Well I think it’s about time for one last post on the GA webpage

GA is now over and it ended with the election of the new board:

Tim Govaert (LBG Ghent) - The President
Cristian Arteni (LBG Bucharest) - The Treasurer
Triin Lõhmus (LBG Tallinn) – The Secretary
Tassos Natsakis (LBG Thessaloniki) - The Vice-President for External Services
Karina Maria Herman (LBG Timisoara) - The Vice-President for Internal Support
Xavier Duchatel (LBG Paris, Polytechnique) - The Vice-President for Local Group Support

Everybody wishes the best for these brave souls.

We would like to thank all of BEST for giving us the opportunity to organise GA 2008 and for making it such a great event!

Hugs and kisses,
LBG Tallinn

On Thursday we had few interesting sessions. We have seen presentation about Virtual International Plenary that should make decision making process in BEST faster by doing some voting online. The project is still in testing phase, but few proposals have already been voted this way and we hope to have it running fully by 2009. Also, we saw presentation from current committee coordinators about what does it mean to be in their shoes and right after that we saw future coordinators presenting their motivation and ideas for the next year.

In the second half of the day we went in smaller groups out of the plenary, but this time to have some trainings and engineering competition. The topics were interesting and it was hard to choose just one to attend.

At the end of the day we had a gala evening in the hotel’s spa. There, next to enjoying sauna and swimming pool, we also had some awards given to the Local BEST Groups that went an extra mile in organizing their courses:

• Torino - Events Quantity Award
• Cluj-Napoca - Events Diversity Awatd
• Chania - BEST Teachers’ Area Award
• Tallinn - Event Communication Award
• Maribor - Event Logistics Award
• Gliwice - Academic Quality Award

Yesterday we had a free day here in Pärnu to get some energy and motivate ourself for even more productive second part of the General Assembly. During the day the delegates had a chance to visit the city, relax in the spa, play some sports, watch some movies and learn how to give massages. In the evening we had a special dinner for the 90th Anniversary of Estonian Republic where Local BEST Group Tallinn did amazing job in presenting their history. The motivation and emotions present by the end of the show was commented as: “something not yet seen in BEST” and “BEST moment in my BEST life” from some experienced and older members.

Thank you BEST Tallinn, now we are ready and motivated to continue with the work!

The morning part of today’s session was a bit more bureaucratic with presentations of proposals regarding some internal regulations. Later we had presentations of Baby Local Groups Ankara, Brussels ULB and Graz that are running for the full membership of BEST. Another interesting presentation during the day was from ESTIEM ( European Students of Industrial Engineering and Management), which is an organisation very similar from us and we are very excited to be able to exchange experience with them.

In the afternoon we had around 10 discussion groups about many hot topics to BEST, later during this GA we’ll see what outcomes were reached. The day ended with a Committee and Project rally, where all the participants had a chance to get more information about the same and get motivated to join.

Today, during the plenary time, we had a voting session and the result of it was that Training Group became official committee of BEST. Accept for this we had presentations from Bucharest, next Presidents Meeting organisers to be held in November this year. Also Helsinki, Stockholm and Budapest presented as candidates for organising General Assembly 2009. On the last day we are going to have voting session for this. Other sessions during the day included presentation of budget of BEST for the next year, success of the Recognition project that aimed at getting ECTS credits for the students attending out courses, Market Research and some proposals.

It was first working day here in Pärnu and already we had an interesting presentations and discussions. The day started with some opening sessions, introduction from the board, speakers and the organisers. What followed was a short history session that showed us development of BEST from the idea born in 1987 to present day. After this time travel, board of BEST presented their Annual Report and what they have been focusing in the last year. There were also presentations about interesting topics like trainings, visa issues that some of our local groups have and International Engineering Competition project that has been developed with our partner organisations CFES and bonding. Educational Committee of BEST presented proposals to join three new Thematic Networks (Virtual Placement, ESTIA-EARTH, TREE-TWO) and to approve the Strategic Plan of IFEES. Lest, but not least we had presentation by two of BEST observers, Chisinau and Istanbul Yildiz, where the whole plenary gave them full support.

It’s 9:15 here at beautiful Pärnu and everything is quiet. Most of the delegates are still asleep. Yesterday we had official opening at Tallinn Technical University which included presentations and workshops organised by GA Partners and few words from honorable guests:

Jakob Kübarsepp (Vice-rector for academic purposes of TUT)
Kaja Jäppinen (City of Tallinn)
Anne Kivimäe (Ministry of Education & Research)
Joao Rei (TREE project coordinator)
Ömer Hantal (President of BEST)

After this very nice and successful opening, today we are ready to start working on the future of BEST.

Hey folks!

Now we have live video online already from the plenary. We’re still setting things up so there’s probably little to see right now, but stay tuned for tomorrow morning.

More info here.

Today is the first day of GA 2008 Tallinn. At the moment some of us are in Pärnu setting up the plenary while others are greeting the delegates in Tallinn.

We set up this blog so that we can keep You informed on what is going on during the GA. Enjoy!