history of best - 20 years in europe

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Foreword“If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience?” – George Bernard Shaw

BEST wrote its history!From an idea late in the ‘80s a unique organisation shaped itself from the creativity, passion and dedication of thousands of students. They wrote history with their actions and now this story has been preserved for the future in the shape of BEST History Book.

Now, at its 20th Anniversary, alumni, members and students of Europe can find the most important aspects of the life of BEST in its History Book.This project started from a daring idea that many BESTies had over the years. It became a reality, when the XXI International Board of BEST included it in their agenda as a gift for the Organization at its 20th Anniversary.

This project has been a very big challenge from the beginning and it should be mentioned that this book is not perfect and may not capture all the events that have succeeded in 20 years. This is why we must strive to improve it and include more stories from the life of BEST in a future edition.

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Contents

BESTBeginning: 10Stockholm, Grenoble, Berlin 11

Defining BEST, Identity of BEST 15

Getting bigger and better 24

BEST for Students 32Season Course 33

Engineering Competitions 41

Career Support 43

Educational Involvement of BEST in European Higher Educational

System 49

BEST Online 56Minerva 59

Makumba 62

BEST Career Center 63

Jimmy 64

Johnny 65

BEST Application System 68

BEST Teachers’ Area 69

BEST University Centre 70

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Private Area 72

Unified System 74

Public Website 75

BEST Network 77 HISTORY OF BEST LBGs 83

Story of LBG Aalborg 83

Story of LBG Almada 84

Story of LBG Ankara 84

Story of LBG Athens 85

Story of LBG Barcelona 86

Story of LBG Belgrade 87

Story of LBG Brasov 88

Story of LBG Bratislava 88

Story of LBG Brno 89

Story of LBG Brussels 90

Story of LBG Brussels ULB 91

Story of LBG Bucharest 92

Story of LBG Budapest 93

Story of LBG Chania 93

Story of LBG Chisinau 94

Story of LBG Cluj-Napoca 95

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Story of LBG Coimbra 96

Story of LBG Copenhagen 96

Story of LBG Eindhoven 98

Story of LBG Ekaterinburg 98

Story of LBG Ekaterinburg USTU 99

Story of LBG ENSAM 100

Story of LBG ENSTA 100

Story of LBG Gdansk 101

Story of LBG Ghent 102

Story of LBG Gliwice 103

Story of LBG Gothenburg 103

Story of LBG Graz 104

Story of LBG Grenoble 104

Story of LBG Helsinki 105

Story of LBG Iasi 106

Story of LBG Istanbul 107

Story of LBG Kaunas 107

Story of LBG Kiev 108

Story of LBG Kosice 109

Story of LBG Krakow 110

Story of LBG Leuven 111

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Story of LBG Liege 112

Story of LBG Lisbon 113

Story of LBG Ljubljana 113

Story of LBG Lodz 114

Story of LBG Louvaine-la-Neuve 115

Story of LBG Lulea 116

Story of LBG Lund 118

Story of LBG Lviv 118

Story of LBG Madrid 119

Story of LBG Madrid Carlos III 119

Story of LBG Maribor 120

Story of LBG Messina 120

Story of LBG Milano 121

Story of LBG Moscow 122

Story of LBG Nancy 123

Story of LBG Naples 124

Story of LBG Nis 125

Story of LBG Novi-Sad 126

Story of LBG Paris Ecole Centrale 127

Story of LBG Paris Polytechnique 127

Story of LBG Patras 128

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Story of LBG Porto 128

Story of LBG Reykjavik 130

Story of LBG Riga 130

Story of LBG Rome 131

Story of LBG Rome Tor Vergata 132

Story of LBG Saint Petersburg 133

Story of LBG Skopje 134

Story of LBG Sofia 135

Story of LBG Stockholm 136

Story of LBG Supelec 137

Story of LBG Tallinn 137

Story of LBG Tampere 138

Story of LBG Timisoara 138

Story of LBG Thessaloniki 139

Story of LBG Trondheim 140

Story of LBG Turin 141

Story of LBG Uppsala 142

Story of LBG Valladolid 142

Story of LBG Veszprem 143

Story of LBG Vienna 144

Story of LBG Warsaw 145

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Story of LBG Yildiz 146

Story of LBG Zagreb 147

Story of LBG Zaporizhzhya 148

Regions 149

BEST Organisation 154Working Groups 155

COMMITTEES of BEST 162

Information Technology Committe (ITC) 162

MarkeTeam (mT) 165

External Events Committee (EEC) 169

Financial Committee (finTeam, fT) 172

Training Interested Group (TIGro) 177

Educational Committee (EduCo) 181

Boards of BEST 184

Honorary members of BEST 193

BEST Internal Events 194

Cultural Exchanges (CEs) 195

WorkShops (WSs) 195

Short Intensive Meetings (SIMs) 196

Trainshops 196

Trainers Camp 196

4Ts Train the Technical Trainer 197

Committee meetings (CMT meetings) 197

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International Projects’ Forum & Inter Committee’ Forum 198

Round Table 199

General Meetings 200

BEST Projects 204BEST on Paper 205

Visual Identity of BEST 209

Recognition Project 213

University Project (Centre) 215

Virtual International Plenary 217

BEST and partners 219bonding 220

CFES 221

Other NGOs 223

BEST and Companies 224

BEST Culture 229BEST Traditions 230

BEST Stories 242

General Meetings 243

Acronyms and Abbreviations 247

History Book of Board of European Students of Technology 1989-2009

Chapter 1

BEST: Beginning, Struggles, Milestones, Development

• Stockholm, Grenoble, Berlin

• Defining BEST, identity of BEST

• Getting bigger and better

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BEST: Beginnings, Struggles, Milestones, DevelopmentStockholm, Grenoble, Berlin

For everything that we create there is always the questions: when, why, how? When it comes to BEST there are even more questions looking for an answer. This is the story of the creation of BEST.

In Stockholm, May 1987 an event called International Week took place. Only students in physics and mathematics were invited. The universities that went to Sweden were Berlin and Aachen (West Germany), Helsinki (Finland),Imperial college of London (United Kingdom), Delft (Netherlands), Warsaw (Poland), Stockholm (Sweden), Zurich (Switzerland), Copenhagen (Denmark), EC Paris and INP Grenoble (France), Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium).

This meeting had the main goal to set up a link between the European universities and to support the exchange of the students between these universities. As the meeting had no clear conclusion, it was decided to organise an International Week (IW) each year in a different country where problems of exchange in Europe would be discussed. Another important decision was to enlarge the board of the meeting to all Europe.

Grenoble was chosen to organise the second International Week. The aim of this second meeting was to strengthen the link between European students and to establish a new European organization, to set up its status and to define its principal actions. It was decided that the third International Week would be held in Eindhoven in November 1988.

In October ’87 other universities were invited to participate at the event, this enabled the meeting to go up from 12 to 24 universities. In December 1987, it was considered that a yearly international week was not enough to strengthen the relationship between the European Universities; therefore, the creation of a European Association was hoped for. Prior to March ’88, students from INPG Grenoble worked hard in organizing the second International Week. At the meeting in Grenoble, from 20th to 27th of March, universities from 13 European countries were present. The main topics of discussion were:

• European Exchanges• Creation of the European association• Research for new and easier ways of practical training• Lowering the cultural barriers

First topic discussed was the functions and creation of an association (known for the present as the EAU-European Association of Universities).

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Chapter 1: BEST: Beginning, Struggles, Milestones, Development

It was considered important that the association would support students in finding employment, either vacation or longer term, abroad. There were many discussions regarding the limit of this support and exactly how this support must be given. It was noted that the first International Week (Stockholm 1987) had provided no conclusion about the week and had produced no declaration of intent about what the week should have achieved.

The structure of the EAU was decided upon. There would be two meetings per year. The first, in November, would take the format of the current week and the second, a working reunion of 4 days (maximum) would be held in April at different location.For the future, it was decided that prospective holders of the IW would prepare a presentation about why they should be the next organizers of the IW. At the IW the holders of the working reunion were to be chosen.

Problems about archives were raised. As no clear conclusion was reached the presidents would hold onto the relevant files - passing them on as necessary. It was decided that the committee (now known as LBG) members of the EAU would be representative in each country - one of the participants in the IW.This association had many aims and one philosophy:“Promote Europe amongst Europeans.”The main aims and function of this association were settled:

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

Short term aims were discussed:• Encourage the universities to accept foreign students.• Collect information about the different universities.• Stimulate international study-excursions.• Get companies interested in the EAU.

And long term aims:• Create international job-shops.• Get propositions of jobs from foreign companies.• Advertise the EAU in the newspapers.• Convince universities to recognise one year of studies in another country made by their students.• Work for more lectures in English on higher courses. Students should be allowed to answer exams in English.• Work for exchange of three months in other university laboratories.

It was decided to give a new name for this association in the last day of the event.

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“The EAU (European Association of Universities) was recognized by the French government as a non profit organisation. It was felt that the term EAU was misleading so it was decided to choose a new one on Saturday at 2.30.”-Grenoble Report, 1988There were many proposals, some of them funny, other not. One idea was to call it NBS (No Business School) or EST (European Students of Technology), but in French EST means east. Finally, Giuseppe Margriote from Turin invented the name: BEST-Board of European Students of Technology.

At Grenoble, was also decided that a booklet would be produced by the INPG giving information about school systems in each participating country. The booklet should also provide information about companies in each country. Exactly what information could not be decided upon but it was agreed that as a start INPG should include something to this effect in the brochure they will produce.

After IW Grenoble, BEST was the name embraced by all members, and all of the documents after the event stated BEST as the European Organisation of Students of Technology, EAU being an acronym no longer used.

The next meeting was the IW in Eindhoven that started on 6th November 1988. The main aims of the discussions were to define what needed to be done until the next IW in order to keep BEST together as an association and to set up the main topics of discussion for the next WR.

Paticipants at First BEST meeting in Grenoble in 1988

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This was one of the most productive meetings they had as the agenda was to define BEST. In Eindhoven, they were discussing about the statutes of the organization, how will this association help students all over Europe, the communication between the groups and the financing of such an organization. . They also discussed the future steps and what needed to be done until the next meeting. Even if BEST had no financial means, the members succeeded in publishing and sending newsletters with news from all countries members of BEST, words from the international management of BEST and future organizers of the IW from Vienna , 1989.

The next meeting and probably most important meeting for BEST took place in Berlin, in April from 10th to 14th. This meeting was the first one exclusively for BEST members. Students from all over Europe participated at this event: Barcelona, Berlin, Bologna, Budapest, Eindhoven, Grenoble, Helsinki, Lisbon, Ljubljana, London, Louvain-La-Neuve, Paris, Stockholm, Trondheim, Turin, Vienna, Warsaw and Zurich.

The aims of this working reunion were well known: to define the statutes by which BEST will abide in the future and to define plans on which the organization will concentrate future actions. For all of these topics to be reached and to have clear conclusions, the participants were split into 2 groups: the first group took care about the statutes of the organization and the second one had to define a strategy, a plan that would ensure the development of BEST.

BEST had been registered as a non-governmental organization in France, so it is subject to French law even if the members are not French citizens. At the statutes topic, many aspects were discussed: structure of the organization, admission of new members, purpose of BEST, resources and expenses, exclusion from BEST, membership of the organization and internal regulations.

The first discussions were about the content of the statutes. The definition of the association, its goals and the seat of the different bodies of administration as well as their personal information were included in the statutes.

Regarding the structure, the delegates decided that BEST would conclude of the Board, a General Assembly and members. Any decision that was not included in the statutes, according to the French laws, must have been voted unanimously by the General Assembly. A secretariat was to be chosen by the president to distribute the reports of the meetings and to take care of the documents of BEST.

After much discussion, the first group presented to the plenary a preliminary version of the statutes consisting of 15 articles that reached the topics mentioned above and many more.

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The second group discussed future plans. The delegates of the second group split into more groups and reached themes like information –inside and outside the organization, exchange of students in Europe and cooperation between BEST and international companies.

Regarding inside information, a questionnaire was given to the member universities of BEST, and each university would send the filled questionnaire to all other universities. This way, the member universities would know more about one another. Another important point was the logo of BEST. Even if there were 3 proposals for a new logo (sinus wave, “atomic model” and “circle”), the plenary decided to keep the old one but to redesign it including the sinus wave in it. The final design was made by BEST members from Switzerland.

The exchange topic produced three conclusions regarding the involvement of BEST in exchange issues: on long term, BEST should convince more professors to support students that go on exchange programs, for short term exchanges, BEST was to involve informally and inform the universities through newsletters about this opportunities and for the EEC Engineering Degree, Lisbon and London should get informed and this topic was to be discussed in the next meeting.

The idea of job fairs, then called jobshops was raised. The difference between international jobshops and national job shops was settled and they all realised that at national level the members were organizing this kind of events, and an international jobshop would be a big challenge for all BEST members.

In the last days of the event in Berlin, the new board of BEST was decided. Even if in the board should have been members from Vienna, as this group was the organizer of the next meeting, Ida Law from Trondheim was the first president. Vienna wasn’t a full member of BEST. The members of the group that were organizing the BEST meeting after Vienna took the challenge.

After these steps were made, in the mind of every BEST member were the words as found in the first report of BEST in 1988, IW Grenoble: “Good luck to BEST!”

Article written by Mirela Andriescu

Defining BEST, Identity of BEST

Creating a new organisation was a great task for students of technology. Even if there was a long way until the finish line, their will was enough to determine a series of events that concluded in the definition of BEST.

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After International Week (IW) Stockholm in 1987, the participant universities wanted to continue their cooperation and decided that a new body must be created: European Association of Universities (EAU). Even from the beginning they tried to create a set of rules that would ensure the efficiency of their work and a long existence.A huge step was made in the next year at Grenoble IW, where the basis of BEST was set. After choosing the name of the organisation, the delegates discussed about communication inside the organisation and concluded that every 2 months a newsletter must be sent to all of the participant universities. At the same meeting the aim of the organisation was defined: “To facilitate the exchange of students and information” among the different universities under the philosophy “To promote Europe among Europeans”.Other aspects like the status of the organisation, the funding, internal structure and logo issues were poorly discussed, so the delegates decided that at the next meeting, the working reunion in Eindhoven 1988, all of these details were to be cleared.

The purpose of the meeting in Eindhoven was to define BEST and its activities. The agenda discussed even from Grenoble meeting had some points as: meaning of BEST, statutes of BEST, structure and identity of the organisation.

First topic on the agenda was “Why BEST?”. “This point was really encouraging because after a while’s discussion, everybody present seemed eager to join up with the association and work with it. Let’s hope that enthusiasm continues!” (Eindhoven report, 1988)

For the topic “How BEST” the delegates identified 4 different subtopics: communication with the other European universities, financing of the organisation, creating new groups to promote BEST in the European universities, the aims and constitutions of the local groups.The delegates were split into 4 different groups and each group needed to find solutions for one specific topic mentioned above. At the end of the meeting, the conclusion was discussed in the plenary.

Communication inside the organisation

After debating this topic, the group identified two ways to exchange information: through meetings or an information network. Even if direct contact is the most efficient way of communicating, only few days per year are not sufficient to sustain a European association. So the idea of an information network popped up in the delegates’ minds. Its main institution should be the Central Secretariat that would fulfil the following functions:

• collecting information about the work of BEST• receiving request for information about BEST• selecting the universities to pass this information out to

The means of communication was the snail mail, telex, telefax and telephone. There were

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discussions about the idea of a computer network between universities. The structure and constitution of the central secretariat couldn’t be set as the delegates didn’t know what the best solution was: to have the office of this secretariat in a university, or to move it from time to time between universities. Regarding funding, the main question was who should be responsible for raising the money and who should distribute it. The organisers of the IW or Working Reunion (WR) should be able to provide lodging and food for the delegates and the participants should take care of their transport to the location. Another aspect was the funding of the central secretariat and it was decided that the secretariat should take care of the expenses on its own. A daring and new idea was the cooperation with companies: to receive financial support from them and provide them the chance to present their opportunities to the BEST members.

The next big subject was the creation of local groups in the European universities and getting them acknowledged. As the universities were so different, there was no common approach or formula to create a BEST group. However, the participants had the responsibility of creating such a group in their university.For the creation of each local committee a set of guidelines was created by the Strategy Group. The most important thing was to establish a relationship with the university, with the professors and administration alike for their academic and logistic support.Every founder should then send a report to all other universities, members of the organisation, to detail on the creation of their group.

In long term, the participants decided upon the structure and next steps of BEST. The Administrative Council was considered to be the members of the group who were organising an International Week and all of the members should research on the steps of juridical creation of a student organisation in their university.

The meeting in 1989, in Berlin was the biggest step BEST made as a European organisation. One thing was clear: BEST was registered in France, in Grenoble and was subject to French laws. However, the big task was to make clear to all participants what was BEST and the rules all of the local committees had to follow.

A big part was the statutes and internal regulations topic. Many aspects were discussed: structure of the organization, admission of new members, purpose of BEST, resources and expenses, exclusion from BEST, membership of the organization and internal regulations. For these and other many topics articles were stipulating the general rules that BEST had to abide by.In 1990 after the GA in Budapest, the statutes and internal regulations were revised and consisted of 15 articles about the statutes and 11 articles with the internal regulations of BEST.

After 2 years of struggles, Europe had a new students’ organisation. In those days, the

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biggest challenge was to maintain BEST alive and secure its continuity and growth. In 1991 at the GA in Paris, BEST made a step forward: did BEST need a board? That was the question on every delegate’s lips after a little misunderstanding about who should represent BEST in the meeting with P&G.

While studying the board issue, 5 subgroups decided to propose a new structure of BEST consisting of the General Assembly as the legislative body who elects the president, the board and the organising group of the next GA. The delegates were afraid that with this structure some groups would become too powerful, so instead they agreed that the president of BEST should have an advisory committee with a formal role to assist the president, maintain communication and create proposals for the agenda of GAs.

The homework

To keep BEST alive, communication between the local groups was mandatory. The only way this was done was through telephone and newsletters. Another way to preserve BEST and to evolve was to actually get some work done. Therefore, tasks were given at each GA to LBGs and were very diverse: from the summer program and ways to improve it to structure of BEST, newsletters and nursing baby LBGs.At the same GA, the delegates were split into several subgroups and discussed future policies and projects, future of BEST, structure of BEST. Thinking of the future of BEST, the delegates suggested different ideas:

• an International Contest that was approved by the GA, • a BEST week similar to a conference (which was not approved)

Other topics discussed were the common image, English courses of 2 weeks for BEST members and a BEST all around Europe trip. One important topic was the acceptance procedure of new groups inside BEST as it was not clear and understandable to new comers what are the needed steps to become baby LBGs. In 1993 a Continuity group was created that evaluated the process of continuity inside BEST. The main tool that assured the continuity was the homework for LBGs system. This group had to read and evaluate all of the reports of the homework made by LBGs and even propose new ones. “The homework ensures our continuity; they link one GA to the next one and also the LBGs together. Therefore it appears necessary to keep them even if we have to select the important ones and stop the unproductive ones.” (Report of Continuity Group at GA Warsaw, 1993).They encouraged the continuation of projects with potential like

• BEST magazine, • BEST Internal Publication List, • Vacation list, • Best Computer Network (BCN) and • promotion of BEST

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They proposed the BCN and the contact with the European Commission as permanent homework. In their report they gave guidelines for creating homework so that the LBGs understand better what needs to be done and the importance of permanent homework.

At the GA in Warsaw a big topic was the life and progress of BEST. The delegates divided this into 5 subtopics:

• Vision/Mission/Goals• Environment• Outputs of BEST• Decision making• Communication

The most important outcome after the discussion was what we know as Statement of Purpose. Paolo Bianco from Torino proposed that the statement to be included in the statutes of BEST. Although no decision was taken regarding this issue, the delegates approved considerable changes to the statutes and Internal Regulations and made clearer the admission and exclusion of LBGs and the structure of the management of BEST and its role. The idea of an Action Plan for a specified period of time was well received by the delegates. For the communication inside the organisation they emphasized the usage of email as the main communication tool.

The concept of strategy was better explained by a document named “Strategy” at GA Turin 1994. It presented the benefits of having a strategy how you can build up a strategy and why BEST needed one to ensure its growth and prosperity. After this moment, an international committee was created to work on the strategy of BEST. It was approved along with the Technical Committee, Structure Committee, PR and Industry Committee.

Other important aspects were the changes to the Statement of purpose and Paolo Bianco’s speech about how can we use it. The Statement of Purpose consisted of:“We will strive to develop activities in order to help our fellow European students of technology to become more internationally-minded, by reaching a better understanding of European cultures and developing capacities to work on an international basis.We will achieve this purpose through the active involvement of our members, in challenging and innovative projects, providing the conditions for their personal development and putting their abilities to full use. We will value integrity and seek wide range contributions to the advancement of the Association.

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

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At the same event, they had the first discussions about a one year mandate for the International Board instead of half a year. The main reason was the lack of time for the Board to implement their decisions and plans.

By GA 1994 in fall, the Strategy Committee had started to work. Some steps were designed: to study what was done prior, to identify the projects of BEST, to sustain and to improve them. For its growth and stability, BEST had to identify the needs of its stakeholders: students, members of the organisation, universities and companies alike. These needs were the starting points from which a solid strategy would be created and followed.

The 3 Year Plan

In 1995, BEST members discovered some problems with BEST’s continuity. Many of the reports of the previous events that offered solutions for some of BEST’s problems were forgotten. This way a knowledge transfer was faulty. For this, a possible solution was the 3 Year Plan (3YP).

“The 3 Year Plan is a possibility for BEST to have long time planning. It allows us to write down what BEST wants to achieve in three years. There should be goals that are easy to measure. These are goals you can measure as time is passing and gives BEST the opportunity to evaluate the plan after some time. The idea has popped up many times in BEST and now we hope that the 3YP will be just as integrated into not only the Board but also the whole of BEST.” (GA Patras report, 1995)

The First PM Plenary : PM Trondheim, 1995

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The delegates liked the idea and by the next meeting, PM 1995 (first President’s Meeting) the Strategy Committee with another subgroup – the Future Subgroup – should prepare a proposal of the 3YP. Concerning Growth, at GA Patras a Forum was organised where lots of ideas and opinions popped up about limited or unlimited growth, what kind of Universities to accept and what to follow at an applying university. Concerning communication, 1995 was a big leap for the organisation. Solutions like FTP-file transfer protocol, www technology and IRC –a real time platform for instant messages were presented to overcome the communication barriers.

The work of the Continuity committee was in progress. For GA they prepared four topics for the delegates: the archive and general secretariat, alumni, committee’s work and a handbook with guidelines on how to start and run an LBG.

One of the problems was the archive of BEST. The General Secretariat’s main task was to gather the documents and to secure them in one place. Besides that, other tasks of the secretariat were:

• Daily email check.• They had to answer the questions ASAP but one week answering time was given.• They had to inform every LBG about their holidays a month in advance and even then check their mail and answer at least once a month.• They had to be able to fax answers.• Should be reliable and happy people.• Had to attend GAs, PMs and had to attend WSs if possible.• Had to find and train their own successors

In the action plan that the general secretariat had to prepare for PM in fall, one subject was the creation of the Where Ideas Never Die mailing list (WIND). At this mailing list, people from BEST could send ideas of any type that concluded in the improvement of the organisation.

Towards the committees, the Continuity group presented a set of recommendations, one of the most important being the creation of the coordinator of the group that had to lead the committee and its projects.

For the LBG handbook, a proposal was that the LBG in charge of the updating the handbook should do it for 5 years to preserve continuity and unity.

For the PM 1995 in Trondheim, the continuity committee prepared the 3YP that included not only the work of the Board for three years but the work of the whole organisation. The plan was given for feedback to the LBGs for improvement and the final one consisted of the aims,

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mission and goals of BEST. These goals concerned the Summer Programme (the summer courses), and also some new projects that needed to be promoted and accredited:

• the Short Intensive Training courses - SIT • BEST language courses for students. • ways of better representing the students of Europe• to promote in a clear and easy way the universities in the BEST network

For the communication issues, the usage of internet by BEST members and students alike was one of the main points reached and developed. Other topics reached were

• the funding of the organisation, • the role and attributions of the board • the continuity committee • by 1997 every LBG should have a www page on internet.

This 3YP included the board members, the committees, the active members and the LBGs. Everyone had a part in reaching the success of this plan. After one year, the committees were evaluating the progress made. At the sharing session of the Continuity WG in PM Veszprem, 1996, the following were discussed: • “Sharing session • The Continuity WG The Continuity WG was concentrating on topics such as:

• Removing old decisions:• No money should be asked for a European week (GA or PM)” (Eindhoven ‘88) which hasn’t been respected already.• A member must be 18 years old” But the members are not the people but the LBGs...• Members should lead a morally acceptable way of life”... What is morally acceptable?• Keeping in mind some decisions such as the target areas for BEST (Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Austria, Great Britain)• The BEST Archive- should we cancel it, change the project?• The lost Homeworks : Annual report, History of BEST, Technical centre, Fun-o-mail, Bulletin ...”

LBG Eindhoven decided to take the task of writing the History of BEST. The LBGs voted on having a contest for the www pages of the LBGs. It was the only way to motivate them to finish this important task in time. The creation of the alumni mailing list was voted upon at the same meeting.

The next year, some major modifications were made at the 3YP, some presented below:• “By the GA ‘98 BEST has received at least two new baby-members from a target

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area.• By the GA’97 the language courses together with SIT-courses and SC are held according to the Vivaldi concept.• By the GA ’98 all the leaflets for the language course are made available on www in time for promotion.• To raise the quality of SCs, additional standards are defined and included in the SP handbook, until the PM 97.• By the GA ‘98 BEST representatives are regularly invited to the general meetings of FEANI, SEFI and CESAER. • By the GA `98 every LBG has its own WWW page, according to the common image concept.• All LBGs offer a good quality information centre, available to all the students at their University. The information provided covers all available international exchange programs, and at least all BEST member Universities. By the GA ‘96 a list of the basic documents is ready. By the GA ’98 all LBGs have their information centre in operation. The list is updated yearly. • By the GA ‘98 BEST has collected and published information about possibilities of thesis abroad. This information will be regularly updated. “ (3YP GA 1997, Belgium)

In 1997, as the 3YP was reaching the finish line, the Strategy Committee had to create a new plan to continue the previous one. For this, the members attended the workshop in Eindhoven in October and prepared a strategy for a new plan and a questionnaire for the LBGs. They wanted to establish a dynamic 3YP that “will be updated every year by adding the farthermost year plan, so we will always have 3 years ahead”. (Strategy report, PM Warsaw, 1997).The year 1998 brought changes regarding the strategy:“The X Board tried to update the old 3 years plan we had since ‘95, but the need for a more flexible structure was so felt that the Board decided to avoid to produce a new one; the board decided to try to find new points and at the same time to divide tasks among different people. The committees tried to help the Board to do a new 3 years plan, but they didn’t succeed and at the end they decided that the GAs should find strategies.” (Report of GA1998, Romania)

This was the rise and fall of the 3YP. As BEST came to a point were it had a stable structure the strategy committee was dissolved and other new committees were created to work for the development of BEST in different domains.

This was it! BEST had a solid structure, enthusiastic people, great portfolio of prior experience and a bright future. Well done BESTies!


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Getting bigger and better

Getting bigger in numbers

The babies eraWe all know that BEST started in 1989... that’s a fact. But how did it become what it is now? Now that is a real question. When BEST was founded there were only 14 local BEST groups. So what happened in the middle and caused the growth from 14 to 81 and to more than 2900 active members around Europe?In order for an organisation to grow, it needs members, and members in BEST were the LBGs. The first applications to join BEST from non-member Universities started coming in the early 1990, but a procedure of joining the organisation was not ready yet. Thus the need for defining one was brought and the issue was firstly discussed during GA90 in Trondheim. There is was decided that universities with student representatives who want to be involved in BEST, must send a letter of application to the current secretariat, and these ‘aspiring’ BEST members started to be called ‘babies’.

The process was very simple: Any baby member of BEST was given a well-functioning nearby LBG as a mentor (or as it was called a ‘nurse’). The task of the nurse was to give the new baby information on BEST and to get them started on their work. The new baby members were invited by the secretariat in the next General Assembly, if there were available facilities and usually only one member per baby member was invited due to few available places. If there were not enough places, then the secretariat was choosing among the new babies, but a priority was given in baby members whose representatives were never to a General Assembly before.

After some time, the result of the work of the baby member was put forward to the next GA and if the baby member wanted to become a member of BEST, the nursing group and/or at least one other LBG had to recommend them. If there was no recommendation on them for two consecutive years though, an automatic voting was made. Of course, in order to keep everybody informed, each baby member had to submit a full report in every GA.

This pretty simple process was what BEST needed at the moment, and it served it well for quite some time. However since the very beginning BEST members started to thinking about an upcoming issue: What if BEST becomes too big, and it cannot sustain itself. Even from 1991, with just 15 members, BESTies were afraid of the growth, since General Assemblies were very difficult to get funded in order to host all the new people that wanted to attend them. Furthermore, the communication with the LBGs was almost non-existent and more LBGs would mean less order in the organisation. That’s why after a point, BEST members targeted the Universities that they would contact in order to become members of the organisation. These thoughts will be around the organisation for some time

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Observers EraFor the first time, in GA1993 in Warsaw, a new term is being used inside BEST: observer group. This was the definition of groups of students that were interested to apply to become BEST members, and they were invited to a General Assembly in order to see how the organisation was working and get motivated to work back at their home universities. However, since this invitation was done uncontrolled and without a strict process, members started questioning the efficiency of this method. As it was said before, people were afraid of the Unlimited Growth of BEST, but on the other hand they were also afraid that BEST would be considered a closed lobby if they just stopped accepting new member groups. Something like this would be devastating for BEST’s image and thus the solution that popped up was that some rules for inviting groups to attend General Assemblies. Serious discussions took place in GA1995 in Patras, and various different directions of Growth were proposed (continuous, limited, limited speed, unlimited growth) and all the pros and cons were analysed.

The final conclusion of the discussion was made official by a vote of 6 different proposals that were defining the procedure of accepting new members. A new limitation started to exist, and that was a limitation of new Baby members accepted every year. Furthermore, it was defined that observers and baby members are invited by the board in order to get elected and become baby and full member respectively, and that in order for a new group to become a baby member, a status of observer before was needed. The criteria for selecting new groups were concerning regional representation, academic reputation and number of technology student at the university.

No limitations in size were voted! This lead to an unlimited growth that made BEST counting 81 different LBGs in just 20 years.

Fine-tuning the regulationsAfter the voting session of GA1995, things got clearer for BEST and its growth. Members had a direction and knew where to focus on. Thus they started contacting universities that thought it would be good to be members of the organisation and they received back applications from those interested to join BEST. Since then, no big changes in the membership process and growth policy were made. The first small change came only after 1.5 year in PM1997 in Warsaw, when after a proposal the interested groups to join BEST had to send a motivation letter in order to explain how the university is working, and the next one in GA2000, when the board invited one extra observer in GA cause they thought it would be a pity to reject one of the applications. During GA2000, there was a set of proposals to refine the membership process that got approved and made the board to have to publish the list of all the observer applications right after the deadline for application.

Finally, after 4 years in GA2004 in Oresund, BESTies decided to bring the organisation one step forward in its openness towards the world: After a proposal made by the strategy group of BEST, the board and no other BESTie was any more able to ‘pro-actively promote BEST

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towards other Universities’. This rule was set because strategy group thought that it’s not fair for the Universities that are not contacted by the board for two reasons: Firstly because they had less opportunities and second cause the board would be biased in favour of the Universities they contacted. This rule though didn’t stay for long in BEST and in PM2008 in Bucharest, LBGs voted to be removed from the regulations.

Getting bigger in geographic area

While BEST was constantly growing, it also became more attractive to more universities. Thus many more, less known universities wanted to start an LBG and it created more new questions for BESTies: What is Europe, and should BEST expand beyond it? Since the very beginning of BEST, it’s ‘borders’ were way beyond any other European Structure (like the EU). It connected countries that were considered outside of the commonly accepted boundaries of Europe at that time (referring to Europe as a political term of course). But geographically speaking, the growth of BEST was always inside the borders of Europe. However, this began to change in the late 90’s, when BEST received applications from non geographically European Universities.

The first non-European University to join BEST was LBG Ekaterinburg, when they were invited as observers in GA1998 in Romania. No discussions for years about it rose, since Ekaterinburg is located only a few kilometres east of the European borders, but discussions rose 8 years afterwards, before GA2006 in Zagreb. In that GA a proposal was made in order to define the geographical boundaries of BEST and they were set as following:

‘’”BEST aims for Universities located in European countries including the entire territory of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Georgia, Turkey and Russian territory west of the 61 Meridian and excluding colonies”’’

The 61 Meridian was needed, in order to keep LBG Ekaterinburg (and Ekaterinburg USTU) as members of the organisation, since they are located in the Asian part of Russian Federation, but they are west of the 61 Meridian of the Earth. By 2009 BEST is still inside these boundaries set in that proposal and there are only 4 LBGs that are situated geographically outside of Europe: Ekaterinburg, Ekaterinburg USTU, Ankara and Izmir.

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BEST in numbers

Stories are good and history even better... but since we are students of technology there is one thing we like the most: Graphs! So, curious to know the evolution of BEST every year in a quick glance?

MembersOne of the biggest indicators of growth inside an organisation is the members. But BEST has two kinds of members: LBGs and students. One should expect growth of LBGs to result to a similar increase in the student members of BEST and something like this was obvious since the beginning of the organisation. Even though Private Area did not exist back in 1989, it is interesting to see the current registered users in it, and their joining date. As it’s visible from the graph, the members of BEST increase logarithmically (since alumni members are counted as members) and the rhythm of increase is increasing each year. No accurate data about the active members of BEST each year could be obtained though. A similar increase is observed in the number of LBGs, were within 20 years there was an increase of 65 local BEST groups, with an average of 3 new LBGs per year. A smaller increase, but a bigger impact, appeared in the growth of countries that BEST was present. Starting with 12 countries, BEST is now present in 30 countries across Europe. Comparing with the EU that has 27 members after 58 years, BEST is ahead with 3 countries. However, there is still work till we manage to catch up with UN (they have 192 members right now and 64 years of existence).

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EventsBEST is known in the outer world for its external events, since it’s our main service towards the students. As it is explained in a following paragraph, BEST got its own on-line application system in 1997, and thus all the statistics that exist are since then. In total for 13 consecutive years there have been more than 143000 applications by 67000 students, out of which more than 16000 had the chance to live and experience the BEST spirit and get to know the recent breakthroughs of technology in one of the 1050 external events (registered in the system) organised by BEST.

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Besides the external events though, BEST needs to organise a lot of internal events in order to develop itself. Members of the organisation have the chance to meet and discuss live about hot topics and increased activity means more ideas, more sharing and more development of the organisation. Since 1989 there have been more than 540 internal events organised. Recently the activity is growing even more, which is something that raises a lot of discussions inside BEST: is this a sign of efficiency or inefficiency? For sure it’s a sign of growth.

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CommunicationBEST is an organisation spread in the four (or more) corners of Europe. Thus, communication is very essential, in order to maintain its integrity and spirit. Without modern technology BEST wouldn’t be the same as it is now, and this is easily proven if someone takes a look at the vast communication via e-mail that is going between the members. Almost half a million of e-mails have been registered in Private Area, which means that the real number is a lot bigger. A constant growth of the virtual communication is taking place every year, something that is normal with the increase of members and the increase of usage of internet by young students.

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DocumentationLast but not least, one essential part of BEST is the on-line archive that its members maintain. Initially the information circulated with diskettes, later hosted in an FTP server and now a vast network of documents available at all members at any time in every corner of Europe. The archive is the heart of the information of BEST.A sum of 12000 documents consisting of proposals, ideas, minutes of meetings and outcomes of discussion groups all together compile the identity of the organisation.

Besides the archive, a new technology for documentation appeared in BEST during the last year: the BESTipedia. A wiki-wiki system for storing information and developing documents grew slowly in the beginning, but after 3 years of usage it became a source of information with its 6500 pages available for all users.

‘‘(It has to be noted, that all the statistics and numbers were taken from the database on the 14th of March. Since not all the information about BEST is stored in the server most of the statistics are just indicators of the general picture of growth of BEST, and cannot be taken as absolutes.)’’


Chapter 2

BEST for Students

• Complementary Education

• Engineering Competitions

• Career Support

• Educational Involvement of BEST

in European Higher Educational

System

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BEST for StudentsSEASON COURSES

Starting pointsEven from 1989, the moment that BEST was born, its main goal was established: to help the students of Europe. One of the main programmes discussed back then was a project that aimed in making learning programs of European Universities of Technology known among students. In this way, BEST would come to ease the students’ task to go and study abroad. Even if all LBG worked hard to reach this goal, the project was very hard to implement and soon BEST members thought of another solution.

So, the idea of courses organized by BEST in collaboration with the universities popped up during the General Assembly (GA) in Trondheim in 1990. At that time, it was the most important thing to do and it seemed easier for everyone to organize such events. The delegates then decided to have a list of topics that every university could hold a course about. “These courses should be about two or three weeks long and have to be taught in English so that everyone can attend them. Obviously, they have to be scientific courses. They should be prepared for groups of about twenty or thirty people. The range of time for holding these courses would be from June to October, both included. So this was the beginning of the Summer Season.

BEST programme of complementary education is one of the oldest and most important projects of BEST, aiming to broaden knowledge of European students, mainly in the field of technology, but also in other areas that can contribute to the personal development of every individual student involved. Courses organized within the programme all over Europe enhance participants knowledge in a way that complements the education provided by the participants own universities.

Therefore, the mission of Complementary Education Programme of BEST is “to facilitate self-development in the fields of engineering, management and cultural matters”.The academic part of single BEST course is of course very important. It consists of lectures, case studies, company visits, research institutes visits etc. There are three major groups of learning events organized by the Local BEST Groups:

• Technological course is an event aimed for increasing and widening the professional knowledge in a certain field of technology, especially concerning modern technical applications of technology and the latest research achievements.• Career related course is an event about non-technological subjects in order to develop personal skills in topics linked with working methods, communication techniques, marketing, economics, project and organization management and other such soft skills, stressing practical work.

But there is much more than the academic part of the course that can make the days with

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Chapter 2:BEST for Students

the fellow students from all over the Europe an unforgettable experience. It is a great opportunity to find out that students from all around Europe are alike, that there are no borders between them but still the different cultural backgrounds of participants make the event even more colourful and interesting. Besides getting to know the hosts’ city, country and culture better, looking beyond the walls of usual tourist attractions, you find out so many things about other countries and cultures through the eyes of other participants.

The next step was to have some regulations and recommendations about what was called “Summer Programme”. What was a “Summer Programme”? The actual season, with all the deadlines before included (the activity announcement, application, validation, ranking and optimization).

SUMMER PROGRAMME 1991 After a very long discussion and several subgroups working night and day at GA Trondheim on it the first rules and recommendations for the Summer Programme’91 were settled: Rules

• BEST reserves the right to stipulate the following minimums regarding the summer courses:• All courses will admit at least 20 BEST students• There must be some kind of evaluation of the course accompanied with valid proof of attendance.• The BEST Summer Course at any organizing university may be a part of an already existing program as long as all the BEST minimum requisites are fulfilled.• The level and topic of the course will be decided by the organizing university to the best extend of its abilities, keeping in mind that there will be 2 or 3 week courses with approximately 4 working hours a day.• Each organizing university shall reserve 75% of the available BEST student places for other organizing universities students, rest of the places being awarded to students from non-organizing BEST universities. The host university reserves the right to enlarge the course for its own students and possible guests from sister schools.• All the information and pre-requisites regarding the details of the course shall be submitted by each organizing university to all BEST related universities and the Secretariat by December 15th.• The applications and pre-selection will be completed by the local BEST groups of the sending universities before the spring G.A. The exchange and assignment of places will take place at the G.A. Each local group will bring all its application organized in correlating order beginning with the best candidate.• Each organizing university may send through the BEST network the equivalent to 75% of the available places of their own course.• Within the 75% of the available places in any given summer course, there should be at least one place reserved for every organizing university. All remaining

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places will be distributed between organizing university students at the G.A. by exchange.• 25% of the places will be distributed at the G.A. among students from non-organizing universities.• The organising university reserves the right to demand any type of written document to facilitate the acceptance of students to its course.• Tuition costs will be covered by the organizing university. Room and board shall be provided in the most inexpensive way but preferably free.

All of these rules were to be respected by each university and LBG. Because back than we didn’t benefit of internet facilities and online application, the students were filling their application forms by pen and afterward gave them to the LBG from their university. The delegates at the GA from that specific LBG would take the applications and give them to the organizing LBG where the students applied. Another solution was to send the application along with their CV by snail mail until a specified date considered an application dead line (DL).

This process was hard; the selection was made manually by BEST members, so there was no common procedure of selecting and ranking the applicants. At some point, some application were having added even pictures, but this got out of hand when in some LBGs the selection was made based on good looks and further on adding pictures was not allowed. In 1992, during the GA in Helsinki and Tallinn, the first optimization was done. LBG Grenoble took the challenge to make the first manual optimisation. Its purpose was to fill most of the available places and allow students to apply for several Summer Courses (SC).The process was hard and it had several back-points. Year by year the system was improving, but it took lots of effort by BEST members and time.

“So, at the beginning of SP94 programme, we encountered different problems: • The SP-posters and the SP-leaflet were made and distributed very late due to continuity problems and overloading of the responsible. • The deadlines were postponed by the Vth Board because of the delay of the info-material and organizational problems. • The new deadlines were subsequently passed by a large part of the SC organizers. • There were major problems with the optimization which resulted in a further delay.

The result was that the first list of participants was distributed at the end of May. Some SCs started in the beginning of July, so the applicants had more or less given up hope and in some cases arranged other activities. This postponed the time even more before some of the participants were informed of their acceptance. The final result was a large number of unused places and a much larger number of not satisfied applicants.

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Some of the SCs had problems living up to the standards of the BEST SCs. Every SC is representing BEST toward its participants, so if a SC is poorly organized the whole BEST network is discredited” (notes from the VI-th board report).

The organizers always tried to get money from programs as ERASMUS or TEMPUS. For some of the seasons, we were financially sustained by the European Union, as we were applying for grants for the courses. A proposal for collaboration with FEANI was presented by the Board as they seemed to be interested to help locally for the Summer Courses, providing lecturers in technical subjects as they are Engineers first of all.In GA 1994 in Turin, the first official “Book of making summer courses (SC)” was presented. It was called SP (Summer Programme Book) and it included all the deadlines and advice for the SC organizers.

The SP-book The SP-book was made to improve the “quality” of the SCs and to have a better knowledge management. It was made to improve the SP-booklet made by Ovidiu Sandor from the V-th board to decrease the papers needed for a SC organiser and to structure the Rules of the BEST SP. The handbook was included in the book, some chapters from it were restructured and some minor changes were made. To start from the structure of the book and then later deal with the contents it was treated as a completely new project, where the booklet and the rules were given as background material. This book was to be updated after each season after gaining more and more experience.

In this period, lots of events (WorkShops) were needed to establish a common ground for the SP, some requirements and advices that each LBG was advised to follow. For this, the WorkShops in Kosice, Lund, and Barcelona gathered SPOC members that worked in making these BEST events easier to organize and better planned. During these events, they prepared all the information for the book and started organizing it and improving as much as they could.

As the SP was growing more and more, inside BEST a new team was born that was concerned about the complementary education offered by BEST: Season Program Optimisation Committee (SPOC or Vivaldi committee). SPOC was originally founded back in GA96 to solve problems related to optimisation of BEST summer programme. Originally known as Summer Program Optimizing Committee, one of the committee early projects was to try to find a way of ranking the LBGs based on the quantity and quality of their activities (a project which was later dismissed). Gradually, as the committee developed expertise on this and linked areas, SPOC evolved to implement and take care of the Vivaldi procedures and the quality of BEST complementary education. Also SPOC was involved in the development of the current optimisation engine, ”Johnny” (as a proper IT-committee didn’t exist by then).

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Until ‘96 -’97 the application was still made by fax, or snail mail and the optimization was made manually. As internet appeared in the life of BEST members, SPOC considered that there was a constant need in having a system that would make the optimization automated. So some people from SPOC joined forces and started working at an optimization procedure .Some people from the CMT was to design the content of the application and other members would implement it accordingly. From the ones that initially worked in the development of this application we can mention 2 guys from Timisoara: Ovidiu Sandor and Cristi Bogdan .Ovidiu had a scholarship in Stockholm so the hosting for the server was there for a long time. The application was called “Johnny” (as the anonymous guy name in Romania) and the hosting was nada.kth.se.

SPOC delegates testing Johnny at GA 1998, Romania Many of the members of both ITC and SPOC focused on Johnny server to make the optimization process better, so several versions of Johnny were launched during the years 96-98. After a couple of year Johnny turned into BEST Application System (BAS). It is practically the same application always updated with new features that make the life of BESTies easier.

In parallel, another project was developing inside SPOC. It was named GreenApple and it was a set of guidelines that would assure a nice standard for the organizing of courses. The first attempt to discuss and develop a quality system for BEST Summer Courses was at IBS Athens (November 1998). The discussion group handled two case studies: “Building

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up a quality system for evaluating the experiences of foreign students at a university and how to improve the services if needed” and “A quality assurance system for BEST Summer Courses” based on the outcomes of the first one.

The work on this topic continued during the working group about Quality Control at the PM98 in Torino (November 1998). At IBS Gent (February 1999) a quality system was designed. The different steps of the system became more detailed. During the WS in Maribor (March 1999) the GeenApple system was finalised.

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

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

At the WS in Zagreb (October 1999), the demo courses were evaluated and the GreenApple procedure was modified (proposal #17-W-ZA-EDU-500).

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

With the GreenApple project, BEST tried to satisfy the European students of technology, to provide them with sufficient information about the course and make the course comply more with their expectations. The BEST members wanted to improve the quality of the complementary Education provided by BEST. With highly developed evaluation system the course organizers get feedback from the participants already when preparing the course, during the course and at the very end, which enables them to improve their way of working.

Until the end of the 2004 seasons, all of the LBGs applied the Green Apple standard in order for the LBGs to provide quality services for the European students of technology. After PM04 Portugal, GreenApple was no longer needed as there were no more any differences between a Vivaldi Event and a GreenApple one.

In 2003-2004 we developed a strong system that was offering students a good complementary educational program. It was clear for each LBG what they needed to do to have a good event so all the partied would benefit of. All of this information was provided by the Vivaldi Procedure:“There is a common procedure for promotion, application and evaluation of complementary

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education activities within BEST, called Vivaldi procedure. This procedure is based on dividing the year into 3 seasons (spring, summer and winter) and having common promotion, application method and deadlines for all the events within a given season.

Important part of the procedure is “Johnny”, our special application/optimization/evaluation engine and related database (developed solely for BEST by Information Technology Committee). Being accessible through Internet, it offers a possibility for all the students from universities with Local BEST Group to apply to the announced activities (one person can apply for up to three events in one season). After the application period is over, the organizers choose the participants for their course, taking into consideration the motivation letters written by the applicants.

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

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

Even while Johnny offers great support for the event organizers, participants and SPOC, in the near future the “Johnny version 2” will be develop in co-operation by SPOC and IT-Committee to provide even better facilities for all the parties involved. (written by SPOC)

Recognition of BEST EventsTerm “academic recognition” refers to the studies carried out at a foreign University, receiving credits for it (from that university) and later having these credits/courses recognized at the home university as part of the studies needed to accomplish a degree.The project was launched in 2000 and it’s been ongoing until now (2009). The main goal of this project is that the home university recognizes BEST courses as academic courses and gives the students that attended the courses ECTS credits. For this to be easier , each LBG had to fill in for each participant an Course Information Form, an detailed document stating the academic part of he course as the cultural one too: the number of study hour, the topics studied, the structure and grade give at the exam, cultural achievements.Merging SPOC and CWG

At PM 2004 it was first discussed a merger between SPOC and Competitions WG (CWG). During ICF Bucharest in 2005 the plan was settled: the structure of the new CMT, knowledge transfer, tasks for the team, further steps, transition period, new framework and places for the international events and new webpage. After the ICF a new era started and a new CMT was born: External Events Committee. This CMT deals with both SPOC projects and

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Competition and succeeded to implement a good unified system for all types of events BEST was providing.

The year 2006 brought new changes for the complementary education. As BESTies considered that they can offer more to students, one of the approved proposals was to have 4 Seasons, not 3; therefore the Autumn Season was created and LBGs could organize in fall one week courses like the ones prepared for Winter and Spring Seasons. “Another of the outcomes of the attempt to improve the complementary education service was the idea to investigate the possibility of having monthly-deadlines instead of season-deadlines for preparing and announcing non-optimised events”. (GA 2006 report)

At the EEC Summer Meeting and BEST Academic System (BAS) Short Intensive Meeting (SIM) in the summer of 2006, investigation on the “Monthly Deadlines” concept has been made. As a conclusion a more advanced concept - Flexibility of organising non-optimised events - was brought to life, which would give full flexibility to announce the non-optimised event to the organising LBG. Promotion would be made by virtual tools, such as the Public Website or a Newsletter. This would have meant that Non-optimised events can be announced after the official announcement deadline of the season. These events would then have had a separate set of deadlines (application deadline, account validation deadline, final list deadline and confirmation deadline). The evaluation and deposit return deadlines, however, would have remained the same as those of the season in which the event took place. A second option was also introduced, that differs in the following: The application deadline would be fixed. The first option was preferred by the LBGs, but the proposal was not approved in the plenary. This was the first step in making non-academic courses more flexible.

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

At PM 2007 Valladolid, the delegates approved to change the minimum number of participants at a BEST public event from 20 to 22. BESTies understood that at that moment BEST was not reaching all the students of technology across Europe that applied to the events therefore leaving many of them disappointed. Granting 2 more places in all events was still a small step but a strategic move for the future. At the same event, the term BEST public event was defines as BEST Course, Event on Education or BEST Engineering Competition leaving the leisure events aside as they didn’t provide the sae value for the students as the academic ones.In 2008 both in GA Tallinn and PM Bucharest the idea of quantity was presented by many

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LBG delegates and the 4 season rule was proposed. That meant that each LBG had to organise at least one BEST public event. Some of the LBGs couldn’t meat this condition so the reasons for not doing that were explained in the plenary.

The complementary education is the most important aspect BEST is concerned of and by its events it brings a new approach of the higher education in the technical universities of Europe. For all of these events to be enjoyed by students from all Europe we must thank the LBGs and members that had a dream and committed to this dream.


Engineering Competitions

Engineering Competitions became and are a real part of BEST since the start in 2002. The first real experience of BESTies with an Engineering Competition (EC) came in March 2002 when some BESTies went to the Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC). They came back very enthusiastic and started to promote the idea for this kind of BEST event. On ICF 2002, GA 2002 and some summer courses in 2002, small team designs and debates were organised. The Board saw that the idea was appreciated a lot and asked David Gonzalez (one of the BESTies who had been on the CEC2002) to create an international working group and to work out the idea in more detail. A call was made in the end of August 2002 to all BESTies and soon an enthusiastic group started to create the first EC-Handbook. On PM 2002 this EC-HB was presented. Competition Working Group (CWG) became officially a working group of BEST and it was decided to let this working group organise the first BEST European Engineering Competition (BEEC) together with an LBG. LBG Eindhoven and LBG Ghent were highly motivated to organise this first BEEC together with CWG and so it would be done from 17th till 23rd October 2003 in Nieuwkerke, Belgium with 60 participants from all over Europe. Half of them participated in teams of 4 people in a 2-day Team Design, the other half in a 2-day Case Study, followed by a presentation day. In the evenings 32 participants debated in teams of 2 people. The atmosphere was fantastic and everyone had a lot of fun doing the tasks and enjoying the social program.

After that CWG got requests from several LBGs to organise a BEST Engineering Competition (BEC) together with them. But the board decided to organise also in 2004 only one big BEC, to give CWG next to that time to work out a second version of the EC-HB and to work out a scenario how to continue with this project in BEST.

The second BEEC was organised by LBG Warsaw and CWG with help from baby member Gdansk from 8 till 16 October 2004 in Poland. 80 participants participated in Team Design,

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Case Study or Negotiation and could also take part in the debates in the evening. At the same time, compies (CWG members) thought about the different possible scenarios for the future. CWG could be providing support in task development to LBGs with a quality check later. The idea of BECs following the seasons was introduced ending in an approved proposal about BEC-events at PM 2004 Ljubljana. The idea of having local, national and maybe a European final reaching towards cooperation with Canadians raised already then. In 2005 three BECs were organised by Sofia, USTU and Zagreb as a first reaction on the PM 2004 proposal.

Also structural changes are taking place in 2005. CWG is merging with SPOC, as the organisation of both courses and BECs is becoming similar. In the new formed team, some people will check the quality of courses, others of BECs, while the general organisation of both types of evens is followed by the whole team. Next to the organisation of several BECs also a lot of LBGs started organising Local ECs (LECs) themselves. In 2003 there were a few already organised, in 2004 there were already LECs organised, some of them being really successfully with up to 100 participants and several categories. Also on a lot of internal and external BEST events a small EC were organised as a workshop as a new and different opportunity for participants.

Having several LECs organised in different Portuguese LBGs, the first National Engineering took place in autumn 2006 in Portugal. Inspired by its success, the attractiveness of engineering competitions and the will to strengthen LBGs by national cooperation, Belgium and Poland followed a few months later with their first NECs. The concept spread as a virus affecting Spain and Italy organising their first NEC one year later in 2007. Seeing more and more BECs being organised following the seasons and an increased popularity of LECs the idea to add an extra level to the national finals raised from coordinators of Italy and Belgium involving other nations in the discussions. At the same time in 2006 the idea to organise an International Engineering Competition together with bonding and CFES was presented, gathering the excelling teams from the three organisations to compete at the ultimate level. Developing the concept of the IEC needed a system to define the teams who will represent BEST. At IPF Lund 2008 the concept of BEST Competitions’ Final (BCF) was launched as a final of all the existing competitions in BEST with Lucien Romagnoli as coordinator in charge of the project. Presenting the project to the delegates asking if BEST should set a big step to develop a European final with local and national rounds, the whole plenary probed the idea positively and changed the name into EBEC: European BEST Engineering Competition. Inspired by the idea, new national and regional finals started to develop in five more so called semi-finals; the result was 10 national and regional engineering competitions (NECs and RECs) with teams from 51 universities, coming from 18 countries involving 3500 participants in LECs. The 10 NEC and RECs were from West to East: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Central Region, Poland, Romania and Moldova, Baltic countries with Russia and Ukraine

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A working group called the EBEC-Responsibles took care of the project together with EEC and support from markeTeam and finTeam to make the big step possible and introduce a new way of cooperation between LBGs and committees. Many new ways were investigated, some more successful than others, but resulting in the first EBEC taking place in the first part of August in Ghent gathering 80 winners in 20 teams equally spread in Team Design and Case Study categories. Topics were delivered by companies, BEST and the United Nations Environment Programme.

The new project created for BEST the opportunity to experiment with media by starting intensive promotion of BEST through the project in some countries and the development of a media centre sharing movies, articles, team blogs and live-streaming to the external world. This is a positive try-out that might affect the future promotion of BEST.

The second edition is planned to take place in Cluj-Napoca intensively supported by EEC and the redefined competitions’ coordinator with expectations to involve more national and regional finals and who knows… all LBGs soon. BEST showed its capacity to strengthen

cooperation between LBGs and to innovate fast… let’s start dreaming about the next step!

Article written by Lucien Romagnoli

Career Support

On the first day, BEST made LBGsLBGs gathered members, attended GMs and developed the Statutes, Identity and Regulations of the organization.

On the second day, BEST made coursesCourses were great events for students; they would develop their technical skills and open their minds towards Europe. But like everything that is fun, courses were also quite expensive to organise.

Money was coming either from universities (but in limited amounts), from grants (but rather randomly) or from companies (but why?)

To get money from the companies, BEST needed something to offer back.

On the third day, BEST made Career SupportThe most valuable thing we had to offer to companies was engineers. And we had plenty of those. It started as a service that would fund the other activities of BEST, but as it turned out, it had also a very important and positive impact on the development of the students.

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Time is relative (when did it start?)As an idea, we had it from the very beginning. The report of the International Week in Grenoble 1988 mentions BEST should organise job-shops which would be international job fairs that would gather students and companies from all over Europe. BEST talked about implementing this for a few years, but after a feasibility plan, it was dropped.

1993 saw another idea pop up: STED (Students of Technology European Database). This was supposed to be a database of CVs where access could be given to companies. Of course in a time when internet access was scarce and expensive, this was also dropped and forgotten.

On an international level, career support for students started with the launch of the first version of MINERVA.

For BEST members it started with the first Company Day at a GM, where they could meet with companies that were specifically interested in students with their profile.

For the local students, it started with the first local job fair, company presentation, or any other type of local career event. Or maybe with the Career Related Skills Courses?So which one was first?

The lovely MINERVA

MINERVA = Moving Into a New Era of Recruitment with Virtual Access

The beginning of Minerva CV database can be placed in 1997, where the original idea to develop a virtual job fair was created. The development lasted for many years and by the end of 1999 we reached the first version of Minerva.

A newer, more stable and flexible version was launched in 2002. From 2002 till 2005, various improvements were made into the system, there has been a huge promotion of Minerva and Minerva was integrated in the public website of BEST. Later on, after ICF 2004, it was renamed into BEST Career Centre. In 2006 the CV database was part of the merger project where users have one unified account for BEST Career Centre together with Private Area account and BEST Courses account.

Minerva has been a working group (WG) between 1997 and 2000 where the WG applied for the “Committee” status at GA Stockholm 2000, which it received in GA Ljubljana 2001. Minerva name remained till GA Gabcikovo 2003, where the committee was renamed into Career Support Committee (CaSCo) due to the broader activities of the group.

The main original idea was to create a unique CV database of students of technology and

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attract companies to recruit new engineers through the internet. Along side (though not deriving from Career Support), new projects emerged and became a supplement to the CV database such as:

• NExUS - Needs and Expectations of University Students• University Project• Career Advices

The existence of those projects led to the change of the “Minerva” name into BEST Career Centre, together with the appliance of the BEST branding effort. All those projects were created with the intention of providing students and young graduates with opportunities and information on their career either in the academic or business world.

BEST Career Centre, from the beginning of its creation, was somehow distant for the Local BEST Groups, since the LBGs didn’t have many benefits and there were many LBGs that organised their own real job fairs. Some of them even had their own virtual job fairs (e.g. Romanian LBGs had eJobShop). A new project called “BCC-LBG Cooperation” was created in order to fill in that gap.

If we were to split the history of Minerva in different periods, they would be the following:• 1997-1999: Start up of the project• 1999-2002: IT implementation and financing• 2002-2004: Heavy Promotion• 2004-2006: Evaluation/Termination of Committee/Project splitting• 2006-present: Follow up period

CaSCo’s legacyIn the early years of Minerva as a Working Group and as a Committee, there was separate budget and fundraising from the rest of the organisation. There was a financial responsible and a budget voted at General Meetings. The BEST members involved in Minerva had company meetings and were fundraising money for the CV database.

With the creation of the Support Group, which eventually became the Financial Committee of BEST, there was a restructure in Minerva. There was no more separate budget and no specific fundraising for the project. The committee had as only focus the development and promotion of the database and the rest of its projects.

Things have been moving pretty well in the period 2002-2004 since BEST had just launched the renewed service and there was a heavy promotion around the Career Centre.

The first doubts and concerns regarding the services provided were raised in late 2003 and 2004. On one hand the interest from students kept being low despite the promotion, and on the other hand there were very limited developments in all the projects under

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BEST Career Centre. Till 2005, the involvement of Local BEST Groups in the project was decreasing step by step, the committee was starting to have HR problems and the success of “BCC-LBG Cooperation” didn’t last long. In addition to that, finTeam was having difficulties in promoting BCC towards companies. All the major developments of the period 2004-2006 were made based on ideas of finTeam members that needed to have attractive offers towards the companies supporting BEST.

As a result of all the above mentioned reasons, the first ideas of making administrative

BEST Career Centre Poster

changes in CaSCo appeared. An evaluation working group was created in 2005-2006 and the results were presented in GA Zagreb 2006 where the proposal to dissolve the Career Support Committee was approved. It was obvious that BCC was a fine fundraising tool for BEST and if used as such, it can constantly provide opportunities for European students. The two important projects of CaSCo were transferred to other teams. The responsibility for the

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maintenance and development of BEST Career Centre was given to finTeam.The positive vicious circleSince going under finTeam, BCC started being developed to suit more the needs of the companies than of the students. However, more companies meant more offers, and that meant more interest from the students. More students - even more partners.

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

The third and most important boost was the implementation of the Local BCC (formerly known as BCC - LBG Cooperation) which meant that LBGs could sell access to the CVs from their university. With this financial motivation, the promotion of BCC was now being done by the LBGs.

Complementary Education SupportComplementary to the technical skills they learnt in school, some BEST courses started teaching students how to find their perfect career. These external events are part of the seasons just like regular technical courses, and they are called BEST Courses on Career Related Skills.

Officially, this category of courses was implemented and the first career course was announced in Spring Season 2003, by LBG Madrid. Still, in Summer Season 2001, Stockholm had already organised such an event “International Engineering - Preparation for a Global Career”, but as a regular course.

Over the next 5 years, 14 career courses were organised (around 4% of the total number of external events)

What about the BESTies?After meeting with BEST members on several occasions, the companies realised that these particular students, after gaining experience in project management, team work, international communication, leadership and many other skills, become potentially valuable employees.

I guess we realised this too, because at one point we started organising career related activities during General Meetings. Companies would pay participation fees to come to the General Meeting Official Opening and meet these high-potential students.

The first full-time Company Day with speeches and a job fair in a GM came in GA Sweden 2000. The previous three GMs did not have any companies present, but in GA Romania 1998

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there was an Official Opening in the Palace of Parliament in Bucharest.

For the sake of double checking, when writing the History Book (in 2009) we were asking around for details about that day. We found out from Risto that “there was at least one presentation from a guy from a French telecommunication company”. Risto also remembered (11 years after the event!!!) that “it was perhaps somewhere around +23 degrees in Bucharest (by contrast, when I left home previous morning it was below zero). In Cluj–Napoca it got cooler, though (+15 or so).” Risto’s memory was never to be doubted again.

Since GA 2000, though, the Company Day became a must for fundraising the budget of a GM. Nowadays, it includes 20 minute speeches, a 1,5 hour job fair and 2,5 hour work shops. The last company days have brought around 40.000 EUR each to the organising LBGs.

So who was first?The LBGs, of course! MINERVA started in 1999, Company Days in GMs in 2000, Career Courses in 2001. Job fairs started almost as soon as the courses!

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

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

Unfortunately, due to university policies, or local mentality, most LBGs are not allowed to organise job fairs, which limits their sources of incomes quite drastically.

Career support is everywhereActually, not just career events are offering the participants career support. General Meetings are the perfect example, but you will also find companies willing to recruit the participants in Regional Meetings, TrainShops, Committee Meetings, BEST Courses, and most recently Engineering Competitions.So what started from a way to fundraise has turned into the BEST service that touches the biggest number of students.

Article written by Cristian Arteni and Panagiotis Isigonis

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Educational Involvement of BEST in the European Higher Education System

Since the early times, BEST was interested in engineering education in Europe and wanted to make students’ opinions heard in an environment willing to improve the educational systems in Europe.

In 1995 SMILE, the committee created inside BEST to think about the future and to create our “3 year plan”, decided to include the following aim for the organisation: “BEST will represent European students of technology in the matters concerning students”.

It had the chance in 1996, after an invitation from 2 academic associations, SEFI and CESEAR, to join a thematic network which was a new EU project at the time.

A new European thematic network dealing with engineering education called Higher Engineering Education in Europe (H3E) was started by three organizations.

This was the first time that our organization had the chance of supplying the student perspective to international educational discussions.

For this reason an educational committee was created inside BEST under the name BCTN. After a while this was changed into EduCo (Educational Committee). The main task of EduCo was to take care of Educational.

Some of the pioneers of this committee were active at international level, and some of the committee’s members were part of the international Board. An interesting thing is that at the beginning, Educo was not a committee opened for everybody. At most, there were 5 or 6 EduCos, the project coordinators and the rest of the education interested people were observers. From the first pioneers of education we can mention: Jonas Murby (president of BEST), Olivier Cuisenaire, Giuseppe Garripoli, Laurent Hendrichs, Paolo Bianco, Guy Brusselmans (vice-president of BEST).

In 1996, when the H3E project started, it was not clear yet to BESTies which path was the right one to follow. With the help of some people from the academic organisations, BEST learned a lot about educational matter in the first years of H3E. One of the persons who helped BEST a lot in getting involved into educational matters was Philippe Grosjean, then secretary-general of CESAER. He was later awarded honorary membership of BEST for this.

In the early stages of EduCo, it was not clear to everybody what the role of BEST in these educational matters was and what EduCo should do for H3E. They started reviewing documents and reports of this thematic network’s activity for a

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better understanding of how BEST can contribute. Inside the Educational Committee it was decided to set some clear guidelines on the role of educational matters in BEST. The result was the so-called Educational Programme and the first strategic plan on educational matters.

Nevertheless, the plans and the monitoring of the development of this thematic network were settled through meetings between the three parties: CESAER, BEST and SEFI. A monitoring committee was formed that had 3 types of meetings all over Europe: executive meetings, monitoring meetings and the working group meetings.

Both SEFI and CESAER made joint Work Groups that focused on different topics of great importance for the development of Education in Europe and during 4 years many meetings all over Europe took place and one by one, fulfilled the primary goal of this Thematic Network: improvement of the quality of Higher Education in Europe. Four major themes were discussed in the joint H3E Working Groups:

• Motivation for engineering studies (why are fewer high-calibre young people choosing to study engineering?)• Internationalisation of the “curriculum”• Types and Forms of Institution, Quality Assurance in Engineering Education and Mutual Recognition• Continuing Engineering Education, Lifelong Learning and the exploitation of new educational technologies

The results of the discussions contributed to the overall goal of the project, improving the quality of higher engineering education in Europe.

From 1996 on BEST started to organise Events on Education, named IBS (International BEST Symposium). An IBS in EduCo’s hands became a 3-days seminar where students from all over Europe, together with academics and representatives from industry, discuss educational matters. The Educational Programme was growing. One of the first IBS organised that dealt with H3E problems was in 1996 in Copenhagen. It was an analytical discussion regarding the problems faced in different countries. Factors affecting the motivation of students were listed and the interest of different potential partners was evaluated.

After that, in 1997, the number of such events grew exponentially and every IBS had a theme of general interest for the three parties. One of the events that took place during that period is IBS Gothenburg.

The participants of this event were students from Technical Universities all over Europe. Some of them were BEST members, but the most of them weren’t.

From the beginning, a set of Terms of reference were settled, some sort of rules and principles

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that everybody followed; the first steps of the collaboration were also discussed: to collect statistical data referring to the topic discussed all around Europe.

All of the outcomes from IBS, WorkShops, like the one made in Bucharest in 1996, or discussions during GMs were analysed at the working group meeting of H3E. The majority of the meetings between SEFI, CESAER and BEST took place at Brussels at the head office of SEFI, but some of them were organised also in Louvain-la-Neuve, Zürich, Lisbon, Stockholm, Ghent, Trondheim. Every WG had a medium of 8 meetings through the 4 years of collaboration. At the end of these 4 years, the final outcomes and reports were published and the project was considered a success.

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

Working day at IBS Stockholm, 1999

The IBS/IBS+ programme of BEST was developed further in co-operation with E4 and ETNET21. The outputs from student discussions at IBS/IBS+ served as input for further discussions in these projects.

The year 2000 brought many changes to the structure of BEST educational events. The EduCo summer meeting of that year took place in Helsinki and was attended by 7 people including Pim Bonne as the coordinator of EduCo, Isabel Arribas Martin and Ronald Van Ham as EduCo Members After reviewing the co-operation with other parties, the most discussed topic was the birth of an new event, BACo, the BEST, Academics and Companies Forum.

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During a BACo, students, academics and representatives from companies meet and discuss topics related to education. The goal is to approach the positions of the three stakeholders in education through the exchange of opinions and experience. “So a BACO could look like:

• Arrival day• 1st day presentations about the topics• 2nd day discussion in mixed groups• 3rd day separate groups• 4th day discussion mixed groups• 5th plenary session to present results• Departure Day

It was tried few times to organise a BACo, but it would only be in 2005 that the first BACo was organised in Zagreb.

EduCo’s framework was modified that year as well, and there were made comments and modifications to different aspects like mandate of the co-ordinator, the size of the committee, membership and joining the committee, responsibilities of members and other related topics. At that time the committee members were only the people that were co-ordinating the projects of EduCo and the committee co-ordinator was to be elected by the General Assembly.

Only after GA 2002 in Paris, EduCo became an open committee, anyone could join, not only the ones that wanted to become projects co-ordinators. Since then the numbers of members grew up to 20 members.

Another event was about to reshape after the Helsinki meeting: IBS+.

The idea of having IBSs+ came in ‘98-’99. After 3 IBSs+ (Helsinki, Barcelona and Ljubljana), BEST came to the conclusion that the concept resembles too much the normal IBS concept. So EduCo had to redefine the IBS+ concept.

“So we think in an IBS+ there should be the right balance between interactive classes and sessions by experts, so people will get more personal learning experiences. The experts we need will depend on the topics; they can be professors, EduCo members or professionals. So these trainers can be local persons who have an in-depth knowledge and have good ideas how to fit the training to the topic.”(Helsinki Meeting report)

The strategic plan for the educational committee of BEST for the years 2000-2001 maintained an continuity to the efforts and achievements gained until than. Some new projects were about to be born like a Project with Minerva on the expectations of engineering students (NEXUS- Needs and Expectations of University Students) or the IBS Book.

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After withdrawing form one activity of E4 in August 2001, BEST didn’t cut all of the communication with E4, and members of the organization were invited at the E4 Management Meetings , as they felt that BEST is a big stakeholder in the European higher educational system. In parallel to this, BEST continued its educational task through several events like: IBS in Chania, Helsinki, Lisbon, Valladolid, Lyon, and Tallinn. In this period, the EduCo members did their best to promote the educational matter and the specific events in the BEST world and tried to convince as many LBGs possible to host IBS.

The BACo concept was better defined in 2003 providing information about the participants, the benefits of each stakeholder, the discussion plans and possible themes and the structure of the event. At that time the IBS concept was also redefined and new discussion topics were identified. At that time EduCo was trying to recruit as much members as possible to be able to meet everybody’s expectations.

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

The two other projects ETNET21 and Leonardo 2000 finished with success in that period.The organization was not just a member of these projects but an active part of it, taking part in the management of the project (the decision making team). In collaboration with these thematic networks, BEST organized events like symposiums and BACo in Vienna, Almada and Zagreb.

Besides the mentioned Thematic Networks, BEST was collaborating or getting in contact with several other organisation and projects: EUCEN (European Universities Continuing Education Network), EuroPACE, REVE project (Real Virtual Erasmus Project), EAN (European Access Network), EAEEIE (European Association for Education in Electrical and Information Engineering). BEST had the common goal with these TNs to stress on the importance of higher education and to improve the quality of education.

The Summer Meeting in 2004 that took place in Leuven was very motivating for all the members present. A lot of decisions were taken that would ensure the progress of the Educational Programme. . Some of the main things discussed and worked upon were IBSs, first BACo in Zagreb in March 2005, the involvement of EduCo and BEST in TREE, the improvement of EduCo image inside BEST and the new projects of EduCo.

At PM 2004, EduCo submitted a proposal to change the name of the IBS in “BEST Workshop on Education” (BWoE): “During ICF 2004 we decided to set a common image to all the external events that BEST is organizing. This way, students will see BEST Events as a whole

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and will be able to easily identify our events. During discussions at the EduCo Summer Meeting we decided, in a session together with markeTeam, to change the name of the oldest educational event that BEST is organizing IBS into BEST Workshop on Education.”

The year 2005 brought lot’s of educational events for BEST made in collaboration with partner TNs, from which we can mention: “Access to higher Education and Undergraduate Research” Symposium in Ljubljana in April-May, “Teaching methods of the future: E-Learning and Project Based Learning” Symposium in Aalborg in August, or Symposium in Rome Tor Vergata “The Role of Extra-Curricular Activities in the Formation of Engineers” in the same month. At internal EduCo events, the committee was focusing besides TN on improving the communication between members of the committee, between EduCo and LBG and trying to improve the quality of events.

At the summer meeting in Athens in 2005 the idea of Local Events on Education was discussed for the first time. After a session held by Stefan Dumitrescu from LBG Bucharest, it was settled EduCo’s involvement and some guidelines for the organizing LBG:

• Number of days : 2.• Logistics: 2 working rooms (for Discussion Groups), one big lecture room.• Number of participants: minimum 10.• Including the event in other bigger events: for BACo it would be ideal to be included in a job fair; in general, it’s flexible.• Content: the report in English but the discussions in native language “

Another project that BEST educational committee decided to work upon is Recognition. Its aim is to help students attending BEST courses in having those courses recognised in their universities as part of their curricula and thus getting credits for attending BEST courses. The first phase of the project was having LBGs answering a questionnaire about recognition of BEST Courses in their universities and to inform students that they can ask for credits from their university for the BEST courses attended in other European university. At RMs in fall, they were handing out questionnaire about recognition.

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

At the end of 2005 there were more and more people interested in this educational issues and the committee had a number of 10 EduCos attending the PM as other committee delegates or LBG delegates.

The planning of events went very well for 2006 as many LBGs decided to involve more and more into the Educational Chapter of BEST: Istanbul took the challenge in organizing a BEST Academics and Companies Forum, Madrid and Porto decided to organise Symposium of Education with Students and Academics all over Europe. Some of the topics discussed were:

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Accreditation, The role of extra curricular activities in the formation of engineers, Ethics in Engineering Education or Sustainable Development in Engineering Education. In 2006 the cooperation was well with the following TNs: ReVe, Eucen, Ean and Tree. During PM Ghent in 2006 BEST participation in 2 European educational projects was officially approved.

BEST became an official partner in SPUTNIC (Seminars Promoting the Use of Technologies for Networking and International Collaboration). BEST was the only one student organisation in this one year project. BEST became one of the 10 partners in the TN VM-BASE (Virtual Mobility before and after student exchanges) and the second student organisation in it. This TN was under the coordination of EuroPACE and its duration was 2 years. Through both projects BEST gained visibility and a chance of influencing the development of the educational system by making students voices heard.

At GA France in 2007, the EduCo delegates proposed to formalize the cooperation with SEFI (Société Européenne pour la Formation des Ingénieurs / European Society for Engineering Education), FEANI (European Federation of National Engineering Associations), and IFEES (International Federation of Engineering Education Societies). The delegates agreed that BEST would become official partners of these organizations. At PM Valladolid in the same year, other 2 co-operations with ERABEE and ENAEE were approved.

BEST continued its task in the Higher Education Systems in Europe in the same way by establishing new co-operations with TN like TREE-TWO and ESTIA-EARTH. Besides the efforts sustained by hundreds of EduCos, the task is not finished yet. BEST represents students in the relationship with Academics all around Europe. Through Events on Education, BEST strives to improve little by little these educational systems. But there is more to be done….

Article written by Mirela Andriescu and Pim Bonne


Chapter 3

BEST Online

• Minerva• BEST University Centre

• BEST Career Centre • Jimmy

• Johnny • BEST Application System

• BEST Teachers’ Area • Karamba

• Private Area • Newsletters

• Unified System • Public Website

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BEST Online

People BEST started realising the need of using on-line and web technologies since the very beginning of the organisation. As technical students, BEST members were aware of the advantages of these technologies, and furthermore had technical skills in order to be able to use them.

Probably, the first central FTP server appeared sometime in 1994 and people started to think about Internet domains and best.eu.org. The public page became the central information page.

In 1996, the first ideas of an on-line network occurred. Mailing lists in Budapest.

Till around 1996 the whole procedure for applying and getting accepting in a summer course, was done manually during events. BEST members were exchanging hand-written applications and then deciding on who the participants will be. The most painful procedure thought, was the optimisation.

At the PM in Trondheim, people decided that we should try a new optimisation procedure that would make the life of everybody easier, and result in fewer mistakes. The procedure remained very similar to the original, only that now the idea was to automate it for faster and more reliable results.

This automated optimisation procedure was a milestone that marked the beginning of the on-line era of BEST. Here’s a short time line of what happened since 1987:

• 1987- People are communicating with snail mail, phone and fax.• Early 90’s- E-mail servers in Grenoble, Newcastle, Budapest. These servers were not owned by BEST.• 1993-

o Introduction of email usage to network.o Electronic document collection began

• 1994 - Introduction of ftp and WWW technologies for the first time. An online archive was also introduced using the FTP technology.• 1995

o Fist public website appearso First version of a www. This version how ever was static.o First attempt of a decentralised automatic system for application to our courses is developed by Grenoble students.

• 1996 o Introduction of weekly inter-LBG meetings in IRC, to strength the communication.o Summer Programme 96 is running. It was the predecessor of Johnny.

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Chapter 3:BEST Online

• 1997o Johnny97 is running. At this point there were season specific accounts that were renewed in every seasono Discussion about a new web domain.o New Web design of BEST, which was financially supported by H3E. The domain ‘best.eu.org’ was also obtained and used later this year.o First idea of Minerva popped up. It started getting designed during WS in Eindhoven. Mock-ups were ready later this year.o First use of [email protected] addresses.o First use of Lotus Notes towards the end of the year

• 1998 o Application to internal events via Lotus Notes is enabled. www.best.eu.org/lbgname is available.o Johnny98 is running. Season independent accounts are used for the first time.o Minerva gets implemented using Lotus Notes. It is not launched howevero Bug submitter installedo Technical archives are installed in Lotus Notes and used for the first time in the beginning of the yearo Near the end of the year the idea to drop Lotus Notes and re-do everything in java/sql occurred

• 1999o New server for BEST (a.k.a. Ana), used as a DNS server and ran mailing lists. Supposedly it was the first server actually owned by BEST. The machine is still in BEST office in Tallinn, but it’s not hooked on-line.o First version of Makumba appears, called Meta-Data at the moment and later Macumba. It was used for implementing Private Area and Johnny. It was done during a summer course that was partially taught by ITC

• 2000o Second server (a.k.a. Malaka) was set in Stockholm. The server ran Lotus licence for Lotus Notes.o Helpdesk was done using PHPo The idea of Karamba first occurred

• 2001o First idea of the merging [5]o Around May 2001 the Public Website is redesigned and launched

• 2002o Johnny-TS (Transition System) was launched in April 19tho Minerva-TS was launched in 6th of Juneo First ParaDe implementationo November: Private Area is using Makumba for the first timeo LBG Reports started to be filled in online

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o Tequila was bought• 2003

o CVS and Lotus files were lost due to a big crasho Makumba is used in www.BEST.eu.orgo News Engine in www.BEST.eu.orgo Helpdesk implemented using Makumba

• 2004o Wiki trial on Makumba o Public Website is redesigned again, and is launched at the end of the yearo News Engine on Private Areao Minerva is renamed into BEST Career Centre

• 2005o BAS LBG Area is integrated with Private Area in the beginning of the year, since it was totally independent previously.

• 2006o Merger is launched for Private Area and BAS userso Layout integration of external pages, so they all have the same layout (BAS, BCC, and Public Website)

• 2007o 30th of July: Local Events feature is launched, known before as Jimmyo Spring Season: P@B is launched but not announced. Some LBGs are selected in order to test the system.o Summer Season: P@B is officially launched. It was later called BEST Teachers’ Area.

• 2008o Merger is launched for all userso The Unified System is launched. The merging dream finally came to life!

From the first on-line optimisation in 1996, till today, a lot of things changed in the way we are providing our services to the students and members. However, no matter how advanced our systems are nowadays, they still work on those same principles that were set in the very beginnings. That’s why it’s worthy looking back in the past to research about the development of our tools.

Minerva

The first idea of Minerva was born by Belgian GA 1997 organisers, when they were thinking of several ways of fundraising. They were thinking of creating a kid of forum on the internet where students and companies could meet. The GA team presented the idea to a lot of companies and it was clear that most companies had an urgent need for such a project. However due to lack of time, the GA team was not able to work for a stable programme, since it was clear that the project was only worth the try when if it was thoroughly prepared and well thought.

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The reasons that pushed BEST members to go on with this project were:

• Growing awareness of internationalisation (and even globalisation) among engineering students and companies• The need for a tool to help students find a challenging international career had grown• Companies having difficulties to find internationally minded students abroad.

After the GA, the X Board worked on with the idea and started surveying discussions with several parties (student organisations in charge of job fairs (bonding), companies, professional recruitment companies, etc.) and decided to go on with the launch of such a project.

From the beginning it was clear that a Virtual Job fair could only supplement a real job fair, and not completely replace it. The idea was to link this system with EFC (European Fairs Club), which would be a network of Engineering Job fairs, organised by students all over Europe. With this linkage, a huge network of engineering job-fora would be created, and covered by the Virtual Job fair.

The child needed a name and a board member came up with Minerva (Moving Into New Engineering Recruitment by Victual Access). Since everybody loved to have finally a woman on-board, Minerva was there to stay.

The first steps for implementing this system took place in a WorkShop organised by LBG Eindhoven in October 1997. There the goals of the project were set, and it was decided that the features of Minerva would be:

• Companies’ Information: The company can put information about the company and can announce vacancies, internships, seminars, case-days, etc. Specialised application forms can be added here.• The Minerva Guide: Students, who want, can put their CV in the Minerva Guide. The student will get a personal password providing him/her the possibility to correct his/her data and to withdraw from the database whenever he/she feels like. If the data is not be updated during one year, the system will demand the student to update his/her profile. If not, the CV will be automatically erased. In that way, we give the freedom to the student to withdraw or change whatever and whenever he/she feels like and we also guarantee an up-to-date database at the same time. Companies participating in Minerva will get access to this base and through smart search engines; they can find the employee of their dreams....• Minerva’s Message Party: Students can indicate the companies where they are most interested in, in that way subscribing themselves in the companies’ mailing list. When the company has an interesting announcement to make, they can mail to all interested students.• European Fairs Club: All info about the real fairs, organised by the EFC can be added here. In this way a student can look for information in Minerva and check

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whether the company he likes most is coming to a job fair nearby.• Minerva News Corner: All additional info (financial news, job-markets, CV-guidelines, etc) can be added here.

In the beginning, the project was decided to run as a joined project, since it involved the job fairs organised by bonding as well, and thus it was the first step for the Cooperation of BEST and bonding on covering level.

A lot of questions were raised on that meeting, and it was decided to write down clear guidelines to the board, in order to work out a precise working strategy till PM. The Working Group also worked on investigating the technologies that could be used in order to develop such a system. It was decided to use Lotus Notes for implementation, mainly because Lotus Notes was a mature system, and it was also used in the development of Johnny. On the other hand, it was thought that using such a popular tool would motivate people to join the group, since they could gain professional experience like this.

Last but not least, a lot of guidelines were defined on what the official name should be, specifications of company information (size of logo, location, countries that is present, etc. etc.), promotion of the service towards students and companies, costs and benefits of Minerva and other various topics.

So like this, the service of Career support started growing in BEST.

Later on, a programmer team was selected in PM 1997 in Warsaw, to move on with the technical implementation of Minerva into Lotus Notes. 3 meetings were held afterwards

• in Copenhagen in December 1997• in Barcelona in February-March 1998• in Cluj-Napoca in April 1998

Sometime in the middle of 1998, Irina from Bucharest finished implementing Minerva with Lotus Notes as her diploma project. However the result is labelled as ‘unfitted’ to be presented to the companies. Main reason was the fact that Lotus Notes was not designed to support this kind of services, and it wasn’t totally under the control of the developers. That’s why, during the BEST-bonding WorkShop in Nuremberg in September of 1998, ITC members complained about working with Lotus Notes and decided to give up the idea of using it, and start to work on it with more familiar technologies (Java and SQL) which let them do a better Web layout, and fully control the technology.

ITC was so enthusiastic to start working on the new technology, that there was a meeting in Helsinki before the end of the year, to start implementing it. Later on the development went like this:

• Winter 1998 - Spring 1999: Sustained work on the new version, with 4 programmers actively involved: Cristi (TM), Toto (LLN), Marta (CJ), and Mirel (BC). More than 20 versions are released internally!• February 1999: Lotus Notes training for ITC meeting in Paderborn, Germany

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that was paid by Lotus. The professional trainers confirm ITC members that their problems with Lotus Notes were legitimate, and that Notes is not so suitable for a service like Minerva• GA 1999 in Lisbon: work continues, and a proposal for the Board taking care of the project is approved• Middle of 1999: Mirel finishes Minerva in SQL as his diploma project• July 1999: Meeting in the Athens SC, the metadata technology is designed• August 1999: Bug fixes to Mirel’s version. Toto becomes the responsible of Minerva development• Autumn 1999: prior to the launch, the metadata technology is integrated in Minerva, ensuring higher reliability and portability• WorkShop Copenhagen September 1999: for the first time the software is thoroughly tested by non-ITC members and solid feedback is given. the bug database is built• November 1999: Minerva is launched! • PM 1999 in Chania: work on the metadata technology continues• January 2000: A Minerva meeting is being held in Turin. The future of Minerva is discussed and an action plan is decided. Also a proposal to make a committee about Minerva in the upcoming GA is decided.• 2000: Cooperation of Minerva and EduCo projects was investigated. Outcomes from NEXUS (Needs and Expectations of University Students) were used and implemented in Minerva. No further development of Minerva was done, since there was a lack of people, and also the system was quite usable. During this period, the promotion of the service was widely investigated.• WorkShop in Copenhagen March 2001: Discussions about the new design of Minerva. A new design is proposed • 6th of June 2002: The new website of Minerva is launched. The new version (called Minerva-TS) was developed using Makumba. After 8th of October, public statistics about Minerva are available for everyone.• ICF 2003 in Timisoara: Talks about naming Minerva Committee to Career Support Committee. Proposal was approved in GA 2003.

In 2004 Minerva service is renamed to BEST Career Centre (BCC), thus finishing the history of the service. The service now appears with the new name that represents in a better way what this service is about. A big era for BEST ends; however little things changed in the service with its change in name.

Makumba

Makumba is the main technology used in BEST IT systems, like BEST Application System, BEST Career Centre, Private Area and Unified System. It is a technology specialised in producing WWW views of data stored in databases. The amateur developers and designers can engage with Makumba at three levels, in order of complexity, known shortly as “MDD”,

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“JSP taglib” and “BL” (Makumba Data Definition, Java Server Pages tag libraries and Business Logic). Makumba is a query-centric technology designed by BEST that helps users to rapidly develop web applications that keep their data in a database (i.e. data driven web applications). It is implemented in Java and offers a JSP tag library and a Java API to the web application developer. The technology has been in use since late 2001, and is being further developed, based on users’ experience and requests.

Makumba was developed by BESTies mostly because a common data format for all the information was needed. Before Makumba, Java and Lotus Notes were used, without very big success. Furthermore, all the servers of BEST were not running windows, and this was a reason to refrain from using the typical choices of MySQL or ODBC. Last but not least, Makumba gathered from the very beginning only limited amount of features, and only the ones that are needed for BEST. This helped even inexperienced BESTies to learn this new system, since BEST students usually stay up to 3 years in the organisation, and easiness of learning was very important.

“The transfer from Lotus Notes format to the present Makumba format was done by me in a painful summer (2001). It was an automatic system that was connecting to the Notes (Domino)-generated PA website and was sucking all documents, member info (and maybe events) automatically. I made such an importer for Johnny as well (that was a bit easier, as I had internal knowledge of it), and a simpler system for Minerva which already had Makumba-like structures. All this was known as the “importer” (not exporter) project, and was one of my main efforts to get BEST IT to be independent of technologies that only a few people (or just I) knew.”(Cristi Bogdan, LBG Timisoara)

The development of the Makumba technology is active, since congresses are organised annually in order for developers to meet and evolve this tool. Since the beginning 6 congresses were organised and they resulted in the 0.8.1.9.1 version of Makumba. After so many years, Makumba proved to be a very reliable and appropriate technology for BEST, since the beginning of Makumba numerous different applications were developed using it. These applications are used daily by BESTies, and are the necessary tools for the current development of the organisation.

You can find more about Makumba in its official website: www.makumba.org|http://www.makumba.org

-Protect your hardware, use Makumba “ITC SM 2004, Incukalns, Latvia”

BEST Career Center BEST Career Centre is the continuation of the Minerva project. The project changed the name, keeping the same goals, just to represent in a more clear way what is it about. Since the birth of BCC, not so many things changed. Here is a short time line of what happened:

• GA 2006: CasCo, the committee of BEST that was taking care of BCC gets dissolved. finTeam is now responsible for the service.

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• 2007: Local BEST Career Service is starting to get developed• February 2008: BEST Career Centre is merged with BAS and Public Website, to form the Unified System of BEST.• 2008: Local BCS is used by the LBGs. Access to local companies is given, and they can only access CVs coming from the LBG that gave them the access. A lot of new features are developed during this year.

The launch of the Unified System is considered a great milestone for BCC, because it brought a very big growth in numbers of CVs available in the database. The reason was that via the Unified System, the uploading of the CVs was very easy and direct: users that wanted to apply to an event needed only some extra fields to be completed to have their CV uploaded.

Jimmy

The Idea of this project was launched in finTeam in winter 2005. First work was done during the Workshop in Trondheim in February 2006. Later on, work continued during the finTeam Summer meeting in Vienna (August 2006) and finTeam Winter Meeting in Ljubljana (November 2006).

JIMMY was an idea of a service finTeam was developing in order to facilitate the cooperation between LBGs and companies. All LBGs would have the possibility to announce any event they were organizing; by this way, finTeam thought that they could attract potential partners (companies). These events would be promoted to companies, via the Public Website, Newsletters and other means of promotion.

Recruiters would thus be able to choose among a large choice of events across Europe that would support their recruiting strategy (which universities/faculties, which countries/cities they want to target).

A link between this system and the BEST University Centre was planned as well, in order to offer the HRs a complete description of the university where each event was taking place.

Companies would have the possibility to cooperate with all these LBGs, however it was decided that the communication will be facilitated by finTeam.

A proposal was also made, that they would sign a ‘Global contract’ will all BEST. This means that they would get one offer for all the events they showed interest in plus of the cooperation with BEST. The purpose behind this was of course to strengthen the common image of our organization towards companies.The original idea was about announcing Local Career Events that LBGs were organising. However, this was later broadened and more types of events (like courses, competitions etc.) were included in the final implementation of the feature.

After a lot of development and testing, the tool was finally launched on 30th of July 2007, and is still used with great success.

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Johnny

Taken its name after the anonymous Romanian, Johnny was the system that is now known today as BEST Application System (BAS). It all started around 1997, when Johnny was first used, and this brought an end to the paper applications.

Have you ever heard that story of how our friendly application robot for season courses got its name however? The story that tells about a few inspired BEST members talking one night about creating a new software for BEST, while drinking their favourite whisky. And when the time came to find a name, the whisky once more brought the inspiration. Did Johnny Walker really lend its name to our oldest web application? Actually, no. That story is rubbish, a fantasy much more colourful than the simple, arbitrary truth. This is the true story of the anonymous Romanian.

BEST has been organizing summer courses since 1991. Given the small scale and state of technology at the time, the administration of the student applications was based on paper forms. At General Assemblies application forms were exchanged and selections decided upon. Over time, a fax was added, and email, and some computer programs, and most of all, chaos. Around 1995 there was an attempt of decentralised automation, with software written by LBG Grenoble: all LBGs were to run the software client locally, enter selected applications, and send the data files to Grenoble were the overall optimisation of selections was performed.

“About pre-1996 electronic optimization attempts, I vaguely remember attempts starting _before_ 1993. An important name is Frederic Ranno from Grenoble, who also made the first BEST WWW pages. In 1993 there was no electronic SP optimization support, as I was in the board (as GA organizer who was part of the board at the time since the GA was the biggest international project...) and remember that there was hardly any SP coordination in 1993 and the board had to take things over during spring. I remember sitting in a Copenhagen computer lab and trying to implement the optimization after the Board meeting in summer 1993. In 1994 or 1995 (or both) things got better, I remember that at least LBGs who did their homework could use the software (not sure if it ran at the LBGs or only in Grenoble). Ovidiu’s radical WWW proposal was accepted at Trondheim PM in 1995.”(Cristi Bogdan, Alumni LBG Timisoara)

By 1996 time had come to bring some web technology to the mix.

In 1996, Ovidiu Sandor, a Romanian BESTie doing post-graduate studies in Stockholm, started on implementing web-based software to automate the Summer Season administration. Summer 1996 saw the first implementation, with limited functionality.” Technically the SP96 system was a suite of programs written in C, using a Netscape web server to deliver services over a plan CGI interface.” (Cristi Bogdan, LBG Timisoara)

Students would still fill in paper forms, while LBG members would register these applications (short form) through the web. The system was _not_ called Johnny at the time. Johnny was the new java version Cristi Bogdan and Ovidiu Sandor made together for Summer 1997. The latter identified the optimisation algorithm as what Computer Science terms “the stable

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marriage problem” The announcement process started already in late 1996 hence Johnny architecture and the needed features were ready by then. The limited access to the Internet for the mass of the European students inhibited the full automation of the process until some time in 1998-1999.

Cristi Bogdan receiving flowers for Johnny server

After SP96, implementation started on a completely new version. Interestingly, a new programming language for web applications was developed in the process. This was the Java Mark-up Language (JML), a language similar in concepts to JHTML and JSP which were developed later by commercial companies. The new version of Johnny was ready for summer 97, and was fairly complete in functionality. It was also known as Johnny97. When spring 98 came on as the first non-summer season, Johnny98 was finalised to be season-generic and to reuse 10-digit codes (the students’ logon) across seasons.

All systems that existed before Johnny were made solely for optimization (not the full support you know today) for several reasons:

• It was the only phase that required more than 1-2 LBGs to complete and • It is an algorithm operation that we associate with computers.

In other words we didn’t realize how useful computers/WWW would be to announce events, manage application, participation, etc. We were also quite conservative, e.g. in the area of paper motivation letters.

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The development of Johnny gave rise to the beginning of the ITC group, which was soon after getting ready for new developments such as Private Area (in 1997, using Lotus Notes technology) and Minerva (failed in Lotus Notes, then implemented in JHTML). This is relevant for the further evolution of Johnny in 2 ways: it drew resources away from further Johnny development, and it also illustrated the point that there was a growing need for more web applications and for integrating these on one technology and one dataset.

In the time that Johnny was left alone (middle of 1998 - early 2002), it started to grow out of its architectural limits. It had been implemented without a database (Java interfaces to databases were unstable and experimental in 1996) and this became an urgent problem by 2000. Johnny was publicly known to be unstable under heavy load, and only a complete architectural changeover would help. Around this time, every season’s application deadline would bring Johnny to its knees, forcing SPOC and ITC to repeatedly postpone deadlines. This was also the time of the so-called 24-hour Johnny watches, who would monitor Johnny around the clock in the days before the deadline, restart it when needed, and suggest deadline postponements to SPOC and the (worried) board.

In 1999 Cristi Bogdan and others started on the development of a new unifying technology that would become the platform for developing the next generation of BEST’s web applications: Makumba, which builds upon JSP. It took till the end of 2001 to get Makumba ready, and offer it to ITC as a tool to (re-)implement new and old web applications.

On the 19th of April 2002, after 1 week of close to 24/7 last minute programming and testing (involving all of SPOC in the testing), the new version of Johnny (called Johnny-TS, transitional system) was launched just in time to accept applications for the new summer season. It was far from ready, but if Johnny98 had not been replaced, the whole system risked a fatal crash. As the summer season evolved, the ITC team completed Johnny-TS step-by-step, each phase only just in time ready to support the next step of the season. It was one of the most stressful times in ITC, involving not only programming but pro-active communication with BEST and all the thousands of students who had applied. The rest of the summer was used to improve the hurried implementation, and by October 2002, an important new part was launched: the replacement of 10-digit codes as logon mechanism, by actual usernames and passwords. It was the first important procedural change in the Season process since 1998.

Since then, changes to Johnny have been limited to adding small features here and there. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a list of more radical change requests for Johnny. But there is less urgency for those, which is as much a comfort as and obstacle? Here is a list of features that were developed since then:

• 2002:o All Vivaldi processes are supported by Johnny

• 2003:o ICF 2003: Johnny Privacy Policy, Superuser Account usage and a watch schedule are defined.

• 2004:

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o Johnny was integrated into Private Area, creating the Johnny LBG Area. Before that, Johnny was totally depended from Private Area.o Johnny is renamed to BEST Application System

This is how the story of Johnny ends. However Johnny the very heart of Johnny still exists and is being used by thousands of students every season.

And Johnny, why Johnny? Cristi told us this: “Johnny was used in Romanian everyday speech to name anonymous people. Before PM 1996 in the IPLab kitchen (IPLab is a former KTH department), Ovidiu asked me “How should we call this Johnny guy?” I replied “There you said it”, and that was that. The rest are rumours.”

Famous Quotes about Johnny:-If Johnny is not running, ITC is running ‘’”ITC SM 2005, Lodz, Poland”’’

BEST Application System

BEST Application System, also known as BAS, is the newer name of Johnny, the online application that enabled students to apply to our events online through the internet. The name started being used after PM 2004, where there was a proposal to change its name to its current one, so it represents better what it is, and is also easier for people to understand and remember it.

Since BAS was the continuation of Johnny, all its features were kept the same; only thing that changed was the name (in fact, in the Makumba Data Definitions, the system is still called Johnny. It wasn’t changed due to re-factoring difficulties). Here is a short presentation of the features developed for BAS:

• 2004o April: Crash of the production server caused postponement of the application deadline, reason was that people didn’t know that optimisation wasn’t automatico December: Superuser access rights changed from password to list. Superusers’ access was defined from being in a specific list or not. Superuser pages show deposit/attendance information. Restricted event editing by organisers after the announcement deadline

• 2005o BAS LBG Area is integrated with Private Areao New page with address lists for an activity.o New page with attendance statistics.o New superuser area features.o Improvements in the main page for students.o Tracking of deposit return in BASo BAS LBG Area available in view-only more for all LBG members

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• 2006o Students can upload a pictureo Students can add arrival and departure dateso Students can share personal informationo LBGs can announce local events and students can apply to themo Organisers can upload the CIF in Private Area

• 2007o P@B is available to LBGso Recognition fields are available when announcing an evento Organisers can register to [BAS|BEST.BAS] eventso Organisers can submit their evaluationo All past, current and future seasons are available in one pageo Courses mailing lists are supportedo Possibility to upload multiple CIFs

• 2008o Unified System is launched!o Application to local events from a BAS account is enabledo Extra-acceptance feature is implemented.

This is the short history of BEST Application System so far. The work done on it is continuous and never-ending.

BEST Teachers’ Area

The idea of this project started back in EEC Summer Meeting 2005 in Timisoara. The story goes like this:

There was a course about Interaction Design at the same moment as the Meeting, and two Nordic professors were present there. During the International Evening, they were offering a lot of ouzo to people, and two EEC members got interested at them. After breaking the ice and starting talking with them, the idea was dropped: to create a system that would allow teachers to access BAS, and view information about participants and upload documents related to the lectures. The idea of professors evaluating our courses was also there.

The point behind this was to enhance the communication between participants, organisers and professors, while at the same time increase the quality of the lectures, due to the pre materials that would be provided.

The idea started getting developed rapidly, and in 2006 the first pages were already coded (it was called P@B back then). The coding part was launched during the Developers Meeting in Thessaloniki (August 2006), and a lot of work was completed during it. Part of the design was also done during the BAS SIM in Liege (November 2006), where a lot of pages were created, together with the help files and instructions on how to use the tool (both for LBGs and professors).

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The first testing version of the feature was presented in late Spring Season 2007, and some LBGs took part in this testing. However the feature was officially launched for Summer Season 2007. Later on, the BEST Teachers’ Area was included in the Unified System, and professors needed no longer to access a different website in order to log in into the system.

BEST University Centre

The first stepsBEST University Centre made its first appearance in the very first BEST Meeting, Grenoble in March 1988. It was decided that this new association will have a lot of aims, but one philosophy: “Promote Europe amongst Europeans”. For this reason, the V.I.A. (Very Important Aims) were set:

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

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

All the pages, prepared and kept updated at local level in each LBG, should have the same structure, so that the student could easily find what they need, also comparing the equivalent information in different universities. To make it in a very simple way, a skeleton that should be filled following this common structure was prepared: it was containing explanations and examples that just need to be substituted by the text and the links that already had been referring to your university.

Half a year later, this idea was asking to be approved on GA Tallinn 1996. The proposal was about approving the structure of data discussed at WorkShop Paris (and getting a coordinator of the Information Centre). LBGs should have their information centre in operation by PM ‘96, and the list of Universities should be updated yearly. BEST should also collect and publish information about possibilities of having a Thesis abroad, and this information should be updated regularly, as often as there are updates. However these actions were not followed, and seemed that the idea died for a few years.

Next time the topic was brought up, was during a WorkShop in 2000 in Bucharest. There the Minerva discussion group made a few proposals on how the co-operation between universities and Minerva should be arranged. It was desired to have a web page within the Minerva site, dedicated to universities. This page would contain information about universities and activities that would take place at a specific university. All this information that someone can usually find on the university web page, but the idea was to have it more

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systematically classified. The activities organised by a university would be in this web page as well. To achieve this it was decided at the GA2000 that it will be beneficial for the project if Minerva can have a contact person in each LBG who will provide this information for the web pages.

Later on, in Workshop in 2001 in Cluj-Napoca Specifications for the project were set, however the project froze again. After a “frozen” period, from GA 2002 until PM 2002, the project entered in an active way again. New motivated members showed interest to continue the important work that had already been done. The problems we faced, like licence for the software on which we would develop the database and lack of will from the side of LBGs for help, found solutions during the workshop in Lisbon in December 2002. A new action plan was ready. Certainly our special thanks are going for EduCo committee for the willingness to help and their valuable remarks. It was the third time that the project wasn’t moving on, de-motivating the members of the Working Group. This time it lasted till October 2005, when a new Mailing List was again created, to start discussing about possibilities for the project.

“The reason why this project kept being frozen was that it always seemed to develop into something that got out of hand. At least this is what happened since 2005 and the same thing happened before also. The idea was always to make something really simple and easy to fill in. However, the concept always grew into something that was too much for the LBGs to bother with or keep fully updated and ended up de-motivating the people involved.

The reason the XVIII board and coordinators decided to revive the project in 2005 was that there was a university wanting to be sponsor of BEST. They wanted us to promote them like we promote companies on our webpage. The problem was that it would look very strange for us to especially promote one university, which was not even a member of the BEST network, above all the others within the network. So, we wanted to provide some basic means for all the member universities to present themselves for free, while at the same time the same service could be sold to universities that didn’t belong to BEST. So, the aim of reviving University Centre in 2005 was to have universities as sponsors alongside companies.

In 2005-06 we managed to somehow keep the information structure small and push towards fast implementation. The project kept together this time and the implementation was finished by the XIX management. Then again, in some ways idea of the centre got out of hand again. This was never meant to be something compulsory for all LBGs, but simply a tool that helps us fundraise while providing equal opportunities for the BEST universities to present themselves on our pages.” (Elina Seppaen, LBG Tampere)

This is what followed afterwards in short:

• October 2005: creation of the mailing list• February 2006: Action Plan, Mindmap, and Data Structure is designed• March 2006: Makumba Data Definitions are coded for the project• Spring 2006: Coding part starts. The project should have 3 databases (universities, offers, city/student life) but the last part is taken out to be independent and is called European Travel Guide.

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• GA 2006: End of CaSCo causes the project to freeze till October 2006• October 2006: LBG Administrators pages ready on ParaDe, first profile filled in there• November / December 2006: System is launched for testing LBGs. Launch of a competitor (http://www.philox.eu)• January / February 2007: some feedback implemented, but less profiles than expected are uploaded• Spring 2007: Promotion at RMs and GA, difficulties to push LBGs• July 2007: discussions with EduCo and with Regional Advisers. Login for University Representatives is ready! The IT part has all the really basic features implemented• September 2007: Large promotion towards LBGs• January 2008: System is launched together with the Unified System• PM 2008 Bucharest: Proposal to make uploading of University Profile compulsory for LBGs is rejected• January 2009: 27 University profiles are online

Private Area

The “Private Area” (PA) started from some static web pages in 1995 and progressed to a number of Lotus Notes components in 1998. A new version of the PA was launched in late 2002.

People just realised that it’s impossible to keep such an organisation working when you don’t have the contacts of all the members of it. How could people possibly move on with projects if they didn’t know e-mail addresses or phone numbers of people in the other side of Europe?

The first idea of a centralised contact list of all active BEST members with their possible areas of responsibilities appeared during PM 1995 in Trondheim, and people agreed that it would be made available by the 96 GA, and updated at every GA and PM. This list was indeed available and it was included in the BESTMAG versions that were produced once per year. More over a list was also circulating during GMs. In the beginning of the nineties, many students did not have their own email address, but were contacted through the email of the LBG.

However, BEST realised that such a list in a printed document is not so usable, mostly because information tends to change quite often. For this reason, an on-line way of managing this information was sought.

At GA1998, the Information Technology Strategy Group presented a proposal of how the information should be structured in a database. Information related to BEST members (such as names, e-mail, passwords, study information etc. etc.) was defined and structured. This also involved an archive and a system to apply to internal events.

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During PM1998, ITC presented in their Half Annual Report all the progress that was done till that moment. The new archives system was ready in October of that year, while the new mail exchanger was working since the beginning of November (for the mailing lists). Both systems were based on Lotus Notes. More over, after the GA1998 a BEST registration page was available that was allowing BEST members to apply to internal events.

The Lotus Notes intranet was a great progress for the communication in BEST and sharing of documents, but it was not entirely user friendly. New members rarely used any other part than the internal events application. At the same time, ITC did not have the full control to be able to improve the system. A decision was made to re-implement it with Java / SQL. More over, they decided to merge the private area with the other BEST systems (Johnny and Minerva) into one, so that people would no longer need 3 passwords to access BEST services, and have keep all their information in one place. The main aim was to stimulate the members to use the Private Area more and give everyone a better overview and tools for interaction.

The new PA was launched in November 2002, with the same content as in the Lotus Notes system, but with a more intuitive way of accessing it:

• The Archive: a repository of official BEST documents, growing with approx 100 documents per year.• Over 25 document repositories for international groups (e.g. committees, the board).• International group data management (including over 50 email lists, essential in BEST communication).• Support for applying to internal events (WorkShops, statutory meetings) handling yearly around 500 applications to 2 statutory meetings and around 10 smaller events.• Member’s data with essential contact and other information for all BESTies.• LBG contact information, with snail mail addresses, phone numbers and University information.• Committee pages, for informing BESTies about Committees activities and ways to join them.

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

Since then, a lot of development from ITC side was done, to improve the current features and also to include more. Private Area is the most important tool for the development of the organisation, since it helps all the communication between BEST members, gathers the knowledge and gives useful information for all aspects of the organisation. Since 2002, the system didn’t get any radical change but here is a list of features that were added since then:

• Availability tool• Wiki pages support

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• Task management• [BAS|BEST.BAS] LBG Area• Surveys• Project management• Company Database• Refunds request tool• Accounting tool• E-mail archives• And many many more

Newsletters

Newsletters are a way of reaching a lot of people at the same time, informing them about new services, opportunities or developments, without the fear of ‘spamming’ them. This fear is eliminated by asking the user if it is okay with getting this information to his/her mailbox every now and then.

Newsletters appeared in BEST in the 90’s for the first time, when BEST was sending information about the events to people that were subscribed to it.

In 2005 Newsletter capability was added in BEST Career Centre, and information about career events, openings in companies and internship possibilities were sent to students that were subscribed.

Unified System

When the BEST online systems - Johnny/BAS, Minerva/BCC and Private Area - where re-programmed in Makumba and launched in 2002, each system still had their own separate log-in. From the start of Makumba development (2001), the designers in ITC had planned to merge these systems into one - using only one log-in. This would require a “merger” - bringing all the data together and deleting duplicate data. At the same time it needed to be intuitive for the users and ITC needed to ensure that no data would be lost. The first designs of this merger tool were made in WS Trondheim in 2001, but it took until 2003 for the first programming to start. However, it turned out more complicated and expected - the design had to be rethought several times as there were many issues regarding access and visibility of information. In 2004 it was decided to focus the first merger on BESTies only. BESTies would understand if their accounts did not function properly for a while or if some data error would happen, whereas any error could be damage our image to the external world. After intense programming and testing, the merger could finally be presented at the GA 2005. BESTies were invited to enter and merge all their accounts into one. After that, all new BEST members would have only one account, giving access to all BEST systems while having the personal data accessible on one page. However, the non-BESTies still needed separate accounts to access to BEST services. It took until 2007 for the unification process to begin...While the idea itself is older, the actual design for unifying all the services we offer to

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students (on our website) started in the beginning of 2007. After GA 2007, all committees were involved in the work of restructuring the public pages, while ITC focused mainly on implementing the new system. The project was developed during several events (Budapest Developers Meeting, Vienna Unification Meeting and ITC Winter Meeting Eindhoven), while various IT tasks were handled on the mailing list.

New features were implemented:

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

The new system was launched as planned, in January 2008. Apart from a couple of minor bugs, everything went fine with the launch and developers have kept improving the system since then. There are many more ideas of which ITC will keep track of and they will be considered individually for future implementation.

Also in January 2008, the new website went through a usability study at the Technical University of Copenhagen (Denmark). Four groups of students tested and provided extensive feedback for the public pages and the student account. This report was analysed by ITC and the suggestions were added next to the other improvement ideas.

Public Website

The public website is the compilation of pages that provide information to the public about our organisation. This information can be either about our activities, or services, or internal news, like elections or decisions made.

Having said all these, the Public Website is a very useful tool to spread the information about BEST into the public. The first public website of BEST appeared in 1995.Frederic Ranno made the first BEST WWW pages. He is from Grenoble but studied also abroad in Newcastle where the pages were hosted. Ovidiu Sandor took over the WWW pages in Stockholm at some point (the pages were stored at www.nada.kth.se/~ovidiu/best, which still exists!).

In 1997 we had the new web design of BEST, which was financially supported by the H3E Thematic Network. This year the domain ‘best.eu.org’ was also obtained and used.“As you see hosting WWW pages was a project itself, and has some history. I remember a big meeting in early 1997 when we (Ovidiu, me, Olivier Cuisenaire who was also a SPOC member interested in the optimization) ported all the best pages to JML and launched www.

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best.eu.org, that’s when the hosting by Ovidiu stopped even if machines at NADA were still the main infrastructure. Then we left everything to webmasters (Dani Buxerres came in quite soon after).

About infrastructure, an important step came at GA Stockholm in 2000 when we managed to move systems out of NADA to a computer (called Malaka) bought by BEST Luleå and left under the table of BEST Stockholm.

There existed also an FTP server a long time ago (since 1993) in Patras, maintained by Akis Karnaussos. It was deprecated down after the WWW archives started being used.” (Cristi Bogdan, LBG TImisoara)

How the webpage looked like in 25th of January 1999: [http://web.archive.org/web/19990125093623/http://www.best.eu.org/]

This design was kept in BEST till May 2001, when the new design was made and in 2003 a news engine was added in the public website. This way, people could update easily the front page with short news and with information about the organisation.

How the webpage looked like in 22nd of May 2001: [http://web.archive.org/web/20010522001453/http://www.best.eu.org/]

How the webpage looked like in 19th of October 2003: [http://web.archive.org/web/20031019003553/www.best.eu.org/index.jsp]

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

How the webpage looked like in 12th of January 2005: [http://web.archive.org/web/20050121033143/www.best.eu.org/index.jsp]

Last time the website was redesigned was in January 2008. This time, it was a big milestone for BEST, because the dream of merging of all BEST systems was finally achieved! The new website was a Unified System that was merging the BEST Application System, BEST Career Centre and the BEST Teachers’ Area, making possible to promote only one website in all our stakeholders.


Chapter 4

BEST Network

• Stories of the LBGs • Regions

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Chapter 4:BEST Network

BEST Network

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Event/LBG Date/new status

PM2009 Lviv 11 November 2009

GA2009 Budapest 23 April 2009Aveiro ExcludedENSTA ParisTech Full MemberLyon SuspendedNis Full MemberSaint Petersburg Baby Member

PM2008 Bucharest 12 November 2008Aveiro ObserverENSTA ParisTech SuspendedKiev Baby MemberKiev ObserverMessina Baby MemberSaint Petersburg ObserverZaporizhzhya Full Member

GA2008 Tallinn 07 May 2008Ankara Full MemberBrussels ULB Full MemberCambridge ObserverCambridge ExcludedChisinau Baby MemberGraz Full MemberIstanbul, Yildiz ObserverIstanbul, Yildiz Baby MemberMessina ObserverSarajevo Excluded

PM2007 Valladolid 11 November 2007Aalborg SuspendedChisinau ObserverKiev ObserverKiev ExcludedMadrid Carlos III Full MemberNis Baby MemberSarajevo ObserverGA2007 France 21 April 2007Aalborg Suspended

Event/LBG Date/new statusBrno Full MemberMoscow Baby MemberNis ObserverNovi Sad Full MemberReykjavik Full Member

Valencia ExcludedValencia ObserverZaporizhzhya ObserverZaporizhzhya Baby Member

PM2006 Ghent 19 November 2006Ankara Baby MemberAnkara ObserverBrussels ULB Baby MemberGraz Baby MemberKaunas Full MemberMadrid Carlos III Baby MemberMoscow Observer

GA2006 Zagreb 27 April 2006Brussels ULB ObserverEkaterinburg, USTU Full MemberGraz ObserverNovi Sad Baby MemberReykjavik Baby Member

PM2005 Ljubljana 14 November 2005Aalborg Full MemberBrno Baby MemberGdansk Full MemberIstanbul Full MemberMadrid Carlos III ObserverNovi Sad ObserverReykjavik ObserverRome, Tor Vergata Full Member

GA2005 Greece 23 April 2005Brno ObserverKaunas Baby MemberLviv Full Member

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Event/LBG Date/new statusPM2004 Portugal 16 November 2004Aalborg SuspendedAlmada Full MemberBelgrade Full MemberEkaterinburg, USTU Baby MemberGdansk Baby MemberIstanbul Baby MemberLulea ExcludedLyon Full Member

GA2004 Copenhagen 11 April 2004Kaunas ObserverVienna Full Member

PM2003 Belgium 04 November 2003Belgrade Baby MemberGdansk ObserverIstanbul ObserverMaribor Full MemberNancy Full MemberRome, Tor Vergata Baby MemberSkopje Full Member

GA2003 Slovakia 14 April 2003Almada Baby MemberBelgrade ObserverEkaterinburg, USTU ObserverLviv Baby MemberLyon Baby MemberRome, Tor Vergata ObserverSopron ExcludedVienna Baby Member

PM2002 Bucharest 09 November 2002Almada ObserverSkopje Baby MemberSofia Full Member

GA2002 France 15 April 2002Iasi Full MemberLeuven Full Member

Event/LBG Date/new statusLviv ObserverLyon ObserverMaribor Baby MemberNancy Baby MemberSkopje ObserverVienna Observer

PM2001 Madrid 12 November 2001Aalborg Full MemberNancy ObserverParis, Polytechnique Full MemberThessaloniki Full Member

GA2001 Ljubljana 15 April 2001Iasi Baby MemberLeuven Baby MemberMaribor Observer

PM2000 Budapest 13 November 2000Aalborg Baby MemberBrasov Full MemberIasi ObserverLeuven ObserverParis, Polytechnique Baby MemberSofia Baby MemberSopron Full MemberUppsala Full Member

GA2000 Sweden 23 April 2000Aalborg ObserverEkaterinburg Full MemberKiev ObserverLyon Baby MemberParis, Polytechnique ObserverSaint Petersburg ExcludedSofia ObserverThessaloniki Baby MemberZagreb Full Member

PM1999 Chania 15 November 1999Brasov Baby Member

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Event/LBG Date/new statusLodz Full MemberSarajevo ObserverThessaloniki ObserverUppsala Baby Member

GA1999 Lisbon 03 April 1999Lyon ObserverSaint Petersburg ObserverUppsala ObserverZagreb Baby Member

PM1998 Turin 16 November 1998Athens Full MemberBrasov ObserverEkaterinburg Baby MemberMilan Full MemberSopron Observer

GA1998 Romania 14 April 1998Ekaterinburg ObserverLodz ObserverLulea Full MemberPorto Full MemberZagreb Observer

PM1997 Warsaw 01 November 1997Athens Baby MemberCluj-Napoca Full Member

GA1997 Belgium 01 April 1997Bucharest Full MemberGhent Full MemberGliwice Full MemberKraków Full MemberLulea Baby MemberMadrid Full MemberMilan Baby MemberPadova ExcludedPorto Baby Member

PM1996 Veszprem 01 November 1996

Event/LBG Date/new statusAthens ObserverChania Full MemberLulea ObserverMadrid Baby MemberMilan ObserverPadova Baby Member

GA1996 Tallinn 01 May 1996Cluj-Napoca Baby MemberGhent Baby MemberKosice Full MemberMadrid ObserverPadova ObserverPorto ObserverValladolid Full Member

PM1995 Trondheim 01 October 1995Brussels Full MemberChania Baby MemberGhent ObserverTampere Full Member

GA1995 Patras 01 May 1995Bucharest Baby MemberChania ObserverCluj-Napoca ObserverGliwice ObserverNaples Full Member

GA1994 Timisoara 12 November 1994Brussels Baby MemberBucharest ObserverNaples Baby MemberValladolid Baby Member

GA1994 Turin 01 April 1994Kosice Baby MemberKraków Baby MemberNaples ObserverRiga Full MemberRome Full Member

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Event/LBG Date/new statusTampere Baby Member

GA1993 Warsaw 01 October 1993Coimbra Full MemberGothenburg Full MemberSupélec Full Member

GA1993 Bratislava 01 April 1993

GA1992 Liege 01 November 1992Coimbra Baby MemberCopenhagen Full MemberGothenburg Baby MemberRiga ObserverSupélec Baby Member

GA1992Helsinki/Tallinn 01March 1992Lund Full MemberPatras Full MemberRiga Baby MemberTimisoara Full MemberVeszprém Full Member

GA1991 Lisbon 01 October 1991Liege Full Member

GA1991 Paris 02 April 1991Bratislava Full MemberENSTA ParisTech Full MemberLiege Baby MemberLund Baby MemberPatras Baby MemberTallinn Full MemberTimisoara Baby MemberVeszprém Baby Member

GA1990 Budapest 11 November 1990Tallinn Baby MemberTimisoara Observer

GA1990 Trondheim 22 April 1990

Event/LBG Date/new statusTallinn Observer

GA1989 Vienna 03 November 1989

GA1989 Berlin 14 April 1989Barcelona Full MemberBudapest Full MemberEindhoven Full MemberENSAM Full MemberGrenoble Full MemberHelsinki Full MemberLisbon Full MemberLjubljana Full MemberLouvain-la-Neuve Full MemberParis, Ecole Centrale Full MemberStockholm Full MemberTrondheim Full MemberTurin Full MemberWarsaw Full Member

The first BEST meeting 27 March 1988

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HISTORY OF BEST LBGs

Considering BEST in Berlin 1989, there were no more than a dozen founding LBGs. Now we have more than 80 LBGs making a whole: the BEST family. You will find below stories of some of these great local groups.

Story of LBG Aalborg

The First Steps for LBG Aalborg were taken in 2000, after an unnamed source at the Faculty of Aalborg University (AAU) asked Christina Asklof, Charlotte Hejl, and Jens Pedersen, if there might be interest in starting up a BEST group at AAU among them as students. After experiencing the BEST spirit as co-organizers in Lisbon they became determined to start up an LBG in Aalborg.

Becoming Baby Member: After participating in different courses and gaining more knowledge on how to run the LBG, the team applied for becoming a baby member at PM2000 in Budapest, and in summer 2001 Aalborg’s first course titled “SC2001 Production Management” took place.

Full Membership: PM2001 Madrid came and LBG Aalborg now became a full member! With the summer course in 2002 titled “Space Craft Engineering” Aalborg strengthened its position on the BEST map of Europe.

The Aalborg Case: After gaining the full membership status the future of LBG Aalborg seemed bright, but unfortunately all the members of the LBG graduated soon after this without having new, motivated members to continue the LBG. After being contacted by Susan Langer from Copenhagen, Jeppe Larsen, a fresh and new student took the challenge to start up the LBG again. Due to the lack of human resources in this period Aalborg did not organize a course in two years, and at PM2004 in Portugal the LBG got suspended. Time went and more members were joining the LBG and at PM2005 in Ljubljana LBG Aalborg got status as Full member. In the following years Aalborg again experienced recruitment issues, and as a result Aalborg wasn’t present at two consecutive general meetings and got suspended in 2007. The next years was more or less a fight for the survival of LBG Aalborg, but in 2008 the very enthusiastic Jakob Veedfald took over the LBG and managed to convince the delegates at PM2008 to give Aalborg a second chance and to organize a winter course!

The Future: In spring 2009 Jakob also managed to recruit new members and a new LBG was created, ready to take on the challenge of making LBG Aalborg grow and not letting history repeat itself!

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Story of LBG Almada

It all started in 2002 when a group of friends got to know BEST and the activities it provides to Technology Students and decided they wanted our University Students to have those opportunities also. In August 2002, LBG Lisbon invited us to help them in their Summer Course. 2 members went there and learnt a lot from those guys in our first real contact with BEST activities. In November, two of our members took part in PM in Mamaia, Romania, and we became officially a BEST Observer Group!!! Between the 14th and 16th of March we organized our first event, Iberian Consultancy Meeting Almada 2003. It went really great and it proved we could organize good BEST meetings. Then the dream came true: We became BEST Baby Members in GA Slovakia 2003 :) From the 5th to the 10th of September 2004, we organized our first public international event, International BEST Symposium Almada 2004, with the topic “The Bologna Process, Quality and Accreditation Towards Recognition”.Together with LBG Lisbon and LBG Porto, from the 10th to the 16th of November, we organized PM 2004 in Santa Maria da Feira. It was great, not only because we hosted in Portugal 130 participants from all over Europe, but also because we finally became Full Members of BEST!!!!After a long process, that included the publication of our Statutes in Diário da República in November 2004, finally in January 2005 we became a Youth Association member of the National Registry of the Portuguese Youth Institute!!From the 28th of August to the 10th of September 2005 we organized our 1st Summer Course, with the topic “High-Tech Engineering in Medicine”. The event was a success and had 25 international participants and 20 local participants. From that moment, LBG Almada organized such events every year. In October 2007, Almada got all the local BEST groups from the Iberian region to a Regional Meeting in Alcochete. This was an opportunity to get to know each other and make the Iberian region stronger. In this event we have the participation of Almada, Valladolid, Coimbra, Madrid, Lisboa, Barcelona, Porto and Madrid Carlos III.From this moment on, LBG Almada gained in stability and experience, organizing events for students by students.

Story of LBG Ankara

The story of BEST Ankara began at February of 2006. It was a cold winter night everything was normal until Mustafa Tokyay, the dean of the Faculty of Engineering of METU and member of the General Board of SEFI heard about BEST from the BACo organized by LBG Istanbul in 2006. Then he decided to send our friends to BACo as observers. Who could guess that this small step would cause a huge difference in the future and would create lots of crazy, funny but hard working BESTies in Ankara =)

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Our friends were infected by the BEST spirit and now it was the time to spread BEST spirit all around METU. We prepared our application in the summer of 2006 and consequently BEST Ankara is officially invited to President’s Meeting which was held in November 2006 in Ghent. Something quite new for BEST happened in this PM. With the changes in the regulations about admission & exclusion, LBG Ankara was delegated by Burhan Unalan and Emre Demirci and it was the first Local BEST Group whose observer status is approved and who promoted to baby member status in the same General Meeting =)

After PM 2006 in Ghent, LBG Ankara started to rock METU. With highly motivated members, LBG Ankara started to make plans for the future. The first event LBG Ankara organized was the WorkShop in 2007. The outcome was very impressing; the idea of Virtual International Plenary first popped up in this WorkShop. Now it was the time for LBG Ankara to organize its first Summer Course in 2007: “Enjoy Red & White”. The next step was to become a full member. Therefore in GA 2008 in Tallinn, in which LBG Ankara was delegated by Erkan Faruk Ozkan and Ahmet Cagan Yildirim, our full membership was voted and LBG Ankara became a full member in BEST.

Becoming a full member of BEST was the best motivation for LBG Ankara. As a full member of BEST we started to plan bigger. Now in our lovely BEST office, with our 50 members LBG Ankara is getting bigger and better each day and planning more Summer Courses, WorkShops, TrainShops, BACos and General Meetings =)

Story of LBG Athens

In ancient times the Athenians wished to travel and learn as much as they could about the way of life of the people of the then-known world, while also wishing to spread their own civilisation and ideas. Centuries after, people in Athens felt the same way about getting to know the world around them and broadening their horizons. That is how, in 1994 a group of engineers-to-be from the National Technical University of Athens decided they wanted to become a member of the then-young but continuously growing BEST family. A General Assembly organised the next year in the relatively close city of Patras, gave them the opportunity to become an observer group of the organisation. Unfortunately something must have gotten lost along the way, because the team and the BEST-dream soon died out.

But hey, it’s not the end yet?

In Patras again, back in the summer of ‘96, a group of friends that will soon be off to study

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in the National technical University of Athens get acquainted with the BEST spirit and decide the want to be part of it too, thus forming a group that came to make its first “official” appearance in a WorkShop organised in Chania, on Crete the following year.The Athens-team had taken things pretty seriously this time. So, in order to succeed in fulfilling their dream, the summer of 1997 is spent working, gaining experience and of course having fun at the Summer Courses organised by the 2 then-existing LBGs, Patras and Chania.Hard work always comes with a prize, so November 1997 at a Presidents Meeting in Warsaw, Athens earns the right to be called an LBG, by becoming a “baby” and thus having the opportunity to organise academic events of their own, something that they are more than ready to do the following summer.The 1998 Summer Course is a hit and Athens becomes a full member of BEST on a beautiful November-Sunday at the Presidents Meeting in Torino.And so the story goes, and BEST Athens keeps organising events and activities for students and BEST members alike, managing always to bring people together and providing the best there is to enjoy to every single one of them.And hey, almost 40 events later, “it’s still not the end”

Story of LBG Barcelona

In 1989 some students from all Europe had a dream of being able to meet each other: this was the birth of LBG Barcelona, one of the founder members of BEST. This LBG came across lots of different and random situations but now, 20 years later, it’s still ready to afford any challenge!

His first course was a summer course in 1993 about Traffic Management In An Big City. Some years later moved a step forward and organized its first Cultural Exchange, so wonderful experience that since then almost every year a CE is held.

The years passed, and BEST was becoming a strong organization growing really fast. LBG Barcelona took part in it being the nurse of Valladolid (1994) and Lyon (1999). To afford this growth and the growth of the LBG itself, Fund Raising turned out to be an aspect to take care about. Because of this, Barcelona organized its first BEST Engineering Competition in 2006 and two years later jumped into the organization of the first National Engineering Competition in Spain.

Since then, this LBG had no desires of being stuck, and its will of expansion is turning it in a wonderful family who wants to know and be known in all Europe.

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Story of LBG Belgrade

The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence. - Rabindranath Tagore

A few enthusiastic people from Serbia had a dream. Dream to be a part of the best students’ organization ever. That was the main reason for applying for the membership in BEST. Yet, the application was the easiest step. We knew very well that success doesn’t come by itself, knocking on our door. What was coming next was a long way up, adastra.

BEST Belgrade officially became an Observer of BEST in spring 2003, at the General Assembly that took place in Slovakia. After that, we put ourselves in motion, eager to reach new successes. With enormous help of our Nurse LBG Zagreb, we managed to become a baby member of BEST in only six months, in autumn 2003, on the Presidents’ Meeting in Belgium.Very motivated students were starting a very challenging learning experience. They had invested an important amount of their time to reach the goal. After only a year, in autumn 2004, on Presidents’ Meeting in Portugal, BEST Belgrade became a Full member of BEST organization.

During the five-years long period we managed to organize numerous events: courses, regional meetings, job fairs, motivation weekends, summer meetings, local engineering competition, Saint Valentine’s parties and many more. Yet, what we are most proud of is having organized “JobFair 08-Create Your Own Future!” with the partner organization EESTEC, where 60 companies participated; furthermore, LBG Belgrade is proud to have organized the Regional Meeting in March 2007 with more than 100 students taking part, as well as Jamboree in December 2007, setting a new record with 400 participants. Moreover, what made us feel lofty is that we helped Novi Sad and Nis to form their own BEST groups, forming a beautiful Serbian BEST family.

The next step? Who knows - maybe a General Assembly? The new generation of BESTies from Belgrade will tell us? The truth is that we will never stop improving ourselves, as Socrates said: “Wisdom is knowing how little we know”. BEST is not just an organization, it is a community of people hailing from diversified backgrounds and cultures working hard to create a sense of unity in the diversity. BEST is the way of living?

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Story of LBG Brasov

The History...The idea started about 11 years at the initiative of 2 people, Marius Todorut and Dan Chiriac who were the first president and respectively vice president of BEST Brasov. We received special help from the Local BEST Group Cluj-Napoca they were our nurse. In 1999 we became baby-members at the Presidents Meeting in Chania and in 2000 we became full-members at the Presidents Meeting in Budapest.Our events... In 11 years from 1 event per year we now have 4-5 sometimes 6.We like to develop new events for students.Our events from this year are:

• the 10th edition of our job fair• the 1st Engineering Competition• the 3rd edition of BEST Film Festival• The 22nd summer course...

We are proud of our BEST Film Festival it’s a unique event in BEST and we want to grow it and make it international, till now it is just national. Our traditions...From this year we have a mascot his name is Ghandi...and he is a worm. We like to meet in our office and spend the night playing computer games or other games...after our meetings we like to go out. Some of our traditions were lost on the way but we are starting to create new ones using the BEST Spirit

Story of LBG Bratislava

1990This was the first time that BEST heard about LBG Bratislava. It was at 4th GA in Budapest when we applied for baby membership (along with LBG Tallinn and LBG Patras). 1991After considering our work and experience, we became full members at 5th GA in Paris in 1991 with all rights and obligations. Also, we made a decision to organise GA in Bratislava in 1993. 1992The Ministry of Interior of Czech and Slovak Federal Republic permitted to establish an organisation: Board of European Students of Technology. The official start of LBG Bratislava was dated on 26th of October 1992. 1993Pre-registration LBG Bratislava with an amendment to the statute at the Ministry of Interior of Slovak Republic on 25th of March. Headquarters of LBG Bratislava was at Namestie Slobody 17, 812 31 Bratislava. In the same year, LBG Bratislava organised the BEST General

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Assembly with Tomas Martinec as a main organiser. Dusan Martinec involved in the 4th Board of BEST as one of the Vice-Presidents (4th Board April ‘93/ October ‘93). 2001The headquarters of LBG Bratislava was moved to Ilkovicova 3, 812 19 Bratislava (13th of December). 2004Change of statute 1st of December. 2008Change of statute by Eva Moravcikova, Andrej Antal, Marek Kollar, Marek Barilla and Jan Perhac on 11th of April.

Story of LBG Brno

I kept postponing writing this article for the last moment. Not because I would be like that, BEST taught me time management and responsibility towards the work even if I am not paid for it... Not even because of not being motivated enough to do that, come on, 80% of what I use in the job I learnt in BEST! True reason was that BEST does not make history. It is made out of each BESTie’s STORY and all these stories make together BEST. I decided to write a story, not hiSTORY. But which one to pick?

It would begin with the very first person of BEST Brno known to everybody as Mik (I would not bother you with Czech names and surnames and would simply use BEST nicknames). It could be then about Mik spicing up his studies in Copenhagen with local BEST spirit. And I would describe how he loved it so much that he made a fatal decision: founded BEST in Czech Republic at his home university in Brno!

Many times I heard the cool story about the nurses of Brno, Bratislava... hehe, at those times... only boys in Brno! And in the nursing LBG Bratislava? They were lucky to have girls. 30 people met in a student flat. There was no place to step in the hallway as there were too many shoes there. However it was very important, full of valuable information... the only knowledge that has passed until these days is that in the morning cynical and non emotional Ondra woke up and claimed: “I fell in love.”

It could be about Brno becoming baby LBG or Mik and Wewe cheering up the plenary at General Assembly 2004 in Chania. It could be about the first recruitment, which, besides the presentations to students attracted also me when I received a motivating email stating “Have the BEST time of your life! Go to BEST courses” just the deadline to apply was in 1 hour...

I would write about the elections of the first board - we were 7 people and we had approximately 8 functions...

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First big event, cultural exchange with Timisoara started from a Czech boy having sympathies to a Romanian girl. The only thing I knew about Timisoara was that they had a neon cross on the church and I really hated the idea of having cultural exchange with them.Smashing first summer course which put the level very high for the following ones!

The beginnings were hard and intense. Mik was so tired of working that he was able to fall asleep when standing. He fell asleep in the night bus and got robbed and stolen everything including his laptop, got even cut by the knife. He didn’t even wake up.Regional Meeting had a great budget in one of the most amazing places, river Vltava, on one side the forest with our perfectly equipped wooden cottages and on the other side, rocks. Sauna, sports, Borovnicke, everything included!

I would speak also about bad times of BEST Brno when the second board fell apart and Brno found itself with president and three or four faithful members and no money for the course. Actually I would skip this because I would think people want to hear only positive stories. But if I already mentioned that, I must also say that this story ended with a happy end! Brno got up again and after the low cost but BEST summer course they attracted new fresh blood members!

I would write about Latino party where Brno wanted to attract also girl members and found Latin students in Brno to teach them Salsa, I would write about how we realised that each summer course had in its name the word design? And we must make it a tradition!I would remember endless discussions with members of other LBGs about our pride, Brno mascot: “This is not a Dragon, it is a crocodile!” (Put “Brno Dragon” in Google and you will see it IS a dragon!I would mention the current board and big LBG of more than 30 people which is finally complete and working and the BEST I have ever seen!I would remember the BEST times of my life.

Story of LBG Brussels

It was the summer of 1993 when the European Union was founded. That same European Union choose his headquarters to be in Brussels. It must have been fate that LBG Brussels was founded that same summer.Since the very beginning LBG Brussels has always taken great pride in organising at least 1 external event (our beloved summer course) and 1 internal event (varying from a TrainShop to a regional meeting to an international meeting) every year. Although we might seem small compared to other local BEST groups, only around 15 active members, that has never stopped us from reaching for the top/sky. At the time of writing, December 2008, LBG Brussels has organised the most internal events of all local BEST groups. A tradition we hope that will be continued in the future.

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But who are we, the students that keep LBG Brussels going now? We are a jolly bunch of students with specialisations in electronics, civil-engineering, chemistry, physics, photonics, bio-engineering and economics. As you can see we are fun AND smart (and gorgeous of course). We love to travel, on yearly base we should earn enough air miles to get to the moon and back. And international minded also!!! Nearly 33 percent of our local group is involved in one of the international committees. Even when we grow old and graduate and become alumni, there is still BAiB: BEST Alumni in Brussels. For everyone who feels nostalgic (and many do) about BEST and wants to go for diner with BEST-alumni in Brussels. Every month they organise a diner, around the 15th. So if you are a BEST-alumni and you’re heading for Brussels, BAiB is there for you.

But it’s not only because of us that people frequent Brussels. It’s our city. Not only because of her cultural heritage but also because of her centred position in Western Europe. Major cities in the Netherlands, France, Germany and even the United Kingdom can be reached in nearly 2 hours by train. So you can imagine that there are always some BEST-travellers in Brussels passing by...

And when we are showing our friends around they simply can’t resist our Belgian pride: chocolate and beer. Everyone who has ever enjoyed a stay in Brussels has left with Belgian chocolates and bottles of famous liquids stuffed somewhere in their luggage.

Story of LBG Brussels ULB

Our first contact with BEST was from a guy that knew a guy that had heard of LBG Louvain La Neuve. Could it be more random than that? He was redirected to LBG Brussels but he never ended up in BEST! That’s too bad for him. We did ... and did not regret it.Our first BEST activity was a CE between Valladolid and Brussels in Brussels. Now imagine how you felt at your first BEST event. Now, do the same without any of the people from your LBG. What do you get? Well, you get to have an even greater time with a group of BESTies. They made us feel home in minutes. We socialized, we drank, we talked ... and we ended up spending the rest of the week at the parties organized during the CE. Now if that is not the BEST way to get to know BEST...

After that rather nice introduction, we were really enthusiast about joining BEST. So we prepared our letters, continuing temporarily as LBG Brussels un-official members. Turned down the first time, we were officially accepted as observer for GA2006. Brussels was assigned as our nurse. Then things went pretty fast, with only nine active members! Baby member in PM2006, WS2007ULB, beBEC07 local round, a CE with Thessaloniki ... and way more! All of this to show we were ready to become full member ... which we did during GA2008 (with a new generation of members). What an adventure!

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Jeanne and Karolos will always remember the moments they spent putting the two ends together, to get support both from BEST and from the University and bring an LBG to life. Of course this would have never been possible without the input from the other members of the group and from the nurse.

Today, it has about 30 members, and keeps pursuing the high standards of BEST: work hard, party hard(er)! And indeed we do. That’s it folks. That’s how another LBG was born. There are gossip stories as well, but those cannot be written. They can only be transmitted orally.

Story of LBG Bucharest

Salut! Hello! Ola! Ca va?Kalimera! Merhaba!It is us, BEST Bucharest!

Come and join us! We don’t rest! :PHere and now we’ll show to you

Everything that we can do.We are young, crazy and boldWe are now 15 years old.

We have done what others doAnd a lot of more things, too!Patras, Belgium were a crush...That’s where we started the rush.

Observer, baby or full,We’ve just set the crystal rule:“Every event - marked with 10And this - just because we can!”

Courses, BACos, Leisures, BEC,Jobshop(R), BESTShip.. just a sec. :-?ICF, PRIME, some RM,And guess! Two of THE PM.

We are proud, and we want moreGreat events we want to score!

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Find Bucharest on BESTorgCome to us as a co-org!

Story of LBG Budapest

As one of the founder members or BEST, our group has a lot to remember - some better and some harder times, always new challenges and many, many events. But what has been present all the way is the faith in friendship, learning, improvement and very importantly in fun!

Having gone to the founding meetings of BEST, LBG Budapest was born and right away, organized the Congress of 1990. The group then started to grow, not only considering the numbers of its members, but also its relationship to our university and also within BEST. Every year we organized job fairs and courses - one of the summer courses lasted for an entire month! - and started new traditions also, like the Jamborees first organized by Krisz or spreading BEST spirit all over Europe also via our members, Erasmus travels.

When there are long periods of happy times though, hard times like to appear. It was also a case for LBG Budapest after organizing the Presidents’ Meeting of 2000. The relationship with the university weakened, so we could no longer organize job fairs and our membership has also decreased. However, through all that time, our guys kept the show going on and finally managed to turn the wheel.

Nowadays, we are a constantly growing group again, with increasing number of events, many new traditions, and our Special LBG Budapest Spirit. And to celebrate our and all the other groups, we brought GA 2009 to life!

Story of LBG Chania

When the paradise joined BEST, May of 1994, it was spring when BEST embraced for the very first time the southern part of Europe. In 1995, Chania received the observer status and got the challenge of organizing a WorkShop, the first International event!

And then in the summer of 1996, LBG Chania started shaping the dream. It was just the start of a long tradition, the annual LBG Chania SC tradition. The first paradise summer course is a reality, the Halara way of life a fact!

But there was more to go. More to know, to learn, have fun, travel, meet new people. There was a new goal.

At PM 1996 in Vezsprem, LBG Chania became a full member of BEST. Lots of great moments

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followed, summer courses, cultural exchanges, leisure events, internal events, all the hopes and wishes were to be fulfilled in the magic paradise of Chania. In November of 1999 LBG Chania went to a new level by organizing the 5th PM, with 80 international students attending it. Everybody knew what will be next.

But the story goes on. Organizing Summer Courses became a great tradition for BEST Chania and we helped more and more people to become motivated believers of the BEST spirit!!! Both at Chania and all Europe! So here it comes, the year of 2004, after a successful Greek-Italian meeting in Chania, we celebrated the 10th birthday of LBG Chania and participated in the 20th anniversary of Technical University of Crete. Our passion and creativity leaded us up to organize the 23rd General Assembly (2005) in co-operation with the Local Best groups of Athens and Thessaloniki, with the participation of more than 250 delegates from all around Europe. 10 years of growing up, and finally the dream came true!

But is that all? No! On the contrary, our dream grows even more. LBG Chania still goes on, organizing events for students by students, giving the opportunity to improve ourselves and broaden our horizons as European citizens, guiding us and making our dreams come true!!

YES! We still want more.

Story of LBG Chisinau

When we were an observer group we find out from a young teacher that during his studies he tried to create an BEST group in Chisinau, but his trying failed, and he was really thrilled hearing from us that we are making a huge work to obtain baby status (now he is helping us with everything he can). In this way we find out which was the real first idea of BEST in Chisinau.

The second time, BEST Chisinau got alive in February 2007 while three guys, Bulgaru Vladimir (Later first president of BEST Chisinau), Borta Pavel (an active member in BEST Iasi, in that time) and Badiceanu Alexandru (Later first Vice-President of FR) were standing in one local and were drinking beers! (I think everybody understand how after some beers appeared the idea of BEST Chisinau).

So Vova with Alexandru didn’t stop just at those beers and that idea, but seriously started to do something in order to make it happen. Later they involved some other friends in this work, who were also enthusiastic on the idea of BEST and so they made a great team. In summer 2007 we obtained the status of Observer BEST Group. This was the first steps in

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our way of achievements.

In September 2007 Technical University of Moldova had a BEST group. Having a huge support from our nurse, BEST Iasi and from others LBGs, we started to grow!

The first feelings of BEST spirit are still high and some of our goals were reached. Now we are a Baby member going forward to a full membership. In 2 years of existence like a real BEST group in Chisinau we got used with regular meetings, organizing competitions, events, recruitments and trainings, making new friends and travelling. The beginning was very hard, making the first steps, studding all BEST traditions and skills is not so easy, but as we supposed this is really cool and now we enjoy to feel the BEST spirit in our group. We teach new members all what we know and support them in reaching the future goals.

Story of LBG Cluj-Napoca

New perspectives, fresh BEST spirit every year

BEST Cluj-Napoca currently has about 50 active members, committed and involved in many projects and sub-departments. The year 2008 was one oriented towards evolution and structural changes of the LBG, which lead to better management and spectacular increases in the quality and quantity of events.

Some of the most recent and fulfilling projects include: GreenWeek, an environmental CSR campaign which encourages recycling among students and university staff; BTW (BEST Training Weekend), an opportunity for students to participate in trainings delivered by BEST trainers; Season BUZZ, a guide to BEST Season Courses, distributed free of charge to the students and also a great FR instrument.

LBG Cluj-Napoca prides itself with organizing the first National Engineering Competition, RoBEC, hosting 48 top students from all over the country in July 2009, in their quest for engineering excellence. However, this LBG’s ambition does not stop here, as 2010 brings the entire continent’s attention to Cluj-Napoca, through the second edition of EBEC.

But it all started with...

December 1994, when Cristi Bogdan and Lucia Cristolovean from LBG Timisoara went to a party organized by the students of Economical Engineering in Cluj-Napoca. A few drinks, as well as the intriguing words these two were flashing about (LBG, GA, JobShop, baby member, etc) seem to have been the starting point for the history of this LBG. In January

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1995 the organization was registered officially in Romania, several months before it became Observer, under the careful nursing of LBG Timisoara.

The first events soon followed - the first job fair in Cluj-Napoca in 1995, growing with every new edition, reaching 50 companies and 3500 visitors in 2008; “Cooperation through Internet” in 1996, the first of 17 Season Courses to come in the following 15 years; the first PC Party in 2000, expanding to such an extent that in 2003 it was already the largest multimedia festival in Romania. Other memorable internal events were GA 1998 organized together with Bucharest and Timisoara, Jamboree 2000 and TRAP VII.

Little space for such a large history of a much loved LBG, but keep in mind, you have to know your history to prepare your future!

Story of LBG Coimbra

Created in November of 1992, in response to an invitation from Local BEST Group) Lisbon, in the Faculty of Science of the University of Coimbra, BEST-UC as since then represented the University of Coimbra in BEST International. Initially BEST-UC belonged to the Engineering Association of the University of Coimbra, but in 2001 has become an independent association with the name BEST-UC Local BEST Group from the University of Coimbra, becoming a member of the National Registry of Juvenile Associations in 1992. BEST-UC strives to provide support to students who want to be more internationally minded, promoting contact with other European cultures, as well as share Portuguese culture with other European students. To achieve these goals, BEST-UC interacts with other LBGs from different countries, giving the members of the group the opportunity to exchange experiences and knowledge. This is achieved organising events like spring, summer, autumn and winter BEST Courses, Cultural Exchanges... Locally, BEST-UC organise activities to enrich students and create contacts between University, Students and Companies, organising events such as Engineering Competitions, Company Days, WorkShops...

Story of LBG Copenhagen

The story of LBG Copenhagen begins in 1991, where we first got introduced to BEST. One year later (that is 1992) our journey began as full members at General Assembly Liege (GA Liege) and since then Copenhagen has established itself as a strong, innovating and at times a slightly crazy LBG (Local BEST Group).The everyday life of at Copenhagen BEST member is fairly hectic. We have always been a

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small group, normally the amount of members is between 5 and 15, but that has never kept us from trying to reach what might seem as impossible goals. Since 1994 we have organized a Summer Course (SC) every single year. Among the most crazy and challenging courses, both budget wise, amount of people and logistical are the following three of our Summer Courses:

• SC 2003 Greenland: No need to say more• SC2007 Mind NoE: Had 60 participants• and our last course the SC2008 in cooperation with LEGO

There has however been one year where we did not organize a Summer Course and that was in 2004, where we hosted the General Assembly (GA) of BEST at our University.

This GA was different from most GAs in BEST. Our group decided to organize this GA with the help from LBG Lund, when no other LBG had been willing to take up the challenge. However this meant that the time we had to plan was short and we had no money to put into this project from the beginning. We knew that we would have to think out of the box to create a GA which would match our budget and the BEST spirit. This meant that we had to transform most of the university. Everything was build from scratch, i.e. the sports hall was used as a giant sleeping hall. But even though this GA was not hosted in a big hotel (as most of the recent GAs have been) it is still remembered as one of the BEST GA ever. Maybe because of the atmosphere you get from sharing sleeping and shower facilities with around 250 people.

In this time, LBG Copenhagen had a strong international involvement. Having members from our LBG represented in the XVI, XVII and XVIII board of BEST. Shortly after the GA 2004 our LBG became revolutionized. The group went through a major generation shift and a new all blonde girl board decided that the group needed a makeover. So together with a new and bigger office, we got ourselves a new colour. Since then LBG Copenhagen has been known as “the PINK LBG”, which we together with our Mascot, the beautiful and pink “Ducky” try to promote as often as possible. As mentioned before, LBG Copenhagen has always tried to be innovative and try out new projects in which they see potential. It was therefore no surprise that when one of our members came up with the idea of hosting a huge regional Train Shop for the newly elected board members that the group gave their support and decided to host this event. The event is called Nordic Joint Board Training (JBT). And the Train Shop became famous, not only for being a huge success and the first of its kind, but also for barbequing a whole pig, which got on fire. It was such a success that we repeated it on our SC08 (the pig, not the fire).We do not have many traditions in our LBG, but the ones we have we cherish.

It is seldom that we have a meeting where we do not sing a bird-song or drink FISK, which is our official drink.

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LBG Copenhagen today consists of many motivated members and a Regional Meeting (RM), Cultural Exchange (CE) and a Summer Course are in the planning phase. We are after 18 years in BEST still around and rocking!

Story of LBG Eindhoven

BEST Eindhoven is one of the founding members of the BEST organisation. Nowadays it’s mostly known for its various traditions which the members proudly carry out everywhere in Europe. Who hasn’t heard of their famous red&blue stickers?During the first few years BEST Eindhoven organised various courses and even 2 WorkShops on growth & continuity and strategy & Minerva (the current BCC). Important issues that are still playing a big role inside BEST nowadays.In 1998 though, one of the most important changes in the image of BEST Eindhoven occurred. A generation shift had taken place and with that also the image of the LBG would change for the BEST. The red & blue stickers, sweaters and various other merchandises were born! But it didn’t stop with only colours; also various other traditions came to live in that era. Some of you might remember the famous “fritsing”, the numerous cans of Hollandia or Keizerskroon that BEST Eindhoven members are always carrying, the wabo, which is a warm beer with whipped cream and of course Nijntje, the famous mascot of BEST Eindhoven!Nijntje, a famous children’s book character that started in the 1950s was a present to the LBG from the participants of the Summer Course in 2001. Since then she’s travelling and exploring Europe and the same time conquering the hearts of everyone she encounters.Besides having a very distinctive image and identity with various traditions, Eindhoven is also very innovative, flexible and always puts fun into everything they do! Probably the 3 most remarkable events of recent years that fit this description the most are: The very first BEST European Engineering Competition in 2003 (together with BEST Ghent), the Board In Eindhoven Rallies, that happen every weekend, but until know only the BEST Barcelona board of 2006-2007 survived a whole weekend, and of course BEST Eindhoven was responsible for the culture programme (aka parties) at the Presidents Meeting in Ghent in 2006!As you can see BEST Eindhoven has been very active and very important these last 20 years and hopes to continue this for at least 20 years more.

Story of LBG Ekaterinburg

Thanks to web-surfing, one day in 1998, when majority of russians have never heard about Web, one Ural guy found www.BEST.eu.org. And our lives completely changed!Marat’s brave and enthusiastic speech made us Observers in Cluj’98. And BEST got its most Eastern LBG! So Eastern, that we are already 20 km away from Europe :) . Step by step, we were exchanging our soviet-mind-borders to Europe-open-friendly look and representing wide Russian soul to BESTies all over the organisation. We keep the incredible

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atmosphere during all BEST events and we meet great people - that’s something we keep in our hearts forever. Believe... Imagine how we, BESTies from the heart of Russia, discovered Europe with BEST! Wide-open eyes, extreme level of adrenalin, memories to pass for sure to grandkids… There is no place for digits here about statistics what we have organized and participated in. But we remember thousands of smiles, kilometers of gratitude, books of fantastic pictures.Last year, we celebrated 10th anniversary of LBG-Ekaterinburg. We have completely changed not only the age of the LBG, but also the people. So now BEST in Ural is represented by new young strong people with other ideas, but respecting the traditions. And now, even if our city of Ekaterinburg is naturally in Asia, we are Europeans! Thanks, BEST.

Story of LBG Ekaterinburg USTU

“Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” And it is absolutely truth.

“It was February 2002. I and Marina Shevelyova, who was a President of LBG Ekaterinburg, went home from the railway station. It was around midnight and we were talking about BEST. Suddenly Marina asked: “Why don’t you set up BEST group in your university?” And it was starting point for me. I made BEST presentation for Students Union and International department. They supported me and my project and I applied for a membership in BEST. My application was refused. But I’m not the person who agrees with negative answer. I like to fight. So I started to fight for the right to present our university on international level.

I faced with a lot of hard work, so I asked for help my friend, Anastasia Mylnikova. She thumbed thought all BEST material I had and finally joined me. We applied for he second time, and again we were refused. But as you already know, I don’t like negative answers. So we decided to try one’s luck again. With the help of International department we made a great presentation. I finally our energies were rewarded - we were invited to General Assembly as a candidate. First day of the General Assembly can counts like first day of our group. And from that moment students of Ural State Technical University are the part of BEST World!”

First President - Anton FarlenkovFirst Secretary - Anastasia MylnikovaOur completed projects:

6-15 February 2004 - Cultural Exchange with Slovakia2-10 May 2004 - BEST course “Radioactivity in our life”4-10 February 2005 - Regional Meeting “Russian Jamaica”1-10 May 2005 - Engineering competitions

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1-10 February 2006 - BEST course “Artificial intelligence”Autumn 2006 - Bologna process and BEST1-10 February 2007 - BEST course “Constructivism. Untimely message of architecture”4-13 February 2008 - BEST Engineering competitions “Create your future”27 October 2008 - Local Engineering competitions “BEST Building Boom”1-10 February 2009 - BEST course “Save your place - Dynamic Space” (almost complete)

Story of LBG ENSAM

LBG ENSAM is one of the founder members of the BEST organisation! It exists and is active since 1989. Thanks to our motivation we are the LBG which organised the most external events in BEST! (37!!)

Today, since we are divided into several campuses in France, we organize 3 courses per year! Another record for our LBG!!

Story of LBG ENSTA

LBG ENSTA was born at the very beginning of BEST, and became a Full Member at GA 1991. From spring 1999 to winter 2001, non-academic events were organized in the university (language Course, discussions on modern problematic).

With GA 2002, the team grew into a motivated, well organized and internationally oriented group. Then every winter from 2002 to 2009 was lighted up by a Winter Course. The themes of the courses have been very various, from Artificial Intelligence to Naval Architecture, illustrating the different Masters available in our University.

In December 1995, we organized WS95, during which some important decisions concerning the organization of Summer Courses were taken. BEST University Centre and other international projects were born there.

Within the years, we developed collaboration with the other French LBGs, which was reinforced when we organized the GA2002 in Paris, the GA 2005 in Polytechnique and the GA07 at ENSAM.

In 2005, ENSTA welcomed the Board training; right after Jiji had been elected as treasurer of the international Board, after being active in FinTeam since 2004. Our involvement in the International Committees was empowered in year 2006, as Alice joined EduCo and Cecile became French RA. We also organized the Corporate Relations Round Table in 2006 at ENSTA, which was a brand new event.

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The members of LBG ENSTA participate regularly to trainings, bePROUD in 2005 and 2006, beRICHER in 2004, 2006 and 2007. In 2004, Jiji had the idea of a French FR training; this was named PICSOU and organized at ENSTA. We organized a Cultural Exchange with Cluj-Napoca and Lodz at the end of 2005.

Beside all these BEST events, we use to meet the administration of the university every year to let them follow our projects and maintain their support. To follow the creation of ParisTech, a collective entity that includes eleven of the most prestigious French institutes of education and research, the LBG was renamed ENSTA ParisTech in September 2008. At PM 2008 in Bucharest, our LBG was suspended because of logistic problems during the Winter Course 08.

Right now we are a really motivated team of around 15 active members loaded with experience and the BEST spirit. Our plans for the future are to send more students abroad, to organize a Cultural Exchange, and to get more involved internationally. In a few years, everyone will know us as “LBG French Kiss”.

Story of LBG Gdansk

During a survival camp in spring 2003, student of Gdansk University of Technology, Bartosz Lipnicki met people from LBG Warsaw. They told him about what BEST is and few months later, he came again to Warsaw to see how Engineering Job Fair by LBG Warsaw looked like. Impressed by this event, he came back to Gdansk and collected a group that created BEST group in Gdansk.

After summer 2003, full of meetings with BESTies, WorkShops and knowledge transfers, an Observer application was sent to the board of BEST International. On September 30th, 2003 LBG Gdansk became an Observer group. Bartosz Lipnicki, Dominika Markowska and Wojciech Syrocki became first board of our LBG. After yearly status of Observer, at PM 2004, we became a Baby Member and a year later at PM 2006 we achieved Full Member status.

The first event made by LBG Gdansk was FOKA 2004 ‘ Students’ Organizations Fair. Afterwards, our group organized RM for Mongolia (all Polish LBGs were still in this region then). Later, in summer 2004, we organized Cultural Exchange with LBG Berlin and LBG Turin. LBG Gdansk is an innovative group. Our LBG members were ones that introduced BEC to BEST and together with LBG Warsaw made first BEC in 2004 and organized in 2005 our first BEST Course as an engineering competition.

Successive years of our existence brought new events and involvement of our members in

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BEST International. From 2005 we organize Meetings with Employers, in 2006 we organized TrainShop, in the year 2006/07 our founder Bartosz Lipnicki became the President of XIX board of BEST International and member of our LBG Andrzej Piotrowski was the Regional Advisor. Since 2005 we organize annually BEST courses. The topic of the first one was robotics. The next courses’ topics were Maritime Industry in 2006, Transport & Logistics in 2007 and Architecture of Gdansk region in 2008. Moreover, in 2007/08 we made another CE with LBGs in Brussels and Nancy and we were the host of national edition of BEC 2008.

We organize yearly party events at our University, e.g. BEST birthday party and the BEST Day (an outdoor party during Students’ Festival - Juwenalia).Nowadays, at the beginning of 2009, there are 38 active members, 20 observers and 30 alumni in BEST Gdansk.

Story of LBG Ghent

The magical fairytale of LBG Ghent began in 1995: Marianne Edlund and Guy Brusselmans were just too late to apply for the XIIIth General Assembly in Patras and had to wait for 6 months to officially make LBG Ghent a part of BEST. Nevertheless, they didn’t wait for this and already organised the first Summer Course in Ghent in the summer of 1995. Ghent really tasted the BEST spirit and we certainly made a nice first impression. At the Presidents’ Meeting in Trondheim, Ghent went into BEST history as being the first group to ever organise a course without being an official BEST Group! We had already earned our reputation...

During the XIVth General Assembly in Tallinn, Estonia, we were accepted as a Baby Member and to raise this reputation even higher, we immediately ran together with the other Belgian LBGs to organise the XVth General Assembly. Before we could believe it, some 150 students from all over Europe were gathering in Ghent, listening to HRH Prince Laurent who officially opened the XVth General Assembly. At this GA, Ghent was welcomed as a Full Member of BEST. This was celebrated by electing Guy as the first, but certainly not the last, Ghentie to be a member of the BEST International Board.

LBG Ghent still kept its innovative spirit from its starting days: in 2002, Amelie (LBG Ghent) and Mirjam (LBG Eindhoven) decided to take the challenge and organise the first BEST European Engineering Competition (BEEC). The BEEC event later resulted in BEC (BEST Engineering Competition) events.Two years later, LBG Ghent was ready for its next challenge: organising the Presidents’ Meeting of BEST. Thanks to the amazing commitment of all our LBG members the Presidents’ Meeting was a huge success, leaving a very good impression on the university, the city of Ghent and all of our international guests.

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In 2008, LBG Ghent was elected to host the first final of the European BEST Engineering Competition (EBEC) in 2009. So, LBG Ghent has been a dynamic group in BEST since it all started in Trondheim in 1995, and today it’s still looking towards a sunny future!

Story of LBG Gliwice

Long, long time ago, when the first BEST groups in Europe started existing, there arise an idea... idea to create another local group at Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice. At this time there were actually only 2 BEST groups in Poland - in Warsaw and Krakow.

The beginning of “BEST Gliwice” was very hard; however with “helping hand” of BEST Warsaw everything became much easier. Official gossips say that it was established at 20th of April 1994 with 15 members. At 6th of November 1994 at 12th BEST congress in Timisoara they got status “BEST Observer Group”. Then they became “Baby Member Group” at 1st of May 1995 at 13th congress in Patras. Finally in 1997/98 they obtained “Full Member” status, voting and membership rights.

During 15 years existence of BEST group in Gliwice some traditions has been born...One of the most important traditions is cyclic events like “Modern Student Fairs” which was organized for the 6th time in the year 2008 or “Engineering Job Fairs” - 5th edition in March this year. Their traditional event is also recruitment which is organized two times every year.

BEST Gliwice can be proud of many achievements for example:• they have constantly around 50 active members for several years,• their actual office is probably the biggest one of all BEST groups having area above 100m2,• they’ve organized double summer courses (academic and leisure course) in 2004, 2005 and 2007,• They created international and very popular committee “LBG Mongolia” which is gathering group of people with special objects of interest and ideas for spending free time, ect.

If you want to get to know more about BEST Gliwice you are welcome to their web page: www.BEST.gliwice.pl

Story of LBG Gothenburg

The history of LBG Gothenburg goes back to 1992, when it was elected as a baby member in GA Liege, having LBG Stockholm as a nurse. One year later, in Warsaw GA LBG Gothenburg got the full member status, and since then has been an active LBG in both international and

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regional level.

Soon, in 1996 Gothenburg had its first international boardie; Jonas Murby became president of the International Board of BEST. Later, in 1999, Anna Nielsen contributed as the GM secretary. LBG Gothenburg also actively participated in the first general meeting organized by all Swedish LBGs of that time in April 2000.

Story of LBG Graz

From Portuguese Beaches to the Austrian Alps......the history of LBG Graz

Just another time that he fell into the water after standing on his surf board… But surfing was not the only thing the young guy from Graz learned during his stay in Lisbon. He established a lot of friendships and a connection to the local BEST group there.

In 2005 when Christoph Troschl came back from the sunny Portuguese beaches he also brought the BEST spirit with him and infected other students at Graz University of Technology. These students were so motivated that at GA in Zagreb (2006) the observer group Graz was created. After the first successful motivation weekend, at PM in Ghent (2006) we became Baby LBG Graz.

But being a Baby LBG was not enough. In order to develop our skills in organizing events we performed a cultural exchange with Eindhoven, Netherlands in February and April did some teambuilding weekends and local promotion events.

In February 2008 we organised our first winter course with the topic: “don’t fear the error: statistics and measurements”. This was a small step for mankind, but a big step for LBG Graz. At GA in Tallinn (2008) we ran for the full membership and we are really happy that we were approved. This pushed our motivation so much that we organised a motivation weekend in order to celebrate and the central regional meeting in autumn. In December we organised our first, but not last Glühweinstandl (hot wine bar) for promotional reason.

In February 2009 we are going to have our second winter course with the topic “Run Robot Run”. We are hoping that this one would be even more fun than the first one! In March we are organising our first local engineering competition.Be the BEST spirit always with us!

Story of LBG Grenoble The history of LBG Grenoble is a long and most interesting story, full of passion, tradition,

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ups and downs, myths and legends (and even dinosaurs), and of course the characteristic Boulet Spirit. It is a story that gets lost in the twists and turns of time, in places where it gets difficult to differentiate tale from reality. Maybe also it is lost in part because the student board of the university inadvertently threw to the trash almost 15 years of archives, but this is another story. As for LBG Grenoble, here is the tale you have been waiting for:

Once upon a time, in a little country unlike others called France, in a quiet city surrounded by mountains called Grenoble, there was an engineering university called the National Polytechnical Institute of Grenoble (now the Grenoble Institute of Technology). And in this university, there was a student union called the Grand Cercle. This organisation, seeking international involvement in a time when the Erasmus program was in its infancy, was very active. It participated in the first meeting that would give birth to BEST in 1987 in Stockholm, hosted the next one in 1988 (in Grenoble), proposed that the statuses of the new BEST association be taken care of and registered in Grenoble in the 1988 European Week in Eindhoven; home of three international Boardies (Nicolas Chauveau of Board XIV, Ludovic Charpentier of Board XV, Grégoire Toussaint of Board XVII) and one RA (Samir Asghar, Alpine RA 2005-2006). And of course let us not forget lots of Cultural Exchanges (Chalmers in 1999-2000, Cluj-Napoca in 2001-2002, Riga in 2002-2003, Ljubljana in 2004, Gothenburg in 2005, Kaunas in 2006, Warsaw in 2007, Kiyv in 2007-2008,Belgrade in 2008, and Istanbul & Chisinau in 2009) and local events (Motivation Weekends, Local Board Trainings, and Local Engineering competitions)! And, let us not forget that Grenoble also organised the first Alpine Weekend in 2003, which was the starting point to the now famous Alpine Jams!

Think that’s impressive? Think again! The LBG Grenoble was clinically dead in 1996 and almost dead in 2004 after disastrous recruitment campaigns, but like the phoenix, it resurrected from its ashes to shine stronger than ever before! And what more, it even gave birth to what is now LBG Nancy, which was at first an extension of LBG Grenoble! You want more? You want traditions? Unfortunately, because of the most (in) famous Boulet Spirit, most are just too politically incorrect to describe, but a quick search in Youtube on “LBG Grenoble” should prove enough to satisfy your curiosity. As for the little song to end our story, here it is: “In Grenoble Never SoberIn Grenoble Raise your glass And drink again, again, again Drink again, again, again”

Story of LBG Helsinki

Delegates from Helsinki participated in the first International week organized in Stockholm in 1987. The idea of an organization like BEST was born in this event. LBG Helsinki is one of the founding members of BEST and has been a member since the first General Assembly

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organized in Berlin in 1989. The first course LBG Helsinki organized was a summer course in 1992 called Power Production and Environment.In 1994 a legendary summer course “Mobile Communication - connecting people” was organized together with Nokia. During the course the people from Nokia were showing the participants a state of the art mobile phone they had as a work phone. According to today’s standards the phone was big, but it still made the participants green with envy since none of the students had a mobile phone at that time. 15 years later in 2008 a summer course called “Developing good, better and BEST products” was organized and again Nokia was one of the sponsors. This time around everyone had a mobile phone. The times might have changed, but the BEST spirit was as high as it was 15 years before.In 2002 the idea of Sauna Crawling was born while planning the summer course. The point of Sauna Crawling is to go in teams to different saunas in the university area (and there are quite a few saunas here) and do a different task in every sauna. Nowadays Sauna Crawling has become a tradition in LBG Helsinki.

Story of LBG Iasi

If it wasn’t for a girl went on Erasmus at the University of Stockholm in 1997 who knows when BEST would have arrived in Iasi. There she met two Romanians that were already in BEST and soon they convinced her (Anca) how BEST can help the students from Iasi. Struck by BEST values, she soon started dreaming about the possibility of the University of Iasi joining the organization. The path that BEST Iasi needed to take was a rocky one: after applying in fall 1998 and spring 1999 just to be rejected as a observer of BEST, the group from Iasi didn’t give up and decided to register the NGO and applied for a third time to become part of BEST at PM Budapest 2000.

Gaining the support of the University, involving many more students and registering the association in Iasi, year 2000 turned out to be yet another time a lucky one. Iasi was accepted as an observer of BEST in 2000. In the next years BEST Iasi became soon baby and with the guidance of LBG Timisoara, a full member in 2002 at GA France.

From then, the number of members grew more and more, and the LBG developed into a strong and united group. From year to year, the students from Iasi University found in the Job fairs, BEST Courses, Technical Festivals and Competition organised by BEST Iasi another chance to follow their dream, to have fun, learn and improve their skills.

In the same time the LBG wanted to give something in return to BEST and started to apply for hosting different internal events. Reaching the maturity needed, LBG Iasi took another challenge and decided to help new group from Chisinau to find their own path through the BEST family.

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After almost 10 years of existence, more than 100 members and alumni can say: “we are proud to be a part of BEST Iasi!”

Story of LBG Istanbul

In a sunny day of June 2000, some students of Istanbul Technical University got together and founded a student organisation in their university. During 3 years, they did amazing jobs, but then, they decided to do more, but how could it be possible?

Everything related with BEST started in a dinner of local group’s board in June 2003. The president of that organization told to the secretary: “There is something called BEST, can you search it and maybe next year, we can join...” The secretary of the group searchedBEST on Internet, exchanged e-mails, then asked to the group for the final confirmation of the observer application; and 3 months after hearing the name of BEST, the group became Observer Istanbul ( September 2003 ) . One year passed with hard job of establishing a Local Group, organizing a mini CE for LBG Stockholm and a Regional Meeting for East Region, after them, making the T-Shirts of GA 2004 during the event and sending them from Istanbul before the end of the event was another success story of the Observer Istanbul. After a great summer with all visited SCs, PM2004 arrived where Observer Istanbul became a LBG.

After visited by LBG Athens in winter 2005, we made our first promotion for SCs where we got the third position of the applications in the whole BEST world. Then, the first SC arrived. It was a remarkable event since with all problems and the lack of experience; participants agreed that it doesn’t look like as a first course ever done by that group... The success also came with 11 couples happened during the event too... This became also one of the causes of becoming full member of BEST in PM 2005.

Beside all other great events such as BACo, Cultural Exchanges, Regional Meeting, etc..., the year 2007-2008 became a remarkable year in the history of BEST where LBG Istanbul is the first and only LBG who organized 5 Season Courses and 1 TrainShop (Be Richer V) in 5 Season! Amazing ha?

Now, we are thinking what we can do more and unforgettable. Any suggestions?

Story of LBG Kaunas

To start with, in 25 of April LBG Kaunas celebrated its 5 years anniversary!!! We are growing and becoming stronger and stronger. How it started? Well, we tell you a short fairy tale.

Once upon a time there were three little princesses Justina, Katerina and Daiva, who wanted

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to create little but nice and crazy land and call it LBG Kaunas.

They travelled through whole Europe looking for help. After long search in 2004 03 12 princesses found a lot of nice and friendly people at BEST North-East Regional Meeting Riga and there represented their idea. And in 2004 in Copenhagen the delegates of huge kingdom of BEST let these princesses to realize their idea - create LBG Kaunas. There were a lot of sunny and dark days for this little land, but these princesses and the other princes and princesses (Justina, Mindaugas, Daiva, Edita, Lina), who followed the idea of hard working, crazy and funny land, managed to get ahead bravely.

During theses 5 years in this LBG Kaunas land were invited lot of people to take part at the events like: JAMAICA_RM_2005, SC?06 “The birth of BEST Anthem: e-music a Creative Approach”, “WC’08: WeCare and we are ready to promote”, “WC’09 - BECuddly”. At 2006 LBG Kaunas represented beautiful motherland Lithuania to friends from Grenoble and Torino (during Cultural Exchanges), hosted International BEST Board, LEMONS in cold 2007 winter.

Of course LBG Kaunas didn’t forget its people and for them created lots of amusements and challenges: unforgettable Christmas parties, challenging BEST Decisions, gripping X-Dj’s!!!

We hope that our little but nice land LBG Kaunas will fare long and happily ever after.

Story of LBG Kiev

How it all began? In spring 2007, the first people out of our members found out about BEST and attended the first event - Motivation Weekend in Zaporizhzhya. Since then, our story has started. We officially got the Observer status in July 2008. Before that was a year of hard times with BEST but not in BEST. That had a positive effect at any way: we didn’t despair, as we had to build our team, work harder and push forward to keep our motivation high, and finally it helped to come as BEST group already, but strong as Observer, and having got enough experience to run for Baby in a couple of months.

Even before getting the Observer status we made a good deal of job. Cultural Exchange at the times of “Great Depression”, Local Engineering Competition with 45 participants when applying for Observer, co-organizing all the events we could reach, participating at the Regional Meeting in Gliwice, keeping in touch with BEST world and with our Nurse Cluj-Napoca, while getting support and office at the University, and involving the most motivated members who weren’t afraid of uncertainty about the future LBG Kiev, difficult to find, as we couldn’t promote our group in association with BEST itself. At the same time we elected the Board of our group, consisting of 5 people, and formed 3 departments (FR, PR, and HR).

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Many experienced BEST members, our Regional Adviser, and 2 members of the XX Board visited Kiev, and it also helped us to find out a lot and to organize our activities better. So with about 10 people we became BEST Observer Kiev. When we heard the good news we couldn’t even celebrate together at first, as at that moment almost all the members were at different Summer Courses as co-organizers!

Having come back home, we started the next phase of our life. The first step was making BEST Kiev bigger, that we successfully accomplished by recruiting about 15 new people, active and motivated to become BESTies. We had an outstanding Motivation Weekend that integrated our newbie’s to the team.

During PM Bucharest we accessed to Baby membership and started looking forward to achieving more!

Upon the return, we had a sharing event with our Nurses and in early December we organized a 3-day career-related event, including trainings, engineering competition, and company presentations. In the beginning of 2009 we organized another company day, recruited 15 new members and had another Motivation Weekend. In April we organized LEC as a round of EBEC. Moreover, this year we are organizing our first Summer Course “To the Moon and Back: Airspace Technologies for the Future”, and the 9th Regional Meeting of Mongolia, also known as the Central-East Region.

There are so many plans and so much motivation to implement them! After everything that we have lived through together, we can obviously do it!

Story of LBG Kosice

How it began On 26thOctober 1992 was lawful by federal department of Czechoslovakia Federal republic (Slovak republic now) establish branch of BEST on Slovakia. The first was BEST Bratislava at Slovak Technical University. Intention to constitute a LBG in Kosice on second biggest technical university on Slovakia (Technical University of Kosice) started at 3.August 1994 by Milos Los, but in this age was official proposal from government that new LBG Kosice can perform just under LBG Bratislava. But for this process was necessary change statute of LBG Bratislava. Another chance was create a substantive statute for LBG Kosice. It was more acceptable way. New statute of LBG Kosice was created and at 22. November 1994 also LBG officially registered. First president and simultaneous statutory was Milos Los. In GA 1994 Turin became LBG KE baby member and later in GA 1996 Tallinn became full member.

From the next Presidents of LBG Kosice we can mention: Peter Zvirinsky, Mikulas Paulo, Andrej Turcan, Mikulas Fekete ( in the same year -2001Peter Zvirinsky became president,

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Lubomir Ziak vice-president of XIVth International Board), Manuela Raisova, Jan Mihalik, Emilia Sabolova, Rastislav Chomjak, Denisa Cholvadova, Ivana Cmarova, Ladislav Bartok and Mario Turcik.

Events:• Autumn 2008 Learning Event-Technological Course: Empower by Electric Power• Autumn 2007 Learning Event-Technological Course: Get Yourself Integrated• Summer 2006 Leisure Event: RETRO ROOTS• Summer 2005 Learning Event-Technological Course: My House-My Castle• Summer 2004 Leisure Event: Crazy Outdoors-See It, Do It, Enjoy It• Winter 2003 Learning Event-Technological Course: “Industry & Ecology-a battle of symbioses?”• Summer 2002 Non-academic: X-Lost• Winter 2001 Academic: How to live in e-world• Summer 2001 Non-academic: Get medieval in 21st century...• Summer 2000 Non-academic: Summer School of Caves 2000• Summer 1999 Non-academic: L.O.S.T-LunAtic Outdoor Survival Trekking • Summer 1998 Summer Course: Summer School of Caves• Spring 1998 Non-academic: SKI WEEK of LBG Kosice, Slovakia • Summer 1997 Summer Course: Environmental Case Studies

Except of these events LBG Kosice in cooperation with LBG Bratislava organized General Assembly in 2003.

Story of LBG Krakow

Long long time ago… In the distant, roaring nineties a strange thing happened in Kraków. There was a handsome, smart guy studying in his fifth year, who actually WANTED TO DO SOMETHING MORE…than just his master degree. So, Jacek Zięba claimed a wish of Kraków joining the Board of European Students of Technology organization.

And that’s when it all started. In 1994 Kraków obtained the Baby Member status. But as soon as it began, as abruptly it finished. Jacek has completed his studies and Baby LBG Kraków hasn’t been heard of ever since. Well, not ever… but until…

One beautiful morning, an even more beautiful girl named Monika (also known as Tere) found a real treasure: a few boxes full of folders left by Jacek in hope to be handed to posterity. Tere examined them thoroughly and found a group of enthusiasts who would follow her lead and bring BEST Kraków back to life on the international area.

So… Kraków became a full member in 1998, and they all lived happily ever after.

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In fact – they = we, and we = BEST Kraków - are doing really well up till now:• We are currently celebrating our LBG’s 15th establishment anniversary! • There are about 300 people who have been involved in creating our history!• We are proud of our current nearly 50 active members, students of one of the most prestigious technical universities in Poland • Year by year, we’ve been successfully organizing Summer Courses • Since 1998 we’ve been organizing Engineering Job Fairs, gathering more than 50 companies and 8 000 visitors yearly• We are taking part in preparations to the Polish BEST Engineering Competition, and frankly, we do SO MUCH MORE!!! • The key to our success is a perfectly developed recruitment system – thanks to it we can choose BESTies that feel the BEST Spirit from their first weeks in the organization

There is only one conclusion:

Come to Kraków and meet us: a fairy tale come true!

Story of LBG Leuven

It all started in September 2000, when a couple of students responded to a flyer which called for engineering students interested “in having beers with foreign students”. The next month, even before exactly knowing what BEST was, the newly formed group organized the Lowlands meeting. In November 2000, two members joined the Presidents’ Meeting in Budapest, marking the official start of LBG Leuven as a part of BEST. GA 2002 in Paris was a memorable event for us: not only did LBG Leuven become a full member of BEST, Wim “Farry” Farasyn was also elected there as international president of BEST!

The biggest event organized by LBG Leuven was the 9th President’s meeting together with Louvain-La-Neuve in November 2003. 144 people joined the enthusiastic organisers in Natoye in the Ardennes and the dream of many of the original LBG Leuven BESTies became reality. After that, enthusiasm dropped a bit in LBG Leuven and most of the oldest BESTies graduated. This was the first generation switch, but after a year of hard work LBG Leuven became again the enthusiastic team like before. In 2006 we finally got our own office, called ‘BEST-hok’. A real house, without electricity and heating, but with wireless internet, a piano and a lot of humidity... In 2007 LBG Leuven took the challenge to organize the Final Round of the first Belgian BEST Engineering Competition (beBEC).

In the history of BEST Leuven we organized 7 summer courses about a wide variety of topics, but about one thing we are sure: All our participants had the time of their life and fell

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in love with our famous Stella, brewed in Leuven.

Now after 8 years of BEST Leuven we are still not the biggest LBG in BEST, we don’t have the most money on our account, we don’t have the fanciest BEST office but we are one group of real friends who enjoy every second we work and party with BEST.

Story of LBG Liege

Founded in 1988 by three students at the University of Liege, P.M.Durieux, M. Germain and T. Wiertz, the ‘Cercle Europe Ingenieur - Liege’ was a student union dealing with the organization of European congresses, cultural exchanges, and other travel-related activities. In the early 90’s when BEST was developing as a new European network; it seemed natural to integrate it in its activities.

That’s how, in 1991, a few students created LBG Liege: Baby member in Paris and Full member in Lisbon the same year. At the time, LBG Liege was only part of the ‘Cercle Europe Ingenieur’ which was itself part of a bigger Student Union called ‘AEES’. Year after year, we organized Summer Courses, Committee Meetings, and even General Assemblies under the well-known BEST motto: Work Hard, Party Harder!

Indeed, LBG Liege has had the great opportunity to organise the 8th General Assembly which was taking place on the same week as the 2nd European Congress and held in the same city. As a result, all social activities and parties were prepared together and brought together over a thousand students! In fact, most people remember it as the GA ‘Sandwiches’ in memory to the great diversity of meals offered during the event. As BEST was taking over most of the CEI’s activities, the latter was becoming obsolete and the group officially took the name of ‘Local BEST Group Liege’.

In January 2008, on the verge of its majority, LBG Liege left the AEES to become a ‘Non Profit Organization’, BEST Liege asbl, and to stand on its own two feet! Up to now, this new legal status has given our group new sponsoring opportunities, better security, and a stronger position regarding our relationships with industrial partners; even if it has been far more demanding on an administrative point of view. Today, LBG Liege relies on over 20 years of experience, enjoys the advice of broad alumni network, and finally has a stable financial income.

The only thing our LBG is lacking is new projects. But that problem will certainly be solved by the unbridled imagination of its members!

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Story of LBG Lisbon

BEST Lisbon (Lisbon Institute of Technology, Technical University of Lisbon) is one of the founding Local BEST Groups. In this 20-year period, we have accomplished many things. Just in 1991 we hosted the 6th General Assembly of BEST and in the same year we started preparing the first Summer Course, which took place the following year. Summer courses became a tradition in our LBG and adding to that we hosted international SITs (Short Intensive Training) and had Cultural Exchanges with other LBGs.

1998 was to BLAME with BEST Lisbon Alumni Meeting! In 1999 we were part of the group that decided to try something new: organizing a Winter Course. That year we celebrated the 10th anniversary of BEST and our LBG, bringing the General Assembly back to Lisbon. Innovation can be an addiction and the last year of the millennium brought something new: a Career WorkShop (which evolved into our current BEST Career Days).

In the first winter of this century we had an IBS (International BEST Symposium) and 2002 brought another international WorkShop. 2004 was a great year: Euro Cup was here in Portugal, but what really matters is that the Portuguese LBGs worked together to have the Presidents’ Meeting in our country. In the following years we kept trying new limits with different events: in 2006 Portuguese LBGs got together again to make the first BEST National Engineering Competition come to life and in 2007 BEST Lisbon rode a new wave and hosted the first BEST Leisure event on surf!

Of course we could take a long time describing our history, like when we had 2 Summer Courses in the same year and our BESTies who were in the international scope ;) (both of which you can [check here|http://best.ist.utl.pt/history/] ), but we feel the best way to transmit who we are is by visiting us in this sunny place close to the Ocean, so see YOU in Lisbon soon!

Story of LBG Ljubljana

Students from Ljubljana were present on the first official statutory BEST meeting in Berlin in 1989. So we were there all along? Not quite so. Just as we were preparing to host our first and one of BESTs first summer courses in 1991 the borders of Slovenia close as the war for independence commences.

That was a blow that took us back for a couple of years, almost to be excluded from the organisation (as there simply were no members of BEST Ljubljana at this period). But luckily BEST did not give up on us. At GA Liege 1992 we were given another chance, some students in Ljubljana were contacted, found some old documents in the closet of the student union went to another GA and revived BEST in Ljubljana.

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BEST did not give up on Ljubljana and Ljubljana was thankful. So in 2001 we organised a General assembly, in 2005 a Presidents’ meeting, we nursed LBG Zagreb and LBG Maribor to become full members of the organisation and organised over 40 courses and internal events, among them the first regional meeting of our region making Ljubljana one of the most active local groups in BEST.

We cannot help it, we love BEST and what it stands for, the spirit just makes us do more and more and it seems we are not quite ready to let it go any time soon.

Story of LBG Lodz

BEST Łódź was found in 1997 by three students: Witold Pawlak, Przemysław Korona and Dawid Solecki to become a full BEST Member in 1999.You’re probably curious how our LBG was established. It was while studying in Denmark at DTU - Michał Nowakowski, Nadia and Przemek came into contact with BEST and decided to set it up in Łódź, so they wrote these words on a small sheet of paper to their friend Witek: “We want to create BEST in Łódź, are you in?”. And of course the answer was “YES!” (This piece of paper is still exposed in our office as a remembrance of the beginning of the great adventure). During GA in Lisbon Michał and Nadia made a presentation which met the acceptance and BEST Family expanded one more time.Because the name of our city is Łódź (which means ‘boat’) we are known as Pirates! And to prove it, every year we go on our own Mazury Cruise – many of us are sailors, therefore on GA we present everything in a pirate’s way ;)One of our unique customs is that every new BEST member in our LBG needs to go through KwaKwa ritual. He has to dance like a duck and then drink specially made juice called ‘Gummiberry Juice alias mix Raspberry’. Believe it or not, but it’s quite tough nut to crack.To make it all more freak, we give names to our IT hardware! Thus, a workstation is called Jacek, server is Marysia and virtual machine is Bobby. Once upon a time, we were called LesBG. That’s because that time all members of our LBG were female. But now it’s changed... ;)For a long time Ljubljana and Lisboa were teasing us that on GA we should be sitting next to Uppsala. Right - if you pronounce Łódź like /udʒ/ our place definitely should be with Uppsala.BEST Łódź as a flourishing and motivated LBG organises job fair (ATP), incredible BEC in cooperation with other Polish LBGs, memorable and extraordinary courses all year round (for instance in cooperation with ESA - European Space Agency), arranges many unforgettable events as TRAP (TRAiner camP) in 2001, Board Summer Meetings in 2003 and 2004, ITC Meeting in 2005, PRteam Meeting in 2006 or one of the biggest BEST events - Jamboree in 2003 in which participated about 500 BESTies. In 2005 we organised beRICHER3 TrainShop and hosted EduCo in 2007. One year later Jamaica RM took place in our city. We also took

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part in students’ exchanges with Liege, Leuven, Paris, Cluj - Napoca, Ekaterinburg, Rome and Lviv. It’s also worth mentioning that between 2003 and 2004 our two BESTies Aneta Błaszczyk and Piotr Bryk were doing their BEST as members of the International Board. And the next year Michał Wojtera was a Board member as well! That’s not all! In 2007 Kasia Sieklucka was a coordinator of markeTeam and Jakub Krzaczek of Knowledge Group.

Our current (the XI) Board: (2008 – 2009)President: Agnieszka JabłońskaSecretary: Katarzyna MrózTreasurer: Piotr GrzelakVice-President for PR: Kacper DurkaVice-President for HR: Marta Borowska

Story of LBG Louvaine-la-Neuve

The Local BEST Group (LBG) of Louvain-la-Neuve was born in 1989, the same year as the BEST network. Ever since 1992, it organised at least one course a year. Each time, we tried to find new fields of technology with always the same goal: Welcoming over 20 students from all over Europe for 2 weeks... and have a wonderful experience together.

Our group became quickly more and more involved in the European contacts of our faculty by welcoming the ERASMUS students, taking part in the social part of the ATHENS week, helping in the CLUSTER symposium and finally taking in charge the European web site of the faculty. And we surely won’t stop here! Apart from those ‘regular’ activities, our group has devoted itself to a number of ‘exceptional’ activities such as intensive training, WorkShops, organising international meetings... Most notable of these are the Presidents’ Meeting 2003 and General Assembly 1997.

Since March 14th 2002, five students associations of the Applied Science Faculty, including our LBG, were gathered in one big association called GCI or the “Grand Cercle Industriel”. Therefore, in order to fulfil some common criteria, we had to change our identity into the “Contact Europe Cercle Industriel - BEST Louvain-la-Neuve” Story of LBG LyonThe beginning - a challenge of 5 years The idea of BEST was brought to Lyon by Piotr Senator in 1999. We became observers at the GA in Lisbon 1999, but then Piotr had to leave for an exchange year. The work was continued during one year after the GA in Stockholm 2000 by Anna Nielsen from LBG Lund (who was exchange student at that time) and Cédric Bellanger, but at the end of the year none was there to continue the work. In 2002, the students’ office of INSA was re-contacted by Nicolas Chauveau from LBG Grenoble, boardie for the French region at that time, and so Clement Artaud and Vincent

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Buisson from the student’s office part for exchange students (Melt’INSA) went to the GA2002 in Paris. There the group became observer again, and at the following GA baby member. Lyon organised an IBS about ERASMUS in 2003, and the first Summer Course took place in summer 2004 (at that time Sophie Moreau was the president of the LBG). At the PM in Portugal in 2004, Lyon finally became Full member of BEST! After this moment, LBG Lyon had lots of enthusiasm and motivation to offer students its support and organize several events for the French and foreign students of technology. A minor step-back After 10 years and lots of struggle, LBG Lyon is facing a rough period due to HR issues. In GA2009 Budapest, Lyon was suspended and was nursed by LBG Grenoble. With more than 40 alumni and only 7 active members, Lyon is proud to be a part of BEST. It will find new strengths to overcome this situation and with the help of its nurse, Lyon will become full member again.

Story of LBG Luleaemail by Maria Hakkanson, alumni BEST Lulea

Hi,Seeing so many LBG histories dropping in I feel a little bit obliged to write a few words about an LBG that does not exist today.

The history of LBG Lulea, in short

Lulea is a town far up north in Sweden, close to the polar circle. It is a town with a technical university, very attractive for students who like outdoor activities. It was the student union board who sent an application to BEST. Lulea University of Technology, through the Vice-Chancellor, was always very supportive towards the LBG.Lulea was invited as an observer to the PM in Veszprem in 1996 and became baby member at GA in Belgium 1997. LBG Stockholm was the new group’s nurse and the members of LBG Stockholm came up to Lulea in the autumn of 1997 to get to know the new LBG and train them in BEST knowledge.In the beginning of 1998, LBG Lulea organised its first event: a Workshop. The ski trip in the forest next to the university, with blueberry soup served by the path, was an unforgettable experience.

LBG Lulea became full member at the GA in Romania 1998.

In August 1998 the first Summer Course was organised in Lulea on the topic: “Recycling of Minerals and Metals”. Many thought it was funny that the organising LBG consisted of nine girls and one guy.Cultural exchange: 16 members of LBG Chania were playing in the snow in Lulea in February

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1999 and 16 members of LBG Lulea became pink as lobsters under the Greek sun in May the same year. We all loved it!In August 1999 the second Summer course was organised in Lulea on the topic: Hydropower - the Power of Water. 25 participants, plus organisers, followed the Lulea river upstream; visiting hydropower plants, walking in the forest, having a snowball fight on a mountain and falling in love with polar bread.

At the PM in Chania 1999 LBG Lulea became the nurse of the new baby LBG Uppsala.

The GA 2000 was organised by the five Swedish LBGs together - Gothenburg, Lund, Lulea, Stockholm and Uppsala. The location of the GA was Stockholm, but before the GA the organisers had met twice at each university.In August 2000 the first non-academic course was organised in Lulea “Wilderness Week in Vassijaure” and in the autumn of 2000 LBG Lulea had a Cultural Exchange with LBG Riga.In September 2001 LBG Lulea organised the Nordic Regional Meeting with delegates from Aalborg, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Lund, Lulea, Stockholm, Tallinn, Trondheim, Uppsala and representatives from the board and TIGro.In February 2002 the first Winter Course was organised by LBG Lulea: “Snowledge - Understanding Snow and Ice”. In February 2003 the second Winter Course was organised by LBG Lulea: “Space Physics at the Edge of the Arctic”. It became the last event the LBG organised.

In 2000 the LBG started to face problems recruiting new members and after the Winter Course in 2003 it looked so bad that Zoltan Bartalis and Maria Hakansson talked about going to the GA in Slovakia and say “Thank you for the party”. But before the GA we had found a new member - new hope - and in June 2003 a BEST training was held in Lulea for a handful new members.The last President of LBG Lulea, Pia Mammioja, sent a letter of resignation to the board which was presented at the PM in Portugal 2004. She was at the time the last active member of the LBG.

BEST regards,Maria HakanssonLBG Lulea alumna

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Story of LBG Lund

The saga about fluffy Lund started in 1991 when we became baby members at General Assembly in Lisbon, much thanks to Anders Berglund who later became president of the 3rd Board of BEST (92/93). One year later, at General Assembly 1992 in Helsinki/Tallinn, we were proposed for full membership by LBG Stockholm after organizing two courses. After the voting with 17 votes for and 0 against we were in the game and nothing could stop us! During the summer of 1993 we organized 3 parallel summer courses at the same time, and since then we have had another 19 summer courses (2009) and two General Assemblies (2000 & 2004). The first was together with all the Swedish LBGs in Stockholm and the latter together with LBG Copenhagen.

Ever heard the expression “Je suis une fraise, mange moi!”, no? How about “I’m a strawberry, eat me!” sounds familiar?This genius expression was once said by a BESTie from LBG Lund, Busse Pettersson, on a ski trip in the Alps trying to learn French.

Story of LBG Lviv

The idea to join some European students’ organization was born in 2002. Once, two students of one of the biggest universities in Ukraine - Lviv Polytechnic, Maxym Fedorov and Roman Palianycya while surfing the Internet, accidentally ran into BEST web site. They haven’t slept few nights filling in the application. Then came to GA in Paris, and were accepted! We became an observer group Lviv. Our nurse became LBG Krakow. At that time there were only 6 interested students. They had problems in getting visas and prices for goods in Europe were too high for Ukrainians. But thanks to persistence and willing to become part of BEST they organized a Regional Meeting and Cultural Exchange with LBG Liege.

The number of active members increased to 20 people and in the next GA in Slovakia BEST Lviv ran for the position of baby member. Till 2005 we had organized one RM, two leisure events and our first course. At PM 2005 in Ljubljana we became Full member.

Now, when we are 7 years old we have 80 active members. We are the biggest organization in our University. Our most significant annual events are:

• Computer Festival DE:CODED, what started in 2006. It is an Ukrainian festival that become more and more popular to students interested in IT technologies• Engineering Job Fair, which helps students to find good job on their profession and realize their ability• Academic courses and symposiums on education, where European students can learn something on their technical specialty

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But we don’t stop and always do our best to be the BEST and now we are preparing to organize the first BEST General Meeting in Ukraine - PM 2009 in Lviv.Welcome to Lviv!

Story of LBG Madrid

LBG Madrid was established in 1996, being elected as Observer group in GA Tallinn. Growing up without fears by the hand of LBG Valladolid, we moved to Baby member in PM Veszprem 1996, and reached Full membership in PM Warsaw 1997.With the support of the University, more people and more money, LBG Madrid was able to organize up to two external events per year, doing our BEST when organizing PM 2001.

In 2003, after having problems with the Student Union, we split up and established as independent, youth association. After the rebirth, LBG Madrid has grown by organizing a wide range of events, covering from Cultural Exchanges, BEST Symposiums in Education and BEST Courses, to BEST Engineering Competitions, a JAMboree, Local Engineering Competitions, National Engineering Competitions, and much more.

In 2006 we celebrated our X Anniversary with a great party, and LBG Madrid Carlos III was born and grew at our side. The strong collaboration and good mood between all the Spanish LBGs have given its outcomes as the BESTspain project.Nowadays, with the dedicated support of the University, full of energy, full of motivation, the Great LBG Madrid is ready to take any challenge. Nobody can stop us!

Story of LBG Madrid Carlos III

Carlinho!!! That’s the word which defines our group, LBG MADRID CARLOS III. That word contains in itself the magic of our small but powerful history. We are still young in BEST, just four years ago one crazy man (this year we voted him as our honorary president), came with an idea and started this dream. We attended some events and learnt how to get the “Excellence”, and since our first event, a Regional Meeting in 2006, every year we improved our courses and we started doing different kind of events; that’s why BEST made us Baby Member in PM06 Ghent and Full Member in PM07 Valladolid.

But let’s come back to that strange word: Carlinho!!! It is the name of our mascot, but, actually, it’s something greater, it’s a sincere smile, it’s pure friendship, it’s a warm hug, it’s our definition, our dream, our spirit. Maybe that’s the reason we became so famous in BEST, and when someone in a party meets you and discover you have a friend in common, he usually says: “Ey, you are Carlinho!” and we answer smiling so proud of belong to that dream we helped to raise up: “Yes, I am!”

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Story of LBG Maribor

In year 2000, a group of students heard about BEST, they liked the idea, so they decided to establish LBG Maribor. With help of BESTies from LBG Ljubljana, they managed to go on GA in April 2001 in a town called Rogla, where they were accepted as observer group. That is how the idea of LBG group Maribor started to realize, with support of student organisation called ŠOUM (Student organisation of university Maribor). The first members were: Plešnik Silvo, Markočič Marjan, Kos Matija, Krajnc Urška, »Krty«, Juršič Igor, Arsič Petra, Jovanovič Sandra, Gregorčič Andrej…

In order to become Baby members they had to fulfil some tasks. They did all of them, and some more by making most of the work for the first summer course, which was in august 2002. On GA 2002 they became Baby members and few months later the first participants came. That was not enough for Maribor. Their goal was to become Full members. That was achieved at PM in Belgium year 2003. After that members became very motivated and active, so they organized one academic event every year.

We are now spreading the idea of BEST not only between our students, but also to all the participants that are coming to our courses. A lot of them joined their LBG after our course.

Over the years our organisation became stronger and more experienced with around 30 members.

Story of LBG Messina

It started some years ago in the summer of 2005, when a Sicilian guy, named Antonio Bellitto, engineering student at University of Messina, surfing on internet found the website of a European association: it was BEST.He didn’t know anything about it before but it seemed interesting, so he began to speak with his friends. Then he decided to contact the BEST Secretary to have more information and to receive the application-form!

In Messina the time was right to start working, gathering information and contacting the University that was happy to help them and support the request.In the BEST map there was not a group in Sicily and it was the time to have one! They were very enthusiast and in July of 2006 they applied as observers but the results were not good.

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In the meanwhile the group was strengthened and its motivation didn’t go down and they continued their BEST dream.They contacted LBG Naples and two guys of them, Antonio Bellitto and Carmelo Marchese, were invited to attend its Autumn Course in September of 2007, where they have the possibility to feel the BEST spirit, learn about its organization and its practises.

In December of 2007 the group decided to apply again and this time there were good news: they were accepted as Observer!

In January of 2008 they started working and almost few days later they received the proposal to organize the first event: Spring Alpine Regional Meeting in April of 2008.It was crazy but they accepted and hard times came...The Regional Meeting was great thanks also to University and its Nurse LBG Naples. The participants enjoyed Sicily and its wonderful coffee-breaks.

The history continued with courses and other events that they attended and on November 9th of 2008 they became officially Baby Members of BEST at the Presidents’ Meeting in Bucharest.

Now the group is growing and they have an office at University, great will to do and new ideas and projects are coming, especially their first Spring Course in May of 2009 and the Italian BEST Engineering Competition.Special thanks for supporting this dream go to the Rector of University, Francesco Tomasello, the University delegate Anna Murdaca and the Dean of Faculty of Engineering, Signorino Galvagno.

Story of LBG Milano

The beginning of LBG MILANO: The idea was born in 1995, when Giovanni Brianza, a student of mechanical engineering at the Politecnico di Milano returned from a European Week in the Ecole Centrale of Paris. Thanks to a dedicated group of students and with the support of LBG Turin, LBG Milano got organized and at the 1997 GA achieved the status of Baby Member!

The following year, at the 1998 PM, LBG Milano became a Full Member of BEST! Thus begun The Glorious History of LBG MILANO!!

The Glorious History of LBG MILANO: Starting from the very first course in 1998, Innovation in Telecommunications, LBG Milano established a reputation for the strong motivation, style and creativity of its members. These great qualities counterbalanced the ever-present financial struggles, which lead to a quite dramatic history of suspensions and re-admissions

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from the Full Member status.Happily, those troubled years did not crush the motivation of a strong working group, which in 2006 was able to start a Reveling New Era!

The Reveling New Era of LBG MILANO: The 1996 technological course, “When Imagination Comes True: Big Infrastructures Made in Italy”, marked the beginning of the new era. LBG Milano expanded up to 25 active members and hosted even more events in the following year, like the Alpine ReJAM and the 2007 Symposium on Education Engineering demand and offer in Europe, in collaboration with EduCO.Those efforts were highly rewarded, for at the 2007 GA LBG Milano won the LBG achievement of the year award!!!

Strong on this motivational boost, LBG Milano scored also a successful 2008, thanks to the iBEC 2008 project and a ground-breaking learning event, the Autumn Course One, Two, TRIZ! Innovation in a Wiz!

Future Days: LBG Milano has definitely a full schedule for 2009 too, as it is planning on organizing one Autumn Course and housing a TRAM!

LBG Milano, as an ever growing group of open minded, driven students, is here to work harder and harder to spread the BEST-Spirit at Politecnico and all through Europe!!

Story of LBG Moscow

Once upon a time... or actually in July 2006 two unacquainted persons Sergey Koulikov and Anna Butorova found out from their friends about BEST and decided that the time has come for Bauman Moscow State Technical University to join this organization. All the needed documents were prepared and sent, and after a month of waiting, on 14th of august 2006, at 2 a.m. Anna Butorova got a call. The calling person was Bartek Lipnicki, President of International Board 2006/2007. It took some time for Anna to understand that from that moment an Observer group in Moscow started its long journey on the road called BEST. In autumn 2006 we felt BEST spirit for the first time - we had CE with Ecole Centrale Paris and in March of 2007 second part of exchange took place in Moscow, as the result of this CE we have new international happy family :). At the same time we took the challenge to organize the longest Jamaican RM ever – Spring RM 2007 in Moscow and we are still happy to see our positive orange scarves on different BEST events :). That spring, in the tents of GA 2007 in France to our big happiness we got the status of baby member of BEST. Next year we organised our first WC07 “LASER: Light And Snow Entertaining Researches”,

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but we overestimated our possibilities and didn’t manage to make it good, so it wasn’t accounted as an educational course, but we didn’t give up! BEST spirit didn’t leave us and after we recruited new generation, we got ready for the new challenges. In November 2008 we organized biggest Russian LEC in our University: 88 participants, 6 hours of competitions, 22 organizers made this event unforgettable for students and BEST members. Following months we spent preparing our Spring Course 09 “Take the lead over the future. Innovations in automation”. We worked hard and did our BEST to make this event perfect. And we’ve succeeded! This course was unforgettable! At the moment our motivated and strong team is ready for new adventures. We are looking forward to new ideas and events (of course, biggest ever :)) In September we will celebrate LBG Moscow birthday – three years since we are the part of BEST family and we are not going to stop! We are growing! It seems like the baby has become a grown-up, so we hope to become full members of BEST in Lviv. We do believe we deserve it!

Story of LBG Nancy

Birth thanks to Grenoble Our history begins after moving on to this century... At that time some students from Nancy decided to create an LBG in our wonderful university, which is composed by 7 faculties (called engineering schools in France) and 1 prep school. The founding group came from the ENSGSI engineering school; we found some creators names like Souhail Bouatia, Any Sounthon. They both came from a Grenoble prep School called CPP (the BEST). Indeed, at the beginning we decided to collaborate with Grenoble, who is an LBG since the very creation of BEST (and where the first GA had taken place!)... During a few years, we had been working together in close collaboration (which continues nowadays!), and then we started to set up a real LBG in Nancy... Step by step till Full Member in 2003 Actually we became observer in 2001 during the PM 2001 in Madrid. At that time, we were allowed to go on the adventure in the BEST world. So we worked harder and harder to reach the Graal, the baby member status. It s happened in France, a very nice symbol for us, because we were helped a lot by the others French LBGs like Grenoble, ENSAM and some others. We officially obtained the Baby member status during GA France 2002! So we were able to organize our first public event. And we successfully did it during the summer of 2002. The topic was the production of glass. Then another event in 2003 about innovation has been organized, each year in a different faculty. they was so nice that we obtained the final full member status during PM 2003 in Belgium, which is also a great symbol for the LBG as our nurse was Ghent, who gave us quite good knowledge transfer since our first starts Our life and improvements During a few years, the LBG managed to develop and organize successful many events, especially under the presidency of Nicolas Pelletier and Thomas Lales, who collaborated with

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many members in order to work hard and party harder! Thanks to the integration of the LBG in the lowlands region in 2005, we had more exchanges with Belgian and Dutch BESTiess. Thus we organised a French Christmas eve in December 2005 with people from Louvain la Neuve and Paris.A few time after it, the LBG got a year of doubts and of financial problem, but thanks to the high motivation of all his members, we managed to get back on tracks, and in 2007 the first motivation week end with Louvain-La-Neuve has been organized, such as the first French Lowlands regional meeting in France too, just before a French speaking meeting (working event with all the French speaking groups!)... Later on this year, the winter course about glass and steel technology went very well, recruiting many participants as BESTies, and we had our first CE with Brussels ULB and Gdansk! Nowadays, the LBG is still working hard and has many projects!! His members are involved in international committees, trainers, active in the French collaboration (LBG Nancy is a founding member of Alfa Canal Historic and still very active in it, participated to all the national events such as the organization of the GA, or the many Repas de noel, etc)...If we wanted to describe in one word the LBG, it would be collaboration: due to his location, the LBG is the perfect place for exchanges between French, Belgium, and maybe you in the future!

Story of LBG Naples

In Anno Domini 1994, LBG Naples was founded......How did it happen? This is the story........ Two different groups of guys from the same University read an article on a newspaper. This article spoke about a new idea from the north Europe, about a student association. This association had a group in Italy, in Turin..... At the same time, the two different groups thought...Why not? Why don’t we have the opportunity to share our culture among other Europeans? Both groups called LBG Turin, for some info. LBG Turin gave all the information they were searching for and informed both the groups of the existence of the other. Finally in February 1994, in classroom “N” (as Napoli) of the Engineering Faculty, the two groups, the first with Camillo Aladino and Ferdinado Bonifacio, and the second with Antonio Scognamiglio, Marco Sacchettino and Biase Celano gave birth to our Local BEST Group of Naples. Until BEST Napoli didn’t have a Constitution Act, the president was the oldest of the group, Camillo Aladino. After the Constitution Act was written the first president was elected, Ferdinando Bonifacio. In 1994 our group applied for Baby Membership, and in May 1995 in Patras achieved full membership and at the same time Margerita Bruni, who was representing our LBG, was elected as Secetary of the VIII Board. In June 1995 was organized the first event of BEST Napoli, the FIGA (First Italian General Assembly), in which we hosted delegates from all Italian Groups: Turin, Rome and Naples. In September 1995 there was our course, its topic was: Methods and practical tools for the improvement of process management. It was just the beginning!

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What did we organize during these 15 years??? 10 Summer Courses, 2 Spring Courses, 2 Autumn Course, 4 Cultural Exchange, 1 Training, 2 iBEC Local Round, 1 Italian General Assembly, 1 Regional Meeting. In the 2004 we hosted the Board Meeting, as souvenir the board presented us a baseball bat that was signed by the International board of that time and by the organizers. That has been passed down president to president until today and it will be passed down until the end of the days!!! In 2007 we became Nurse of Messina. In 2008 we have organized the first iBEC (Italian BEST Engineering Competition) with all the others Italian LBGs. In 2009 we wanted to improve our dedication to BEST and grow as LBG, that’s why in the first four months we have already organized a local round of iBEC, a Regional Meeting; in April we will have a Cultural Exchange with LBG Porto, in May the iBEC National Round, and in September an Autumn Course. But, you know what? We think that the highest achievement of LBG Naples has been to arrive after 15 years and discovering that the BEST SPIRIT is still alive; no matter what happened in the past and no matter what the future will bring us! The flame will keep on burning! After 15 years we’re more than those 4 braves that created it, we look at our past thanking people before us for what they’ve done, but now we’re thirsty for discovering new experiences and to catch new challenges, but above all, to make people discover how this association can light up their lives!!!!

Story of LBG Nis

Date: January, 12th, 2007 Time: 08:08 PMPlace: Zafa’s old residence

Suddenly, one cell phone started ringing and irreversibly disturbed the ordinary routine. “Hello? Dusan? This is Bartosz Lipnicki, the President of BEST International! Congrats, guys, you’re accepted!” And the journey has begun!

It’s not easy to aboard the BEST ship. You have to prove your determination and capacity. We tried a couple of times, didn’t succeed but also didn’t despair. On the 3rd attempt, the Force was with us. The BEST Council acknowledged our attitude and granted us the title of BEST Observer, declaring the start of a new era for the humble students’ life in Nis. A new era and a new hope?

And then the time had come for the first challenges. Recognizing the amazing potential of a new group, the Council gave us the task (coded as ITCdm) given only to members so far. And we fulfilled it, thus impressing the Council and making our masters from Skopje proud. On both pleasure, we have gone one step forward and become the Baby member on November, 10th, 2007. Now, we were ready for the REAL TASK: SC’08. Our group has grown and improved in order to be able to deal with such a challenge. Powerful we have become,

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but to the dark side of the Force still haven’t slipped. And the job was done. And two more after it (RM & JF). Now our strength completely flows from the Force (in some books also known as BEST Spirit).

We feel there is a Full member’s chair for us in the BEST Council. And we got it in the Assembly in Budapest, 2009. The Force is with us!

Story of LBG Novi-Sad

Roots of LBG Novi Sad lead us back to the September 19th 2005 when several students of Faculty of Technical Sciences and Faculty of Sciences decided to form a group which will later be known as an Observer group Novi Sad. Among the founders were Ivana Krsmanovic (president), Svetlana Kecojevic (secretary), Tatjana Petrov (treasurer), Bojana Mojic (vice-president) and Janko Micic (vice president) - the first board of newly born group. On the PM in Ljubljana (2005) a group in Novi Sad was granted the status which boosted the interested in BEST at the University of Novi Sad and helped the founding mothers to spread the ideas of BEST among the other students of the University.

After the inner reorganization which took part in February 2006 the decision was made! The observer Novi Sad was about to organize its first event: the regional meeting in Zobnatica (April 2006)! The excellent organization of this event was a turn point which helped us to proudly receive the status of BEST baby member on GA in Zagreb (2006). In March 2007 the first academic event was organized! The title of the event was “Brainspotting” and its topic was about the artificial intelligence and possible usage in modern telecommunication systems. Thanks to a new members who gave their last quarks of energy for the cause of BEST, the positive grade was obtained which helped our little group to finally achieve the aim for which we struggled almost two years - a full membership in BEST.

The second academic course was organized from the end of September till the beginning of October 2008. It gathered more than twenty students from all parts of Europe Actually, all students who participated in this course were supposed to design their own ceramic pieces which were integrated in the fountain at the centre of campus of the University of Novi Sad! After the three years of existence, the LBG Novi Sad finally managed to organize something which boosted its reputation in the international BEST and made this course a turn-point for future courses.

In October 2008, elections were made and some of the oldest members decided that it is time to retire and let younger generations lead the LBG Novi Sad ship through unexplored areas towards the new storms and sunny shores.

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Story of LBG Paris Ecole Centrale

The LBG of Centrale Paris was one of the founding members in Berlin in 1989, so this year we celebrate our 20th anniversary just as BEST does. You usually stay at this French school for a mere two years, which implies that our team changes completely every second year! So you won’t find old foxes here, but rather motivated newbies, who get to know BEST in the first and manage the LBG in the second year!

Lately we tend to have a lot of international members, actually this year we only have a few French ones... Some of these exchange students already know BEST from their home university, and some continue as soon as they get back! After all, maybe it’s only Centrale Paris where you can run for president after being in BEST for 6 months... There are a number of things this LBG has to be proud of: we could cite the funny stories of our alumni, show up with our mascot, Scooby-Doo, but the undisputed highlight of our history is our Spring Course of 2005, when we packed a plane with our participants, and left to... ...Reunion in Africa.

Story of LBG Paris Polytechnique

LBG Paris, Ecole Polytechnique is the last of Paris LBGs. It was founded in 1999 and became Observer in GA Sweden in 2000. Later on it became a baby member of BEST in PM2000 Budapest, and full member in PM2001 Toledo. That is for the short story... From the birth until now... It all started when some students from a local student club heard about BEST. They were promoting international activities, and when they saw what BEST could bring our university, they were motivated enough to give birth to a new LBG in Paris.

Their enthusiasm made the group grow fast, from a bunch of students promoting international mindset to an organised group regularly organising a course and internal events.

It took some time to get used to BEST practices and getting the BEST spirit, but it was definitely worth it and by becoming a full member the LBG could contribute to BEST as much as BEST was contributing to it.

Nowadays LBG Polytechnique gathers around 15-20 members each year, working hard to develop the LBG and BEST to the higher level.

Some achievements...Even though Polytechnique is one of the youngest of French LBGs, we can be proud of ourselves.

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Together with other French LBGs, Polytechnique organised 2 General Assemblies. The first one in 2002 held on ENSAM and Polytechnique campuses, and was prepared through “Yellow-Banana” events; “Yellow-Banana” standards were a festive alternative to the “Green apple” quality standards valid in that time. The second GA was organised in 2007, located in Paris and Cluny. That one was the first GA where people slept in tents, and they liked it! Besides those two very big events, LBG Polytechnique organises every year a Spring Course, and regularly internal events (1 Regional Meeting, one TrainShop, and 2 WorkShops so far). And it was in Polytechnique that BEST identity and BEST membership system were designed, before being approved in the following General Meetings.

Story of LBG Patras

Local BEST Group Patras was founded in 1991! In GA 1991 at Paris, we became a baby member of BEST; next year, in GA 1992 at Helsinki and Tallinn Patras became a full member of BEST and during that summer we organised the first of the many courses to come. Throughout the years, students from Patras, kept joining our group, and we became stronger, motivated and got ready to take more challenges!

So, grabbing this chance, our LBG organized successfully 2 Regional Meetings, in 2003, Greek-Italian meeting, and in 2009 - South Regional Meeting. As a peak, we fulfilled our expectations, by organizing the General Assembly of BEST in 1995 in Patras. So comes along the successful story of Patras! For 18 years now, we have been hosting BESTies among Europe in Patras who met our hospitality, and more students from Patras, have visited numerous events organized in Europe.

Until now, 2009, we have organised 16 courses, 7 Cultural Exchanges, one Carnival Week, Internal Events, motivation weekends and local events for students of our University.

So much experience and BEST spirit in this LBG, guarantee that LBG Patras should be your destination!We always look forward hosting you in Patras.

Story of LBG Porto

LBG Porto, a place of traditions

LBG (Local BEST Group) Porto was born in 1996 when Coimbra contacted FEUP (Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto) students union and told us about BEST and explained us the idea behind it. Then, two students that heard the idea thought: “Hey, this is really

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great. Let’s start an LBG”! And puff, LBG Porto was born!!!! After that we started to plan our first event in Porto. It was a WorkShop and it was 1997 (WS Porto 1997).

The following year, GA Romania was the second best place to be as Porto (number one place) made it to the top by becoming full member of BEST. And we had Coimbra, our nurse, to thank for it.

Because Porto is a city of traditions, as seen in our Porto wine cellars, in that same year, LBG Porto started another tradition: Summer Courses. After holding our first Summer Course that year, our dear “guinea pigs” (participants) thanked us for - and we quote - “The time of our lives”. In the aftermath of the event we could only draw one conclusion: We had to “do it again and again and again....”

After making Summer Courses a tradition in Porto, we wanted to start another tradition: Internal Events. In order to make Porto a reference in Europe we started to bring BESTies for events in Porto hoping they would spread the news that Porto is the place to be. So, after WS, we got our first Regional meeting in 2002 and we were so good that Iberians made us apply to our biggest event until today, PM Portugal 2004. It was in Porto, in cooperation with the other Portuguese LBGs who worked just as hard as we did, making the event an amazing success. We became such fans of internal events those two years later we organised beRICHER IV (money money money....). Now, every year we have an internal event and you never know what will be next.....

But coming back to traditions, 2004 was a great year because we also started a new one: Engineering Competitions. And this one is so addicting that we have two each year for our students. We are already on our 10th edition. And in between, we organised three BNECs (BEST National Engineering Competitions) making the 2008 final in Porto. This year we started a new concept: a 24H Engineering Competition! It’s something like 24H of Le Mans but 1000 times better!!!!!!

We also have another tradition, the oldest and most important one in our LBG. Generations pass, people change but something stays the same: in Porto we are very warm and welcoming people and we always make our guests have the time of their lives here.

So, do you want to know why Porto is the BEST place to be? Do you want to try out our traditions?

If the answer is YES, you know where to find us ;)

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Story of LBG Reykjavik

LBG Reykjavík is the first and only LBG in Iceland. LBG Reykjavík became an observer group of BEST at PM2005 Ljubljana. At GA2006 Zagreb it became a baby member of BEST and finally a full member of BEST at GA2007 France. Today the group is a full member under monitoring of LBG Copenhagen. From the birth until now...It all started when 2 students from the University of Iceland went to a SUNTU (Student Unions of Nordic Technology Universities) in Trondheim back in 2005, where they heard of BEST for the first time. A group was formed in august that year, and in September the group was approved as an observer group of BEST. Seven founding members went to Jamboree in Macedonia, and came back to Iceland filled with BEST spirit and highly motivated. Eager to get started spreading the BEST spirit, and introducing Iceland to fellow BEST members, the group applied for hosting the Nordic Regional Meeting, and did so in March 2006. The following summer, the observer group held a 2 week summer course, playing with power. With a growing reputation in BEST the group was awarded with a baby member status at GA2006 in Zagreb. The first learning event hosted by LBG Reykjavík was in March 2007, Drink your energy - from water to electricity. At GA2007 France the LBG became a full member of BEST, and the first challenge as a full member was hosting the TrainShop bePRROUD in October 2007. Although young, LBG Reykjavik has had its up’s and downs. We have been one of the biggest LBG in the Nordic Region, and gone down to hardly any active members. But looking ahead, we are eager to continue building up a steady group.

Story of LBG Riga

The birth of BEST-Riga goes back to 1993! It was a time when a group of enthusiastic students from Riga Technical University decided to join and get more familiar with the rest of the Europe. At this crucial time in our countries history ability to travel, to see the Western Europe with its level of development, to learn other cultures and exchange information was a main motivation for getting to know BEST.

Some of the people who brought BEST ideas to Riga were Armands Cakss, Janis Ozolins, Gvido Teteris, Maris Eglite and many, many more. Those people really did some amazing work creating our LBG! In 1993 they organized the very first BEST summer course in Riga: “Recycling Cycle”. It was quite incredible that they pulled that off, since there was no money for it, but thanks to the university, who really helped with providing accommodations and professors, some sponsors and huge enthusiasm (or maybe lets just call it BEST spirit) the course turned out to be a great success! Just one more a little fact about it, there were 90 applications for it, which was quite a big number for the Baby LBG back than. But the most important part surely was acceptance of our LBG as a Full Member in 1994 at GA Turin where Ieva Caune presented us to the rest of the BEST world. But being accepted by BEST

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wasn’t a limit for those people - they wanted to prove the seriousness of this organization and therefore BEST-Riga was officially registered as a non-profit organization in Latvia’s Enterprise Register.

During the following years our LBG grew and developed! But as everyone we had our ups and downs. There was even a time when we almost disappeared from the map of BEST, but since GA 2002 in Paris with big thanks to all our friends we are happy to have Full Member status again (we’d like to think of this as our 2nd born).

2003 was an important turn-point for our LBG, since not only we celebrated our 10th anniversary, but also this was the year of the true reconnection with the BEST spirit ,we organized the first ever Nordic JAM and like that wasn’t enough - summer course “2nd Skin or From Hat Till Underwear”. Then LBG-Riga decided to get a bit more familiar with BEST on more international level - we hosted PRIME I (the first PR and IMage Event) and also the XVI BEST Board chose Riga as the place for their winter meeting. Although we haven’t organized any GMs so far, our members - back then better known as “Riga Girls” was the official Party Team of GA 2004. They worked really hard to prepare all the social activities and parties for BESTies going to Copenhagen that year.

But come on – it’s impossible to name all the events we held during almost 16 years of our existence! We organized courses, leisure events and engineering competitions, as well as we held region and committee meetings, organized TRAP and TrainShops and did many, many other stuff. And surely - there are a ton of local events from seminars and local engineering competitions for the students of our university to all sorts of trainings to improve our own knowledge.

Now we are group of really dedicated people who are willing to work as hard as needed to carry out the proud name of BEST and then celebrate our success the way it can be done only in Riga!

Story of LBG Rome

Once upon a time... there were two twins, Romulus and Remus, who drinking milk from a she-wolf, fighting (or rather, killing) each other and kidnapping women from the neighbourhood, founded Rome, caput mundi (master of the world), and we all know how the all story was... But is scientifically proven that after Roman Empire, the greatest achievement of Modern Age was the foundation of BEST Roma. Let’s go a bit through it!!! It was February 8th 1994: no twins this time, and no murders, but 8 brave boys looking for European girls to kidnap; they were: Franco Petrucci, Alfredo Gentili, Fabio Grossi Gondi, Luca Perugini, Fabrizio Romano, Andrea Masini, Fabrizio Monteleone, Rocco Laraia, our founder fathers. Then followed GA 1994 in Turin: in the same event BEST Roma became full member, and six

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months later, at the GA in Timisoara, Michelangelo Calabresi, one of our guys, was elected President of the 7th Board of BEST. After that, we run from success to success, always grounding on traditional good values: pasta and Italian culture. A great example of how we apply those values is Winter course 2005: Speak as you eat! - A tasty introduction to EATalian language. It seems that all Europe appreciated: we received 762 applications!!! What a record! During our history we have nursed LBG Tor Vergata and LBG Naples, and we have got 5 Boardies: •Michelangelo Calabresi, President of 7th Board •Alfredo Loreto, Treasurer of 8th Board •Andrea Casamassima, Minerva Coordinator of 13th Board •Carlo Spellucci, Treasurer of 14th Board •Giulio D’Aversa, VP for Local Group Support of 20th Board. Every year, we use to organize a Cultural Exchange or a LBG Exchange, besides a Spring course. As it usually is for the greatest cultures, we had our Middle Age period: during 2004/05 BEST Rome almost died, because of a lack of members, but then a bright Renaissance came and now we are growing bigger and bigger, both in number of members and in new ideas. We are more or less 20 active members, but most of all we are a group of friends, and we are proud of it! We rely on cooperation between members and with other LBGs. From this point of view, one of our biggest ongoing projects is iBEC, this year in its 2nd edition; in 2008 we hosted the final round and our Team won the competition, making us even prouder. We have many traditions. For example we use to hand down strange objects for every charge in our Board of Administration: an axe for Presidents, a bottle for PR Responsible, madness for Secretaries and so on. We also act like a family: we have a mum, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts and nephews, but you can’t imagine how complicated are the relationships between them! To join BEST Roma is very easy: you just have to find a family relationship, and then undergo a baptism, which consists of several secret tests, involving beer, imbutos, underwear... Our office is a touristic attraction for foreign friends visiting us: it is a glass cube in a corridor in Engineering Faculty, and that’s why we call it Gabbiotto (funny cage). It can host up to 2 people sitting on a chair, but we filled it with 27 people just to establish a record! Last but not least, we have a mascot: Colossus, gift from LBG Stockholm. He is a truly Roman gladiator, who will protect and favour BEST Roma for the time being, giving us more and more events, fun, happiness and prosperity.

Story of LBG Rome Tor Vergata

Our Past...It was a cold night of January 2002, a night that changed the history of Rome Tor Vergata University, a night that changed the lives of its students, the night in which LBG Rome Tor

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Vergata was born. That night, Roberto Spellucci found his house invaded by a group of BESTies visiting his brother, a member of LBG Rome Sapienza, and, experiencing for the first time what was BEST, immediately fell in love with it. After that experience, to be honest, the LBG existed only in Roberto’s head, who with the help of his brother and a group of brave fellow students decided to take the challenge and begin to work to bring BEST also in their university. It has not been easy, but after a lot of effort and work, on the 10 of February 2003 LBG Rome Tor Vergata finally became an observer group of BEST and, a few months later, baby member. But it was only after many other days, many other nights spent discussing and working, many successes and also disappointments that the LBG Rome Tor Vergata finally became a full member of BEST.

...and our present and future...

Now, after six years of activity, LBG Rome Tor Vergata counts 30 active members and regularly organizes two international BEST events and one local engineering competition and, since last year, we also take part in the organization of the Italian BEST Engineering Competition. So far we organized the following events: 2 Winter Courses, 2 Summer Courses, 2 Internal Meetings, and 4 Engineering Competitions.

From that night of January many people joined our LBG, while other left, but each of them gave, in a way or in another, a contribution to turn what was just a dream into a strong tangible reality, through work and enthusiasm in the course of the years our group managed to extend his curriculum vitae, undertaking many projects and hosting many activities, always spreading the BEST spirit in our university and giving the chance to our colleagues to take part in this beautiful thing called BEST.

Story of LBG Saint Petersburg

About a year ago the historical moment has happened: lives of few people have been changed forever, one more university in Russia has got a bunch of energy and BEST obtained one more local group, Saint Petersburg aka SPBEST.On the 18th of July 2008 we got the letter from the International Board and were invited to be the Observer of BEST and come to Presidents’ Meeting in Bucharest... That time we didn’t realize what all of it is going to be like but already were excited and inspired of upcoming future.So? How to start?

• First, you get the right guidelines and the great Master: we got it - Nursing LBG Tallinn! • Second, you love your Master, take the advices and meet your Master face to face: we had three Motivations Weekends with our Estonian Nurses during this

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year; two of them were hosted by SPBEST.•Third, you approach more and more people to what you love to do and make them love it too: we had little recruitment and now we’re about 25-30 members.• Fourth, you entertain and involve the group into international BEST life: we made Local Engineering Competitions, sent our teams to Baltic BEC in Riga and one of them had won! Now we’re waiting for their participation in European BEC and international EC.• Fifth, you combine Russian&BEST spirit and get lots of hard work, fun and partying!

After we did those steps the time has come to join BEST officially, we became Baby LBG (with 100% votes!) on General Assembly 2009 in Budapest! That was the precious moment of life when the dream became true. We involve amazing city with white nights, drawbridges and architecture treasures into BEST. We are just one year old LBG. We are getting to know BEST life more and more. We are just getting used to the flow of e-mails, meetings and everyday thoughts about BEST. But we do believe we are on the right way. We believe in BEST!

Story of LBG Skopje

The first idea for BEST came in 2001 by couple of IAESTE members, who heard about the BEST Spirit and saw in BEST an excellent opportunity for better student exchange, travelling, friendship and fun.

LBG Skopje had been founded on the 9th of March 2002, after one year’s effort of small group of students. In April 2002, LBG Skopje obtained the observer status. After accomplishing all the required conditions, LBG Skopje obtained the status ‘baby member’ on the 8th November 2002, on the President Meeting in Bucharest. LBG Skopje obtained the status ‘full member’ on 4th November 2003 on the President Meeting in Belgium. Since then, LBG Skopje is organizing academic courses every summer.

In 2003, LBG Skopje organized the first internal event - CASH Regional Meeting. Still, the event on which LBG Skopje is the most proud of is, of course, the biggest event in the whole BEST history - Jamboree 2005. It was an event with more than 600 BESTies from all parts of Europe, having incredible 4 days of trainings and parties on the beautiful Ohrid Lake.

From 2005, LBG Skopje organized the first Job Fair which continues till now and every year is getting bigger and bigger. Other interesting events for LBG Skopje are IPF 2007, International Board to Board training 2008, BEST Hot Chilly Peppers 2008 and many unforgettable motivation weekends! Another great experience for LBG Skopje is the nursing of LBG Nis. It was a great opportunity for us to return the favour - supporting a new BEST

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Group. It is also a great way to learn even more about BEST and big pleasure to see how they grow in strong and valuable LBG.

LBG Skopje is determined to spread the BEST spirit and offer quality services to the students in Macedonia and Europe; now and for the generations to come!

Story of LBG Sofia

Students from Technical University of Sofia got in touch with BEST for the first time nine years ago. Presently BEST Sofia consists of 38 active members, who are working for free for the organization, trying to promote the international activities of BEST among students. This is their story:In the beginning was the word ... In the year 2000 two enthusiastic men. Petar Kraytchev and Veselin Genadiev, stated the strong wish of the small group in Sofia to become part of BEST on the General Meeting in Stockholm. They were accepted in the big family with the statute of observers. Later that year they got the statute of a BEST baby member on the Presidents’ Meeting in Budapest.

In 2001 the fresh team of baby BEST Group Sofia lead by their first President Petar Kraytchev were “Silent before the storm” as they started building relations with companies, motivating new members and preparing for the next year and their first ever BEST event.In the next year the proud members of baby BEST group Sofia organized their first external event “ACAISURE” shortening the distance between ACAdemic and leISURE events, in March. After 2 years of diligent and dedicated work, headed by Irina Lulcheva they received full membership in BEST on the Presidents’ Meeting in Bucharest.Under the guidance of president Petar Stoyanov in the spring of 2003 LBG Sofia organized its first Vivaldi course “Is the network a spider’ web, are you a fly?” With the kind support of LBG Bucharest the same year they organized their first Job Fair. During the reign of the IV board with Vesela Lukarska as President, the LBG hosted its first Cultural Exchange in March 2004 between Sofia and Stockholm local groups. Another “First” was the Regional Meeting of ex-East Region that was held in Borovets – Bulgaria’s oldest mountain resort.

2005 was one of the most challenging and productive years of the LBG. Tzveta Dimitrova started her mandate as President with a Winter Course shortly followed (a week later) by the first ever in BEST history Engineering Competition organized by a single local group! But they didn’t stop there! September was marked with the hosting of their first TrainShop- bePROUD’05. In 2006 the tireless local group was proud to have its first international boardie - Tzveta

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Dimitrova as Vice-President for External Services. The VI local board, with Petya Lozanova to the lead continued the Vivaldi tradition with the spring course “Be Like God- Control Your Climate”.

President Ivaylo Nikolov marked 2007 with the spring course “Introduction to Business Intelligence” and left a trace in the history of BEST Sofia with the first ever Event On Education “Virtual Mobility- European Education and Beyond”, as well as numerous career events as Virtual Job Hunting and their first Companies’ Night. In 2008 LBG Sofia decided to take the challenge of organizing for the first time a trilateral Cultural Exchange with LBGs Ankara and Coimbra. President Vladimir Tsaklev and his VIII board continued their visionary mandate with the group’s first two-week event- the Summer Course “Hitchhiking on the data highway? Get connected in Sofia!” It was followed shortly by the bePROUD5 TrainShop.

Story of LBG Stockholm

LBG Stockholm has such a long history that the creators of this page could not reach the old dinosaurs that created a Local BEST Group in Stockholm. :) But beside this mystery, there are some facts known by heart.

The idea of BEST was born in Stockholm in 1987 and LBG Stockholm is one of the 18 founding members of BEST and has been part of the organisation since 1989. And you know the rest; after 20 years we are still here and going on rocking... :)

LBG Stockholm has the tradition of organising courses in late spring/early summer as it is the end of exam period for LBG members and time to boost the BEST spirit in Stockholm. We organised courses more or less every year since the beginning with sauna parties, gossips and high BEST spirit included. From 1992 to 2008, LBG Stockholm organized 18 BEST courses (this corresponds to 350 students hosted by LBG Stockholm in 16 years).

The only time Stockholm broke the tradition and organised a winter course, (There was another course organised in the season autumn98 but it is not really counted as an official autumn season. :) ), was in the year 2006, when we organised a hilarious leisure event taking part in Stockholm and Kiruna (north of Sweden inside Northern Polar Circle).

In 2000, LBG Stockholm had the honour of organising General Assembly of BEST. After GA 2000, most of the Swedish members organised this great event graduated or went abroad for studies and in a moment, the LBG almost lost its Swedish identity. That is when the international students studying in KTH became the majority and English became the spoken language in the meetings. Since then, LBG Stockholm is also called as LBG Erasmus. Today

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the Erasmus spirit is still going on as presently we only have 4 Swedish members. :)

Story of LBG Supelec

The teamOur organization, called Cercle Europe, was created in 1988 (yes, before BEST!) in Supélec. It joined BEST in 1992 as baby member and became full member in 1993. The campus of Supélec is located in the suburbs of Paris and the studies are mainly about electric energy and information sciences.Activities

We are about 50 motivated students in the team and the board changes each year.LBG Supélec was co-organiser of the GA in 2007 in Paris.We have organized courses for 16 years, our traditional European Weeks. The next one is about alternative energies and happens ... this week. It is gathering 50 BESTies for a crazy week including discussions with experts, a job fair with international companies but also amazing parties, sightseeing (Eiffel tower, Versailles, etc...) and typical French food.We have also planned two Cultural Exchanges this year with Maribor and Skopje.As many foreign students arrived in the school each year, we help them to meet other people by organizing activities and giving much information about the schooling in Supélec.

Story of LBG Tallinn

LBG Tallinn - time goes on, but spirit stays.

LBG Tallinn was founded in 1991, when eight Tallinn University of Technology students decided to do something memorable, not just to ease their way through the university years. The first meeting was held on 8th of January 1991. Tallinn was elected to become a full member at BEST General Assembly’91 in Paris. Since then LBG has grown fast and today it has more than 100 members, including 50 active members, who deal with BEST on a daily basis.

From beginning they have organised every year a career days called Võti Tulevikku and also a traditional summer course. LBG Tallinn is really proud of two international BEST General Assemblies organised in Estonia in years 1996 and 2008. They are not afraid to take ideas from sky and to make extreme thoughts real; it can be an attempt to break Guinness Record in the biggest number of blind dates or it can be restarting the radio of TUT in 1995. LBG Tallinn likes to keep traditions like the Winter Days at Mõedaku, the biggest party called Viitna to celebrate the new board of BEST-Estonia and Survival Game which includes orienteering in forest in the night with BESTies.

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Year to year people change, events grow bigger and the goals get higher. But the spirit of members stays. Emotions from seeing a European friend after a year on following BEST event, satisfaction after achieving goals by hard work with good team or pushing yourself to get a maximum result in every action - the few of numerous feelings that make members to come to BEST office from day to day. BEST gives a lifetime experience!

Story of LBG Tampere

It all began when Riku Aho was elected as an international responsible the board of Tampere University of Technology (TUT). The co-operation between Technical Universities was quite significant at that time and so Riku got to know international responsible Anne Nummila and international secretary Laura Heikkuri from Helsinki University of Technology. After that it wasn’t long that Riku got invited to participate in a WorkShop organized by LBG Helsinki in January of 1994. It was quite cold outside, at least minus 20 degrees centigrade but the atmosphere inside was warm. The same year Riku got invited to GA in Turin and there Tampere became a baby member of BEST and Helsinki agreed to be the Nurse for just born LBG Tampere. After the GA Riku returned to Tampere and told what had happened and that the LBG Tampere would have to be organized.

In the beginning it was a small group consisting of a few people. LBG Tampere participated also the GA 1994 in Timisoara and organized the first summer course on its own in August of 1995. The Course was about Digital Media. LBG Tampere became a full member in that same year in PM that was held in Trondheim. The weather wasn’t the most pleasant in PM but Tampere had a lot to celebrate and a little rain wasn’t going to stop that. After that LBG Tampere has arranged summer courses when it could and at the same time tried to maintain high academic level for courses. LBG Tampere has also arranged internal BEST events such as TrainShops, Cultural Exchanges and Regional Meetings. In recent years LBG Tampere has tried to offer more events to TUT students as well. The Snow Football tournament is one of these and it has been arranged in the past three years.

Story of LBG Timisoara

Timisoara started the BEST path in 1990. The General Assembly in Budapest welcomed us as observers, and Warsaw started taking care of us. It is amazing to see that students from Timisoara were already opening up towards Europe, after only a few months of changing a long lasting and hard weighing regime. In 1991, the students’ organization registered legally, celebrating its birthday on the 27th of May. The General Assembly in Paris in 1991 and in Helsinki/Tallinn in 1992 saw the group become baby member and then full member of BEST, as it stayed until now.

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After the Romanian 1989 Revolution, which started in December in Timisoara, Romanians often say “Today in Timisoara, tomorrow in the whole country”. To stick by this, Timisoara nursed the groups in Bucharest (1994), Cluj-Napoca (1995) and Iasi (2000) to also become active members of BEST.

As the years passed, many events were organised in the Roses City. A total number of 26 courses for students, with topics ranging from Information services in computer networks, Food Industry Technologies and Nourishment, Interaction Design, to History and Archaeology or Medieval Castles Architecture; more than 30 local events, exhibits, conferences, engineering competitions, training weeks. Timisoara started another tradition in Romania, being the first ever to organise a job fair for students (at that time, together with AIESEC). Jobshop is now a registered trademark and a well known and respected brand in Romania, organised by all Romanian groups.

The contribution of the group in Timisoara to the welfare of BEST is also significant. First of all, our greatest pride, Cristian Bogdan and Ovidiu Sandor, who have been starters of big parts in the structure of BEST (our IT systems, our external events committee). 19 internal events were hosted by Timisoara. Out of these, 2 were General Assemblies (one together with all Romanian groups), 5 WorkShops, 2 TrainShops and several committee meetings. 4 persons from Timisoara were members of the international board of BEST in different times.

On the less serious side, we need to mention the BIG working group (Beer Interested Group), very hard working, and very fast drinking. The first ever 100% feminine board of Timisoara was in 2003/2004. The worst financial year was 2002/2003, when, in order to feed summer course participants, the members had to go to the green market and exchange detergent (they had received 100kg from P&G) for tomatoes and cheese... Life in Timisoara is for sure adventurous, and therefore thrilling and fun!

Story of LBG Thessaloniki

Nobody can easily narrate the history of our group. Even if it is not one of the oldest, it will soon be 10 years old. The history of LBG Thessaloniki is on the one hand the stories, the thoughts, the ideas and the innovations of its members through time and on the other hand the relationships formed between them and between their European friends.

Ever since our foundation in November of 1999 the character of the team has changed several times, following the personality of each generation, but what never changed is the enthusiasm and the determination of the people that constitute BEST Thessaloniki to learn, travel, have fun and evolve as a group.

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The excitement of the founding members, back in 1999, about BEST was supported by the academic community of the Engineering Faculty, which contributed in the establishment of the new born team that lead to the organization of our first international public event in the Spring of 2001 and Thessaloniki to become a full of member of BEST in November of 2001.

In the following years, as the team was growing and its needs became larger, we inevitably had to search for support outside the university. The challenge of organizing the General Assembly of 2005 in co-operation with other Greek teams was a major chance for us to create relationships between the group and the social and productive organizations of the city.

Shortly after BEST Thessaloniki was recognized as a strong and developing organization by the Faculty of Engineering and the whole Aristotle University and the Authorities of the city as well. New activities such as local events were introduced and the continuous upgrade of the quality of our events has always been our main goal.

The years past, smaller or bigger goals were met in order to reach today, when LBG Thessaloniki is a very strong and active group organizing several public, internal and local events in order to provide the BEST experience to as many students as possible.

Thessaloniki is well known for its hospitality, LBG wouldn’t be an exception: BEST Hospitality award 2005-2006

Story of LBG Trondheim

Once upon a time, Ida Lau Borch was invited on behalf of the Student Council at NTH, later the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, together with Espen Volden from IAESTE, to the first BEST-meeting in Grenoble in March, 1988. As vice president of the Student Council the invitation from Grenoble intrigued her and the thought of an international student organisation and exchange of summer jobs, which the invitation proposed, made Espen Volden attend as well. IAESTE in Trondheim had exchange of summer jobs as their main activity, but it turned out that this was not the case in Grenoble. When it was clear that BEST was not being founded to compete with IAESTE, Ida went back to NTH and wondered if it was possible to make a Local BEST Group (LBG) at our university.

The Student Council was really positive and BEST was allowed to use the same facilities as them, where the key ingredient was the Student Council’s great secretary and consultant, Kari, who has supported LBG Trondheim from the beginning and is still helping us today. Full of anticipation Ida put up an advertisement in the main square at campus Gløshaugen and managed to recruit two enthusiastic and motivated people, Morten Fjeld and Jan Erik

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Saugestad. Together they started the adventure of LBG Trondheim!

As one of the founding LBGs, Trondheim was very active from the beginning. It also helped that Ida became the first international president of BEST at the 1st General Assembly in Berlin in 1989. In connection with the International Student Festival in Trondheim (ISFiT), we organised the 3rd GA in 1990 and our first summer course in 1991, “High Speed Marine Vehicles”. Our LBG has arranged a summer course yearly ever since with a huge success! We are constantly looking for new challenges and in 2008 we organized a winter course in addition to our annual summer course and this year we’ll be having our first Local Engineering Competition (LEC).

In addition to the annual summer course we have organised several Regional Meetings (RM’s), two Short Intensive Trainings (SIT), four WorkShops, a trainer’s camp (TRAP) and a TrainShop during our 20 years as an LBG. A total of five international presidents have been from LBG Trondheim, but in the recent years our LBG has not been that active on the international level.

We are now a great big, loving family of 23 members and are hoping we will be able to stay this way and continue to develop. By having all these members we are able to do so much more and our potential as an LBG is higher than ever before! So watch out, you haven’t seen the last of LBG Trondheim yet!

Story of LBG Turin

As BEST Turin is one of the groups that founded BEST in 1989, it is not an easy task to summarize so many years of experiences, events and good times.

We can start by saying that even before 1989 BEST Torino was already active. In fact, in 1988 it was one of our members, Giuseppe Margriote, the one who proposed the letter “B” to enhance the original idea of an “EST” Organisation, giving birth to what we all know today as “BEST”.

BEST Torino legal statute was approved in 1991 and since then it’s been on a continuous and successful road full of the BEST spirit!!! We’ve had 6 members present in 6 BEST international boards. BEST Torino hosted 2 General Meetings: GA in 1994 and the first PM in 1998. In 1996 BEST Torino became “nurse” of BEST Milano. Our first summer course was organized in 1992 and from 2002 courses have been organized on a yearly basis. In 2005 the first edition of the mythical Alpine JAM took place, and now it’s a tradition in which hundreds of BESTies take part every year in the scenario of the Alps.

2007 is a double-checked year in our calendar as it was the peak of BEST Torino activity. We organized the first no-fee JAM in coordination with the winter Universiade, reaching there

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the prestigious record of the biggest BEST pillow fight ever (around 350 people)!!! Also 2 Learning Events and a Round Table were organized that year. Because of this, BEST Torino was awarded the “quantity” prize for the biggest number of events organized: more than 600 students from all around Europe came to Torino thanks to us.

As to recent times, in 2008 BEST Torino organized on a national scale the iBEC (Italian BEST Engineering Competition) considered a total success by both participants and corporate partners.

Up to now BEST Torino has organized a total of 15 Learning Events and 2 Career Events and has created the traditions of IMBUTO, Buffalo, Burping game, Cantus in BEST, Towel running, and walk over charcoal fire, our own trademarks which have been recognized and deeply appreciated by the BESTies who have experienced them!!!

Thanks to the motivation of the legendary members as Paolone, Orso (Filippo), Gianalfa, Ricky (Gianfranco), Sergio, Pilu, Fred and thanks to all the members that worked with devotion, BEST Torino has become what it is now. No one can change the history alone, but working together everything is possible, because after all we are always a Group!

With the number of new members always increasing and with the constant work of its Full members and Alumni, BEST Torino is devoted to continue its legacy to BEST: encouraging student mobility around Europe, generating incredible experiences for the students of today and providing the appropriate career tools for the professionals of tomorrow.

Story of LBG Uppsala

In the northern region far far away...Long time ago...

A new LBG was born... More precisely - it all started in the year of 1999, when two students at Uppsala University who had been inspired by a group of BESTies in Stockholm, decided to send in their own application to BEST. When they went to their first event as observers to GA Lisbon they had already mobilized a small group of Uppsala students who had the interest in making friends with other European students. Their first step as a group was to organize a weekend in Uppsala as an activity for LBG Stockholm’s summer course participants. It was a great success of course, and the group was hungry for more! The preparations for GA 2000 in Stockholm started and LBG Uppsala did its part by arranging trainings for the organisers; also we upgraded our status from observers to baby members at PM Chania. This was the place where Uppsala delegates first experienced what a funny word Uppsala is to non Swedes.

When GA in Stockholm was over it was time for LBG Uppsala to take the next step and do

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something bigger by themselves, the first summer course was held. Without the wisdom and experience that has been collected ever since, this first course turned out to be a lot about improvising, and cooking... and in the end the organizers had learned a lot about how to plan the budget more wisely for following years. The course was another important milestone for the members of the Uppsala group. After becoming a full member in GA 2000 in Budapest, LBG Uppsala organized a summer course every year, overcoming problems with a continuous lack of human resources. The courses were mostly focusing on renewable energies, a subject that is still in these days making Uppsala’s courses among the most popular. More than once, our LBG has been number 1 on the list of number of applications received.

Eventually the group grew a little bigger and became a separate legal entity, independent from the student union. This made certain management and accounting activities easier to perform. The group had now started to arrange cultural exchanges. In year 2003 LBG Uppsala organised its first RM and a few years later, a Board meeting (in 2005). Getting closer to present time, membership has now soared, as more and more Swedish students have discovered the beauty and charm of BEST spirit. A peculiar feature of this LBG is that, unlike some other LBGs, it predominantly consists of local Swedish students.

At JBT 2008 an old tradition started to receive some new attention, when BESTies from Uppsala thought it started to feel a bit old to be thought of as the LBG of a city with a funny name (that you can make funny songs out of) decided to do something different. The Uppsala dance was already there, as a part of the Uppsala engineer students’ identity, all it needed was some devoted dancers of the LBG to bring it with them to internal events and start sharing this “modern traditional” dance, which was lately dubbed as “Uppsala dance”. It reached its pinnacle in GA 2009, Budapest, where Nordic BESTies trained by LBG Uppsala rocked the Speakers’ corner. And so the golden green hoodies rocked on, and on, and on... and they all lived happily ever after.

Story of LBG Valladolid

In 1993, a Hungarian Erasmus student decided to move to Spain and bring to Valladolid not only lots bottles of Palinka but also his BEST spirit. As a result, a small group of students organised an unofficial Spring Course. Few months later, Valladolid decided not to live on the wrong side of the law anymore and became Baby member in GA 1994-Timisoara. Even the so-called Los Mosqueteros (The Musketeers) joined the association for such a good purpose. Thanks to those initial efforts, others made by lots of students later and our Nurse LBG Barcelona, LBG Valladolid became Full Member in GA 1996-Tallin. The association started growing, organizing all kind of BEST internal and external events and taking new challenges like the first edition in 1999 of its well-known job fair, FiBEST.

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After ten consecutive editions, we can assure it was a good idea?New millennium brought back to BEST Valladolid its original outlaw spirit. Perversion had come. LBG members were divided into two groups, castos and perverts, both of them contributing to spice up the most well known parties in Europe.At the same time, Valladolid made stronger relations with the rest of Spanish LBGs and new common and interesting projects were developed under the name BESTspain.

LBG Valladolid had not only proved that it could organize the craziest parties but every new proposed challenge. In October 2006, BEST Valladolid went a step forward organizing three events on a row: a Summer Course, a bePROUD and an IT Developers’ Meeting. That challenge was just the beginning; one month later, during PM 2006 in Ghent, the LBG was voted as the XIIIth President’s Meeting organizer. It took place one year later, in 2007, when more than 200 people from all over the Continent came to Valladolid to attend our long dreamed PM.

Is there any life after such a great event? Of course! Last year 2008 has been plenty of activities, including new events that had never been hosted by LBG Valladolid. Full of energy, our members face this New Year 2009 having in mind it’s their turn to write a new page in BEST Valladolid‘s History. It’s also time to look back: old and new generations will celebrate together our 15th birthday. Pervert spirit is still alive...

Story of LBG Veszprem

A long time ago in a small city far, far away...

The year was 1991 when Local BEST Group Veszprem took its first steps in “BEST world”. We organized our first Summer Course and started our journey in Europe in 1992. This was the BEST decision what we could ever have.

Our passion for creating something special was really strong from the beginning. This motivated us to organize Presidents’ Meeting in 1996 and Regional Meeting in 2006. We are really proud that we participated in the organization of the first JAM in 1999.

Since our establishment many things changed what helped us to realize that let come what may, the Veszprem-spirit keeps us alive. What is this spirit about? This gives you the power to handle your conflicts as an engineer and to find the new possibilities even if you don’t see them clearly.We had to accept the fact that it’s hard to motivate the students if the university doesn’t support you, but we (who constantly believe in fun, friendship, flexibility, learning and improvement) have always tried to do our BEST and our events prove that it is worth!

During our 18-years-old history many things happened what we can be proud of: 14 summer

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courses, 7 Cultural Exchanges, 2 WorkShops, Regional Meeting, Presidents Meeting, the first Summer Jam and many Motivation Weekends, these are just some of the events what we organized and what made us stronger and more open-minded.

Now we have 25 enthusiastic members (mostly girls) and it doesn’t matter what will happen,

WE WORK HARD, PARTY HARD!

Story of LBG Vienna

The story of BEST in Vienna is as old as BEST: some people from Vienna participated at BEST’s first general assembly (GA) in Berlin in 1989. They liked the atmosphere and volunteered to organise the next meeting in Vienna. So the second GA of BEST took place in Vienna 29th of October - 3rd of November 1989. There the first statutes of BEST were written and the idea of summer courses was born. There were discussions about whether BEST should be political and representative or not; it was decided that BEST would be a non-political and non-representative organization, a decision the student union Vienna University of Technology didn’t agree with, and therefore left the General Assembly and decided not to join BEST. This meant that there was no BEST in Vienna until...

...in 2001 two BESTies, Thomas from Copenhagen and Mattias from Lund, came to Vienna to study here as Erasmus students. They promoted BEST and got some Vienna students interested. That led to the first meeting of BEST Vienna on 13th of January 2002. People were enthusiastic about the idea of BEST and so BEST Vienna got started in 2002: we elected our first board, created our very own logo and officially registered BEST Vienna as an organisation in Austria and we became BEST Observer on the GA in France.

In 2003, on GA Gabcikovo we became a baby member of BEST which enabled us to organise our first external event: The International BEST Symposium (now called “BEST Symposium on Education”) held in September 2003. Due to its success we were elected full member of BEST on GA Oresund in 2004. Since then we are an active group: we organised nine external events for students from all over Europe, including five academic events, two hiking courses and two skiing courses in the Austrian Alps, and also nine internal events where BEST members including ourselves have worked on developing our organisation. We also have done a lot of local events to promote BEST amongst Viennese students - and let them have a little fun plus get them interested in tasting Europe.

BEST Vienna traditions

Burning MannerThe most traditional party on each BEST event is the international evening where we

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represent each country by its national food and drinks. In Vienna we like to combine these two: we take Stroh rum and dip classic Manner waffles in it, light it up and “eat fire”. An impressive party presentation would for sure be remembered.

Story of LBG Warsaw

LBG Warsaw was founded in 1989. The story is covered in mists and shadows of passing years and we know the truth only from one women tale Dominika Herburt-Heybowicz. She has been participating in meeting in 1988 in Grenoble, where first 16 universities was talking about cooperation, borders of European student’s and where first thought about creating association bounding students of technology appeared. Also she participated at the meeting in Berlin in ‘89 where officially BEST was founded. Warsaw was the only one University from country behind iron curtain on this meeting.

Through 20 years of our history LBG Warsaw took a part in important moments for BEST. Grzegorz Szczeparski gave much input in BEST organizing one of the first GAs in ‘93. Also he participated in creating the Statement of Purpose of BEST. We had a pleasure to prepare a great PM in ‘97 held in beautiful castle walls. This year again, we have taken the greatest challenge to organize XXVIII General Assembly of BEST.

20 years passed with plenty of projects, we are unable to count them all but each was a great adventure and pleasure for us. All those wonderful moments spent with BEST has brought us to the point where we all fell like one big family! What’s more BEST is still FUN for us!

Thanks to all the effort done during those years and heart given by two generations of BEST-ies now we can say that we together build strong team full of passion, positive energy and will to improve our reality!

Story of LBG Yildiz

Hey everyone! This is Istanbul, Yildiz speaking. Let me tell you a very very very old story about a baby somewhere.

It was the late times of 2007. Yildiz was so little, wasn’t even a baby. It was in a very very very big square in its cradle in Istanbul and was crying on its own; however nobody was hearing its screams. Hours and more hours passed, Yildiz was still alone and was praying for a miracle to god and crying for a little, tiny, sweet magic. And suddenly, a group of wizards appeared near the cradle. Took the baby out. Looked at its eyes and said: `Do you want to observe us for some months, you may learn something about humanity and you may be a baby someday, you little ugly thing...`! There ̀ YILDIZ` shined like a star, as its name means

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`star` in the native language

Yildiz stopped crying, and began to observe the group. Day by day that group was bringing something new to home everyday. The baby began to grow up and started to learn new stuff. Days and more days had passed. One day, they took the baby to Tallinn... Some of them were saying `uu, I am not sure about you, but we will see if you can speak or not`... Yildiz learned that being a baby was about `the ability of speaking` and it was the time to show its skills. A man put Yildiz in a new, very big square in front of 78 grown-ups, which they were calling it as a `plenary`. They watched it for an hour, and finally the baby was able to speak. The first thing he spoke was the code name of the wizard group: BEST.

Yildiz had become a real baby at that time. It was 7th of May, 2008.

Story of LBG Zagreb

LBG Zagreb comes into being with the beginning of the year 1998, as an act of enthusiasm of students of Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb. In the year 1999, due to a further initiative taken, BEST Zagreb becomes officially established as an organization. The story starts back in 1998, when a group of students from Zagreb take part in GA held in Cluj-Napoca and Zagreb earns itself an Observer membership status.

In months that follow, LBG Zagreb gets the opportunity to present its plans for growth of local group, thanks to Ivan Petrovic and his participation as a guest on Ljubljana SC in Summer 1998, as well as next year on GA in Lisbon. This is when it becomes a Baby Member, nursed by LBG Ljubljana. In June 1999, Zagreb gathers Founding Assembly and gets officially registered as student union under the name “Bratstvo Europskih Studenata Tehnologije - Zagreb”. Later that year, LBG Zagreb successfully launches its first project that takes form of a WorkShop.

Having been recognized as a highly motivated and ambitious team, LBG Zagreb obtains a full membership of BEST during the GA in Sweden in 2000. Same year in August the first Summer Course “B-connected (New Technologies in Telecommunications)” is organized. Over the years, the organization keeps on growing, both in terms of a number of projects carried out and a list of members. With 44 active members today, LBG Zagreb also counts more then 120 alumni, all of them together contributing to realization of 47 projects in total. Among them, Zagreb is particularly proud to be known as the very first organizer of BACo, back in 2005, as well as adding a new dimension to Jamboree by accepting all the applicants to that event in year 2002 by which turning it into a Jamboree we know today.

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Running on the high from last years success and with the great line up announced thus far, LBG Zagreb will undoubtedly grow, with projects as exciting and as fun as any BEST projects to date....if not more so.

Story of LBG Zaporizhzhya

Everything started from a guy, Roman. After attending his first event in Lviv he came back to Zaporizhzhya already caught by BEST-spirit disease. This historical trip happened in October 2005. So, in the beginning of 2006 there were already at least four people who came to Regional Meeting Kosice to try out what BEST really is. Greatest thanks and honours should be given to Alexandru Aleman, the Regional Advisor of Mongolia region at that time. After coming back a hard work on registration procedures has started. However our application was not accepted from the first time, but it gave a new boost of energy for applying again and being sure in the reality of ‘Veni, vidi, vici!’ thing.

On the Regional Meeting Iasi 2006 one of our inspired members, Alexandra Dolgaya has made a presentation of our group and our motivation to become the LBG. So in November 2006 our first and beloved board was created: Alexandra Dolgaya, Inna Granishevska, Vitaly Balakhonov, Karina Zalavska, Tatiana Fedoronchak. That’s how in a friendly atmosphere in a student café? The work on creating local group ZP has started.

Then everything has become a kaleidoscope of events, memories, emotions and people. After Regional Meeting Krakow 2007 our two beloved delegates had started preparations for General Assembly 2007 France. That’s where we ran for becoming baby-members. And the vote was ‘yes’.

After bright becoming baby-members we took the initiative to hold a Regional Meeting 2007 in ZP. The RM went great and we received nice feedbacks as well as thanks and greetings from participants, trainers, proud of their ‘children’ nurses from Lviv.

In a time after these lots of things happened: our first WorkShop, our first course. In November 2008 we became full members, but it’s only beginning. Just wait for some time to hear much more about Zaporizhzhya rocking!

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RegionsThe World is flat! And so was the structure of BEST in the beginning. We had the LBGs on the one plane, independent and working according to some written rules that they didn’t understand so much, and the International Management on the other plane, trying to make strategies and develop LBGs without having much knowledge of their real needs.

These 2 planes, although ideally should have been joint, were almost parallel. This is a conclusion that was reached in a Discussion Group in PM 2000.

They also concluded that the 2 planes need each other to survive. The international level cannot exist without LBGs, and the LBGs need the international coordination to promote and sustain their events. Therefore, even though the 2 planes have complementary goals, conflicts of interests should be avoided.

Most of these conflicts were the result of short-term problems that were preventing the acceptance of long-term ideas and projects. And this was because of poor communication. LBGs did not understand these long-term ideas, because it was communicated just in GMs, and just to one LBG member. And any continuity in discussions was deemed to die, as every GM you would get another LBG delegate.

Spreading this kind of information to the LBGs proved to be too much work for the Committees, so the board stepped in.

Splitting EuropeIn 2001, the board divided Europe amongst themselves. Each of them took a certain region under their wing, where they would keep close contact with the LBGs, make sure local and international goals match, and communicate things in time so that people can process the information.

This division, however, was not clear and communicated publicly, nor was the same from one year to the next. Actually this flexibility of regions is still kept, as there is a fear of creating a third plane (or level) within BEST, or even having regional “opinions” in GMs. Of course, since all your fears have to come true, some LBGs started thinking it might be a good idea to have one board per region.

The boardies, however, were not the only ones splitting Europe. TIGro was doing it too. In about the same period (2001 - 2003) they created the Main Trainers. These were trainers that were communicating with their own set of LBGs regarding training needs in those regions.

During the Board Winter Meeting 2003 this overlapping of the regional boardie and the main trainer was spotted and corrected. A clear division of responsibilities was made, and the Regional Meetings would now be prepared in cooperation by the two.

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A third party that was splitting Europe were the LBGs. Although not officially, regions like Iberian, Lowlands, Nordic and later CASH (Croatia, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary + Skopje and Belgrade) were sort of forming themselves. This is also how the Regional Meetings appeared.

Regional Group TherapyEven in the ‘90s, some LBGs form the above mentioned regions were announcing regional events (Regional Jamboree, Consultancy Meetings, etc.) They would invite those LBGs that they thought were in the same region with them, and have fun oriented events together. This created also some tensions, as some LBGs felt left out. Until spring 2003 these events were rather sporadic (3-5 per year), and were not so much connected to GMs.

An interesting fact is that the first regional event was the “Nordic BEST Conference” organised in Stockholm back in October 1991.

Spring 2003 brought the first full set of 8 Regional Meetings, which were used for preparing the GA delegates:

• Lviv (Ukraine + Poland Meeting)• Almada (Iberian Meeting)• Cluj-Napoca (Eastern Consultancy Meeting)• ENSAM (French Meeting)• Rome (Greek ... Italian Meeting)• Ljubljana (CASH Meeting)• Gothenburg (Nordic Meeting)• Ghent (Lowlands Meeting)

The content of these events was prepared by the regional boardie, and the training sessions were coordinated by the main trainer of the region. In 2004, those main trainers were renamed Regional Training Advisors, or Regional Advisors at Training (RATs).

The board steps backIn winter 2004, a WorkShop was held in Helsinki to work on the “BEST working structure”. This workshop later resulted in a complete change in the structure of the Management of BEST.

One of the outcomes of this WorkShop was the creation of the “Vice president for internal communication”. His mission: To facilitate active communication between LBGs and BEST international bodies as well as between LBGs themselves, with the help of the regional contact persons. It was even intended that these regional contact persons would be invited to the Board Summer Meeting alongside the Committee Coordinators.

After WS in Helsinki there was another WS in February 2005 in Timisoara, were the final structure of the future board was set-up. Concerning the regions, there were three options taken into account, one of the having as basis splitting the “big countries” of BEST: France, Romania, Italy etc. With some fine tuning till GA Chania, this was the final one approved.

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The new management structure created in the WorkShop was voted and implemented in GA 2005 in Greece.

So if before there were 9 boardies (which included the Committee Coordinators as well), the board was now composed of 6 people, and there were also 6 Coordinators outside of the board. With just 6 boardies, the regional boardie idea was no longer sustainable. There would be too many LBGs for each boardie to follow up on.

So one of the boardies “the VP for Internal Communication (as named in the WS)” officially called VP for Local Group Support would coordinate the “regional contact persons”. And so, by adding the regional boardie responsibilities to the RAT, and with coordination from the VP LGS, the Regional Advisors were born.

This way the board stepped back from 2 sets of duties: coordinating the committees and keeping direct contact with the LBGs, therefore being able to focus more on planning and the big picture.The first generation of RAs was elected through democratic elections (one LBG - one vote) in June-July 2005.

The regions they had to advise were formed after GA 2005 according to what the LBGs wanted. 8 regions were formed, taking into account transportation cost, cultural similarities, visa issues, etc.

Later on, at the first RA Meeting in Chania in March 2006, there were discussions about small changes in the regions, like putting Italy with south France and Greece with Balkans (as previously Italy and Greece were a region). This proposal was approved at GA Zagreb.

As all pioneers in history, the first generation of RAs had the main goal of defining what they are and what they have to do. Close to the end of their mandate, they decided to have the very first Regional Advisors Meeting, in Chania (where they had just been invented less than a year before) They created the first RA Handbook (with tips on how to keep in contact with LBGs, how to solve their problems, how to filter information flow between the 2 level of BEST etc) and also the concept of the Regional Meetings. But defining the position is not the only thing they did there.

Joggling the regionsAt the end of the RA Meeting in Chania, they had popped up with several ideas about the new and improved regional division. One of the ideas was to have concentric regions, where central LBGs would be region 1, the first ring around them region 2, and so on until the last region which would contain Trondheim, Reykjavik, Lisbon, Naples, Chania, Istanbul, Ekaterinburg etc. Although it may sound crazy, there was some reasoning behind this, as the regions would now empower diversity as well, not just make neighbouring LBGs even closer and separated from the others.

In the end, the solution presented had 8 regions, but:• Skopje and Greek LBGs would be in the same region in the hope of releasing some of the political tension. On short term it created quite a scandal, with some

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LBGs saying they will leave BEST if this division is done, but on long term it proved to be very effective. Less then one year later, 120 Greeks were singing and dancing together with the organisers in the biggest BEST event ever: Jamboree Skopje 2005.• Countries with many LBGs (such as Romania, Poland and? well... Paris) were divided into several regions. The point of this was to prevent the national spirit from setting in too deep, and focus on the exchange of experience between LBGs all over Europe. There was also the issue of language: in one RM in Romania, there were 5 Romanian LBGs represented, one delegate from Istanbul and no one from Sofia. Needless to say 50 people did not start speaking English for one Turkish guy.• They also CRASHed CASH. Since this region had mostly former Yugoslavic LBGs that spoke more or less the same language, the Austrians and Hungarians were feeling somewhat isolated. The best solution was to split Yugoslavia (again!) and make a more balanced distribution of languages;• Nancy and part of Paris went to Lowlands;• Italians the other French LBGs were now Alpine region;• Yet some things can never change: and those things are Iberia :p

Well, the second round of RAs was elected in the same democratic fashion one year later. Well, some more some less democratic, as after several rounds of equal votes for the French and Italian candidates in Alpine, the winner was finally decided according to the result of the World Football Championship Final.

They decided that the country that loses the Championship gets the RA position as compensation. However their Latin spirit triumphed, and as they could not live with themselves to support the opposing football team, they decided that winner takes it all. Italy took the Cup and the Region! Many years from now you will still hear Italians shouting: “Pooo-po-ro-po-po-poo-pooo!!!”

This second generation of RAs did not have a RA Meeting, so at the end of their year, they passed the same regions to their successors. Good for knowledge transfer, but bad for flexibility. One more year after, when the board decided to make some minor adjustments to the regional division, hell broke loose.

South East had now become almost double in size than some of the other regions (with a lot of Turkish and Serbian LBGs joining BEST in a very short time) and it made sense to do something about it. But now, the regional spirit of South East and the sense of belonging of the Central LBGs made it almost impossible to reach a concession. In the end South East became South (8 LBGs) and Central South (6 LBGs). Just as it had happened at the last division, it took about 1 month for hell to cool down and people to stop complaining.

Currently there are 9 regions in BEST, and with the RA Meeting becoming a tradition, more changes are expected.

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We have a region. Now what?Within this taboo third level of BEST, many things have started to develop.

First of all, some regions didn’t like their geographical name, so they started being creative.

Central Region --> CreamIberian --> PortunholesNordic --> Nordic Kingdom (imitating Nordic mythology)South East --> Halara region (Greek term that means relaxed); Flexi region (from the very cheap Balkan Flexi-Pass)Central South --> Pleskavita regionCentral East --> MongoliaNorth East --> Jamaica (this was more of a forced creativity, since the LBGs in North East wanted to be called Nordic, but were not allowed)

Then, traditions started to emerge:

Mongolia has its very own special drink called the Mongolian (a 500 ml drink with 3 layers: Coke, beer and vodka). There is also a ritual behind consuming this drink: the would-be drinker has to come to a Mongolian and ask for the drink. The Mongolian will shout: “On your knees, bitch!” After kneeling, the drinker will receive a healthy set of slaps over the face, and finally his drink which has to be finished in one sip.

And after the identities of the regions were defined, the projects appeared as well. We now have Regional TrainShops, Joint Board Trainings, Regional JAMs, and more recently Regional Engineering Competitions.

Article written by Cristian Arteni


Chapter 5

BEST Organisation

• Working Groups• Committees • Board• Honorary members

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Working Groups

AlumniNet

First ideas related to alumni networks were discussed at GA2002, where the Local Alumni Network WG stressed the importance of preserving the communication and relations between LBGs and their alumni. The idea was embraced by everyone, and not long time after, another great idea popped up: to make a giant European network of BEST alumni.

In 2005, a group of alumni took the initiative in creating the link between all of the alumni of BEST from Almada to Ekaterinburg. The main purpose was to ensure the communication between Alumni, and BEST and Alumni.

So, for coordinating this network, AlumniNet was created. The WG was founded in 2005 by Anna Travesset, Wouter Schaekers, Gregoire Toussaint, Mirjam Zwanenburg and Gabriela Popescu. For this to be a success a strategy was needed and some responsibilities were created. Therefore they were thinking about defining some responsibilities that would help the network to grow by focusing on some key points. The main tree responsibles would have to focus on promotion, IT problems and the coordination of the entire network.One of their main interests was to promote the project so more and more alumni join the network. For this, they needed a common playground; so they focused in implementing an interface on PA. To make it more useful, every alumnus could FB and complete his/her profile in PA. The profile contained personal info, current job/university + job/university history, studies and alumni involvement. After GA Zagreb, at every GM, Alumni Net was taking care of Alumni Meeting and having some discussions how to improve the Alumni Network and the collaboration with active BEST members.

Alumni Meeting at GA Lisbon in 1999

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Chapter 5:BEST Organisation

Only from 2006, after the Alumni Short Intensive Meeting in London, they defined several important projects like: AlumniNet public website, AlumniNet PA pages, AlumniNet Gallery, AlumniTimes. Gaining in image, alumni network benefited of the support of the International Boards and the number of the alumni joining the network grew more and more. An official alumni mailing list was created where hot topics were discussed. This way, alumni established a simple and good way of communicating with BEST and offering support and FB in different matters.

The first issue of AlumniTimes appeared in June 2006, and it was suppose to be a biannual magazine. Until now, 4 editions were completed and savoured by BEST alumni and members.

The major project of AlumniNet was organizing an event for alumni similar to the BEST courses: BEST Alumni Network Event On Sustainable Energy (BANTSE). For this, there were several presentations made, a schedule and prepared all of the details of the event. AlumniNet was present at GA 2008 with a presentation of the development of the network and ways to improve the collaboration. Even from the beginning, alumni net caught the attention of many BESTies eyes and the network got affected the snowball effect ....more and more alumni joined and spread the word about it!


Competition Working Group

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

The board saw that the idea was appreciated a lot and asked David Gonzalez (one of the BESTies who had been on the CEC2002) to create an international working group and to work out the idea in more detail. A call was made in the end of August 2002 to all BESTies and soon an enthusiastic group of BESTies started to create the first EC-Handbook.In PM 02 this EC-Handbook was presented and Competition Working Group (CWG) was founded in PM 02 with the goal to develop the concept of Engineering Competitions inside BEST. It was decided to let this working group organise the first BEST Engineering Competition (BEC) (at that time called BEST European Engineering Competition or BEEC) together with an LBG.

LBG Eindhoven and LBG Ghent organised this first B(E)EC together with CWG and it was

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great success and inspiration for the future engineering competitions. After that CWG got requests from several LBGs to organise a BEC together with them. But the board decided to organise also in 2004 only 1 big B(E)EC, to give CWG next to that time to work out a second version of the EC-HB and to work out a scenario how to continue with this project in BEST. The second B(E)EC was organised by LBG Warsaw and CWG with help from baby member Gdansk from 8 till 16 October 2004 in Poland.CWG successfully coordinated the tasks of the first two BEST European Engineering Competitions. In PM 04 a new concept was presented and approved. In this new concept for BEST Engineering Competitions the LBG takes care of the complete event, also organising the competition content of the event. This transformed CWG from a task developing working group to a working group keeping the overview over the BEST Engineering Competitions and giving feedback to BEC-organising LBGs. And in the year 2005 3 more BECs took place in spring and summer seasons. After this year, more LBGs organized BEST Engineering Competitions as these were dynamic events, full of challenges that gave the students a practical and new experience.

Article based on the Competitions wiki page

Helpdesk

The BEST Helpdesk team is a group of BEST members belonging to the different committees and working groups of BEST. All bodies of BEST are represented here. They are responsible for answering the requests, questions and doubts submitted through our web-based Helpdesk system (www.best.eu.org/helpdesk and private.best.eu.org/helpdesk).

Helpdesk was created in 2000 by Gwenael Alizon, from Ecole Centrale and was running on PHP. Gwen was the first responsible in 2001/2002 and there have been 4 more coordinators since then. After 2003, Helpdesk was running under Makumba.

“The purpose of Helpdesk (HD) is pretty simple. It’s a platform that allows users of our IT systems and people interested in BEST to have contact with the organisation in case they have some problem or question that they cannot solve or they cannot find information on our website. HD was created for having the possibility to track the progress of the requests, so that questions and problems are not lost as time passes by.

There’s not much to say about the evolution, it has been a quite steady group of BESTies taking care of requests and they do the same job since 2001 without many changes. The IT systems are improving, the basis of the work done remains the same.” (Panagiotis Isigonis, LBG Chania)

Article written by Panagiotis Isigonis and Mirela Andriescu

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Knowledge Group (KG)

The Knowledge Group (KanGaroos) has been created at GA France 2007 and is a result of the restructuring of the Training Interested Group.Its main goal is set as ‘Collect and organize the Knowledge in BEST’. For this, the WorkShop in Paris hosted by LBG Paris Ecole Polytechnique in 2006 was the starting point of the restructure of the knowledge inside BEST. After GA France in 2007, the decision was final: a new team was to be born to restructure all of the knowledge that BEST accumulated during 18 years of existence. The team consisted in people interested about the knowledge management of BEST but in the same time not necessarily trainers. Before 2007, only TiGro members were taking part in the restructure of knowledge inside BEST. After 2 years of existence, KG defined several projects that their members are working at: Knowledge Collection, LBG Materials, LBG HandBook, Games Database and History of BEST.The activity of this WG will never end, thus BEST is in a continuous development but having all of the information structures in a simple way will prevent us in reinventing the wheel over and over again.

Article written by Mirela AndriescuNewsTeam

NewsTeam is the Working Group supported by markeTeam Committee that is responsible for making BEST events more visible to our stakeholders, by publishing press releases, and establishing media contacts. Also it is responsible for making the BESTtimes editions, which is the official internal magazine of BEST edited & published on digital format. The BEST magazine was produced before BESTtimes appeared, and now it can be found in the LBG’s offices (no digital versions).

The idea of BESTtimes started in the XV Board, but Tina Toni, secretary in the XVI board was the first one to implement its basis. Then Eva (Secretary of the Flowers Board) took care of it afterward, and improved it by creating something similar to a newspaper, almost a monthly edition. Then it was managed only by the Secretary and one or two more people. The XVIII had it as well, but less frequent. They also started the international and external newsletter. As the things started to move, the group had other responsibilities. In 2009 the group takes care of all external and internal news (BESTimes and the news in PA and Public Web Site news), and it is responsible of the contacts that BEST has with the media.

Article written by Ruxanda Burtica and Mirela Andriescu

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International Engineering Competition

This group consists of members from 3 different organisations, more than 30 different nationalities, people with different levels of experience with engineering competitions and different background in their respective organisation. The group focused on every aspect in organizing this world wide event, and made a vision statement where they decided on the type of competitions, the opportunities provided to students, on the cultural exchange provided for the students. A committee with members from all organizations had to take care of all the organizing details, the contests and the administrative problems. The international working group of the project met from the 12th to the 14 of October 2007 in Brussels, to discuss and work on the future of the IEC project.During a productive and fruitful meeting, they created the timeline and decided how to move on. The date for the 1st IEC to take place was fixed but there was still a lot of work to be done to bring IEC in 2010 to life. The following steps were discussed at that meeting. Last but not least, it was planned to have two life meetings per year.

Although it is a very promising event, from where all parties involved have lots to gain, the project is moving on slowly despite the efforts of the members involved.

Article based on the IEC documentsWebTeam

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

Webmaster group recognized“This group was recognized after GA Lisbon in 1999. There the Webmaster Group had a couple of places. What I do remember is that, there, a meeting on a new site took place and that a member of the Board attended. In that GA Dio was elected (again) web responsible.” (Dani Buxeres) In the summer of 1999, most of the members of the Webmaster Group attended a SC in Athens that about Java. There, they had some meetings about the new look of the website in parallel with the activities from the SC.

This group of people didn’t have access to the ftp server where the pages were hosted but had to send the updates to Dio, who uploaded them to the server. After some time, the way

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of working changed and instructions were sent on the ML on how to update the pages on the server by Cristi Bogdan from LBG Timisoara.

At PM in 1999 the Board asked Dani Buxeres to lead the group until the GA had to vote on a new coordinator. So the weeks after he took the responsibility of keeping the site updated (by that time the site was designed in a way that made it need frequent updates).

After some time, a restructure of the group was made :the first things the members did was to clean up the mailing list, remove all the people who were not active at all and mail lbgs@ inviting interested people to join the group. A new group was about to be born. We had at least one person in each position: coding, writing and designing. We also had good contacts with other committees but the group lacked some tradition, structure and the knowledge of how to do things. This structure was settled at a meeting hosted by LBG Brussels and a training on web technologies was made at that time. “At GA Sweden, in 2000 the new site project was re-launched (we had a working group where we recruited important new members such as Pietro Dolcini and we created a mailing list dedicated to the project), delegates realised that the web site was an important tool for the external image of the association and Daniel Buxeres was officially elected Webmaster coordinator.” (Dani Buxeres, LBG Barcelona) Pietro Dolcini took the responsibility of this new project and for the first months he did most of the work. From that point people were working hard at the new website. At ICF Warsaw in January 2001 the Webmasters Group worked on the layout of the website and invited other committees to make the content of their pages.

Before GA in 2001, the working group had to elect the coordinator it would propose to GA to coordinate the group for the following twelve months. Maria Alandes was the new coordinator of the group. In GA Ljubljana, the design was almost finished and was presented it to the delegates.But the site was not public yet; the group wanted to publish it before winter season ‘00-01, but we didn’t managed. Same happened for spring’01 but then we decided that we had to publish it the day of summer season’01 announcement.

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

Later on, the task was not finished, because the public web site needed to be updated from time to time. They complexity of the site got bigger and many features were added afterward. The group is still active and always pending to the needs of the organisation. It was finally finished in 2003. At the end of next year (2004), the public website is again redesigned and launched.

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

Article written by Mirela Andriescu based on the wiki written by Dani Buxerres and Nico Deblauwe

CreativiTeam Working Group

This WG aimed at improving the WIND (Where Ideas Never Die) initiative, how to manage ideas and discussions happening on WIND mailing list and how to increase creativity. The initiative was good but only few members joined the team. Even if Creativiteam mailing list is not active anymore, the ideas keep popping up and the BEST spirit never dies!

Description of CreativiTeam mailing list

Guide Project

This project is a virtual working group meant to guide all the students of our universities through the cities of Europe. The outcomes off all the work was suppose to be a Complete Travelling Guide for European Students. This way, BEST could help not only BESTies but every student that needed the info. This couldn’t be done without the help of many members that thought of the content, Information Technology Committee (ITC) to create an interface for the guide and the LBGs to implement it for their city and complete all of the fields. Using this facility means there is only one guide for the whole Europe! The project evolved during the years and the fields were updated; now they contain information about money issues, weather, hostels, places to have fun, means of transport and any information needed to enjoy the town. From time to time, the LBGs update the information so it is always accurate.


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COMMITTEES of BEST

Information Technology Committee (ITC)

Communication and IT in the pre-ITC eraThe communication was initially done through fax and they had sessions on GA which meant plenty of papers. Then short emails appeared. In the beginning the e-mail communication was very weird because people had little and restricted access. Grenoble was more or less a centre and everyone was sending applications for Vivaldi. The first program was written in C and everyone inserted the application in the computer for two days and then they got some results. In 1996 (SPOC & BTNC) the first committees appear with the idea to have an on-line network. ITC started with a need of informational system (messenger pigeons were tired).

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

History of IT infrastructureIn 1997 a technical revolution happened with an EVS - Electronic Voting System. The Internet domain started, a version in Lotus Notes started by a French girl, but it wasn’t used in production and the base for ITC - more like a technical use. Somewhere between 1998 and 1999 a new server started to work - name was Anna. The machine is still in the BEST office in Tallinn (offline). The machine ran DNS servers and mailing-lists.

Zoltan bought the server Malaka (Stockholm) four days before GA 2000 and it’s running at the moment. The HDD crashed in 2002 during the mandate to 2003 (Priit’s mandate). The server ran Lotus Notes with the first PA (or the second official implementation). Sometime in the last part of 2003, Tallinn was bought without any official decision from the board. Tequila was bought, fortunately, one month before the crash on Malaka.

History of technologies

Lotus NotesLotus Notes was first technology used by BEST. Notes based systems allow the maintenance of several databases, both discussion and archives, with a customizable access rights list. Moreover a dual interface is possible: the same database can be accessed both via a Lotus Notes client and a Web browser, without losing flexibility and features. Unfortunately the Web interface of Lotus Notes systems cannot be completely customized; therefore we have

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to stick to its “empty”, self-generated, Web pages. On the other hand, while access rights can be set in a very precise way even for every single registered person, the spirit is not to restrict people from putting in / seeing data.

MakumbaSometime around ‘99 the first version of Makumba appeared (it was called Meta-Data and later Macumba) with implementation in PA and Johnny. Around 2000 helpdesk was done using PHP and Makumba started to be used in 2001 in the PA. Idea of Makumba is that all code would be implemented with one programming language which is easy to learn and use. Makumba is implemented as JSP tag lib. There was a joke about a French fighter pilot crashing his plane in the jungle. The natives found him and gave him the choice “Macumba or death”. He bravely chose death, so they gave him “Macumba till death”.

KarambaDare to imagine: One single username and password to remember for the whole system (including Johnny, Minerva, archives, address book); each member sees what he/she is most interested in (committee members see their committee-related stuff, LBG members see info about his/her LBG, see who else is online at the moment, each sees his own calendar (with marked common events) and to-do list, all emails sent to him/her trough best.eu.org mail servers. In 2000 Stefan Beabler, Thomas Laroche, Cristian Bogdan brought idea of Karamba, as a dream of perfect informational system. Karamba would be the new private area of BEST. Currently it is patched up of several systems, using different tools, offering different reliability and interface. In the first stage all currently used systems will be integrated into a common database, enabling us to share the information among these, avoiding redundancy and conflicting data and ease the access via uniform interface to all of it.

Web applicationsPrivate AreaThe Private Area is the tool that every new member of BEST wants to use. Its history dates from 1995 when members of the Technical Committee prepared some static pages that evolved in 1998 into Lotus Notes components. Starting from the list of active members of BEST all around Europe, in GA 1998 the Information Technology Strategy Group, presented a proposal consisting in gathering all of this information in a database. Information related to BEST members (such as names, e-mail, passwords, study information etc. etc.) was defined and structured. After GA 1998, a registration page was available for all BEST members that allowed them to apply to internal events. Until PM 1998 BEST had a functional mail exchanger. All of these systems had basis in Lotus Notes. Because Lotus Notes wasn’t totally under control, pages were implemented in Java/SQL, merging all the systems (Johnny, Minerva, Archives, address book) into one. The new PA was launched in November 2002.

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ITC Meeting Patras, 2002

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

Minerva / BCCThe first idea of Minerva was born prior to the GA 1997, when the organizers were thinking of several ways of fundraising. They were thinking of creating a forum on the internet where students and companies could meet. Because of the few time left, the GA organizers couldn’t implement their idea until the GA. Companies were pleased about the new approach. For BEST, this was a new way of collaboration with the companies... In 1998, a girl from Bucharest finished implementing Minerva with Lotus Notes as her diploma project. The idea was good, but because Lotus Notes was not a language designed to supplement this features, the ITC members decided to drop the project in that format and turn to newer and user friendly technologies (Java and SQL) which let them do a better Web layout, and fully control the technology. In 2004 Minerva gets a new name: BEST Career Centre.

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

MarkeTeam (mT)

As all good stories get born in an unconventional way, this story is not an exception. This one came to life at London Luton airport while waiting for a flight to Istanbul, written on a piece of paper with an unsteady hand.

It all started in 1999 when Mitja Pirc became coordinator of the working group. It was the last year of the previous century when this new brilliant idea got born. At GA 1998 Lisbon, Mitja and Sten Ausburg started a group to begin developing marketing strategy for BEST. However, it seems that BEST was not prepared for such a big step forward yet, so markeTeam was limited to working on promotion materials. Still, at that time it was a huge step forward as the working group was created. They had a few meetings during 1999-2000 in Copenhagen, Ljubljana, Lisbon and Chania to work on different projects like BEST toolbox, logo redesign, promotion materials, ect...Adler Looks Jorge from LBG Lisbon revealed the origin of the infoBox and toolbox:“The toolBox and infoBox idea were discussed in Lisbon workshop’99. While Nicolas Chauveau worked on the infoBox, I worked on the toolBox. With the feedback of Anna Hakansson and Frederik Habils I collected the content and coded the website which was presented at PM 2000. With more feedback the complete version was presented and distributed in a CD at the next GA - GA2001 Ljubljana. It was a great challenge to get all the elements together and many collaborated.”

Time passed by and Yiannis Zevgolis took over a group, which was already turning into a “CMT under trial period”. At GA 2000 in Sweden, the “worm” concept was presented for the first time. You may wonder, “The worm, what the flower?” Well, this was the first effort to change the BEST logo which had been there already for some time. At that time it became obvious for marketing people in BEST that the logo we had until then was not really accomplishing to its role , it was complicated, its message was not thoroughly clear and , what is probably the worst, the logos were different among LBGs. Of course, there were many BESTies with strong sentimentality towards the old one and unfortunately the brand new CMT, still at trial period and totally unprepared to face LBGs, didn’t manage to push the idea through.

Well, as every group has its identity, mT needed a logo to represent theirs. It couldn’t be

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any different for a CMT, whose purpose is to take care of the image of BEST. markeTeam logo happened to be drawn on a napkin somewhere in February/March 2000 during a designer’s meeting in Ljubljana by Amand Gril. It was scanned, transferred to a computer and eventually adopted as the logo of our team. GA Ljubljana arrived and Nicolas Chauveau became the coordinator of a freshly voted official CMT, markeTeam. This moment was also a little bit stressing for Yiannis. Couple of hours before the ending ceremony he was informed that there is a tradition of all coordinators conveying a gift to the new coordinator. So, he had to come up with something and he had to do it fast. He went to his condo, opened his suitcase, trying to come up with something. The only thing he found that could fit the purpose was a pair of blue suspenders. Second option would have been a pair of used socks, or underwear. Nicolas would not have been too happy about those! So, Yiannis wrote his name upon a pair of suspenders and eventually, during that night, gave them to Nicolas. Since then every new coordinator gets those suspenders with the names of previous coordinators on.

