Q&A forum is now officially opened

Hello eveybody!

AIESEC Tallinn LCP and EB VP candidates 08-09 Questions and Answers (Q&A) round in the special forum is now officially opened. You can ask questions March 1-6 and the candidates have time to answer until March 7.

You can find LCP candidates' applications here:
http://myaiesec.net/content/viewfile.do?contentid=10007689

and VP candidates' applications here:
http://myaiesec.net/content/viewfile.do?contentid=10007687

Firstly all candidates are to shortly introduce themselves in the forum - who they are (name, current position), what do they expect from the application procedure and whatever else they find necessary to say.

I recommend you to subscribe to the forum and add it to your bookmarks:
http://www.myaiesec.net/content/viewforum.do?contentid=10007718

Good luck everybody and waiting for lot of questions!

Riina
LCP 07-08

And the brave ones are...

(drums please)

I'm truly happy to announce the candidates for the Executive Board of AIESEC Tallinn for the term 2008-2009.

For the LCP position we have two candidates:
Oliver Immato
Liise Valma

For the EB VP positions we have four candidates:
Ott Niggulis
Jaan Lainurm
Merilin Piik
Nele Koduvere

You can find VP candidates' applications here:
http://myaiesec.net/content/viewfile.do?contentid=10007687

and LCP candidates' applications here:
http://myaiesec.net/content/viewfile.do?contentid=10007689

For all you full members out there - well, you know what to do, I'm sure! ;) Read the applications, look out for more information coming soon and keep yourself up-to-date with all that's necessary!

PS! If you haven't registered to the Spring Seminar yet, you can do it here:
http://www.eformular.com/niggulis/springseminar.html

Good luck to all the candidates!

Cheers,

La presidenta Riina

Epilogue

I felt that previous two posts were sort of incomplete without bringing out what I learned most from these two special events - applying for EB VP and for LCP.

(1) There is never enough time for filling in the application. Especially when it gets just a bit thorough each year and requires more research for knowledge.

(2) There is never enough time for writing the MOST PERFECT speech. Everything just happens so quickly after sending in the application.

(3) There aren't right or wrong answers for the application, in the Questions&Answers round, during VP candidates' interviews. There are just answers which suit AIESEC Tallinn reality more or less.

And if I was to give few recommendations based on these, that would be it:

(1) Look at the application as soon as possible after it comes out. Then you what is waiting ahead and how to divide your time between your responsibilities so that you would have fair amount of time for answering questions.

(2) If you're not so sure what should the speech be like, ask around. There are plenty of members around who have given speeches when applying for EBs and they would be most delighted to chat with you and help you. If you don't know where to start - look up some general information about writing speeches in Google for example. All in all - talk about things you know, if you don't know - find out and make sure you know what you're talking about ;)

(3) Make sure you know how the process is like (what has to be filled in, when is something happening, etc), then it's a whole lot easier to focus on the content and quality!

As I have mentioned before - I would be happy to help you if you have any questions, so feel free to contact me :)

I wish you best of everything on your journey!

Riina Maisa
President of AIESEC Tallinn
2007/2008

Some links:
made a spontaneous speech? in English
being an example? in Estonian
had to come up with a speech? in English
almost done with the speech? in English
coming to an end? in English
Speech tips

Thinking of applying for EB* 08/09? 2/2

If you thought that the second part would be about applying for EB the second time, you are absolutely correct :)

I'm not quite sure anymore when I first started to get ideas that I could apply. I guess somehow it came from seeing how well Siim managed our team. And most likely from the fact that people had high hopes for me. There were a lot of people who tried to convince me that I should apply to become the next LCP**, but I had all my life planned already and LCP year didn't really fit the plan.

I remember so well those conversations with Siim and something he  told me once - if I want to get the kind of leadership experience that would help me in the future managing for example my own family, then LCP year would definitely be IT. Ahh, yes, I haven't mentioned yet - my other option was to apply for MC VP, but that wasn't so facinating either, I suppose.

So this time I managed to help a little bit with the application and booklet and felt really good about it. I started to like the idea of applying - especially because I started to find out who were the people who thought of applying in other cities - Kribu and Mari. Ooh, that was nice how we already bonded before we were elected, in Synergy 2007 we saw the real synergy that we could create!

Guess what - I hadn't learned from applying the year before! The application was a little bit shorter in length, but a lot longer in it's content. The questions were harder, more information had to be searched than ever before. And during all this time - I was quite alone with my doubts. I even considered not sending in the application, but thanks to Siki who motivated me so much during these last few hours, I made it!

This time it was also tougher to make the speech. As in previous elections I reminded myself the magic of writing speeches, this time I wanted to take it a step further. So I decided to make sort of "spontaneous speech" :) It took a lot of self searching, finding out what would people want to hear, reading new information from the web, looking for puzzle images at 2am before THE DAY!

