECHNOLOGY