ESTIEM Magazine | Autumn 2012 | International Marketing by ESTIEM

International Marketing Branding without Borders

European Students of Industrial Engineering and Management Issue 43 2012/2 | ISSN 0874-5242 | Price 0 Euro | www.estiem.org

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INTRODUCTION Editorial President’s Speech Projects & Committees

CAREER Finally... Supply Chains are Getting Green! 8 Shaping the Future at Schaeffler 9 A Happy Couple 11 Tampere University of Technology 12

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Pursue your Industrial Engineering Master’s Program in the Netherlands? What about the masters Innovation Management or Operations Management & Logistics at Eindhoven University of Technology?

FOCUS Integral Marketing The Preferred Customer Concept A Future for Education - or is it Learning? International Marketing

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EVENTS

www.estiem.org

www.tue.nl/masterprograms/oml www.tue.nl/masterprograms/im

www.facebook.com/ESTIEMfb www.vimeo.com/ESTIEM www.twitter.com/ESTIEMtweets www.estiem.tumblr.com www.foursquare.com/ESTIEMtweets

Where innovation starts

INSIDE ESTIEM Introduction to ESTIEM Our Last Count to 3 before the World Ends Board the Academic Days Rocket! A Growing Initiative Insights Into the Work of the Grants Committee Get Into IT! Members Committee The Regional Coordinator Experience Take a Look Beyond the ESTIEM Training Horizon A Country-Wide ESTIEM Start-Up You and Me, Europe and 3D From Hard Work to a Huge Success The Circle of Knowledge The New Vision Series Blowing in the Candle Summer Academy - Touched by Magic Local Group Stockholm Exchanges Interwieving Two Previous Project Leaders Experiences from the 2012 Final Think TIMES Taking ESTIEM Overseas

EXPLORE EUROPE An Exchange in a City Blossoming with Culture Viva Mexico! A Semester in Cologne Lund - A Huge Small City One Semester at LiU

INTRODUCTION

IMPRINT Project Leader Sorana Ioniţă

Dear ESTIEMers,

Editorial Staff Sorana Ioniţă Victoria Martínez Jelena Bajšić Yuwei Zhang Jonas Frimmer Tea Suuronen

Article Acquisition Sorana Ioniţă Dunja Sekulić Victoria Martinez Advertisement Acquisition Victoria Martinez Contact magazine@estiem.org ESTIEM Permanent Office Paviljoen B-6 P.O.Box 513 5600 MB Eindhoven The Netherlands Fax: 0031-(0)40 2473871 info@estiem.org www.estiem.org Disclaimer The contents may not always reflect the opinion of the publisher. Any reproduction or copy is permitted only with the permission of the editors. Our Partner

This is where the complexity of International Marketing begins. It is considered the same as Global Marketing by some, if it defines a certain product using a more general approach in order for it to be successfully placed on a global market. Or it can be defined by the other half as having a specific approach, when referring to its placement on different markets, but always takingthe culture, economy, business customs and related aspects into account. To put it in a nutshell, International Marketing aims at finding the optimum way of applying classical marketing principles outside national (state) boundary lines. Why was it the ESTIEM Magazine’s turn to cope with the topic of International Marketing? First of all, the need of a study related to it stems at the very core of a student organisation, as well. Judging by corporate requirements, a background regarding international marketing is highly desirable for business students seeking employment, not only for today, but also for long-term career planning. Second of all (and also more important, in my opinion), when one intends to effectively shape its own future on the so-called “Leader Path”, he/she should also be aware of the paramount importance that this concept has immersed throughout the world, as it contains the freedom of unlimited growth potential. Besides International Marketing, you, as a reader, may find it interesting to discover insights about ESTIEM: what is new, what has been going on lately, future plans of Committees, Projects and Initiatives, students’ exchange experiences and last, but not the least, you will find out more about career and Masters opportunities in one of ESTIEM’s partners – all of it in the 43rd issue of the ESTIEM Magazine! Enjoy reading!

President’s Speech Dear Reader,

Our organisation is growing day after day. I have witnessed closely and firsthand what we all know to be true, ESTIEMers continue to show amazing abilities to bring forward this European student association by overcoming cultural differences and distances. Thanks to these tremendous efforts, ESTIEM is now trying to develop services to all ESTIEMers and to bring companies closer to students. We saw STILL and Schaeffler becoming Partners of our Projects, Zeiss is willing to organise a recruitment event after being a yearly ESTIEM Partner. A lot of other possibilities are yet to be developed with Business Booster and Job Opportunities. Besides this we still envision the future with all the European countries with Industrial Engineering and Management students to be in our network. We are striving to develop strong relations with other organisations either with students or with professionals like the Institute of Industrial Engineers. One thing that we, as future Leaders of Europe and the world, know is true, is that marketing is important. We need to know how to brand ourselves and our future companies’ products. Therefore, in today’s global world we need to know how to apply classic marketing beyond our own borders, and this is the core of International Marketing. As ESTIEM, we are developing our brand among the professional world, ensuring that we reach the right target of students, promoting our events to maximise the participation of our members and satisfy their expectations.

T hus, t he focus topic of t his EST I EM Magazine is of utmost importance to all E S T I E Mers a nd a l l t hose i ntere sted i n Engineering and Management at a global scale. Not only are the articles regarding the focus topic extremely interesting, through the rest of the Magazine you can discover more about what has happened, is happening, and will happen in this organisation that has given so much to me along the years. Find out about all the different Project, Committees and Initiatives of ESTIEM, and never hesitate to take the next step and become active yourself as well! Therefore, it is with great pleasure that I invite you to read our 43rd ESTIEM Magazine. I hope you will enjoy it. In high ESTIEM,

XAVIER AZCUE

Design Sebastian Mohr Anne-Laure Ladier Bengisu Altunsu Manu Joshi Jean-Yves Lemelle Milan Đorđević Edmund Salzmann

SORANA IONIȚĂ

Layout Public Relations Committee

What we have learnt about markets and marketing in the past century, pretending to carefully listen and take notes upon both successful and likely to fail paths is not a simple list of Do’s and Don’ts, but merely about gaining all the possible skills in relation to the process of Adapting. To reach a level of accomplishment, a marketer must adjust its needs to foreign environments and have the capability of solving conflicts that directly or indirectly emerge from differences in political, cultural, economical and legal backgrounds.

INTRODUCTION

ESTIEM Projects BrainTrainer

BrainTrainer is a Project designed to develop leadership, presentation, business and human skills of the participants through professional trainings lasting one or two days. Its aim is to coach and develop the participants to become more professional and successful in their organisation as well as in their own future career.

Europe3D

Within a 5-day seminar series the participants get a basic picture of the hosting country. A special focus thereby lays on national characteristics in politics and economy. Lectures given by experts from politics, science and economy shall provide the participants with a theoretical insight. On the other hand the Project’s aim is to integrate our guests actively in this seminar. Especially to include the practical aspect, the Project cooperates with companies for excursions and lectures.

ESTIEM Magazine

The official publication of ESTIEM provides the perfect platform to reach a target group of approximately 50 000 students of Industrial Engineering and Management at universities all over Europe. The ESTIEM Magazine is published twice a year and distributed among IEM students, graduates and also professors and companies across Europe, through the ESTIEM network.

Summer Academy

Through the Summer Academy Project, ESTIEM recognizes the importance of and takes responsibility for providing knowledge of ethics and sound leadership among future leaders of Europe. It was set up to bring international students together during summer holidays to engage in open discussion, group work, debate and private study under a senior Academic Leader.

ESTIEM Guide

E S T I E M Gu ide prop o s e s s t udent s a nd ESTIEMers different services. First, the Student Guide is ESTIEM’s guiding service provided to any student who is interested in studying Industrial Engineering and Management in Europe: an online database filled in by students sharing academic and practical information on cities/universities. Secondly, the Survival Guide provides ESTIEMers with the basic information to ease their planned or spontaneous trip for visiting other Local Groups. And lastly, the EventAdvisor will provide crucial information for ESTIEMers to choose the right event.

TIMES

T h e Tou r n a me nt I n M a n a g e me nt a n d Engineering Skills (TIMES) is the largest pan-European case study competition solely for the students of Industrial Engineering and Management. This prestigious, highly acclaimed event is the flagship project of ESTIEM. It has successfully been organised since 1994 and attracts around 1000 top European students every year. After Local Qualifications in 68 different universities and 7 Semi-Finals in selected cities, the winning team of the Final is awarded the title of Europe’s “IEM Students of the Year”.

Vision

Vision Seminar Series aims to improve the personal skills and capabilities of the Industrial Engineering and Management students in Europe. The seminars contain a balanced mixture of academic lectures, workshops and company visits, which are combined with cultural and free-time activities of the organising city. Through those activities the participants of a Vision Seminar develop themselves both personally and professionally. Each year’s Vision Seminar series focuses on one main topic to which all Vision seminars are connected. The current main topic is Vision - Green Supply Chain.

& Committees Corporate Relations Committee

The Corporate Relations Committee coordinates the relations between ESTIEM, companies and universities jointly with the Board. The Committee’s work covers a number of fields with the aim of improving and simplifying ESTIEM’s relations with companies and universities, such as updating cooperation proposals, creating and gathering results for different surveys or training people on how to approach companies and universities. The Corporate Relations Committee also plays an active role in supervising and supporting Projects and other Committees with regards to sponsors and academic supporters.

Public Relations Committee

The aim of the Public Relations Committee is to take care of ESTIEM’s outer appearance. The Committee is responsible for communicating the brand of ESTIEM and increasing the awareness both inside and outside of ESTIEM. The PR Committee works with several different tools to achieve this, for instance designing PR material, creating design templates and guidelines, as well as working on press and social media visibility.

Information Technology Committee

The IT Committee maintains the mail, intranet, and web servers of ESTIEM and coordinates all IT-related development in the organisation, such as regarding the IT backend system (.NET platform/C#). In addition, its members offer troubleshooting services and technical advice to ESTIEMers.

Grants Committee

The Grants Committee supports ESTIEM’s applications for EU Grants and aims to establish and develop knowledge on public funding opportunities and their application procedures. It also wants to share the existing knowledge with as many ESTIEMers as possible and to support more and more Local Groups apply for an EU Grant for their events.

Members Committee

The Members Committee supports the members and provides information for those students interested in joining the ESTIEM organisation by forming their own Local Group. They guide them through the whole process, starting from establishing contact – via the guest and observation period – until fully pledged membership. Also, Members Committee takes care about Requirements that Local Groups are expected to fulfill, tutors Local Groups that are already members of ESTIEM and tries to figure out what Local Groups need on local level, cooperates with the Trainers on Tour to fulfill these needs that have issues about any possible topic (HR, PR, Recruitment, Fundraising) and fosters connections between Local Groups.

Financial and Legal Committee

The Financial and Legal Committee’s role is to ensure ESTIEM’s compliance with all laws and regulations. It supports the Board, other Committees, Projects and Local Groups in all financial and legal matters. On one hand, it consists of experienced ESTIEMers and ESTIEM Alumni, who are motivated to provide advice whenever requested. On the other hand, active Committee members work on creating and updating Best Practice Documents, trainings, templates, etc. for all related topics. Since many people are unexperienced with finances and regulations, the Financial and Legal Committee aims at helping them to deal with them correctly. Furthermore, the Financial Controllers, who perform every year the audit of the financial books of ESTIEM, are part of the Committee.

Knowledge Management Committee

The Knowledge Management Committee does three things. First, updating/creating Best Practice Documents – from organising a Project to how to be a Leader, available online on the ESTIEM Portal – by documenting the collective experiences of ESTIEMers throughout time. Second, collecting feedback from the ESTIEM events participants in order to make Quality Reports, showing the development of ESTIEM’s Projects. Third, providing trainings on the ESTIEM events and on local level to stimulate a continuous development of ESTIEM and ESTIEMers. n

INTRODUCTION

CAREER

9 Shaping the Future at Schaeffler Experiences of an ESTIEMer Anne Bruss studied ‘Industrial Engineering and Management’ at the University of Bremen. From May until October 2012 she is at Schaeffler Herzogenaurach for an internship.

Supply Chains are Getting Green!

PROF. KAI-OLIVER SCHOCKE

The ones who act, are better prepared: one thought, which motivates a lot of players in logistics to identify areas of ecological relevance within their company and to implement adequate improvement measures. Just with logistics, 14% of the CO2emissions are caused. That´s at least one reason for companies in the logistic sector to contribute for achieving the climate goals. But the CO2 emissions are not the only relevant emissions in the logistic sector: there are also noise or fine dust emissions. That means, firstly, that all emissions in logistic systems and processes have to be identified. A second step might be to design logistical systems more efficient, more ecological and, in the end, more green.

Well done! You as the future leaders in Europe did quite well in choosing “Green Supply Chain” as the topic of VISION 2012/2013. You are on the right way in getting prepared for future challenges. You will have to change the future – in getting green again. n

years

GREEN SUPPLY CHAIN

Dr. Kai-Oliver Schocker is a professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt, Germany. He co-founded ESTIEM Alumni and was their first president.

Introduction to our Vision Central Partner - STILL

An intact eco system is the basis for life - for us and for future generations. For the Hamburg based STILL GmbH, the leading supplier for customised internal logistics solutions worldwide, it is a matter of natural cause to use the resources of nature as carefully as possible. Use of recyclable materials, gentle production methods, energy saving products and environmentally responsible workplaces are in the focus of STILL just as are research and development of a wide range of alternative propulsion technologies such as hybrid with lithium-ion batteries or fuel cells. The name STILL stands for ecologic responsibility based on technical progress offering its customers a product portfolio that sets the standards for energy efficiency.

Why did you join ESTIEM and what do you consider especially interesting about it?

I joined ESTIEM because of various reasons. One reason is the internationality – I like to meet new people from different cultures and l love to see other countries. Furthermore, it´s a great possibility to make new friends and create an international network with people having similar interests as I do. Within ESTIEM, one has the opportunity to take part in different workshops, trainings and events european-wide. During these events I can not only deepen the knowledge I gained in the different courses at university, but also enlarge it by learning many new things. The topics of the trainings are for example communication, presentation, negotiation, team-management, business communication, rhetoric, case study solving or project management. In the project Europe 3D, which shows you three dimensions (economics, culture, politics) of the country, one can learn various interesting things about other countries. I also joined ESTIEM because I simply wanted to experience something new and unknown – to

Why did you choose Schaeffler for your internship? What do you like especially about the company Schaeffler?

I’ve always been interested in the products Schaeffler produces. During a career contact fair, I had the opportunity to talk to human resources professionals from Schaeffler and could present myself, talk about my perspectives and interests. Since the focus of my studies was in engineering, I chose the corporate testing department of Schaeffler to do a half-year internship. From the beginning Schaeffler has been very attractive to me – at the fair, where I first met Schaeffler, in the interviews and now in my internship. One recognises that the company really cares about its employees. I also like that I am working in a nice team and have the possibility to learn a lot of new things. Schaeffler is an international company, I got to know a lot of other interns who come from all over the world. Which assignments do you enjoy the most and why?

I especially enjoy working on projects, in which I can follow the development from the beginning to the end. I also like to support my colleagues with their measurements and analyse the results of the testings. Another interesting job is evaluating the tests because I get to know the correlation between things and learn how they belong to each other. The same happens when I help with an assembly.❱❱❱

ANNE BRUSS

Finally...

In this interview she is going to talk about her daily work at Schaeffler in the ‘Research and Development department – Corporate Testing Transmission – Transmission Bearings and her ESTIEM-background.

sum it up, ESTIEM was the perfect opportunity for me to combine having fun and gather knowledge relevant for my studies and future job.

CAREER

Which tasks within ESTIEM did you undertake and which projects did you work on?

I already joined t he V W I/EST I EM Hochschulgruppe Bremen in my first semester, a few weeks after my studies had started. So I came to participate in TIMES. One year later, I was organising the Local Qualification for the TIMES case study competition in Bremen. Then I got to know events outside of Bremen. That is why I decided to organise an Europe 3D event in Bremen, together with two other Local Groups. Which experiences did you gain during your time at ESTIEM that now help you during your internship at Schaeffler?

What helped me the most was developing various soft skills and work on my presentation abilities, for example during the presentations of case studies. Moreover, I learned how to work in a more structured way, because of the organising I had to do. Would you recommend an internship at Schaeffler for other ESTIEMer and why?

I would recommend an internship at Schaeffler, because I feel very good repealed. Due to the size of Schaeffler, there is supposed to be an interesting position for everyone, depending on the location. You can find the greatest variety of jobs in the headquarters in Herzogenaurach, but of course there are many different jobs in other locations too and after a first internship at Schaeffler in Germany, it is also possible to do an internship abroad in one of the Schaeffler subsidiaries. It´s very easy to apply for an internship or job, as Schaeffler uses an online Recruiting-tool. n

http://www.schaeffler.de/content.schaeffler.de/en/careergermany/jobs/career.jsp

OUTDOOR CLIMBING MOMENTS: THE 41-MEGAPIXEL CAMERA LENS FROM CARL ZEISS ENSURES RAZOR-SHARP IMAGES

Oberkochen | Carl Zeiss and Nokia

A Happy Couple Dynamic The partnership between Carl Zeiss and the cell phone giant Nokia is a success story that began seven years ago. Now it has taken another leap forward with the launch of the new PureView 808 smartphone.

Everyone has heard of the seven-year itch. Whenever a celebrity marriage breaks down in that unlucky seventh year, it is catapulted to the front pages of the gossip magazines. The relationship between Carl Zeiss and Nokia is rather more durable: the two companies have been collaborating since 2005 and have just achieved a major milestone in their seventh year together. The joint headlines they are making are all thanks to the new PureView 808 smartphone. Back in January 2005, a team of Zeissians headed off to Finland to lay the foundations of a successful partnership. Someone who was involved almost from the start is Oliver Schindelbeck, the ZEISS technical representative who supports Nokia in the partnership. “This collaboration is very important to us because it offers us an opportunity to make our brand more visible in the broader consumer market.” He also praises his counterparts

in Finland, who he describes as frank, professional and reliable. Both companies benefit from the rangement in terms of their image as well as the technology they are developing. New smartphone with a high-tech camera

Nokia has already launched numerous cell phones with ZEISS camera lenses, so a clear process is already in place. “We begin by talking to Nokia about what features they want the camera to have. Then we draw up the specifications,” says Schindelbeck. The teamwork extends from developing the optics design and building a prototype right through to producing the final camera module. This was the same process used for the Nokia PureView 808, which includes a very special feature: a 41-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens. “Not even an SLR camera can offer such a high image resolution,” says Schindelbeck. “But it wasn’t our goal to set a pixel world record.” The idea behind Pure- View is not only to limit pictures to smaller resolutions, but also to simultaneously offer the option of enhancing the image quality in order to produce authentic, razor-sharp images. Nokia and Carl Zeiss invited an international audience to witness the launch, receiving rave reviews from those who tried out the phone. So while many relationships end up succumbing to the seven-year itch, the partnership between Carl Zeiss and Nokia has already reached the next level. [PWi] n

OUTDOOR CLIMBING MOMENTS: THE 41-MEGAPIXEL CAMER A LENS FROM CARL ZEISS ENS U RES R A ZOR- S HARP IMAGES

AREER

CAREER

Tampere University of Technology International Master’s Programme in Business & Technology Are you interested in business development in global business-to-business markets? How about studying in Tampere University of Technology, in the heart of Finland?

T he Master’s P rog ra m me i n Busi ness & Technology is a 2-year program focused on industrial marketing, business development and global sourcing strategies. The language of instruction is English. This programme is aimed at students who already have BSc degree in engineering or technology. An engineering degree combined with analytical thinking, problem solving, intercultural mindset and understanding of new technologies provide our graduates great career prospects in industrial marketing, sales, supply chain management, technology sourcing, business development and consulting. Studying in TUT is not only theoretical, but it also includes projects with local industries that enable students to gain practical experience in the development of global sales and sourcing processes. The contact between managers, teachers and students to solve real-life management problems gives our students invaluable learning opportunities. The global world faces an increasing demand for internationally oriented graduates that have a broad perspective in business development.The intercultural mindset the programme provides is a gateway to multicultural companies as well as smaller companies that are expanding abroad. Many of our students have started

their management careers in business development projects related to global sales and sourcing.

INSIDE ESTIEM Back in 1990,

students from five different countries founded an organisation, which they named ESTIEM: European Students of Industrial Engineering and Management. Its aim was and still is to establish and foster interrelations among European students of Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM).

Why to apply for our programme?

Getting international experience already during your studies

Acquiring good knowledge in professional English

Learning multi-cultural team skills Participating in projects with local companies Finland is a northern country, renowned for its high standard of education and technological know-how. Tampere is centrally located in Finland and easily reachable from every direction. It’s situated between two large lakes and has various outdoor opportunities. Being the industrial pioneer of Finland, Tampere is a hub for leading-edge technology, research, education, culture, sports and business. It’s a lively city with great student culture that ensures you won’t get bored in your free time. As a student of TUT, you have the right to take courses also outside the program from other faculties or from the University of Tampere. “I choose TUT over other programmes because I found really what I was looking for. Management degree programme for those who have their backgrounds in engineering. In addition, the programme seemed to me more practical than theoretical and offered practical case solving in co-operation with companies.” Antons Ponomarjovs, Latvia The application period is between 3 rd of December and 28th of February. You can apply in http://www.tut.fi/admissions. For any further information please contact the international coordinator Minna Baggström at minna.baggstrom@tut.fi. n

After 22 years, it has grown into an organisation bringing together 50 000 students from 68 universities in 26 European countries, and is still growing. All these universities offer courses in IEM. Based on this structure, ESTIEM forms links between students, academics and companies in order to create a Europe-wide, multi-level IEM network. ESTIEM has continuously increased the number of its activities, thus being able to offer a great variety of events to IEM students and an opportunity to experience different cultures, take part in international projects and become friends with other ESTIEMers from all over Europe. The decision-making body of ESTIEM is the Council, which meets twice a year, in autumn and in spring. Each university, represented by its socalled “Local Group”, sends two student representatives. The six members of the Board of ESTIEM are elected during the autumn Council Meeting. The Board is responsible for the management, coordination and administration of the association. Besides taking leadership positions in the Board and as Project Leaders, ESTIEM members can also take up more responsibility by working in one of the Committees. With lots of teams and tasks to choose from, there is a place for everyone. Naturally, the backbone of ESTIEM is the European IEM student. The students involved in ESTIEM incorporate both the skills required for modern business and an open-minded approach towards other people and cultural issues.

For more detailed information about our organisation and its activities, please visit our website at www.estiem.org. Here you can also find everything you need to know if you want to get involved. So don’t hesitate and start moving… you will not regret it! n

INSIDE ESTIEM

Gregor Herr Vice President of Activities

Our last count to three before the world ends 22nd Board of ESTIEM Xavier Azcue President

As cliché as this sounds, as I look out the window of the airplane that is taking me to my first destination in my last long journey as the ESTIEM President, I cannot help but be nostalgic and think of this amazing year I had the privilege of living. For it, I want to thank everyone with whom I crossed paths and who made it so special from the bottom of my heart. To my successor I want to say that, if even for five minutes you are not enjoying the ride, give me a call so that I can talk some sense into you! Your year will be full of incredibly fun moments, for me our funniest moment dates back to the Handover Board Meeting. Gregor sleeping, Marc losing some clothes, and Jean-Yves… well, some things you just had to be there for.

Not only is it an incredible amount of fun, it is also the most enriching learning experience possible. I learnt a lot this year, about myself and others. I learnt that you sing with your heart, not your voice. That Enschede is in the Netherlands, really, that they just do not have Dutch people. That in Skopje, when men used to be little girls, they took their moms to school. That TIMES is on fire, and that the cookies taste great. That it is good to have a babysitter in the midst of all the guys. That a little magic never hurts. That a small smile can go a long way. That you do not have to be from a Latin country to be Latino. That champagne is good. That it is not a good idea to be late to a Cantus. That you do not fall asleep during a tram party. That glass bottles are dangerous. That you can go far on hand luggage. That starting a year on a boat is a pretty good way to start. That road trips are fun. That if you fill the Doodle, I will be there maybe. That there is always one more verse to the Yogi song. That sometimes the important decisions are easy to make and the small ones take forever. I learnt that taking the risk and running for the Board was probably the best decision I ever made.

ESTIEM Vice President of Activities – well, that is about travelling and partying all over Europe. This is the perception everybody has about my position. It is true that I am most of the times not the earliest in bed in our Board and I am going to be the guy who travelled the most of us during our year in the end, even if some of my co-Boardies are hardly competed with me, but the reason for that is not my position, it is my personality. I simply like to hang out with my ESTIEM friends, spread the spirit and travel to our Local Groups all over Europe. As the Vice President of Activities I have all the duties an ESTIEM Board member has. I am involved in all the strategic decisions of ESTIEM made during this year and I have my position related responsibilities, which are mainly scheduling, promoting and supporting all the events we offer. I also supervise the work of the Knowledge Management Committee, the Europe3D and the Summer Academy Projects. Combining all of these aspects with the already existing expectations of the Vice President of Activities position, this role turned out to be one of the major challenges for me. During every event you are expected to simply live the ESTIEM spirit – work hard and play hard, while keeping up with the operational work, planning trips months ahead, washing clothes, ensuring liquidity at all times and maintaining constant communication with all the ESTIEMers you are working with. Therefore, I would like to use this opportunity to thank all the people I worked with and all the ESTIEMers I met for the invaluable experiences I gained during this year. You are the ones who made this year what it is - simply awesome!

Marc Hedler Vice President of Education

Almost a year ago, I was sitting in the same physical position, in front of my computer screen and writing about the work for the good of this organisation. I was sitting in another European country, I was writing another article for a different reason but the motivation remains always the same. Back in the days I was preparing to apply for the ESTIEM Board, today my duty is slowly approaching its end. A vast amount of experiences and “lessons learnt” are behind me. The past year has been a challenging one. Being given the trust of the ESTIEM Council to lead this organisation together with five other people is a great responsibility. The Board position has been one of the best professional and personal experiences I have had so far. Working with an international team, scheduling and coordinating your work over the borders and time zones, calling trains, airplanes’ cabins and living rooms of friends all over Europe home, is something, although physically exhausting, I will be missing the next year. Answering a lot of e-mails every day, keeping the same enthusiasm in every event although it might be your fourth in a row was how I got to learn what my priorities were. The key is not to lose your aim out of sight when travelling or working in different environments. My biggest motivators this year were the ESTIEMers around me, who gave me a lot of energy over the past 365 days. I have to thank everyone who has been supporting and working with me for ESTIEM over the last year.

INSIDE ESTIEM

Victoria Martinez Vice President of Public Relations

Henrique Cruz Vice President of Finance

I cannot believe that one year passed. Being in the ESTIEM Board has been an unforgettable experience. I can still remember the Council Meeting in Ankara, all the stress and how nervous I was. Everything was in slow motion. But everything suddenly disappeared when we really got on-Board time! I did not count in weeks or days but in ESTIEM events.

I am writing this article, sitting at home in Porto, exactly ten months after the election during Council Meeting Ankara-Bilkent. Being given the opportunity to lead our beloved organisation, working and meeting fantastic people (like you) and the restless climb to the top of the Sunshine Mountain have made this year the one to remember.

There are not enough words to explain how much I learnt and lived this year. I remember when I arrived to the first Board Meeting in Istanbul, entering the room where the other Boardies were and hardly able to believe what was about to really start. Little by little, we started to get to know each other, we travelled together, we had endless chats and discussions and it is then when I understood why people say that being a Boardie is amazing. I experienced a lot of things with my five boys that helped me grow up as a person and as a professional.

It all started on a Boat in Istanbul with 80 ESTIEMers in the idyllic scene of the Bosporus. You can agree that it could not have started in a better way. Our enthusiasm was off the chart and much like the boat that evening, we started our journey through the tricky yet exciting tides of the ESTIEM Sea.

As the Vice President of Public Relations, I had a close relation with the Corporate and Public Relations Committees, and also the Magazine Project with my two lovely Leaders. I would like to thank Jelena, Sebastian, Asbjörn and Sorana from all my heart, because without them I could not pull through this year. I would also like to thank all ESTIEMers I met – you made my year very special! During this Council Meeting in Belgrade, I will have to hand in all of my responsibilities to my successor, but not just that – I would like to share with that person and with all of you that ESTIEM brought me happiness, challenges, stress, a lot of e-mails, lessons for life, friends, love, and made 2012 MY year.

I could go on and on about the skills I have gained this year, how it changed my life and how I will cherish this experience forever. But, I will not. During this year, I have learned something more. I know the plane safety instructions almost by heart. I understood that I cannot sing, even if backed up by 50 other ESTIEMers, I know how to get free Internet in the airports, and how to use the ESTIEM template (almost) Finally, I learned that you have got the Magic in you. I will never forget the thrill of talking in the General Assembly or the epic night in Budapest after the ESTIEM College with the Serbian crew. The Board year is full of tiny moments, which, when combined, make the perfect symphony of an incredible year of 2012. What would I say to my successor? Enjoy every bump of the Board year road and every loop of the ESTIEM roller coaster; they only come once in a lifetime…it is going to be one hell of a year!

Jean-Yves Lemelle Vice President of Administration

One thing I would like to share with you, dear ESTIEMers, is why and how I kept my motivation throughout this year. At the beginning of the year there was the excitement of being at the top of an amazing network in which you can develop yourself personally and professionally. Then you start working hard not to disappoint all your friends you earned throughout your past in ESTIEM, the Council Meeting of your election and the first month of your term. And then arrives the higher peak of the Council Meeting when you almost feel overwhelmed by the workload. However, the motivation went up the minute I opened the General Assembly at the Council Meeting Warsaw. At that precise moment I had a lot of thoughts in my mind but the strongest one was: “It’s starting!”

I already had this feeling before – when I got my high school diploma, when I arrived at university for my first day (it happened twice for me – one in Paris and one in Grenoble), when I took the plane for my first ESTIEM event, when I landed at Lima in Peru for my volunteer project, when I landed in Bogota, Colombia for my exchange semester, when I booked my flight for the Handover Board Meeting and then in Warsaw. This last time was a little bit different – I realised how much those moments are valuable for me. The few occasions when we say: “It’s starting” are the ones we should never forget about. They inspire us whenever we feel down. They show us what was decisive. And we know why we can be proud of what we have achieved in life. My last words would go to all ESTIEMers – thank you so much for being who we are! n

INSIDE ESTIEM

Board the Academic Days rocket! What happens when two German guys get an idea about a totally new kind of event which ESTIEM has not seen yet?

During the last year, there have been two more ESTIEM Academic Days events: Finance Days in Brussels and Innovation Days in Lappeenranta, which proved that there exists a true demand for this kind of event. Also this October, Energy Days took place in Istanbul and two other Academic Days events are planned for the next year. The application period for the future organisers starts right after the Council Meeting in Belgrade.

Furthermore, during the Coordination Meeting in Darmstadt, we came up with promotion ideas on how to raise awareness about this developing initiative. There, we also updated and clarified our mission and vision statement, which makes us now fully prepared for becoming an ESTIEM Project. Of course, our work is just at the beginning and we have a long way ahead of us when it comes to having a stable Project status. However, like one good friend of mine taught me: “Aim for the Moon but if you don’t succeed, you are still among the stars.” Are you ready to board the Academic Days rocket? Do not hesitate to join our growing team! n

A Growing Initiative By the time you’ll be reading this article printed on very fine paper (which, by the way, you should recycle once you see no use for the Magazine), I will not be the Social and Environmental Responsibility Initiative Leader anymore.

Portal soon. The goal is to compensate those emissions with, for example, planting trees. Also, do not forget that we donated 156€, which was gathered during a small auction in Council Meeting Warsaw to a Greek NGO – Arc of the World.

Sad – I know – but sometimes you need to make options cope with what life presents you and those options require sacrifices. No, no virgins or animals, and much less any trees or plants, but you guessed it right: the Social and Environmental Responsibility Initiative (shortened, SERI) had to be one of those sacrifices. But Sorana, the Project Leader of the ESTIEM Magazine, didn’t ask me to write about my life here, neither to make an ‘emo-suicidal-like’ article saying “farewell”. I am here to write about what has happened in SERI in the last months and what is going to happen in the next ones.

During and after the Council Meeting, a large amount of ideas (re)surfaced. Now we want to expand the Green Event Guide into a whole Social and Environmental Responsibility consultancy project within ESTIEM with the creation of another guide, where we have some pro-social activities. Alongside with the green ones, it would enable us to establish a team of people that would help the local event organisers to build a greener event and include a few hours of some sort of prosocial activity. We also intend to list and create an online catalogue of different volunteer projects in which ESTIEMers can take part: from European Voluntary Service to Service Civil International.

SER I has been gaining relevance inside ESTIEM, especially boosted by what we did during the Council Meeting in Warsaw and before that. A couple of months before the Council Meeting, we finished the first version of the Green Event Guide – a guide that will help make every ESTIEM event greener. In Warsaw, due to the great effort of both Anne-Lise and Justine, the first Awareness Training came to happen. What is that? The simple primary goal is to make you understand how differently people live in different areas and then to discuss our behavior in that situation – expect to see more of this training in Council Meeting Belgrade! Ellett, Benedikt and Florian also did a great job setting up a calculation method for the CO2 emissions ESTIEMers make during their trips to an event. Expect to see that implementation on the ESTIEM

Not only do we want to tell you what you can do, but you can also help us create our own SERIevent concept: maybe working with disabled people in an industry setting, helping a local community grow or any other innovative, unlimited idea that we can come up with. There is so much room for growth and that is why we need every person available for establishing partnerships and organising external events. In the end, I know SERI will keep on growing and the new leader will do an excellent job. My personal belief is that things end so that they can make room for better ones to happen – and that, I am sure, will be the case with the new leader. n

DUARTE VALENTE

TEA SUURONEN

Like it is possible for any ESTIEMer, they also launched it as an initiative which took a form of Academic Days Initiative during Council Meeting Porto in spring 2010. In this state, the whole initiative consisted of two team members. After this, something that firstly was a minor idea about something significant, turned into concrete strategy, goals and action points. The first Academic Days event took place already in December 2010 in Eindhoven by the name of ESTIEM Logistics Days. Already after the first event it was clear that this would be a success story to be written in the stars, that this is our chance to develop the whole ESTIEM network towards a more academic direction which had its first steps carved by EPIEM and the VicePresident of Education.

When walking along this path, we have also faced some problems, namely related to the new face of our lovely initiative among the ESTIEM event portfolio and the recruitment of more busy-busybees into our project team. According to our deepsearch-analysis, it seems that ESTIEMers perceive Academic Days as an extremely highly educational event and thus being a bit afraid of participating in one. In order to deal with that, we decided that the participants do not need to be experts before the event, but will become one during it. Our promotion campaign in Council Meeting Warsaw to gain new members with graduation hats paid off as well. We are always happy to welcome new enthusiastic members.

INSIDE ESTIEM

Insights into the work of the

Grants Committee

I know all of you were dying to hear what has been going on in the Grants Committee in the last year, so I decided to end your misery and report on the latest developments.

Acquiring, storing and sharing knowledge about L R Forum different funding opportunities

(Eindhoven) – responsible Arjen Martens, amount granted: 17 774 €

Providing support to Local Groups and central BrainTrainer (Ankara-Bilkent) – responsible ESTIEM when applying for public funding for their events

Bengisu Altunsu, amount granted: 17 258 €

The first joint event of the Financial and Legal Giving advice on how to deal with the grant and Committee and the Grants Committee took place the grantor in case they get granted this autumn in Coimbra. This two-day training event aimed at training the participants on how to Researching on new public funding opportunities deal with grants applications, how to improve their for ESTIEM and its members. written and spoken English language skills and how to manage the budget for an event (from fundraising to ways of spending it). A cooperation with BEST and AEGEE was set up in order to gain even more knowledge about grants and set up a collaboration platform for best practices exchange. A database of local funding opportunities for Local Groups has been set up and we are working hard to discover other granting opportunities for the members of ESTIEM. In the trainings’ field, the Grants Committee has offered this year for the first time its services in ToT, Local Responsible Forum and Regional

Get into IT! Coordination Meetings events. The idea behind it was to ensure that the Local Groups are instructed on how to apply for grants and, most importantly, how to manage the money and organise the event afterwards. We have quite some new, enthusiastic members and together with them we managed to create four new positions within the Committee to help structure our work better. The Grants Committee also has a new mascot: SheKa, the cute stuffed cash cow of ESTIEM. And all of this happened just in 2012. Imagine what the future might have in store for the Committee, with its increasing popularity and great support from the actives! We still need YOU!

The Grants Committee would be nothing without the commitment of all of its members. But there is still a lot to be done and even more ideas to make happen and you can help us achieve our goals. Are you interested in Grants? Want to know how to write Grant applications? Learn how to communicate with the European Commission and other grantors? Improve your English? Then join the Grants Committee! Contact the Committee Leader for more information: send an email to Leader.Grants@estiem.org! Excited about the future

After CM Belgrade, the Grants Committee is bracing its new leader and with that, new opportunities will arise. A fresh way of thinking and doing things will add more excitement to the Committee and will take it even further within its development. I, just like all of you, am looking forward to see where the new vision will lead to. n

IT, or Information Technology, may be something which you are not too familiar with. If you ever felt that expertise in this area could add value to your personal set of skills (and your CV) then it is time to get into it.

In 2011, the IT Committee released the new EST I EM Portal well k nown by almost every ESTIEMer. The process of implementing it for you, our users, took more than 4 years. Analysing and modelling the way you interact with it was an important part of the development process, besides coding in a complex language you may not know yet. The whole development of Portal 5 involved more than 100 active ESTIEMers who gave their opinion on how it should look like and how they want to use it. In 2012, the ITC kept running the whole infrastructure and tried to fix all the last bugs on the Portal to make working with it as efficient as possible for every user. We also worked on new features to improve it and increase the ease of use. However, we realised that we had a bottleneck when trying to quickly implement new ideas: detailed modelling of the requested feature. We need to grow and we need support for IT. The next step for our Committee is to get new students willing to learn not only how to code but also to do detailed analysis of new ideas and ways to improve the Portal even further as well as modelling the features we want to implement. Most of the work should be done before the coding even starts. Most of the work requires creativity and commitment. Students like you do most of the work. The IT Committee is a unique experience in ESTIEM where you can learn highly professional skills. Besides, you will also have the chance to discover the most “nerdy” parties in all of ESTIEM during our Coordination Meetings that will surprise you, almost for sure. So don’t hesitate anymore. Send an email to leader.it@estiem.org and get into IT! n

ISRAEL POHL

MĂDĂLINA GAVRILĂ

But first things first: if you haven’t been involved What has 2012 meant for the Grants Comin Central ESTIEM for too long, you might not be too mittee? 2012 was one of the best years so far for the familiar with this - may I add - awesome Committee Grants Committee. A total of nine applications yet. to several grantors were submitted with the help …what does the Grants Committee really do? of the GC this year. Although not all applications The Grants Committee supports all layers of were granted, we have acquired more knowledge ESTIEM applying for public funding (Grants) and aims that will improve the application process in the futo establish and develop knowledge on public funding ture and help us be even more successful. opportunities and their application procedures. It is the newest Committee in ESTIEM, having an existBOTH applications submitted for the Youth ence of only three years. The Grants Committee is in Action (our main grantor) deadline of the 1st of Feburary got granted: about:

INSIDE ESTIEM

Members Committee

JENNIFER WEINGARTEN

The Members Committee has experienced an enormous development in the past six months. It all started off with just a few ESTIEMers who had the vision to take the Members Committee one step further. This article will outline the outstanding work the Members Committee team has done this year.

As you might know, the Members Committee is responsible for expanding the ESTIEM network by finding new Local Groups. Our Approaching Team takes care of this task. This year, the idea was to expand the team to have several ESTIEMers simultaneously researching universities all over Europe which have Industrial Engineering and Management studies within their curricula. This idea took off very quickly and now we have many new Guest Groups and more than ten other universities we are currently in contact with. In the meantime, the Board and the Members Committee have been developing the Regional Coordinators concept. The Regional Coordinators try to foster the relationships between the Local

Because we care!

Groups within the same regions and also try to support Local Groups with their individual issues. They basically close the communication gap between the Local Groups and the ESTIEM Board. Besides that, the Human Resources Task Group has had a huge increase in members. They actively support the recruitment from local to central level, for example by offering the so-called “Get Active” Skype chats, where ESTIEMers, who are interested in central ESTIEM, can get answers to all their questions. Furthermore, they have been developing the “Get Involved” page on the ESTIEM Portal. The Human Resources Task Group already has many plans for the future and it will be interesting to see how much further they will develop in the next months. If you are interested in what the Members Committee does, feel free to approach leader.mc@ estiem.org – we are always looking for interested ESTIEMers who want to join the team! n

The Regional Coordinator experience NUNO CARNEIRO

My name is Nuno Carneiro, I am 20 years old (21 at the Council Meeting in Belgrade) and I am from Local Group Porto. I was also born in Porto, so I study in my hometown. I have been in ESTIEM since 2010, but by the time I applied for a Regional Coordinator position, I had almost no experience working for ESTIEM on the central level. So how did I become the first Regional Coordinator of the Iberian Region earlier this year?

The start

Before the year 2012, there was one responsible within the Board of ESTIEM that kept all the communication with the region he was assigned to. But the Board members were always travelling and had so much work, that the communication with the Local Groups of the region was almost only about sending one or two e-mails each year.

So the challenge was set: applications were open for the Regional Coordinator position in each of the eight regions, someone would be responsible for increasing the communication between the Local Groups and the central ESTIEM Board and between the Local Groups in the same region. I strive for being disruptive and discovering innovative ways to tackle common problems, so I immediately considered applying for it; it was all about developing a completely new position with almost no guidelines!

The Regional Coordinators were in contact with each other, sharing their own experience in the position and helping each other with tips. Within the Members Committee, we came up with a way to overview the development of the Local Groups and the impact of the implementation of Regional Coordinators.

In February 2012, I got accepted to be the one of the first ESTIEM Regional Coordinators, responsible for coordinating the seven Local Groups in Portugal and Spain.

The ultimate tool for the Regional Coordinator is the Regional Coordination Meeting, where all the Local Groups in the region gather to have trainings, have fun and discuss cooperation possibilities. These meetings are organised each year, but it is expected that their outcomes will increase now that there is some more work done by the Regional Coordinators.

Hard Work

Future

A lot of people were afraid that our position was a mistake, because it would just increase the gap between the Local Groups and the Board and we had to prove them wrong.

We still need to clearly define the position and its objectives for a sustainable model for the Regional Coordinator concept. There are also a lot of possibilities for the whole network with the help of the Regional Coordinators: better recruitment on central level, more communication with the Committees or even an increase in the effectiveness of Council Meetings by helping the delegates.

I started by sending an individual e-mail to each Local Responsible introducing myself and setting a Skype Call with them. Those calls, during which we talked about their problems was probably one of the most important steps within this journey, because I could immediately show that my position would not be consisted of imposing any solution, but of facilitating the exchange of solutions between them. This is why the next step was having a conference call with all the Local Responsibles in the region together, where they could get to know each other and share their experience. I also helped the Local Groups with small issues and provided information about some usual procedures in ESTIEM, sometimes having to contact someone on the central level to get that information. Xavier Azcue, the Board Responsible for the Iberian Region, was of crucial help for me, because he made an effort to develop the region and gave me advice in this new position.

The future shines bright for ESTIEM; the Regional Coordinator position is definitely valuable for our Local Groups and I am sure the next group of Regional Coordinators will do a great work. Satisfaction

It is very satisfying to see the Local Groups grow and sustain this growth while communicating between each other. Being a Regional Coordinator has been a great experience, I had the privilege to work with outstanding people and I want to thank all the Local Responsibles in my Region for helping me with this task! By fostering communication and having people from different Local Groups working on a common project, I believe it will be possible to establish a sense of cooperation that will grow on its own. I hope I was able to give the first spark for it! n

INSIDE ESTIEM

Take a look beyond the ESTIEM Training horizon!

Extending the View

ESTIEM is a part of IFISO (Informal Forum of International Student Organisations) and thus in contact with other training sections which organise and carry out training events – individually and in cooperation with others.

JANINE BROCKMEIER JUDITH HARTL

One example for such an event is the Leadership Summer School. This ten day training event is meant for people active in student organisations and NGOs. Every year, around one hundred students of different countries, study tracks and backgrounds meet there to attend high quality trainings on leadership and to share, network and develop personally. In the last years, there have been trainers and trainees from ESTIEM present at the Leadership Summer School – having the chance to experience this great atmosphere of empowerment, creativity and personal growth. For trainers who would like to develop professionally and network with others, the BEST Trainer’sForum is the place to be! Every year in March, trainers from over 30 different organisations meet for one weekend, deliver trainings to each other, give feedback and discuss training issues of their organisations. Many new initiatives, projects and collaborations emerge from this platform – one gets inspired by other great trainers and builds up a strong network of exchange and peer support. There are also one-to-one cooperations with other training sections – ESTIEM provides trainees and trainers for EPSA, BEST, VWI and AEGEE events.

Attending a training event of another organisation will not only provide insights in how others work and have fun, but it is also an opportunity to meet many interesting and active people. Giving and Taking

Joining a training event of another organisation is one way to broaden your horizon in the training world – another one is to invite external trainers to an ESTIEM event. This happened for example at the Training New Trainers events, where we invited members of EPSA, BEST and VWI to join the trainers team. External trainers are also involved in some of the ESTIEM Regional Coordination Meeting trainings – and could be invited to any other ESTIEM training event. If you are interested in contacting externals for your event, get in touch with the Training Coordinator! Of course, we also have some very good and active trainers in our own organisation. They do their part to strengthen the European training network: ESTIEM trainers helped educate VWI and BEST trainers, delivered and coordinated the Leadership Summer School; they are involved in the concept development of the AEGEE Fundraising School and they attend international trainer meetings. Making Big Plans

Right now, we are taking several of our cooperations to the next level – we plan a joint Training New Trainers event for February 2013. With VWI, ESTIEM is sharing knowledge and experience and will collaborate on setting up a training library.

A country-wide ESTIEM start-up

has just started!

I remember the days when we talked about ESTIEM Business Incubator which later turned into Business Booster with Dimi and João two years ago. Those were the days when my entrepreneurial senses were being boosted. I was dreaming of founding my own business, my own startup, but I wasn’t sure what to do. Then, with one of my friends, Ali, who is also an ESTIEM Alumnus, we started talking about those dreams.

In Turkey, we still don’t have really great railway connections and it is sometimes really expensive to travel by plane, but, however, we have really great bus companies. Every seat has its own TV, in every bus there is a wireless internet connection and a lot of technological gadgets are available. Turkish people use buses a lot inbetween cities in Turkey. Last year, 250 million bus tickets were sold. Nearly one year ago, while I was having conversations with Ali about being an entrepreneur, I was trying to find a bus ticket in order to go to my hometown to visit my family. It was during one of the religious holi-

Furthermore, the ESTIEM training section is, at the moment, sharing details about training and knowledge management structures with other organisations and looking for ways of further collaboration. Long term speaking, there is a strong drive for close training cooperation between various student organisations. The idea of organising joint Training Advanced Trainers events has been discussed for a while and the need for a communication and idea sharing platform among European trainers has been identified. The training coordinators are in contact and they work on those ideas – but they cannot do this alone. There are already some active and enthu-

days in Turkey, so everybody was trying to go to their hometowns. I had to visit the websites of companies one-by-one. I couldn’t find one single available seat and I was really annoyed. It is easy to find flight tickets for ESTIEM events, by checking one of the flight search engines, comparing the prices and dates and done! There weren’t any engines for bus tickets. Then we started thinking about turning this situation into a business model and we came up with the idea of oBilet. We imagine a website that gathers all bus companies in Turkey such as flight comparison websites. We called our website “oBilet” which is translated to English as “The Ticket”. You could take a look by accesing www.obilet.com. For now, oBilet is offering services just in Turkish but soon we are planning to make it in English as well. I really believe that ESTIEM helped me find my path and be an entrepreneur. Thank you ESTIEM for everything! n

siastic people out there pushing those projects and they look for other passionate trainers and training lovers to support. If you are interested – join external events, take part in the exciting developments and see what begins where ESTIEM trainings end! For more information, contact trainingcoordinator.kmc@estiem.org. n SOME INTERESTING LINKS TO CHECK OUT:

leadershipsummerschool.org trainersforum.org zerogeneration.org

YIĞIT GÜROCAK

Have you ever attended a training on improvisation? Tried to improve your communication with NLP (neurolinguistic programming)? Experienced an open space session? All that and much more you can see, hear and feel when you take a look beyond the ESTIEM training horizon. In fact, there are a big number of other training organisations, communities and initiatives out there. We joined some of them, and we want to encourage all ESTIEM trainers, aspirants and training enthusiasts to do the same! How? Go on reading!

INSIDE ESTIEM

You and me, Europe and 3D

INSIDE ESTIEM

From hard work to a huge success Spring Council Meeting Warsaw

What does it mean to be European? Europe as a continent is not so big and it is relatively easy for us to travel to other countries for holidays, studying, work or to start a new life. However, there are many differences between the countries of Europe.We all live in this small Europe but, do we know each other?

LAIA GÓMEZ VALLE

Currently, the economic crisis is giving almost every country a hard time and we are trying to deal with this situation; each country in its own way, but still collaborating between each other as a whole, as we are a part of something bigger – Europe. We all want to grow and live better in the future. But, how can we do it if we do not understand what is going on in other countries? For example, what kind of political system they have, how their economy is structured or which culture or traditions they have. Each country is different in these aspects. And, what do we have in common? Do you, perhaps, know some characteristics of a country? Did you know that the Norwegian police officers do not carry guns? And that they save a lot of money for the future with the help of the oil reservoirs they found? Did you know that Finland was one of the first countries where women could vote and be elected in the parliament? Did you know that Vojvodina, the northern province of Serbia, has six official languages?? That the president of Hungary is elected every five years? Or that Spain has 17 autonomous regions with each having different statutes, and not only siesta, Sun, or sandy beaches? During a Europe3D event, unfortunately, you do not have the time to answer most of these kinds of questions very deeply, but at least you can get an insight into what the situation in a country is, why it is like that and how people live there. You can learn all of these things by being there, visiting companies, the parliament or important historical places and

also enjoying the time with the people, or participants from other countries. Then you will be able to spot the differences and broaden your knowledge. Europe3D Project was started in the year 2007 and since then, there have been 15 events in many different countries around Europe. We have not seen all of the places in Europe, but maybe we will see a Europe3D Estonia, Europe3D Latvia or Europe3D Macedonia in the future. What should be done in the Project? We are aiming for improving the quality of the events. We want to make it possible for even more participants to be able to go to a Europe3D. In order to achieve that, we need to do more promotion, we need to find ways of approaching ESTIEMers and non-ESTIEMers, thus making the Project and ESTIEM itself more visible. We want to encourage more Local Groups to organise this event. We aim for getting more quality feedback from events, and using it afterwards for improving other events. We also want to make it easier for local organisers to overcome problems that might appear when organising a Europe3D event. In the end, we want to think even further outside of the box, improve the concept and add more value. How to do it? We need motivated people who see Europe in three or more dimensions like us and who will help us take a step further in order to reach our goals. n

Willingness to organise the Council Meeting 2012 in Warsaw came from that: to face the challenge, to stretch our capabilities, to welcome 250 ESTIEMers for the first time in Poland, and at the same time, to make the best event from that. And we succeeded. The feeling that came along was one of the most satisfying experiences. It is not easy to organise a Council Meeting, but as long as you feel safe in our network, nothing can actually go wrong. I was supposed to write an article about our event, but while struggling with words, I came to the conclusion that nothing can explain this as well as writing to you directly and sharing feelings and memories about this challenge that we, the members of Local Group Warsaw, faced during the planning of Council Meeting Warsaw 2012. Our aim was to make you, dear ESTIEMers, feel like at home in Warsaw, to show you the best what Poland has to offer and to hear all your warm words after the event. We were proud to discover that we reached our goals. That week spent in Warsaw was full of your hard work, commitment and important decisions. We are glad that we enabled you to shape the ESTIEM vision and made your time spent in Warsaw unforgettable.

My ESTIEM friend asked me in May, a couple of weeks later: “How did you feel before, during and after the Council Meeting?” And three hours later I was still talking. Organising the Council Meeting is certainly one of the demanding experiences that we will be remembered for a long time. It brought us also an incredible satisfaction and joy that we shared together with 250 ESTIEMers. It was a great adventure and an opportunity for Local Group Warsaw to host a Council Meeting in Poland, expand our network and contribute to Central ESTIEM. The beginning was tough – the project team not big enough, our experience also not so astonishing and, of course, the huge workload. To be honest, we probably doubted many times whether the Council Meeting will be a success. We had, however, somebody who kept on believing in our Local Group – Roza Wypych – our Project Leader who was making things happen from Colombia for several months. Although many people were new to ESTIEM, she managed to foster the ESTIEM spirit and successfully brought this project to an end. There were also many experienced ESTIEMers, former and current Board members whose advice and support we could always count on. They made it safe for us to fall and they helped us rise. Thank you all for that! Last but not the least: thank you Local Group Berlin and Local Group Poznan for preparing the ESTIEMers for the Council Meeting during the Pre-Council Meeting and thanks to Local Group Eindhoven for organising the unofficial Post-Council Meeting. To Local Group Belgrade: we keep our fingers crossed for you and we are waiting for the autumn Council Meeting in Serbia! n

NATALIA KOBZA

We say: “ESTIEM is a safe playground”. We learn, we try, we make mistakes, we succeed. We strive for the best and that is what makes it perfect, as professor Dietrich Brandt told me once.

INSIDE ESTIEM

The Circle of Knowledge

The new

series The Supply Chain Goes Green

Knowledge Management Committee Within the Knowledge Management Committee, we care about storing and processing the experiences of the past for future generations of ESTIEMers. The committee is consisted of three sections: the Training team, the Feedback task group and the Best Practice Document section.

There are of course a lot of factors influencing any event, which makes it very hard, if not impossible, to draw a conclusion from one event only. The challenge is to find patterns, certain questions that regularly get a low or high score or are often commented on (for example, the quality of thecoffee during breaks). Then you can react and update the Best Practice Document to inform future organisers. So, what is our roadmap? We already have and will continue to harmonise the questions of the feedback forms and the structure of the Best Practice Documents. For now, we compare different event types and manually look for patterns in general belongings to find improvements.

These two task groups are recently working closer together in what we call “The circle of knowledge”. The main aim is to further improve the quality of our ESTIEM events by implementing the results from the feedback of the last event in Best Practice Documents, which the next organisOur vision for the future is to compare all ers can use for their event preparation. events more efficiently, discover event specific patterns and follow the development over several years. We are now working on the development of a system that implements those ideas (new feedback tools, feedback on Best Practice Documents themselves, etc.) The next step would be to partly automate the updating process of the Best Practice Documents using the feedback data. If you want to know more about the Knowledge Management Committee and help us develop an efficient way to improve our ESTIEM-events, contact us under leader.kmc@estiem.org. n

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. Jonathan Swift

Being one of the oldest Projects in ESTIEM, our Vision Seminar Series has already been in our network for 20 years. This year’s topic of the Vision Seminar Series is an essential topic for the industries and also our future: “Green Supply Chain”.

While supply chain costs have been purely defined on monetary terms in the past, today’s environment is much more complex and supply chains have to face many more requirements. One of them is the “green factor”. Showing that a company strategically cares about the environment is a huge challenge and much more than just an image issue for companies worldwide. In our series, we will have ten Vision seminars that are organised by sixteen Local Groups in ten different countries. Our amazing Vision Central team with around 20 Visionaries has worked hard to prepare these series and is ready for all the challenges that we will face in the next year. This year we were able to acquire a central partner – STILL. They are one of Europe’s leading suppliers of industrial forklift trucks and intra-logistic services. Having a partner that is connected to the topic of our series brings much more than just financial support – STILL participated in Vision Hamburg and they will also play an active role during Vision St. Petersburg and the Final Conference in Novi Sad.

As STILL already brings academic recognition we were also able to get a patronage for the Vision series – Prof. Dr. Kai-Oliver Schocke. He is a Production Management and Logistics professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt and one of the first ESTIEM members dating back to the year 1990. With STILL and our patronage, we want to bring our project to the next academic level.

I n S e pt emb er we h a d ou r O rg a n i s er s’ Coordination Meeting in Berlin. I can ensure that we have really great and highly motivated Vision organisers this year – they will make sure that you will definitely have a legendary Vision event.

TORBEN SCHÄFFER

JONAS FRIMMER ESIN KOREL

We also created the so-called Feedback System, which helps improve ESTIEM events by collecting feedback from all events and creating event and project specific reports, evaluating the opinions of both organisers and participants in order to find strengths and weaknesses. The Best Practice Document team (or shortened, the BPD-team) provides experiences from other ESTIEMers such as guidelines on how to organise an event. Therefore, we ask former organisers to write down their own experiences and send the information to their successors.

The key step is, hereby, the identification of the lessons that were learned throughout the events, where we need both positive feedback, but also and especially constructive suggestions for improvement points. The main work in the cooperation lays in finding efficient ways to identify the lessons from the past events for the ones to come.

INSIDE ESTIEM

In Hamburg, we kicked off our series with over 35 participants at the end of October and we were also able to visit STILL at their headquarters. After eight more incredible Vision events, we will conclude our series in Novi Sad with the Final Conference and celebrate our 20 year anniversary big time. Therefore do not miss out on this chance and attend one of the upcoming Vision events. Be ready to make the invisible visible and be sure to attend one of the greatest events we have to offer in ESTIEM. We are waiting for you! n VISION EVENTS Event

Dates

Subtopic

Hamburg Vienna&Graz Linköping& Stockholm Helsinki&Tampere Izmir-DEU Porto-Lisbon-Seville St. Petersburg Ilmenau&Dresden Calabria Novi Sad

23.10-28.10 10.12-16.12 29.01-03.02 04.02-10.02 12.02-18.02 17.03-28.03 01.04-07.04 14.04-20.04 12.05-18.05 28.05-02.06

Have you met... Green Supply Chain? Responsibility of Generations Green City Logistics Sustainable Freight Transport Carbon Footprint Iberian Roadtrip - Back to the Roots Window to Europe: Maritime logistics Reduce.Reuse.Recycle Resource Revolution Final Conference

INSIDE ESTIEM

Blowing in the candle

Summer Academy Bulgaria

SELENE BUDAK

This year’s Summer Academy was organised by Local Group Sofia within the mountain resort of Semkovo, Bulgaria.

Second week was the time for us to reflect on what we discussed and develop our minds further by writing and working on a personal thesis. Jim was very supportive when it comes to the selection of thesis topics, he provided freedom and various possibilities of structuring our theses. There were many brilliant ideas to reflect on. Spending three days working on our theses, having time for ourselves, assured the understanding of what was taught and the outcome has been fruitful for all of us. It was an opportunity for us to look at our inner selves and to notice many things that we have been ignoring for so long.

There were two more things that helped us during our Summer Academy period – the caring organisers from Local Group Sofia and the breathtaking atmosphere of Semkovo. The lakes and the mountains provided a calm and peaceful environment for us. With some enthusiastic hikers in our group, we were able to see a wonderful forest and peaks of mountains. We also had the chance to swim in an ice cold lake which had some consequences afterwards when it comes to our health, but it was worth it. Trying to reach the peak left many great memories, even if I was not able to get there in the end. I also suffered for two weeks of unknown allergies, which was hard for me to handle, however, hiking for couple of hours was even more challenging for me! In the end, I had some of the best memories that will stay with me for the rest of my life, thanks to Local Group Sofia. Meeting such good current leaders and probably the best leaders of the future helped me rediscover my hope in the future of our world. Trusting each other and trying to achieve a common goal has never been that much delightful. Being an apprentice of Jim has been a marvelous experience for me. He is one the most caring masters and our conversations will stay with me for a long, long time. Looking back now, I am still struggling to go back to real life. I think it is better for me to settle down now… and then the candle will be blown out. n

Summer Academy – Touched by magic Thoughts of an organiser I must admit that I did not understand from the very beginning what Summer Academy was. As a young ESTIEMer, I assumed this is an event like any other ESTIEM events. It is not.

Riga, our Local Group, is one of the youngest members in ESTIEM. Since April 2012 we are Observers and the process of organising an international event was something new for us. When the Summer Academy Project Leader offered us the possibility of organising such an event, we were very excited to have the opportunity of showing how welcoming and friendly our members are, how cheerful the latvians really are, how proud we are of our country. The most specific thing that an organiser should know is how to create the atmosphere, because, within these two weeks, the participants and the professor become a family. Summer Academy has its own spirit and just like the ESTIEM one, it cannot be described but can only be felt. For Dietrich Brandt’s academy, the main organisers are the participants – they end up creating

the Summer Academy by being there and by being themselves. On the one hand, it is very difficult for the participants because sometimes they are not sure about what they can expect from this event, but on the other hand – it is a miracle, you never know what can happen, that is why the combination ends up being so brilliant. As a local project leader, I understood that in order to have good results, I had to find the best project organisers and in the end I actually did! We were a very small team, but I am so proud about what we did. Summer Academy taught us to trust each other, to be honest and to not take everything too serious – be yourself, be simple, then you can find a solution for everything. Even by only observing I felt touched by its magic and I am happy to have had the chance to make it happen. This Project is not only life-changing for the participants by giving them a serious base for self-growing ; it also gives to the world, twice a year, fourteen better potential leaders. And it gave me the feeling that I was a tiny part of making the world a bit better. n

EVITA VITOLINA KRASIMIRA NATOVA

It has been two delightful weeks of Jim Platt’s company. Much like other Summer Academy’s, the main focus was on the leadership model that Jim and actually many other teachers had been providing us with throughout history. Fourteen future leaders were the apprentices of Jim. Summer Academy is not only a leadership camp; it is certainly more than that. It is not easy to put into words what we have been doing for two weeks but, looking from one perspective, we were awakening ourselves. First days have been an adjustment process to the daily camping routine and at that time, leaving the real world behind was tough. After a while, we adjusted, we were able to comprehend our situation better and we became a part of it like the wheels of a gear.. Now everything was about questioning, enlightenment and synergy – and our group collaborated perfectly.

Later on that week, we dealt with our group thesis and coped with different central ESTIEM related topics. The environment for brainstorming and improving certain things on ESTIEM level was also productive.

INSIDE ESTIEM

Local Group Stockholm exchanges Stockholm visits Budapest

YUWEI ZHANG

The next day, it was time for a visit to the parliament. The majestic building was quite a sight with its beautiful and lavish golden ornaments. After the visit, we went to the MNB (Magyar Nemzeti Bank), the Hungarian National Bank, for a very interesting and exciting lecture about Hungary’s economic system as well as a lesson on how to spot counterfeit money. We even got the opportunity to compare real and counterfeit Swedish banknotes!

Local Group Stockholm left Sweden on an early morning to enjoy a long weekend in the beautiful city of Budapest. We were greeted at the airport by Eszter, the Local Responsible of Local Group Budapest. On our way to the first stop of the day, we were greeted by one of the organisers, Adam, who poured each of us a small glass of pálinka, the Hungarian national drink. We continued to a café where we enjoyed Hungarian soup and desserts and The following afternoon, we visited the Zwack chatted the afternoon away before heading to our acMuseum to learn about the Zwack family and the commodations at a student dormitory. history of Unicum, as well as for some Unicum After settling into our rooms, we headed off for tasting. In the evening, we went to Budapest’s a city tour, starting with the Citadel located on the culture center for a Hungarian folkdance session. Gellért hill from which you can see the entire city. Hungarian folkdance might look easy but it is hard! The fellow Stockholmers and I were unfortunately Luckily, there were many experienced and pavery unlucky with the weather - we were in Budapest tient dancers who helped us through it. The night during one of Hungary’s coldest winters. We could continued with some more dancing at a nightclub not stay outside for too long because of the biting nearby. cold so we had to always move quickly from one The next day began with a lie-in. After a lovely place to another. brunch, we visited the Opera (where we saw more lavish golden ornaments) and Andrássy Street. Late in the afternoon we went ice-skating at the City Park Ice Rink, the largest ice-skating rink in Europe, before we headed home for dinner.. We got to taste some delicious freshly made sausages, among everything else that was offered. On our last day in Budapest, we relaxed at a thermal bath. Afterwards, we were ready for our last night which began with a farewell dinner at a nice restaurant and ended with a memorable night at a pub where we enjoyed each other’s company and played billiard. Everyone from Local Group Stockholm had a great time in Budapest. Eszter and her team organised a great event and we learned and saw a lot about their city. ESTIEM exchanges are really a superb way to travel - not only do you get to see a city in a way you normally would not do, but you also get to meet new people and make friends for life.

Moscow and Budapest visit Stockholm

Local Group Moscow arrived on a sunny Thursday and the first day consisted of mostly shorter city tours and a tour of the university (KTH) campus. That night, we, the organisers, taught our guests traditional songs we sing at our university’s gatherings and fun get-to-knoweach-other games which served as a perfect ice breaker. The night ended with a visit to the posh Sturecompagniet, one of the oldest nightclubs in Stockholm. The next day, it was time for a proper tour of Stockholm. With two organisers as guides, everyone got to visit the beautiful Old Town and the main sites of central Stockholm. That same afternoon, Local Group Budapest arrived and the whole group was finally complete. Friday night was Culture Night, an event inspired by the International Night from ESTIEM Council Meetings; each Local Group brought something typical from their country and put it all on one table so that everyone could explore around. Local Group Budapest brought Pálinka and toasts with a Hungarian paprika topping and Local Group Moscow brought sweets and vodka and made traditional Russian pancakes before arriving to the party. Since it was Easter soon, we prepared a traditional Swedish Easter buffet which consisted of meatballs, eggs with caviar and smoked salmon. Next to this, we also went in the typical KTH student attire: we wore our faculty’s overalls and our “Schmecks” (a hat worn during special occasions by technical students in Sweden, as well as Finland). Saturday started with a fun teambuilding session and continued with a visit to the Royal Palace. We visited the palace’s museum Tre Kronor (or Three Crowns, if you translate the name to English), located in the oldest part of the palace. Our guide told us vivid and colorful stories about

significant Swedish royals throughout history and what life was like in Stockholm around five hundred years ago. The third night consisted of a somewhat more special event. The organisers and guests were divided into four groups to cook and enjoy delicious home cooked Swedish meals at four different hosts’ homes. When dinner was over, we all met at a popular bar in southern Stockholm and danced the night away. The next day began with a visit to the majestic Vasa Museum, where the well salvaged sunken warship Vasa from the 17th century is displayed. The day continued at Drottningholm Palace, the Swedish royal family’s private residence. The palace is inspired by Versailles and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We had a guide who showed us around the palace. The visit ended with free-time in the palace’s breathtaking gardens. Afterwards, we headed back to school for a quick barbeque dinner and then we went to several pubs. Monday, the last day, consisted of mostly freetime. Local Group Budapest had to leave before the evening, unfortunately. That afternoon, the organisers and Local Group Moscow attended a workshop about values and leadership where we reflected upon which values are the most important for us. It was a perfect opportunity for everyone to summarize everything and reflect on the last few days. After the break, it was time for the gala dinner. All in all, organising this exchange event for Local Groups Budapest and Moscow was one of the most interesting things I have done. It was a rewarding experience and Local Group Stockholm now has great new friends from Russia and Hungary. Stay tuned for an upcoming article about Local Group Stockholm’s trip to Moscow! n

INSIDE ESTIEM

Interviewing two previous Project Leaders

Jelena Bajšić, ESTIEM Magazine Project Leader 2011/2012 Will you please introduce yourself to ESTIEMers?

Bahar Akıncı, Vision Crisis and Change Management Project Leader Will you please introduce yourself to ESTIEMers?

Hello lovely ESTIEMers! I am Bahar from Local Group Istanbul-Bogazici. I am in the last year of my studies and I have been an ESTIEMer for three years now. I was the Project Leader of Vision from April 2011 until November 2012. I have had a full student life and now it is the time to grow up and find my way into the corporate world that has come for me. Why did you decide to become a Project Leader?

In Council Meeting Zürich back in 2009, I was abroad for the first time with 200 strangers and it did not really feel that strange. I have had the chance to run into this Project called Vision and I was amazed with how much I could discover in it. And I just could not stop. Many Vision seminars, Council Meetings and Coordination Meetings followed and I knew I had to have my own Vision! What was your job about?

I was responsible for choosing not only the topic of the Vision seminars, but also the organisers, the participants and afterwards monitoring the whole coordination (especially academic-wise) of each and every Vision seminar during my term. I was also responsible for gathering the outcome of each of these events and making it useful for all the ESTIEMers. “Oh, damn. Why did I become a Project Leader?” Your worst experience, please.

Well, that is a hard one. Even though I had many anger breaking moments, I never really said that. Though, I am known for my unlucky incidents each time I am in front of the Council, presenting the Vision Report (the remote controller going crazy and losing all my slides, losing my voice and glasses before the presentation and so on). So stay tuned for the Council Meeting in Belgrade, if you can manage to read this article beforehand.

“Thank God, I became the Project Leader!” What was your best experience during your term?

There was always the proud feeling of achievement after each Vision seminar. That was some pure happiness, but I don’t want to separate one moment from another. However, the most special one so far was when I held a final speech in Vienna after the last Vision seminar of my term. Well, it cannot even be called a speech if you end up crying in between your words, but it was a very emotional and definitely a life lasting moment for me. How did ESTIEM contribute to your professional/ personal development?

Well, take my word, being a Project Leader for one of the coolest Projects in ESTIEM gives a lot to talk about in your interviews. Seriously, you learn a lot about how to manage people, how to manage situations and it is indeed a small simulation of your future leaderships! Is there anyone you want to thank for their support during your time as Project Leader?

My former Board Responsible, also one of my nicest friends, Ilka Petersen was a great support before and after I got elected. We have built the base of the Crisis and Change Management year with her biggest supports. Also, I would like to thank many friends who have supported me with their great advice and who deserve to be mentioned: Berna, Divjak, Geoffrey, Antti, Judith and so on. Also, many thanks to my lovely Vision team, Torben and Andres. And not to forget my current Board Responsible, Marc, who has done his best every time I needed help. Is there any advice you would like to give to the younger ESTIEMers?

ESTIEM is a land of endless opportunities and it is up to you to take the most out of it. And, well, if you still run into me during an ESTIEM event, chances are quite likely that I will buy you a drink, so try and find me. n

I was the Project Leader of the ESTIEM Magazine for the year 2011/2012. If you are interested in knowing more about me, dear ESTIEMer, a personal conversation (if you happen to run into me during an ESTIEM event) will do the trick. Why did you decide to become a Project Leader?

That is a tough question which is hard to answer, because the decision happened over night – literally. In a nutshell, I can just say that I was a very motivated ESTIEMer who wanted to contribute to our lovely organisation and leave some trace. I also loved the concept of Projects and the ESTIEM Magazine was perfect for me in all of its aspects. What was your job about?

As the ESTIEM Magazine Project Leader, I was responsible for creating the issues which are distributed during the Council Meetings. I was in charge of coordinating the main tasks which, when completed, form our official publication. Those tasks include acquiring articles, proofreading (which is done in order to make sure that there are no mistakes such as grammar or spelling) and, finally, the issue design. I had a team of people which was working together with me on these tasks in order to complete them on time. “Oh damn. Why did I become the Project Leader?” Your worst experience, please.

It is pretty difficult for me to grade which experience was the worst for me. I did have several bad situations, but all of them ended on a good note. However, if I have to point out a specific one, I would say it is the first crisis I had as a Project Leader which occurred around six months after my term started. The concept of the Project had changed a bit and I started doubting my own motivation and will to continue working. However, with the help and support of the Board 2010/2011, I managed to get back on track and continue leading the ESTIEM Magazine with the same engagement as before, until the end of my term.

“Thank God, I became the Project Leader!” What was your best experience during your term.

The best experience for me came during the Council Meeting in Warsaw when I gave my last report as a Project Leader, showed the promotion video we made and, lastly, received a letter of appreciation from the Board. All of it was very special for me - the applause I received, the respectful looks from all the ESTIEMers in the room, and the smile on the faces of the Board members. I still remember how overwhelmed I was. I started shivering and I even shed a tear when I was going back to my seat. Then I knew that what I did was treasured and I could see all the fruit of my work. There was a thought that went through my head at that moment: “It really paid off.” How did ESTIEM contribute to your professional and personal development?

How did it not? Being a Project Leader helped me improve as a person – from learning how to delegate tasks to communicating with people, from being more responsible to, most importantly, becoming more self-aware. I got to know myself better, I learned how much I was capable of, how many obligations I could handle at the same time and much, much more. Getting to know myself is, by far, the best lesson ESTIEM taught me. Is there anyone you want to thank for their support during your time as a Project Leader?

I would like to thank those who were with me from the beginning to the very end of my term – my lovely teammates for being so dedicated and responsible. They helped me improve the Project and make it what it is today. Also, I´d like to thank the Board 2011 and, last but not least, the Board 2012 for standing behind my ideas. Is there any advice you would like to give to the younger ESTIEMers?

If you are motivated and want to try and take upon a certain responsibility within ESTIEM but you are doubtful or even afraid - don´t be! ESTIEM will be, without a doubt, an interesting and fulfilling journey for you. You never know what is waiting up ahead, but be sure that whatever it is, it will be worth it. Just take the first step. n

INSIDE ESTIEM

Think cases. Think teams. Think TIMES.

TIMES Experiences from the 2012 Final

The Semi Final in Cambridge was perfectly organised and the chosen cases were fitting perfectly into the IEM concept. After the first days bad performance, we received a very good and constructive feedback from the jury, which helped a lot in our second day’s performance. Incorporating the feedbacks and trying to reach the maximum point on the performance gauge we started working on the second case. At the award ceremony it was really hard, but also beautiful to believe the results. We became also totally aware of the fact that a deep and intensive preparation is going to be necessary to face the challenges in the Final.

Team Budapest

Then we arrived to Stockholm. We considered this year’s Final as the most exciting and toughest challenge in our lives. At the moment, when Mr. Swahn put on the last slide on the overhead projector our heart was beating incredibly fast. It was the biggest pleasure to stand there among the best IEM teams from all around Europe in 2012.

When the plane took off from Stockholm and the captain drove the plane into the sky, I honestly felt that joining ESTIEM about 4 years ago was the best step I could have ever taken in my life. Most of the skills – presentation, leadership, strategic thinking, creativity and of course English communication – that helped me and all of these were coming from the trainings, workshops, working groups and events… That is why I would like to seize the opportunity hereby and declare my greatest honour to the organisation. Thank you ESTIEM! n

What are we facing in our everyday lives? And what do companies have to overcome to stay competitive? They and we are facing problems. After analysing the situation, we try to figure out our own unique solution to it, as so do companies. They have to tackle adverse situations and try to surpass them.

Local Qualifications

September to December

Semi-Finals Kaiserslautern, Germany Karlsruhe, Germany Gothenburg, Sweden Budapest, Hungary Ankara-Bilkent, Turkey Istanbul-Bogazici, Turkey Aveiro, Portugal

January to March 14th -18th January 2013 21st-25th January 2013 25th-28th January 2013 14th-17th February 2013 21st-25th February 2013 28th Febr.-4th March 2013 25th-28th March 2013

Final Munich, Germany

BIANCA LÖW TEAM DARMSTADT

The overall event was perfectly organised by LG Stockholm. Started by a fancy welcoming ceremony with appetizers, jazz music and speeches given by the dean of KTH, the TIMES founder Andreas

Swahn, Xavier Azcue and the organisers of the final Jakob Berthold and Carl Robin Kirchmann, the seven final teams experienced 6 wonderful days in Stockholm. Even the accommodation on a sailing boat transformed into a hostel was spectacular. The seven teams from seven different nations (Budapest – Hungary, Eindhoven – Netherlands, Helsinki – Finland, Milan – Italy, Zurich – Swiss, Darmstadt – Germany, Sofia – Bulgaria) had to solve 3 different cases with totally different subjects. After deciding about an investment project and trying to increase its value (Bain & Company case), the teams had to improve the CSR involve-

The TIMES case study competition is unique since it’s the largest European wide competition for IEM students. During the competition the teams have to solve 3 case studies to make it to the Final, and then 3 more to get the title “IEM student of the year”. But what else makes TIMES so unique?

22nd-28th April 2013

Team Darmstadt First of all congratulations to team Budapest for being the winner of TIMES 2012 and the new “IEM students of the year”! This year’s final was the closest TIMES final that has ever happened in the history of TIMES. The overall level was extremely high and as a result the final points of the teams in a narrow range. The top 3 teams’ (Budapest, Eindhoven, Helsinki) ratings differed only in the decimal places.

That is what TIMES is all about. It brings students closer to company situations and shows them how they work. In addition, the participants have to find the problem and create their own solution and view towards it.

ment of SAM in India (SAM case) and establish a 5 year plan for tackling the economical instability of Nigeria (Nasdaq case). After the hard work was done the fun part began with fantastic dinners every evening which were not only eating but also included singing, Swedish dinner traditions and performances by different teams. To put an emphasis on that point: all the dinners, even the grand gala-dinner on the last evening, were self-cooked by members of the LG Stockholm. They did a great work and all the participants really enjoyed the delicious dinners and the party time afterwards. n

Its diversity. Every case and situation you are going to solve is different and students can use their knowledge to approach it from different perspectives. TIMES gives students the excellent opportunity to apply their knowledge in real life cases, and most important you work in teams on the best solution. Afterwards the participants get feedback from professionals on their case work and presentation skills. So if you haven’t participated yet, what are you waiting for?

Find out when the Local Qualification will take place in your university and participate! It will be the best way to put the theory you learned at the university into practice and to improve yourself in many different ways. So be part of the TIMES competition this year, and see you at one of the SemiFinals in Europe! n

JANINA KRISTIN KÖHLER

CSABA HARTMANN IEM STUDENT OF THE YEAR 2012

When we turned the first page of the case assig nment during t he T I M ES 2012 L ocal Qualification in Budapest none of us believed in victory. Our aim was to participate in an excellent intellectual competition and practice our soft skills. Of course another main driver was to challenge the other teams and compete to become the Winner of the LQ and further compete on international level in one of the Semi Finals.

INSIDE ESTIEM

FOCUS

IIE Annual Conference 2012, Orlando

Taking ESTIEM Over Seas From the 19 to the 23 of May the Annual Conference of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) took place in Orlando, Florida. As the responsible ESTIEM Boardie for the cooperation with IIE, I was invited to join this meeting. th

MARC HEDLER

After taking over the responsibility for the cooperation between ESTIEM and IIE in the beginning of this year, it was clear that a neat follow up of the work that has been started and continued in the previous two years, would set an important emphasis of my work in 2012. In May, a meeting with Gregory Watson, the Fellow and Senior Vice President International of the Institute of Industrial Engineers, took place in Helsinki. Further steps for the cooperation between IIE and ESTIEM were discussed and as a fundamental step, we agreed upon signing the Memorandum of Understanding, which was developed during the previous year and finalised during the current year. Shortly after the XLIV ESTIEM Council Meeting, I was heading to the United States of America in order to attend the IIE Annual Conference.In my backpack I was carrying an envelope with a document, which was about to outline and set the foundation for the further cooperation with the “world’s largest professional society dedicated solely to support the industrial engineering profession”. The conference itself took place in Orlando, Florida and was, according to IIE, a “gathering of Industrial Engineers” with roughly 1.400 attending participants out of which around 700 claimed to have a student background. The concept of this conference was not at all comparable to the Council Meeting I was just coming

from, not only in size but also in the approach of the meeting. IIE is not a pure student organisation, but rather a professional network with a sub-branch for students and their professional development. During the days in Orlando, I was set up with members from different committees and various parts of the central IIE structure, so I was able to explore many aspects of this organisation in the end. In particular, there were conversations with IIE professionals as well as students, for example, regarding membership or recruitment strategies or fundraising and they were the ones that showed me that, although there are many differences, enough similarities and potential touching bases will be the consisting core for the work in the future. I had the chance to join some parts of the students program, called the “Student Track”, during the conference. However, it has to be acknowledged that the further cooperation with IIE will mostly have a professional character. During the four days, I joined, besides many personal meetings, various working groups, keynote sessions and an internal job fair. Following the agreed further steps of the cooperation with IIE, I had a meeting on the final day of the conference with the IIE President Doug Rabeneck and the IIE Chief Executive Officer Don Greene, in order to sign the Memorandum of Understanding. After my stay of eleven days in the United States of America, I travelled back to Europe, having many promising business cards in my pockets, various ideas for the future in my head to follow up together with IIE in my head and an envelope with a signed document in my backpack. n

International Marketing Branding without Borders

FOCUS

International Marketing in the 3rd Millennium INTEGRAL Marketing

CRISTIAN MUSTAȚĂ

International Marketing as a business philosophy is the one that goes beyond borders. What is meant in most books is that it goes beyond national and cultural borders, so it has to take cultural differences into account in order to be successful.

A very important point for the 3rd millennium is that it has to go beyond the borders of traditional marketing and management thinking as well, in order to be successful in the future. As a consequence of an increased number of men and women, among them, consumers as well as employees, the consciousness rises towards subjects like the environment and the quality of life as a meaning to fulfill a higher destiny on earth (higher than just earn money, prestige and material goods); new pressure will press enterprises to rethink their business philosophy and to drive away from models where profit maximisation is the natural “Number 1” goal. Even just simulating interest for the environment and for the quality of life of their employees and customers, like many enterprises do now, might not be enough. In order to be successful, a new business philosophy is needed. But, how do we define success? This question proves to be of great importance. Why do we have an economy and a business world full of various big, medium and small enterprises? What is their meaning in the connection with humanity? Such questions bring us back to the roots, where the answers are simple and clear: the meaning of the economy is to make life on earth easier, to make it easier for all human beings to have a harmonious,

prosperous life and to pursue their personal higher goals of evolution. Because business philosophies have altered massively from this meaning, we see so much trouble and crisis everywhere. Because of the actual state of our planet and our societies, we have to realise that a new business and marketing philosophy is needed. One that really cares for all human beings involved (including customers and employees), as well as for the environment. One such philosophy is the INTEGRAL marketing with its eight principles described in a more detailed way by Mustata (2012). It is called INTEGRAL marketing because of the connection with all our surrounding covering integrity and honesty of managers, real corporate social responsibility, justice and fairness in stakeholder relationship management, ecological sustainability of the planet, a rising concern for human and also animal rights, and sustainable development for a growing world population in the sense shown by Windsor (2008) and even more. It is also called INTEGRAL because it is the abbreviation of eight principles of being and acting in the role of a manager and beyond: Intensity, Non-Conformism, Truthfulness, Effectiveness, Goodness, Responsibility, Authenticity and Love. The Principle of Intensity shows us if we have found our vocation; our work as managers, professors or employees should fill us with passion and joy and the sense of living intense.

The Principle of Creative Non-Conformism enables us to have the courage to be open to new ways of doing business when it is necessary, even against our own inertia or former management routines and eventually the criticism of others. Each great change is impossible without it. It corresponds with the principle of Courage described by Secretan (2007). The Principle of Truthfulness also belongs to the Castel-principles of Secretan (2007) and means that the inner decision has to be truthful in thinking, speaking and acting, while also being open to the customers, employees or other people around us. It ensures a foundation for good long term relationships. The Principle of Effectiveness is the attitude enabling us to reach our established goals in the desired direction including the goals for profit, social contribution, as well as for our personal evolution – a principle also embraced by Secretan (2007). ❱❱❱

REFERENCES Mustata C. (2012), Integral management, an answer to the need of change in the way of doing business in the 3rd Millennium, will soon be published in the Proceedings Volume of: LeanTech ’12, 1st International Scientific Conference on Lean Technologies, Novi Sad, Serbia 13-14 September 2012. Secretan L. (2007), Ganz oder gar nicht!, J. Kamphausen Verlag & Distribution GmbH, Bielefeld 2007, pp. 67-68. Windsor D. (2008), Educating for responsible Management, in: Crane et al (Eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Social Responsibility, Oxford University Press New York 2008, pp. 503-521.

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The Principle of Responsibility is driving all human beings to embrace it beyond their care about their selfish isolated interest in order to merge them with the greater responsibility towards all that surrounds us: our families, our friends, our customers, our employees, our colleagues and the whole environment. Our life and this planet are gifts we inherited in a state of richness and diversity and we are obliged to honor them. Even when making profits we should take care that our business is developing in a sustainable way towards the resources of the environment and of the people affected directly or indirectly by it. Therefore, it is fair to think that we are here for both seeking fulfillment and serving the others, each in our own way. The Principle of Authenticity lives in a deep connection with us, with our own inner nature and truth, where we feel that we are able to connect with infinity. In order to solve a difficult situation in harmony with universal principles the manager sometimes needs to connect to his inner self, to the deep peace coming from inside in order to gain intuitive access to the innovative solution that fits the situation in the best manner. It also means to embrace life as it is, to be present and full of life in all areas one is confronted with.

The Principle of Love envelops all the other principles. It is the best motivation to act and having the love for everything that is affected by our business drives and by our decisions, then they will be in harmony with all consequences. Love means to feel a joyful connection with nature and all human beings and everything that surrounds us. The eight principles of integral marketing cannot give us a certainty for success, but they give a healthy frame to continuously evolve towards perfection and harmony in order to make life more beautiful. Everything that is “touched” by business should have such a philosophy. The world will not change by itself, but if we change our attitude and way of acting and if a large number of us do it and we achieve a critical mass in the end, then a change will surely arise. n

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The Preferred Customer Concept A basic research framework for studying strategic advantages in the competition for the best suppliers The way technology firms manage their supply chains has changed dramatically over the last decades [1]. Firms have shifted from a primarily single firm- centered model to network based inter-organisational collaborations. These networks often spread around the globe facilitating access to new supply markets. However, firms become increasingly dependent on the external supply of materials, goods and knowledge. For the competitiveness of these firms, it becomes an increasing necessity to ensure privileged access to the best supplies in their field of business. In other words, they should aim at becoming preferred by suppliers offering critical resources. This contribution offers a basic research framework of how to study this “preferred customer phenomenon“.

New Challenges within Supply Chains of Technology-based Firms

An entire industry (e.g. European car manufacturers) might lose its competitiveness if it does not ensure prime resources. A prominent example is the Chinese oligopoly on rare earth metals, which are needed for the manufacturing of innovative products like mobile phones or satellites, for instance. A similar scarcity of supplies occurred for other raw materials, such as iron ore, oil and its derivates. Supply markets are increasingly volatile and resource competition is transcending the firm level to a situation in which entire industries compete for resources. Firms and industries are competing for preferential resource allocation from suppliers.

BERND M. ZUNK

The Principle of Goodness has two sides: the inner decision to do what one thinks it is the greater good and to believe that there is a superior benevolent order of the universe that will support us in making good decisions in difficult situations. The change towards integral management will bring many difficult situations until a majority of decision factors in economy and politics abandons old ways of pursuing their narrow interests, their enterprise or their country in favor of the greater good of all life on earth.

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REFERENCES

The Author:

Cristian Mustata is an Associate Professor of Marketing and Human Resource Management at the University Politehnica of Bucharest in Romania and a member of EPIEM (European Professors of Industrial Engineering and Management). Dr. Mustata is interested in the fields of marketing & management ethics, change management, creativity and human resource development. He may be contacted at cristian.mustata@upb.ro

1. Schiele, H. (2012). Accessing Supplier Innovation By Being Their Preferred Customer. ResearchTechnology Management, 55(1), pp. 44-50. 2. Christiansen, P. E., Maltz, A. (2002). Becoming an ‘interesting’ customer: procurement strategies for buyers without leverage. International Journal of Logistics: Research and Applications, 5(2), pp. 177-195. 3. Ellegaard, C., Johansen, J., Drejer, A. (2003). Managing industrial buyer-supplier relations - The case for attractiveness. Integrated Manufacturing Systems, 14(4), pp. 346-356. 4. Essig, M., Amann, M. (2009). Supplier satisfaction: Conceptual basics and explorative findings. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 15(2), pp. 103-113. 5. Ghijsen, P. W. T., J. Semeijn, Ernston, S. (2010). Supplier satisfaction and commitment: The role of influence strategies and supplier development. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 16(1), pp. 17-26. 6. Steinle, C., Schiele, H. (2008). Limits to global sourcing? Strategic consequences of dependency on international suppliers: cluster theory, resource-based view and case studies. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 14(1), pp. 3-14. 7. Schiele, H., Veldman, J., Hüttinger, L. (2011). Supplier innovativeness and supplier pricing: the role of preferred customer status. International Journal of Innovation Management, 15(1), pp. 1-27 8. Ramsay, J. (2001). The Resource Based Perspective, Rents, and Purchasing’s Contribution to Sustainable Competitive Advantage. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 37(3), pp. 38-47. 9. Zunk, B. M.; Schiele , H. (2012). Preisstabilität durch „Preferred Customer Status“: Einflussfaktoren auf Innovationsleistung und Preisgestaltung von Lieferanten. Zeitschrift für wirtschaftlichen Fabrikbetrieb, 107(7-8), pp. 974 – 978. 10. Schiele, H., Zachau, T., Hüttinger L. (2011). Das „Preferred-Customer“-Konzept – Lieferantengunst als strategische Größe für den Einkauf. Marketing Review St. Gallen, 28(4), pp. 20-25.

The Author:

Bernd Markus Zunk is an assistant professor at the Institute of Business Economics and Industrial Sociology at Graz University of Technology. As a teacher of business economics his particular emphasis is on the areas of industrial marketing, purchasing and supply management, marketing controlling as well as marketing intelligence. His research and his habilitation project focuses on the “Preferred Customer Concept”. Bernd M. Zunk is an active member of the Austrian Association of Industrial Engineering and Ma nag e m e n t ( W I N G), t h e Strategic Management Society (SMS) and the International Purchasing and Supply Education a n d R e s e a rc h A s s o c ia t i o n (IPSERA).

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State of the Art in Research

tion might also refer to suppliers’ best ideas, most experienced engineers, and latest technologies [1, 7] as well as to stability in pricing [9]. In strategy research, resources refer to skills and capabilities that can provide firms or industries a competitive advantage. Basic Research Framework to Study the “Preferred Customer Phenomenon”

The upcoming field of preferred customer research so far distinguishes three streams: (1) customer attractiveness, (2) supplier satisfaction, and (3) preferred customer status. Research indicates, for example, that customer attractiveness enables small buyers to access leading edge technologies of large and powerful suppliers [2]. Supplier satisfaction is argued to strengthen the commitment of suppliers in the buyer-supplier collaboration [4]. And a preferred customer status has been shown to increase a supplier’s commitment to, for example, innovation-oriented buyer-supplier collaborations [7]. The concepts of customer attractiveness, supplier satisfaction and the preferred customer status, as well as the relationship between these concepts, form the core of a new research stream led by Schiele et al. [1, 6, 7, 9] illustrated in the figure below. n

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A Future for Education – or is it Learning? The dinosaurs did not become extinct over one single night. It was a gradual process that took many years. Today we know that they were not able to adapt, but during that time, it was probably difficult to see what was happening. Today, very few of us prefer being a dinosaur.

Neither did globalisation happen over one single night. It is a slow moving consequence of new parts of the globe becoming industrialised, which started decades ago. It has also been heavily supported by technology for a very long time. And technology does not know what national borders actually are. Not even iPhone became successful over one single night. It was based on a long development process of a company we today call Apple. The same happened with the new generation of Google products. Apple launched new products as well, when the circumstances were good. Some people are fundamental and claim that timing is everything. I would not agree. However, it surely helps. If looking at Nokia and its current situation, we can learn that, if not understanding the times we live in, we easily might become yesterday’s dinosaurs. When problems arise, who knows if it will be too lateto adapt?

I remember the time when Internet came. I was a part of the generation that did it. Yes, I remember the life before Twitter, Facebook, Google, Netscape, Mosaic, e-Mailing - even before mobile phones. A lot of crazy things happened at that time. Investments were, for instance, made in several businesses that never took off. Education was one of them.Many of us have forgotten what happened in the early days of Internet. At that time, people in my generation talked about e-Learning and expected big changes within the education system. We made some bold moves and also some good ones. For instance, we turned our interest to the, at that time rather small, but growing, gaming industry. We thought and I personally still do, that “gamification” was an interesting term to be used. I think it can teach us a lot about “motivation” – one of the most important keywords when it comes to learning. Without motivation none of us learn anything. Good learning motivates. However, e-learning did not really take off as we thought it should have at that time.

All of this tells us is that it is fundamentally difficult to know when a radical shift is on its way. So, we should be careful before shouting “the wolf is coming”. At the same time, we should be aware of the fact that “sometimes the wolf actually is coming”.

Today we know that the connections themselves where very bad. We also know that neither students, nor teachers, where ready for this change. We also lacked good software. Looking at the early Internet times of e-Learning in hindsight, it is understandable why the education system as a whole never was really shaken up at that time.

With all that in mind – I still have a growing feeling that the walls protecting our system of education might gradually be falling. At least they are definitely shaken up at this moment – and that might be interesting and important enough.

But the globe, technology, as well as us people, have changed since then. Of course e-Learning has gradually grown under the radar screen. Today, connections are here, and you students are already well adapted to the digital life. You know, for in-

HENRIK BLOMGREN

An upcoming stream of research addresses the question of how firms can attain critical supplies. This research moves away from a traditional view on supply management where the market dominates the supply market, and where the supplier persuades the purchaser to buy. Instead, it takes an innovative view on industrial marketing, purchasing and supply management and promotes a situation in which buying firms or entire industries collaborate closely with supply markets to attain better supplies and resources than competing firms or industries. At different levels of analysis, one central research question is: “How can buying firms or buyers be more attractive and more satisfying to supplying firms or individuals in order to induce preferential resource allocation” [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. A “preferred customer status” therefore refers to a buying firm to which the supplier offers preferential resource allocation. Different disciplinary fields describe how preferential resource allocation helps firms and sectors to improve their competitive positions. The type of resource referred to varies across the disciplinary fields. From an operations perspective, they may refer to tangible materials or production capacity in times of scarcity or high demand. This could explain why some firms are afforded preferential treatment in the supply of scarce materials that are denied to less preferred competitors [8]. In innovation management, resource alloca-

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stance, how to download, legally as well as ❱❱❱ illegally. You have physical connections (read: laptops, cables, smartphones, broadband, tablets, wifi, etc.). You have software connections (read: social networks, emails, Second Life, YouTube, etc.). Today I would expect far more from e-Learning than then. Take a look at the music industry; once upon of time, musicians earned their living by selling records. They played live concerts for free in order to sell their records. Then downloading came. Today it is the other way around. Records are nearly available for free, or via new kinds of actors like Spotify. Musicians have had the need for reinventing live performance. Successful musicians have managed to fill bigger stadiums than before and earn lot of money. Other musicians have gone broke. In the meantime, a lot of record companies have downsized heavily.

A professor at the University of Harvard, Clayton Christensen, has recently started talking about Disruptive Education. That is of interest, simply because the old creative destruction theories of Joseph Schumpeter that Christensen is building his ideas on, seem to fit in here. During a time of creative destruction old players are threatened, new ones arise on the scene, and a total whole new pattern of the industry landscape evolves. I hope you have read about these theories in some of your courses. In my country, it is classical reading for IEM-students.

What is then, really, seriously, the added value a university and its teachers are delivering today? And by the way: What is the added value you, students of today, give to your universities? The last question a non-expected one, right? Some claim it is about knowledge, attitude and values; preparing professional skills; learning for life. It could even be about your personal growth and us teachers, as human beings (an idea I personally like very much). Others claim it to be about accreditation, the manifest of the monopoly implicitly embedded in the degree. People who look a bit deeper into it, also claim that a university gives their students access to a unique network – useful for your whole future carrier (as well as you as unique individuals in order to create that network to the universities as such). Networks are important in life. If looking upon an educational system of today in this way, and combining it with theories of creative destruction, you easily get heavily curious when thinking of e-Learning of today. ❱❱❱

The Author:

Henrik Blomgren is an Associate Professor in Industrial Management at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, and guest Professor in China. Executive training, management consultant and different kinds of industrial practice are headlines towards what Mr. Blomgren does. Bridging analytical thinking and business action, preferably in the field of marketing and business development and entrepreneurship are also subjects of his interest. He is also a patron of ESTIEM and may be contacted at henrik.blomgren@indek.kth.se

One of my personal predictions for the future is that the business of education actually really is in a period of a rather fundamental change. It will not happen overnight, but if we teachers do not look out and re-invent our role as teachers we could end up becoming the obsolete dinosaurs. And, by the way, this probably goes for you students, as well. Since you are the customer, as well as the supplier, even a part of the system, it is reasonable for you

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to have to change in the future. I hope you do not only expect us teachers to be the only ones changing here? I hope all of this could make us stop focusing only on “credits”, “education” and “teaching” and instead talking about: learning, personal development and networks. That kind of future would be interesting to live in.n

International Marketing In the late 1960’s the first completely globally linked television programme which included live contributions from all over the world, ended with the Beatles singing ‘Love is all you need’, specially composed for the occasion.

In the years since, televisions have been distributed globally in their billions… but the love got ignored. There was a sociologist, Marshall Mcluhan, who wrote a book around that time called ‘The Medium is the Message’. You might care to note that he was right. Apple has been similarly successful, selling millions of devices for communication that have transformed the way we communicate. But has it made us better people? Ironically, Apple’s company logo is an apple with a bite taken out of it. The story it inevitably brings to mind is the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, where the biting of the apple – in response to some very seductive encouragement from the serpent - led to expulsion from the Garden of Eden and endless struggle thereafter to build lives that are truly meaningful. So you have 300 “friends” on Facebook? Huh? Really? Try looking the word up in a dictionary. Endless trivia. Love is no better off than it was before. And meaningfulness is…nowhere. Tell me again, what is it you`re going to market, globally?

What ESTIEM markets globally – well, round Europe so far, anyway – is love. The bankers, in half the time ESTIEM has been at it, have marketed a whole view of economics that is well on its way to wrecking the universe and it is quite clear that we are in for a far harder time yet before we get out of this mess. And the core of it all has been the steady persuading of people to borrow money to buy things they cannot pay for. (Hello serpent! You again!) Now tell me again… what is it you are going to market all over the world? It doesn’t seem to me we are short of stuff. But it does seem to me we are going to have a hard time loving each other as this mess gets worse. So marketing more of that ”love” stuff that ESTIEM manufactures might be quite a good idea.n

The Author:

Jim Platts, a lecturer (Manufacturing Engineering Tripos) and examiner (Manufacturing Leaders’ Programme) from the university of Cambridge, spent 23 years in industry, was a partner in the consulting engineering practice Gifford and Partners, 1981-6, MD of Composite Technology Ltd 1986-9 and is now a lecturer in the Institute for Manufacturing. His interests are design and manufacturing, particularly skill-based manufacturing, and a concern for ethical leadership.

JIM PLATTS

This is an interesting analogy to the upcoming future of education. It means us teachers must re-invent our role. We need to become far better at real live performance, as well as, on the other hand, free online goods. What I mean is, we need to be far better in handling both of these extremes than we are at this moment.

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An Exchange in a City Blossoming With Culture

Vienna

OANA MÜLLER

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of Erasmus, I will begin with emphasising on the fact that being a student abroad is not all about studying and partying hard, it is also about the connection you manage to harmonise with the host city. Prior to that, your entire environment will be changed, and you will be able to get to know yourself better under different circumstances. Also known as the city of music and dreams, Vienna is a sophisticated place that invites you to refinement, joy and good mood, spread all over the city through its modern architecture, young galleries and trendy clubs and also through its museums and concert halls. All the tremendous efforts worth every single penny when you get here and start to be a part of this amazing world, filled with scents of historical inspiration. Since we embarked on our journey (with another seven students from Romania), we have known that we were going to uplift into another dimension, different than the one we have been used to. Over the past few years I’ve visited lots of places in Europe, but never stayed more than three weeks. The more time you spend somewhere, the more you will get to know the city’s secrets. In Vienna, I have lived four fantastic months and I regret I could not have stayed more. These four months opened my eyes largely and made me fall in love with the place.

Education

Regarding the academic aspect, I can say I`ve been surprised by the fact that at my host university I was able to choose every subject I wanted to study, no matter of my specialisation. If you want to study astronomy (or any other subject you have interest in), you have this opportunity. It is really nice when you have this feeling of freedom in choosing whatever you like. The professors were understanding towards the foreign students, giving us support every time we required it. But… Very important! … In order to study in Vienna (at least at the Technical University of Vienna), it is kind of mandatory to speak and understand German. Most of the courses are in German. People

Vienna is a cosmopolitan city with a mix of different nations. Each subway ride will delight you with Spanish, English, Japanese and so on (I am certain you understood the point). As an ESTIEMer, one of the biggest advantages of studying here is the fact that Vienna has an extremely friendly Local Group ready to adopt you. During my stay, I participated in the Crisis and Change Management Vision seminar, which was one of the best events I have ever been to (it is even nicer when you have access to the backstage and you see people organising things).

90% of my neighbors in my dormitory were Austrians. It is a great way to improve your language skills but if you are looking for diversity and more fun, go and search for an Erasmus dormitory where you can party every day and every night. I noticed that Austrians are really relaxed in everything they are doing: relaxed in restaurants, relaxed at school, relaxed at jobs. I just love the way they see life. Activities

Vienna is fascinating when it comes to its culture. If you come here, don’t miss the chance to visit as much as you can. Either you chose Gothic, Baroque or Art Nouveau, the diversity is impressive: Vienna has over 27 castles, more than 150 palaces and over 100 museums. So, let the cultural adventure invade you spiritually. In the summer semester you will never get bored here. My favorite places are the Kahlenberg Mountain, from which you can have an amazing view of Vienna and the Old Danube shore. A picnic with the other Erasmus friends after swinging in the sun might be incredibly delicious. Also, at the Bundes Strand you can enjoy the Old Danube`s shore on an artificial beach and, of course, you can swim in the clear blue water. If you are the water sports addict type, Vienna is still the perfect place for you. You can sail, you can do canoe, wake boarding and much more. I also recommend Prater Park for amusement and for strong sensations.

One more thing to add – every student has the opportunity to do what kind of sports they want to do, with a really cheap price per semester, somewhere around 20 euros. You can practice every sport you can imagine, from basketball, canoe, swordplay to ballet and eye-moving. Pretty interesting, isn’t it? Nightlife

Vienna has a big variety of clubs, with different types of music, from Rock ‘n’ Roll to Latino and Electronic. There is also a club frequently visited by the Erasmus students: the Ride Club. The beverages here are really cheap and the atmosphere is incendiary. There are parties every day of the week. Summer in Vienna is best enjoyed in the open air. You can relax in bars along the Danube channel, which is a great way to listen to some really good music and also chat with your friends. MUST DO: Grab your new friends, a bottle of wine and go to the Museums Quartier, a city oasis during the summer. I can guarantee you some quality time, relaxing on the fancy loungers and listening to music. This is how the modern Viennese do it. So, if you have the chance to study here, you will not regret it. Being an Erasmus student in Vienna is a great challenge that everyone should take advantage of, at least once in a lifetime. n

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But, to be honest, I had quite a hard time to adapt to the new culture. The people in general just tend to look for an easy life, they love to have fun and enjoy their lives even if that means not having much money. To be in time is almost a crime, and to look for efficiency can be considered futile in most cases. But this is what taught me to be more relaxed and to live in a world totally not compliant to my own.

A Summer Apart from Europe

¡Viva México!

ROBERT GLAWAR

What is it that, which every student dreams about, after a busy year full of studying and exams? Maybe some Siesta at the beach, parties with a lot of Tequila, or traveling and exploring a new culture? Well, I decided that my summer should have all of those things. So I decided to pack my stuff and went off to Mexico. Ten weeks later, I came back home having experienced everything previously mentioned and so much more.