The competition was hard, votes divided between us - it really was a close call that I would not be writing this here today from LCP point of view. But I made it and it has been one of the best things that happened with me in AIESEC! And today I couldn't be happier about my decisions so far :)

I hope you have enjoyed these brief stories about my journey when I made these decisions and if you wish to know about it more - feel free to call me, e-mail me, skype me or msn me, I'd be happy to help you with your learning as well ;)

PS! There will also be a sequence for this story in the next post ;)

____

*EB = Executive board
**LCP = Local Committee President

Pictures from EuroCo 2007

The official dinner was a success, wanna know why?

• Food was great - after whole week of eating Lithuanian traditional food, we got something really different
• People danced AIESEC dances wearing suits and nice dresses - how odd is that?!
• Really good cake!
• People were given time to talk with each other instead of having an evening full of speeches and performances
• The main sponsor was really youthful and his speech was something totally different from what I expected
• There was no "This is table nr 1..." and it's the first event when I've seen that happen :D
• Amazing people, lots of cool conversations, some good-bye's...

I really liked that evening, it took everything together so nicely :)

Practical Leadership - after EuroCo

I was thinking about the title of this post for bit longer than I usually do. One of the reasons being that I wanted to write about two things that seemed at one point totally different deserving different posts. No, it will be under one topic and that's it :)

Coming back from EuroCo

Imagine - it's 5 in the afternoon and the conference ends, people are leaving home (airports, bus/train stations, etc) and 2 Estonian girls know that they have at least 5 more hours to "kill" before they can start heading home. So, we made it to Vilnius, found a place to hang out, enjoyed good food and some tea. Everything is still quite fine. Then comes the decision to rest in the car while we wait for the others and almost the same time comes information that 2 Latvian girls are now ready to join us. Okey, so we meet them, they want to go to this party, I want to sleep in the car, so be it. (Just for your information, McDonalds parking lot near train station is not the quietest place to be at trying to sleep).

If you managed to think along, you'd know that there is one girl trying desperately to get some sleep, 3 girls at a party and 1 girl still not with us and the time just goes by. It's past midnight when we first hear from her, so we managed to get nearer to the place she's at. And that's when it really strikes me - all of us waiting in the car, we are absolutely widening our limits, our minds. There is high tension, because all of us are tired and can't wait to leave this city, but still - no one says a word.

Many times when we come across these situations, we find it hard to keep our mouth shut or just avoid certain topics in order to keep the thin line of balance. That to me is leadership in practise - always recognizing the situations around us and acting accordingly. Realising that we are not leaders only when we are with our own team but also in our everyday life.

The role of the leader should never be put 'on hold' - it should reflect to ourselves and to others in all of our actions!

Stay tuned for part 2 ...

la presidenta AIESEC Tallinn

Huuh, it's been almost-almost one week that I've been officially la presidenta and it feel quite good already :) Although most of my energy still has gone to my studies because of the exam session, I've had few things on my mind and todo list.

It's always so hard to know exactly what the president is doing because a lot of P's work doesn't really stand out or show out. So I just wanted to share what I did during my first week ;)

Last Friday, my very first official day, I got a message from one of our members that she got a message that her membership in our database has expired. So the very first thing I got to do, was to update all members in our database. Some of them needed to expire, some of them will be around in AIESEC for at least another year, right :D

Also on Friday we had our AIESEC Tallinn picnic which was organised by our cute&cool PD&HR Liise and Siret. They had done really good job ;) Anyways, my task there was to first give a short speech and later fill some different tasks with my EB team. We succeeded quite well, I think :)

Then almost endless e-mails with the new P-Club regarding different issues in AIESEC in Estonia. We're going to have our Team Days during coming weekend and of course many things needed to be cleared out for that as well.

Of course the data in the AIESEC.net Tallinn community needed to be changed as well. We have our EB picture up and also our contact information. First things first right ;)

No way I can do without e-mailing someone - so I've sent many e-mails to my EB as well regarding different topics (recruitment, transition updates, planning, conference opportunities, etc), now all I have to do is wait for the replies :D

There was also a deep discussion with Marjam, our lovely AIESEC Estonia president, about different important topics such as where AIESEC is heading to, how to change our mindsets, who are we really and how to become the most powerful youth organization in Estonia.

I guess pretty much last, but not least - it was brought to my attention that a lot of people in AIESEC.net Tallinn community had not been approved for their membership status. So, I did that as well, pretty much making a lot of people happy and getting even more e-mails than ever before :)

So, that wraps up my week quite nicely, I'm sure :) There are loads more to come once my exams are over and I don't have to worry about them anymore. Of course there's more transition meetings coming as well (one of them already tomorrow afternoon), but I'm exited and really looking forward to them ;)

And just one more remark before I close this post - watch out, AIESEC Estonia! Tallinn is going to rock your socks off! :D