It was not really that easy because, in order to get an internship, it took me quite some time and bureaucratic efforts to get it done, but thanks to IAESTE, everything was settled quite soon and I could take off to “Victoria de Durango”. Durango is one of more than 30 Mexican federal states and with “only” 600.000 inhabitants, its capital is not even close to being important. Anyway, it is fun to know that Durango is called the Land of Scorpions, because nowhere else can one find so many different types of scorpions per square meter. Also, more than one hundred Hollywood movies where filmed in Durango.

From the very beginning, I felt more than welcome and one could see that the Mexicans are very friendly and hospitable. Some locals were even picking me up at the airport and helped me to find a flat in a peaceful area of the city, so I ended up living together in a house with two Spaniards, as well as a Turkish and a Polish girl (two of them where IEM students just like me, by the way). But besides having a nice countryside, Durango was rather boring, so my international friends and I tried to get away as often as possible and visit as much of Mexico as we could. At first, we went to the beach and visited Mazatlan, one of the main tourist attractions and also the biggest harbor in the country. It is popular for its cliff diving, as well as having a nice time in the clubs and bars nearby. That is when I first found out how loco the Mexicans can get when it is party time, and that they love nothing more than to dance to their local music, banda, which is an alteration of Bavarian folk music.

One of the things that will always be in my mind is the very tasty food. Although Mexicans eat almost only meat and a lot of sweets, they have many traditional dishes completely different from what I knew before (and not even close to the Texmex food one can find in Europe). However, my favorite thing to do was to travel. Our longest travel was to Mexico D.F. (Mexico City), which is one of the biggest cities of the world, having more than 20 million inhabitants. The city is so big that, when arriving by plane, you cannot tell from above where the city ends. You just see houses in all directions.

However, the city has so much to see that you cannot stop being amazed. The huge markets, old Aztec temples, the floating gardens, the colonial monuments, but mainly the people and the intercultural flair just makes you want to spend more time in this metropolis. For me, the best part of my whole stay in Mexico was the visit of the pyramids of Teotihuacan. Amazingly, they are in a much better state then the Aztec legacies, although they have already been there long before the Aztecs. I also was very fond of our trip to Tequila – the city, where the typical blue agave is growing which one needs to produce tequila, the beverage. To be honest, after having the pleasure of tasting the real Tequila, it is hard for me to ever drink what they sell at home again. If any of you ever get the chance to visit Mexico, go for it! But keep in mind that it is a very different culture from what you might be used to at home. n

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The Most Beautiful Times Surpass The Fastest A Semester in Cologne

SEMA KARAN

I was one of the luckiest students who had a chance to do the ERASMUS exchange in Cologne. Everything started with finding out that I would be the first student in my faculty who qualified for an Erasmus semester in Cologne. Even though I had a lot of anxiety about life in Cologne, all the unnecessary concerns ended up with being picked up from the airport by an Erasmus student, whom I just asked on Facebook without knowing each other before and it was enough to understand how the people are helpful and how a friendly atmosphere is waiting for me. Cologne is the fourth-largest city in Germany which is located on both sides of the Rhein River, the place of birth of “Eau de Cologne” which we know as lemon scented water and of the famous carnival, which is also known as one of the biggest festivals in Europe - the Cologne carnival.. Cologne benefits from a large market structure, while the city is also an important cultural and research center and home to a number of corporate headquarters which enable students to find internship programs easily. Cologne University of Applied Sciences is Germany’s biggest University of Applied Sciences, having ten faculties and over seventy courses in engineering and social sciences as well as humanistics, architecture, mechanical engineering, social work, business law and foreign languages. Despite of the fact that the Bachelor courses are being taught mostly in German, the lecturers would provide exams or homework in English to give an opportunity to Erasmus students not to fail, if she/he does not reach the required German level to pass the courses.

During my Erasmus period, I have never had any language problems related to making myself clear in English because almost every German person had the necessary knowledge of English which made my life easy for both documenting processes and daily work. I urged myself to improve my German skills. In the beginning I talked very slowly after starting every time with my typical sentence “Ich kann ein bisschen Deutsch sprechen” (I can speak a little German). I was listened patiently by my lecturers and my German friends encouraged me. Putting all this understanding and charity aside, good life conditions, social and sports activities both within university and daily life enabled me to adapt to Cologne easily. There are lots of accommodation offers in student residences and dormitories near the university with a reasonable price. Another benefit for students is the transport by trains, trams, buses in the North Rhine-Westphalia Area, which means 31 districts and 23 urban districts with your semester ticket that is paid every semester. Thanks to the semester ticket, I could visit the other small and lovely German towns with the other Erasmus students or my German friends. Moreover, due to the perfect location of Cologne, I was able to explore the countries close to Cologne like France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and to learn about new cultures in Europe. Besides all that, Cologne welcomes lots of international students every year and many events are organised for these students involving one or two times international parties in the most wellknown clubs, activities arranged by Karibu which is a small association for Erasmus students at Cologne University of Applied Sciences and ESN Köln which is carried out by the University of Cologne.

Erasmus Student Network (ESN) is one of the interdisciplinary student associations in Europe for supporting and developing exchange students. ESN offers help in academic, social and practical integration processes. I was really lucky because ESN Köln is one of the most active branches and thanks to ESN, I attended many activities which include cultural and social events such as trips to various places within the country and out of the country, film nights, language projects, international food festivals and last, but not least, parties. Some of them were also trips to Hamburg, Berlin, Paris, Prague, Amsterdam, etc. At the time of such a cosmopolite atmosphere, finding a tandem partner to develop language skills which you want to improve, to practice speaking and to learn new idioms and words was a perfect opportunity and I developed my German skills thanks to this opportunity. And what about ESTIEM Local Group Köln? In spite of not having a Local Group in Cologne, there are many ESTIEMers who are doing their masters or exchange programs and they come from nearby Local Groups like Siegen, Aachen, Dortmund and Paderborn which are all in North Rhine-Westphalia area. Actually, all ESTIEMers already know Cologne with one of the popular ESTIEM songs – “Heute fährt die 18 bis nach Istanbul” (Today, line 18 goes up to Istanbul) which is also one of the favorite Cologne carnival songs. All in all, Cologne is a wonderful option for your year abroad if you intend to have unforgettable memories while exploring Europe and getting to know many foreign students. Erasmus in Cologne was a special journey for me, whose final destination I never wanted to reach. n

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A Huge Small City

Lund

JONAS FRIMMER

When planning a semester abroad, there are so many great places to go to: Spanish beaches, South American mega-cities, famous US universities or growing Asian metropolises. This text will prove why I did not regret going to a rather small city in the south of Sweden for one second. That city is Lund.

It has slightly more than 80 000 inhabitants, however more than 40 000 are students. Adding the university staff and you can easily understand that the university IS the town itself. That, of course, has a big influence on the life within the city. It is young, dynamic, friendly, international and very welcoming (except for the semester a break, then the whole place is a ghost town). If you, however, at one point urge for some big city air, Malmö – Sweden’s third biggest city – it is just ten minutes away and Copenhagen can be reached in 40 minutes. When I first arrived in Lund in August 2011, the city presented itself a little different to me – during the first night someone broke into my parents’ car (who dropped me off on their way to their holiday) and stole my laptop and all the electronic equipment I left in the car. I did not feel too secure because of being in Sweden. However, that little bump on the road was quickly forgotten once I started my life there. I was lucky enough to get a room in a student dorm before coming here – others had to camp in front of the international housing office to get one of the last places during the next day. I immediately liked my new home.

It was quite far outside of Lund, but since you do everything by bike anyway, that “far outside of Lund” meant 20 minutes to the university – in capitals that would be called a fantastic location – I really did not mind. We were all international students there, including many Germans. That was not unusual, since Sweden, in general, and Lund, in particular, is a highly popular place for exchange students and those that are doing international master studies (about 5000 international students come to Lund each year). Therefore, it is not very easy to get in touch with Swedish students, despite the fact that there is an ESTIEM Local Group there. Probably the best opportunity for that are the „nations“: student organisations which are responsible for the social life around the campus. They organise the nightlife, offer lunches and brunches (you especially would not want to miss a brunch when you are in Lund, it’s extremely good), sports and theater. Since it is all organised by students, it is incredibly cheap for Swedish conditions. You can either just enjoy the offer of the nations, or work at those places yourself, get to know Swedish students and participate at the „Tack-sittnings“(parties with a certain motto). Since mostof the Swedes speak excellent English, there is no need to learn Swedish, but I tried it nevertheless. It is great to slowly improve and to be able to understand more and more of the Swedish culture. Additionally, the Swedes are very patient and do not mind repeating one sentence three or four times until you understand it. At some point, I was even confident enough to take a course taught in Swedish, which meant that reading the course material cost a lot of time and my group members had to rewrite my part of the essays to proper Swedish.

The studying part was also very interesting– Lund offers a vast variety of courses and thanks to their quite good reputation, they often have very interesting guest lecturers. In general, the learning style is very different to German universities – at least to Karlsruhe. A lot of group work is done, case studies are a part of almost every course and the exam in the end of the semester is mostly responsible for 25-50% of the grade. That, of course, means that there is a stricter view on the attendance, which restricted my possibilities to travel. However, you should not go to Sweden for a longer period without seeing Stockholm and Gothenburg and a trip to the north of Sweden is also supposed to be fantastic. All in all, I liked it so much, that I first extended my stay from one semester to a study year and then decided to even look for an internship over the summer in Sweden. That turned out to be harder than expected, since the Swedes do not have the classic internship as a part of their studies, if anything, they write their thesis at a company. During a job fair, however, I managed to get a place at the E.ON wind energy team in Malmö, where I started right after the Council Meeting in Warsaw. I worked there in a very international and young team (up to five different nationalities among eight people). The most apparent thing I noticed was that the Swedish working life is really progressive. They have highly flexible working hours, which also applies to interns. The coffee breaks (or „fika“) are almost compulsory and are a great opportunity to get to know your co-workers. Another nice thing about Sweden is that you call everyone, no matter whether he is the dean of the university or a CEO of a company, by their first name. It is a more friendly and relaxed atmosphere.

Something that I will definitely remember is Swedish midsummer. Everyone, from small children to older people, who show surprisingly good stamina at that occasion, is dancing around a big pole and singing songs about pigs, frogs and many other animals while imitating them. The program after that is classical family time and I unfortunately did not get to take part there, but as far as I know it contains plenty more songs and Aquavit, a special Swedish drink (it takes time to get used to it). After midsummer, the big cities are very empty; everyone goes on holidays, what remains from work lasts, more or less, for one and a half months. I could enjoy that time very much, because, for the first time in my life, I lived at a beach, and when the weather was not too bad (unfortunately, Swedish summers are not very reliable), we spent our time playing beach volleyball and going swimming. Now after the last month in Malmö, it is time for me to go back to Karlsruhe. I am looking forward to making the best out of it in Karlsruhe as well, but I can already say that this last year in Sweden was a highlight through and through! n

EXPLORE EUROPE

One Semester at LiU Expanding Reality

But enough of those clichés and I guess, if you do not happen to be from Scandinavia or a member of ESTIEM, you might have never heard about the city of Linköping before. To get you started, Linköping is actually the fifth largest city in Sweden. It has about 145.000 inhabitants, is located in the province of Östergotland in southern middle Sweden and known for its university, cathedral and high-tech industry. Before coming to Linköping, I did a little twoweek road trip with an old friend from school through northern Germany, Denmark and southern Sweden. Once I arrived in Linköping, I realized pretty soon that this city is made for students and that student life here would be going to be a little different than what I was used to. Or do you see Crocodiles take on American football players in a soccer match or a portable wood-heated hot tub in the middle of campus every day? Like the majority of students at Linköping University I lived in a district called Ryd, which might not be the most beautiful and stunning district ever but it is simply great to live there. First of all your friends are never far away and it is actually impossible to go outside without running into wellknown faces. At night this brings the advantage that there is always at least one awesome corridor party going on within a five minute walking range. At day it is perfectly suited to meet with friends to cook together or just hang out. Moreover, you can rent saunas and a lot of other things for free from the housing company. Especially the saunas are great - we celebrated some nice sauna parties which

got more and more fancy, including disco lights and a swimming pool in the shower. Needless to say you can reach any part of the city by bike or bus in no time. A little less than 30.000 students study at Linköping University on three different campuses. LiU was actually the first university in Sweden to offer an industrial engineering program and it is popular for its student-centred teaching. Student labs and other facilities are at the highest international standards as the results of the International Student Barometer show. For myself it was quite interesting to study in a, compared to my home university in Karlsruhe, quite different system. A lot of teaching was done in the form of projects and other forms of group work with a high practical context. Therefore, the workload during the semester was maybe a little higher than at home but since every semester is divided into two terms and the exam preparation does not need as much time, I was definitely able to enjoy life outside of university. Besides from university, I was happy to use my time as an ERASMUS student to experience the country. And again, Linköping proved to be an excellent choice, this time as a place to start your trips. Since it is situated pretty centrally within the denser populated area of Sweden, you can reach all other major cities by train or bus very fast and inexpensively. Together with other ERASMUS students I made trips to Copenhagen, Malmö, Lund, Gothenburg, Kalmar, Stockholm, Luleå and northern Sweden, Norway and the Baltic capitals. At the same time do both Linköping itself and its surroundings offer plenty of possibilities to spend your free time. We, for example, went to a couple of ice hockey games of the local hockey club LHC that plays in the first Swedish league Elitserien. If you would rather work out yourself, of course you can do that too. Jogging trails in the nearby forest

even have lights so you can go running after coming home from university in the evenings. Typical for Sweden, nature is never far away. In the region surrounding Linköping you can find thousands of forests and even more lakes. And despite the rather chilly temperatures in fall we went hiking or canoeing whenever there was time. At night we could chose from a variety of different clubs in the city center or the famous student parties on campus. These parties are called “Kravall” which means that you should wear your overall. Overalls are a big thing in Linköping. Each section has its own color and there are quite some battles between the exchange students about who has the coolest overall or gets the most batches for attending the most student parties. To get to those parties I was able to take part in another Swedish habit: queuing. Swedish people apparently love to queue for any reason or at least they do not mind it. While I was quite amused at the beginning, I soon learned to become part of that custom, sometimes waiting as long as 18 hours to get some of the highly desired Kravall-tickets, which is definitely worth the waiting time. Before I could even think about it winter time had arrived in Linköping. Unfortunately, that meant that the semester was coming to an end way faster than expected. On the other hand was it great to experience some genuine Swedish winter/ Christmas traditions and of course plenty of the so called Glögg (mulled wine). Eventually it was time to say goodbye to all of your new friends and pack for going home. After all, I can only recommend the ERASMUS program to everyone even only slightly thinking of it. Not only will you get a nice addition to your résumé but you will also make new friends from all over the world and get insights into a different education system and culture. I definitely would not want to miss all the wonderful memories created in one semester abroad. n

TOBIAS ROSSBERG

Linköping? Where is that? - I really don’t know how many times I have heard that question before and after my ERASMUS semester, that happened in precisely that town in Sweden, the country of IKEA and H&M, tall, blond-haired people and, of course, moose signs.

EXPLORE EUROPE

EVENTS

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