Time went by and Stjepan Pavlek became the next coordinator. Thanks to him the “rainbow warriors” concept popped up. Since then markeTeam got an image of a funky and kinky CMT. We make sure to share a lot of affection with other CMT members. Pink is also a much desired colour for markeTeam member’s outfits. At this time the committee had realized that making a new image for the whole organization takes more than just presenting a new design solution developed by designers’ team. More effort was put into training BEST members regarding marketing matters. markeTeam started to prepare for the first marketing trainshop for LBGs.MarkeTeam members in GA 2004 with BEST 15 year anniversary map

In the period of 2003-2004 Tarvi Olli started with the goal to establish the Common Image of BEST. First step was to give BESTies PR & marketing training; PRIME (PR and Image Event, hosted by LBG Riga) trainshop was organised. Not only it broadened BESTies` knowledge, but it also gave a boost to the development of the committee itself. By the fall of 2003 the committee grew to 60 people with about 20 very active members. The Common Image was a broad idea and needed time to develop, however it was worth the effort. Materials started to look similar round corner design elements started to appear and definition of how to use the logo and official dark-green colour was voted on. BEST IRE was updated, outdated Graphical Profile from GA2000 was replaced by a new document describing the elements of logo, use of local symbol in the logo and the dark-green was voted to be part of the logo.

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MarkeTeam members in GA 2004 with BEST 15 year anniversary map

The year for Gregou (Gregoire Toussaint) started with a mandate from LBGs to start developing the image of BEST. After working on it for about one more year, just before GA 2005, markeTeam came up with complete set of common design elements that LBGs can/should use in all materials: the Shields. It’s important to mention here Martin Varvas (Mumu), who played a huge catalyst role since 2004 till 2007 mainly as designer and conceptionist. That’s the time when shields and derivatives were made public.

At GA 2005 Chania, the next coordinator - Harry (Harilaos Vasiliadis) - became famous for his specific attitude. He had an idea joke with the LBGs in a bit weird way. He had a 5 minute long presentation and as he knew that his speech would take 4 minutes only, he decided to use that 1 minute for fun: he sat on a chair next to the table in the middle of the plenary with an orange CMT hat and a glass of frappe coffee, pretending to sleep lazily with 200 LBG eyes staring at him impatiently. After 55 seconds he stood up and said “... and that’s what I’ll be doing all year!” Afterwards, he explained it was joke and started presenting himself, but anyhow it seemed to have had an impact on how many red and yellow votes he got - Moral of the story: Don’t joke with the LBGs!

When Harilaos Vasiliadis took charge of the CMT another a big chapter of changes started. MarkeTeam and webTeam were merged and made a giant committee with around 80 members and many projects, some of them huge and important, like the Annual Report, and some smaller but still essential, like leaflets. Mumu was head of Corporate Identity. Katy Vanbrabant and Gregou were pushing the AR, trying to make it on time for the first time. Sylwia Besz was the HR back then and did a really good job with changing working structure of the committee. The structural change, making webTeam a “project” of the CMT

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rather than a separate group, had some impact and caused conflicts. This change led to renaming the CMT, since GA 2005 the official name was PRteam. That’s also when the CMT coordinators were not board members anymore. Website redesign had started again and finished much later with a huge input from Marian Buhnici. That was also when the first market analysis was made by Harilaos to see how many students were interested in Career services (it was the time when CaSCo was closed).

The next one to lead the team was Marian Buhnici. Since his summer meeting the committee started to think more about what is actually PR and what is marketing. Since then every new markeTeam coordinator can expect the question “What is the difference between PR and marketing?” at GA after his/her speech. The name of the CMT changed back to markeTeam and the committee started making steps towards becoming marketing and not just promotion committee. The first step from all of them was starting Market Research project (led by Wolfgang Vollenhofer). Another very important project for BEST that got started from this Summer Meeting at 2006 was the Visual Identity project (led by Christian Banik). Even though it wasn’t officially the project of markeTeam it was mainly carried out by markeTeam members.

In 2007 Kluska (Katarzyna Sieklucka) was voted as the next coordinator. At that time Market Research became one of the biggest projects in BEST. Overall in March 2008, after the interviewing process finished, markeTeam analysed gathered data. Also, Visual Identity project continued (this time with new leader: Marian Buhnici) and finally after 7 years of different attempts, at Presidents Meeting 2007 the Visual Identity of BEST was finally approved. Since then markeTeam have worked on its implementation in all promotional materials that have been produced. Kluska’s time had also lots of input to the traditions of the markeTeam. At beKNOWN3 Lexu (Alexandru Albu) and Marian brought the two unquestionable super hits to markeTeam the “gay bar” and “what what in the butt”. Since then, if you don’t understand something you always need to ask “what what?” There was also a new concept of a party introduced, called Mi Scusi. This is one of those non-existing CMT parties where everybody comes out extremely happy. And if you wonder where our beloved Pupi comes from, that’s beKNOWN3 invention as well.

Then, we reached to 2008-2009 period, where Diana Wosik became the coordinator. Annual Reports on time finally, after a few years of timing problems - can be probably regarded as the biggest achievement. During this year Marketing Strategy (led by Mart Partna) has been developed as a project following the Market Research and aiming to take the promotion of BEST and its services to the next level. As this was a year when BEST celebrated its 20th anniversary, some materials were made for this occasion and this is also when the history book idea popped up. BEST got the official YouTube channel and the official logo registration process started. As for some fun stuff, thanks to Annual Action Report of Kluska where she put a photo promoting BEST pins and lanyards, Diana’s boobs went famous over BEST with a name of “markeTits”.

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At the time of writing this story, Diana’s successor, and being a girl, a markeTits owner, can be already announced. It’s Teele Kundla, the gay bar party inventor, however for sure she will bring much more into the bright future of markeTeam.

External Events Committee (EEC)

External Events Committee (EEC) was the result of merging two other existing groups: Season Program Optimising Committee (also known as SPOC) and the Competition Working Group (CWG). You have read about them in the previous pages, so you know the first dates back from 1996 and General Assembly Tallinn and the latter from 2002 and Presidents’ Meeting Bucharest.

In the General Assembly 2005 in Greece, CWG declared, in their half annual action report, the will to establish a strong and effectively working committee together with SPOC, as they have been dealing with BECs that can be counted together with the courses for the 3-course rule and 8-season rule. It was the beginning of the merging process of SPOC and Competition Working Group, by approving the framework of the new External Events Committee. After a transition period, the committee and the working group were officially merged from the 01st of July 2005 on.

During the months after merging, EEC had one summer meeting (SM) in Timisoara which was very important as it intended to define working methods and a new structure for the new committee, since the current team came from the merging of 2 previous teams: SPOC and CWG. After this meeting, the framework of EEC was presented in PM 05 Ljubljana which includes the objectives of EEC. In a brief description, these objectives can be put in order as:

• Development of the issues of the complementary education that BEST is providing for students from BEST universities;• Management of the Vivaldi procedure, including co-ordination of Vivaldi seasons (Spring, Summer, Winter) and taking care of the tools used in Vivaldi procedure;• Assurance and improvement of the quality of Vivaldi events;• Providing support to LBGs organising an external event (courses, leisure events, engineering competitions, etc.).

This long history reveals that EEC and its ancients have always been the essential parts of BEST’s structure by means of the decisions, proposals and developments they put into practice. EEC does its work with the general responsibilities and heritage that got from the ex-teams: the continuous improvement, coordination and quality assurance of the BEST Programme of Complementary Education. These responsibilities will continue, even if the name and the framework of the committee change, but the main idea and the essential structure stay the same as well.

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EEC Summer Meeting Timisoara, 2005

EEC has kept the same objectives since 2005, but has always strived to find better ways to do it, mainly through innovative projects and processes that help developing external events in numerous ways. We will present them now, for you to get to know most of them:

The Vivaldi SeasonsIn 1992 we started off with a single one: Summer Season. A few years later, it was decided to spread events to other periods of the year and Spring, Autumn and Winter Season which were implemented in 1998. Autumn Season was discontinued afterwards, but it had an impressive return from 2007 on and now we have four seasons, to cover all year: Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring. Each Season has a Coordinator to take care of it and support all events? Main Organisers in order to offer the best experiences to our students.

Vivaldi HandbookThe Vivaldi Handbook started with the beginning of our courses and has continuously been updated with new rules and guidelines proposed in GMs and approved by LBGs. Any BEST member (and mainly event organisers) can download it as a digital file, but we also offer them the chance to see it in EEC webpage in PA.It is now in its current 3rd version, after an historical moment back in PM Valladolid 2007: it was then that we decided to split the Vivaldi Handbook into two volumes, one with the rules and one with guidelines. The purpose of this change was to make it more user-friendly and easier to consult.

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BEST Application System (BAS)BAS, a joint project of ITC and EEC, has started in 1996 with Vivaldi server called Johnny, which had all information about programs and applications stored in a database. Next step was made at the end of 2002, with new log in system which was used for optimization of courses and new validation procedures. From that moment, SPOC (and afterwards EEC) started working closely on development of Johnny. Finally, the name Johnny was changed into BEST Application System (BAS) in PM 2004, in order to ensure better communication with the external world, and that was the last significant decision of SPOC before merging with CWG into EEC.In 2007, after unification of all BEST informatics systems, students can take advance of many different features, including career related ones. From the external events side, they can apply to events, share important info such as arrival and departure data and many more.From the LBG side we have constantly developed new features to increase the quality of our events and we now offer the possibility to, through BAS, make materials available for participants, create events, mailing lists, evaluate the course from the organisers, perspective and keep track of the deposit return, along with other useful tools.

BEST Teacher Area (formerly Professors@BAS)And as we developed BAS for students and BEST members, we also created opportunities to involve teachers more in our events. By creating them a teacher account they have the possibility to make materials available for students, be part of the mailing list if the LBG chooses so and even evaluate the event from their perspective.

Recognition ProjectIn GA 2000 another significant project was started - recognition of the learning events towards universities. Ever since then, EEC (together with EduCo) has been working on reaching highest number of universities which would recognize our learning events and approve ECTS points for their students. After a long period focusing on developing materials to support this, such as Information Form for all types of academic events and Certificates of Attendance, we are moving ahead towards the development of relations between universities and LBGs concerning external events, credits, both in issuing and recognising them.

CompetitionsCompetitions has continued to evolve with EEC, by providing LBGs with has much support has possible in different ways, including handbooks and EEC contacts persons. With the increase of their quality, in PM Valladolid we decided to make Competitions organisation easier and from then on they no longer need to be approved by EEC one month before being public to students. Parallel to this we created a Competition Task Database to encourage the sharing of tasks made by LBGs and to give them a good source of ideas to try and develop.

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In the past years we have also witnessed the development of new levels of Competition, mainly at Local level, conducting to National or Regional Finals. In 2009 these are reach a new level, by taking the best students to the brand new European BEST Engineering Competition as a grand final.

Quality ProjectIn 2004 LBGs decided to cancel the application of Greenapple Procedure, as all events were having good quality standards. Three years later, in 2007, EEC created Quality Project with the goal to assess the Quality of events then and later closely monitor the quality evolution. This is done with a proactive attitude in promoting new and better methods to develop external events, including challenges of having higher academic levels and the use of new tools.

Quantity Project (evolution of Flexibility Project)The former Flexibility Project evolved into quantity Project in 2007, aiming at increasing the number of participants who take part in our events. This goal is achieved by giving LBGs more chances to organise external events, with flexible deadlines, and by encouraging them to have more students in their events.

Support to LBGsEEC has always worked to better support LBGs organising external events, not only through the development of materials (including handbooks), but also by providing experienced contact persons and always been available to answer LBGs requests. In 2008 we took another step and developed, with TiGro, a new concept of local trainings for one or for a small group of LBGs focusing on external events organisation, having in mind the Vivaldi rules and guidelines but also the specific needs of each LBG.

Financial Committee (finTeam, fT)

Hello European Engineers!

My name is fT (a short for faTty) and I’m finTeams piggy bank. I’m in charge of

• ensuring the financial stability of BEST International• taking care of the money all the members of finTeam obtain with their hard work:

o contacting companies o assuring a constant income of fundso distributing the resources and supporting fundraising for International Events

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Now you know my task, it’s time for you to hear my memories. This is the story of where I came from, an amazing adventure in which the initial funComitee turned into our actual finTeam, keeping the fun and the hard work, improving every day, and getting bigger and bigger... It’s the story of my trip around Europe, surrounded by members of the team, who make sure I’ll never be skiNny :-)

Our travelling starts in Romania, land of Dracula, where I was born between palinka shots and “Doina”. It was the year 1998 and I was visiting Bucharest with some friends, going from pub to pub trying to discover what a “mongolian” was.

On one of this bars I found a crazy group of students dressed up as coins of different countries, dancing to a song that sounded something like “tunak, tunak”. I went to them to ask what was going on “we are from BEST”, they said “and we are on pub crawling!”

I asked more about what this BEST was... they told me it was the BEST friends, the BEST people, the BEST atmosphere, and the BEST parties! They said it had been founded in 1989, and it had worked perfectly since then, supported by the hard work of all the members. But that year they were running out of funds, and things were getting difficult.This people were so cool, I decided to stay with them for the next night, and the day after... and suddenly I realised I had become one of them. And as every member, I had to help, work with the rest, and enjoy doing it.

So… this is how I changed from being a normal pig, to a piggy bank. We created a team of people from all over Europe who would make sure the funds would never run out again. FunComitee they called us, because everyone enjoyed our company.

In this team there would be a treasurer, taking care of the numbers, making sure there was a constant income and that money was spent wisely. And a lot of highly motivated people, who contacted companies, suited up, and took me to meetings in all the cities in the continent, where someone would fill me again with some nice hot money.

I was witness to the closing of the first 3 year support contract in 1995 between BEST and ENSPM (Ecole Nationale Superieure du Petrole et des Moteurs), which assured important funding to BEST.During these trips we also found some friends in the biggest companies, friends who accepted to collaborate with us yearly, becoming our partners. Together with companies, that I loved more than other we decided to create Support Group, in 1999 in December, the group of BESTies and companies that helped us to became richer! The official meeting took place in London at PricewaterhouseCoopers headquarter. Members of Support Group at the time were P&G, American Management Systems and PWC.

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As years passed by, my mates, the other members of the team had to leave, as they finished their careers and started new lives in different places. This left me quite alone... and my job was getting difficult with none to support me.

But with time... as General Assemblies and Meetings passed by, there was always someone left by my side. Always someone with whom I could travel, live, enjoy life, and help maintain BEST stability.

Some years were special, with many members really active and helpful, constantly caring for me, organizing crazy international evenings. This happened for example in the year 1999, in the General Assembly that took place in Lisbon, were many people joined our group and we celebrated it with a great “festa!” And they made me a naughty picture involving a scarf... but I won’t give more details here about this, just ask!

Same happened in 2000 in Madrid, when many people promised, after a shot of Pachara, to make me fat for ever. It was a bit scary, though... because as they said it I saw some of them drinking “sangria” and cutting “jamon” out of a pig leg... Luckily, I survived. In May 2002, in the Hague, a great event took place: First Round Table, then known as Support Group Meeting. The companies that attended were the members of the Support Group: PWC, AMS and P&G. It is fun to see that the future RTs have the same structure as the first one. The same year, in the General Assembly that took place in Stockholm, the group was revitalised with new ideas and concepts. Different levels of partnership were conceived, and a mailing list where all BEST members could interact and keep in contact, even if they were separated by miles.

After few successful Support Group meetings cooperation with Support Group was collapsing. But at PM 2001 in Madrid appeared a new idea.Exactly then different levels of cooperation were created.

At GA 2002 in France I was present at great event. It was the next step in cooperation with companies: Second Round Table meeting. This idea became one of the big meals that made my piggy belly faTter. Some companies like me so much, that still, after 7 years, want to work with me: Bombardier, Procter&Gambell and Shell.

The 2002 was supposed to be the year for Support Group to grow up. So, at the same GA Support Group became a Team and started to work immediately when coming back from France.

I loved all our team members so much that decided to make one more event to see them, to work together and, of course, to have craziest parties together. Where could we do this? Of

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course, at the Summer Meeting. Our dear friends, the Masters of job fairs from bonding, hosted the Support Group Team in Baumhaus in Hofgeismar. What a nice time that was (that’s why I like beer since 2002).

The next one was GA 2003 in Bratislava. Uhh! Do you know why that was a happy time for me and all finTeam members and, I am sure, for you too! Because after all our Support Group and company meetings, our work and success we got the new name, which is more similar to my Financial Team or finTeam. However, the treasurer in company matters is still one of our main activities.

Besides this Financial Team wants to provide support for the fundraising for BEST internal events and provide advice and materials to LBGs. So, at the next Summer Meeting 2003 at Bucharest the idea of fundraising trainshop appeared in order to help LBGs to make their own little piggies bigger and heavier. We called it “be Raise Incomes by Cooperating Honestly with External Resources” or shortly beRICHER. The first one took place in March 2004 in Thesaloniki. Since then we already had 7 beRICHERs and trained about 150 fundraisers.

At international level just in 2003 we had 8 partners (if we count previous years together, a few times more and all companies that were in contact) ohh! You couldn’t even imagine how many letters and numbers were in my little piggy head. That’s why at GA Denmark 2004 finTeam Company database was created and programmed in Makumba to centralizeinfo about companies.

fT Summer Meeting Gdansk August 2005

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In the April of the next year my Bank became bigger for 29 000 Euro from European Grant. I never ate so big mounts before!

Now you are ready and its time to tell you one of the most excitement moments in my life. Even now, when I’m telling you about this after 4 years I fill tears on my cheeks, because at Presidents Meeting in Ljubljana 2005 finTeam became a Committee. Hooray!!!

One day in 2008, I realized that I was too hot so I decided to move Tallinn and enjoy their amazing GA. I was working really hard on behalf of all finteamers and partying even harder. One of those nights, the sex party, I met FReddy that, as you already know, became my BEST friend and I expect to keep that way. We had lots of fun there in the middle of Vana Tallin’s people that motivated us to keep working in BEST.

We kept working together during all year gaining and keeping our partners, definitely doing really well our job until SM. There, we met the new generation of finteamers willing to help for the cause. There were really great days and we rocked a lot as social responsibles! There’s no rest for one finteamer so we started working for a wonderful PM in the warm city Bucharest. As you can imagine the flavour of palinka made us gave our best during the event. We still had hangover when he head to our following stop: Cluj-Napoca. We had special moments there but the most important was that FReddy fell in love. He met FRitzi, a really beautiful, sexy and wonderful partner (I’m not a zoophiles pig but I do really appreciate how nice she is) with who shared a lot of love. After the event they got married in an exotic and unknown place in Europe and they live happily.

However, work is work and money was waiting for us so we met again in spring with all finteamers in Warsaw to keep improving. I really think we did and we also enjoyed (even poor FRitzi was quite sad I should say for the curious that he didn’t cheat on her!!!!).

Here finishes, for now, my memories. Maybe I’m still young but I really had an intensive and exciting life. Do you know what the best thing is? An even more brilliant future is waiting for us!!!!! Do you want to know it? Easy, join the team!

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Training Interested Group (TiGro)

“BEST will provide adequate training to its members, in order to ensure they contribute to the association in an effective way and that they develop skills useful in their future professions”

PM 1995 in Trondheim, proposal by Busse Pettersson, VIII Board

The PioneersThe text of the proposal by Busse can mark the first milestone for history of TIGro (Training Interested Group). It would anyway take quite some time before this would become a real body of BEST, but it was sign. This text was to become the Statement of Purpose of the committee.

If during 1996 some trainings took place during internal events such as workshop it was only at the GA of 97 that the board would focus on internal education as an organizational need. This led to TRAC (Training Committee) coordinated by Luca Nosetti. This was similar to a discussion group than a committee and it raised very much the awareness about this topic, and a webpage was presented in the PM 97, featuring the name “TIGro”. During PM there was the shift from discussion to action: Krisztian Stancz from Budapest announced the first Trainshop, an actual training event for BESTies. Also the mailing list of TIGro was created during that PM.

After the great success of the 1st Trainshop -that involved both experience BESTies and Company trainer- more people joined the mailing list and this lead to a motivated group of people coming to GA 98 willing to establish a training system in BEST.

1998 was might moment for TIGro: during the GA the proposal of establishing TIGro as committee was unanimously accepted, endowing the team with a serious image, and following the GA a BEST webpage and a BEST mailing list were given to the committee; further on, the 1st Jamboree took place, a big gathering for BESTies in which many trainings were delivered; and then during PM the sharing of training materials between TIGro and bonding -our German partners- started, it was clear the idea of having a summer camp to educated BESTies to became trainers and finally the first coordinator of TIGro was elected, in the person of Krisztian Stancz.

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

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TIGro Caravan at GA Ljubljana in 2001

started a system to try to keep track of the training happening around Europe.

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

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

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

In 2003, after the formalization of the Regions in BEST, the Regional Meetings, (RMs) became a usual appointment for BEST of the same region just before the General Meetings. And a big appointment was especially for TIGro as many training were delivered to BESTies in these events taking place at the same all around Europe.

From 2004 the Trainshops, now all named like “beABLE” or “beRICHER” became a more structured and several edition of the same trainshop –continuously developing the previous edition- were starting to take place year after year. The longest lasting one is the Trainshop on FR whose last edition was the “beRICHER 7”.

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A time of changesIn 2005 the GA approved a major change, in which committee coordinators are no longer part of the board, like it was in the first year of existence of TIGro. Federico “Fred” Pisanu was the first coordinator of TIGro in the structure of the international management that still now working. In those years, although there was a constant growth of training activity around Europe, the committee was internally divided. TIGro indeed was made by both trainers, who attended TRAP, and also other members interested in Human Resources and soft-skills but without a thorough background from attending TRAP and a field experience. After two years trying to tackle this issue it was decided to put to an end to this unsustainable situation. In GA 2007 it was decided to separate the two “souls” dissolving the committee creating two working groups: the new TIGro would gather only trainers and the Knowledge Group (KT) would deal with knowledge management and HR interested people.

The rebirth of the committee The new TiGro, now named Training Group, kept running all the training events such as TRAP, Trainshops, thus becoming even more effective without having to deal with other matters. Many experienced trainers –since there was no coordinator at time- helped building the foundations of the new TiGro during the Summer Meeting 07 in Serbia, defining the new framework of the committee, more focused with the training activities compared to other committees one. After a short transition period in GA 08 TiGro became a committee again. The latest years a big project started in 2005 finally saw the light: the Training Database, keeping track of all the training sessions delivered in BEST since its beginning. At the present day many experienced trainers have over 100 hours of training, but an outstanding performance is the one of Federico “Fred” Pisanu with 600 hours delivered in 5 years. The recent times saw also the rebirth of the relations with bonding, attending and being trainer in each other events, the number of Trainers Meeting is rising again, and also the number of active trainers thanks to the creation of 4T an event in which BESTies experienced in fields such as FR or marketing are given the skills to deliver training.This is yet one more step to “provide adequate training to BEST members, in order to ensure they contribute to the association in an effective way, and that they develop skills” useful in their future professions” the very mission of TiGro.

List of TIGro coordinators• 1998/1999 - Krisztian Stancz (Krisz) - Coordinator of TIGro• 1999/2000 - Kasia Lech - VP of the XIIth Board• 2000/2001 - Riinu Lepa - VP of the XIIIth Board• 2001/2002 - Lubomir Ziak (Kubo) - VP of the XIVth Board• 2002/2003 - Irene Escolar - VP of the XVth Board• 2003/2004 - Aneta Blaszczyk - VP of the XVIth Board• 2004/2005 - Angela Scaueru - VP of the XVIIth Board• 2005 - Federico Pisanu (Fred) - Coordinator of TIGro

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• 2006 - Ana-Cristina Dumitru (Creatza) - Coordinator of TIGro• 2006/2007 - Herve Tunga (Rv) - Coordinator of TIGro• 2007/2008 - Ligia Martin (Gilly) - Coordinator of TiGro• 2008/2009 - Jasper Van Bourgognie - Coordinator of TiGro• 2009 (current) Peter Kun (Kuni) - Coordinator of TiGro

Made in TIGro: The story of JamboreeJamboree! This is probably a word that evokes many memories in almost every single BEST Member. Who hasn’t participated in at least one Jamboree? Currently Jamboree is the largest BEST event for number of participants gathering the whole Europe in room. But how it all started? Well, exactly for this purpose: to get the magic feeling of having the whole Europe in one room! Let’s jump back to 1998, a mighty year for TIGro. Krisz had the idea of this big gathering to show all the BESTies, especially the young ones, the aforementioned feeling and also give the chance for them to know a bit more about BEST through basic trainings and other light activities, like a BEST rally to show the structure of the organization to the newbies. As Krisz was promoting the idea it first took place in Hungary, and all the other active TIGro members helped in the design and the organization of the activities. The first Jam was “only” 110 participants, back then second only to the GA. Back then it involved mainly the LBGs in that area but quite fast it grew bigger and bigger coming now to include the whole Europe, up to the record-JAM 2005 in Skopje with about 700 participants. Trainers have always been present in numbers at Jamborees taking care of activities, games, trainings, ensuring the BEST motto “work hard, party hard” come true in every edition.

Made in TIGro: The story of RAsNowadays the Regional Advisors (RAs) are already a tradition for quite some years in BEST. The LBGs got used to their role and the effectively work with them, as the RAs take care of the state of the LBGs, making sure they are running smoothly; and when the LBGS need help they support them by identifying problems, assessing needs, and developing strategies to improve, learn, and reorganize the local group. Sounds like a trainer’s job? Well you will be not surprised to learn that the ancestors of the RAs were born in TIGro. After the discussions of the TIGro Summer Meeting 2000, it was though of having some “main trainers” for some geographic areas of Europe (no Regions yet, back then!) The main trainer was just an overview of the training activities happening tracking trainers and LBGs trained. In the TIGro summer meeting of 2004, when Regions and RMs were already established there was an evolution, the RTA (Regional Training Advisor). Their role was becoming more proactive, and fitting pretty much the description above of the RA. All the RTA could have the advantage of having either a trainer of TIGro background and therefore have a set of skills for this task. The next year, the board decided to move this project out of TIGro and led to RAs as they are nowadays.

Made in TIGro: Welcome to the Jungle!

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It was the 9th of April 1998, and in the heart of Transilvania, Cluj-Napoca the General Assembly was taking place. On that day Krisz, Riki and Ursa were doing the presentation of TIGro, with its brand new framework. Now, not only they decided to make a more informal presentation with leaflets instead of the usual slideshow, but the wanted to have a nice PR image to show the delegates. Rushing on the moment, the choice fell on a tiger paw, and that, alongside with other tigers’ image, was how it was presented to the delegates. The motto used back then would have a life much longer its creators expected. “Welcome to the Jungle” from that day in 1998 was for long time the big headline in the TIGro pages inside Private Area, and the exact sentence written in the email that welcomed a new member in the committee. And whole new culture was around it: the members of the committee were designated as “TIGers”, the mailing list of the active member was “The Jungle”, a training event visiting LBGs was “the caravan” with a Camel as logo, the alumni mailing list was “the Desert” and the paw was on any TIGro made material. It was no surprise to upon becoming coordinator of TIGro when he received a puppet of TIGer, the gift that is passed coordinator to coordinator. As the SPOC committee had the unofficial mascot of a chicken, (a nice meal for a Tiger!) there was a friendly rivalry between the two committees who would never miss a chance in internal events such as GMs, ICFs or even RMs to joke with each other trough their slideshows, presentations, or even promotional materials.

Educational Committee (EduCo)

BEST is one of the international students organization that has an educational programme and this is due to EduCo (Educational Committee). Events on education are designed in order to reach outcomes to improve our educational process. The same outcomes are presented and shared on international conferences attended by other organizations, professors and students. H3E was the first Thematic Network that BEST took officially part in and it had been established by two European academic organizations (CESAER and SEFI), together with BEST.

Having been given the support of the European Commission, under the SOCRATES-Programme, it saw a unique opportunity to contribute to the framework for a new structure in Higher Engineering Education for Europe. All three organizations shared their wide experience on an international level and worked towards reaching the goals set for H3E. The aims of the initial three-year project of H3E were to create a forum for the development, dissemination and promotion of ideas extending the European dimension in European higher engineering education, while still retaining, or even raising, its traditionally high quality, and also increasing the number of those having the opportunity to contribute to this process.

Through the Educational Programme, BEST is involved in facilitating discussions in educational matters and transferring the results to other interested parties. BEST through EduCo is therefore organising Symposia and BACos with the participation of the main stakeholders

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in education. This should increase technology students’ awareness of educational issues by letting them discuss those topics among themselves and above all, with their natural counterparts in the educational, and in the case of BACo, the industrial world, teachers and company representatives, respectively.EduCo is the committee in BEST that deals with the Educational Programme and Educational Involvement of BEST. Thus more information is mentioned in the article about Educational Involvement.

Structure of the CommitteeUntil 2004 the EduCo members (the committee coordinator and project coordinators) were elected by the General Assembly of BEST. The committee coordinator was a full member of the Board of BEST and had the title Vice-President for Educational Policies. The then framework of EduCo described it as follows:

‘The Coordinator represents the committee in the International Board and has all obligations and rights that are provided to him/her by the status of the vice-president of BEST. In the committee there are certain members that have a specific responsibility of coordinating one or more of the projects. These EduCo Members are called Project Coordinators of the Educational Committee and have to be ratified by a General Meeting (Generally Assembly or President meeting)’

However these regulations changed in PM04 and since then all full members of EduCo have the right to apply for both positions. The voting procedure is clarified by the internal regulations of BEST and it is no longer performed during GMs. Thanks to these changes to the regulations of EduCo, lots of members have joined it in the past years, increasing the quality of EoEs. Since 2004 EduCo is an open committee and all BEST members who show their motivation are able to join and give their input in all EduCo matters.

More over, EduCo coordinator was the only coordinator that was elected directly from the plenary during GAs. The reason for this was that the EduCo coordinator was representing whole BEST when attending various conferences, and thus the LBGs should vote for him/her. However, this changed in PM06, since a common framework was voted for all the committees, and the voting procedure for the coordinator changed to follow the rest of the committees (election inside the committee and then approval by the plenary).

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EduCO Alumni Meeting Brussels in 2006

Big contributorsEduCo and the idea of Educational Involvement wouldn’t have ever been possible without the people that believed in it. These people devoted their time and energy not only because they wanted to improve the engineering education in Europe, but also because they wanted to make it possible for other students to do so. On the other hand, EduCo got developed not only due to the personal work of its members, but also because of some people outside of BEST who believed as well in the idea and supported us in any way possible.

The first one of these great people is Philippe D. Grosjean, a consultant and former secretary-general of CESAER from Belgium. Philippe was the man who got BEST involved in educational matters, when BEST was asked to join the H3E project in 1996. Philippe introduced the (inexperienced) BEST people in the world of educational matters and has always supported students’ interests in the project during the lifetime of the H3E. In the academic world Philippe D. Grosjean was a controversial person due to his straightforward style and outspoken opinions. He was elected Honorary Member of BEST at the XVIII General Assembly in Stockholm in 2000.

Also the people from the first H3E are worth to be mentioned, since Giuliano Augusti (ex-president of SEFI), Claudio Borri (also ex-president of SEFI) and other people from the network supported BEST in many opportunities. Communication with them is constant since the very beginning of H3E and they helped EduCo and BEST by inviting us in all the Thematic Network Project (E4, TREE, and TREE-diss) and supported BEST in taking part into SEFI activities. Claudio Borri also invited us in taking part in IFEES (International Federation of Engineering Education Societies).

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Apart from the SEFI people, two more persons helped our development with a different way each. Katrin Bijnens as part of EuroPACE team, and Gunter Heitmann that joined three of our Events on Education within 1 year (BACo Zagreb Winter04, BSoE Rome TV Summer05, BACo Istanbul Winter05) Last but not least, in the list of our contributors all the LBGs that managed to organise an Event on Education all these years should be added, and specially LBG Lisbon that took the challenge to organise our BEST Conference, a very ambitious project that was cancelled in the end.

Boards of BEST Definition: A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. The body sometimes has a different name, such as board of trustees, board of governors, board of managers, or executive board. It is often simply referred to as “the board.” The first steps - Advisory Committees vs. Boards As BEST started officially in 1989, there was a need of a general coordination, someone to take care of the organisation, to make sure the members meet, and also to prepare all the meetings regarding the young at that point organisation. More over, goals had to be set, and these goals had to be achieved. And how could one achieve goals without having a legal existence, without being able to juridical act in defending the interests of the association? Without being able to spend money in the name of it?

All these were the sparks out of which the first board was created. Part of the French law required that in order to gain legal existence an association must have a ‘council of administration’, which was translated inside BEST as the Board. On top of that, there were all the reasons that were mentioned above, that moved the first BESTies into setting up a board to oversee the organisation.

The first board was consisting of the following positions: President, Vice-President, Treasurer, Vice-Treasurer and Secretary. The President, the Vice-president and the secretary were the legal representatives of the association. The board were: 1st advisory Committee: April 89/Oct 89

• President: Ida Lau - NTH (Trondheim) • Vice-president: Christophe Fitemont - INPG (Grenoble) • Treasurer: Yngve Kristiansen - NTH (Trondheim) • Secretary: Jacob Lopy - T.U. Berlin

Their tasks at that time, as they were defined in the statutes of BEST, were: • The president had to choose the secretariat, that was responsible for writing

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and distributing a report on the events of the previous meetings • The president had to send the invitation and agenda for the General Assemblies to all active members of the association • The president with the assistance of the board was guiding the General Assembly and presented the biannual report. • The treasurer was presenting the financial report.

Since the first approval of the statutes, there were a lot of changes happening to them. A lot of these changes were referring to the duties of the board. Till 1991, the tasks and the definition of the board changed in almost every general assembly. However, the ‘boards’ of BEST were somehow started to be called ‘Advisory Committees’. The only reason to justify this so far is that they thought it wasn’t an official body, and that’s why it was called ‘advisory’. After 1991 however, the old advisory committees changed their names into Boards of BEST. The reason is clear and can be seen by a statement in the report of GA 1991 in Lisbon:

“We all think that the B.A.C. (BEST Advisory Committee) is very useful and that it improves the efficiency of the conferences (GA). It provides a better balance and an opportunity to consider more views in greater details. It also helps the President considerably when working as a team. It is important to point out that the job of the B.A.C. can be done by a BOARD, something which is already in our statutes. The B.A.C. structure is not really representative of our organisation in front of the outside world, whereas a board is.

It’s been considered by the B.A.C. that the work on helping the local groups should be improved. The Board/B.A.C. concept is not only good, but needed and could be very useful in insuring appropriate representation of B.E.S.T. throughout the continent. Especially in the case the President lives in a “corner” of Europe. We all feel that this committee, whatever it may be called, is very useful and therefore necessary in the future, to insure the continuity of B.E.S.T...” Evolution of the structure From 1989 until 2009 it’s a long time, and during this long time a lot of changes happened. In the beginning, every 3-4 years there was a change in the structure of the Board. This is what happened during those 20 years:

• From April 1989 till October 1991, BEST had 5 ‘advisory committees’, with a 6 month mandate from GA to GA • From October 1991 till April 1995, the first 7 boards had a 6 month mandate from GA to GA. • Since May 1995, each board has a one year mandate, initially that was from GA

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till GA. The first one year serving board was the VIII Board. • During GA1998, a Proposal for a new management structure for BEST was made for the regulation of committees • Since XII Board the mandate has changed to from 1 June till 31 July. That makes the XI Board the longest serving board in BEST history. • From the V Advisory Committee till VII consisted of President, Vice-President, Treasurer, Secretary and (next) GA Organiser. • From Board VIII till XI consisted of President, 2 Vice-Presidents, Treasurer, and Secretary. The Vice-Presidents would look after the topical work that is nowadays covered by committees. The organisational concept of committees was started around that time. • From Board XII till XVII consisted of President, Treasurer, Secretary (executive board) and all coordinators of committees (‘Vice-Presidents’). This was to give more power and visibility to the emerging committees. • Since the GA 2005, the current structure of the board is President, Treasurer, Secretary (executive board) and 3 Vice-Presidents (for ‘External Services’, ‘Internal Support’ and ‘Local Group Support’).

The first big change in the structure of the board was made in GA1994 in Timisoara. There, there was a proposal to change the statutes of BEST and add one more position in the board of BEST and to also make the mandates of the boards 1 year long, instead of 6 months that it was before. If the proposal was approved, then the new statutes would be valid right after that GA. However, the board made a proposal about having already from the GA1994 one new position in the board, in order to motivate people, because they didn’t want to wait for 6 months for the new rules to be applied and because they saw the need for it. To this proposal most LBGs reacted though, saying that such a proposal was illegal, since it was against the current statutes of BEST, and after some long discussions the board had to withdraw their proposal.

The next big step happened in GA1998 Romania in April, when there was a proposal by the board to change the structure of it. The reasoning was to shift to a structure that would allow a better definition of responsibilities at the international level, and at the same time improve the involvement of the local BEST groups. This would lead to a better communication and a better transfer of knowledge and know-how inside the whole association. It would also among other things allow the board to work more efficiently on its management tasks. The change was not proposed for the same GA, but it was in a form of mandate for the next board to refine the management structure and also to try to find improvement points in the proposed solution. They also had to analyse the statutes in order to find what should be changed. In the end the proposal was approved, and the XI board managed to accomplish all the points of the mandate. So in the end the structure changed in GA1999 in Lisbon.

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The new structure After a long period of no changes in structure of the board, a new proposal came to shake the waters of the structure. It was proposed as a mandate for the XVII board to investigate the working structure of BEST. Some of the things they wanted to investigate were:

• What was the role of coordinators of committees (and working groups) in the board? • How to close the gap between the LBGs and international teams? • How to involve more people actively in certain projects? • How to handle the workload of boardies? • By having extra/less board member(s)? • By having a central office where (some) boardies work together in real life? • How far to want to go with regional involvement? • How to improve the current situation on short term?

All these were questions that were bothering BESTies in 2004, and asked the board to find a solution to them. After a year of discussions, questionnaires, meetings and discussions again, the board proposed the new structure of the board and of BEST: The board would consist of 6 positions (President, Treasurer, Secretary, Vice President for External Services, Internal Support and Local Group Support) and the coordinators would not be part of the board any more. It was the first time that the number of people in the board was reduces, but that was also one of the points in the mandate, since the board was getting too crowded and too difficult to manage.

List of International boards of BEST: • I Advisory Committee of BEST April 1988 - Oct.1989

o President : Ida Lau Borch - Trondheimo Vice-President: Christophe Fitemont - INPG Grenoble o Secretary: Jacob Lopy - TUB Budapesto Treasurer: Yngve Kristiansen - NTH Trondheim

• II Advisory Committee of BEST Oct. 1989 - April 1990 o President : Yngve Kristiansen - NTH Trondheimo Vice-President: Csilla Kolhemi - TUB Budapesto Treasurer: Hens Erik Vetne - NTH Trondheimo Vice-Treasurer: Attila Nagy - TUB Budapest

• III Advisory Committee of BEST April 1990 - Oct. 1990 o President : Gabor David - TUB Budapesto Vice-President: David Ensell – ICLo Treasurer: Attila Nagy - TUB Budapesto Secretary: David Boras - ICL

• IV Advisory Committee of BEST Oct.90 - April 1991 o President : Gabor David - TUB Budapesto Vice-President: Thierry Geoffroy - ENSAM Paris

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o Treasurer: Attila Nagy - TUB Budapesto Secretary: Matthieu Nerzic - ENSAM Paris

• V Advisory Committee of BEST April 1991 - Oct. 1991 o President: Hanne Gröndal - NTH TrondheimVice-President: Gabor David - TUB BudapestTreasurer: Kim van Roy - ENSAM ParisSecretary: Bernat Albinyana - UPC BarcelonaGA Organizer: Duarte S. Lopes - IST Lisbon

• I int. Board of BEST Oct. 1991 - April 1992 o President: Bernat Albinyana - UPC Barcelonao Vice-President: Andrea Selvaggi - Torinoo Treasurer: Eric Verbrugge (Jazz) - ENSAM Pariso Secretary: Kaur Lohk – Tallino GA Organizer: Anne Nummila – Helsinki

• II int. Board of BEST April 1992 - Oct. 1992 o President: Duarte S. Lopes - IST Lisbono Vice-President: Andrea Selvaggi - Torinoo Treasurer: Astrid Skarheim - NTH Trondheimo Secretary: Maciek Bud-Gusaim – Warsawo GA Organiser: Thierry Wiertz – Liege

• III int. Board of BEST Oct. 1992 - April 1993 o President: Anders Berglund - Lundo Vice-President: Oriabel Parisis - ENSAM Pariso Treasurer: Oskar Ahlberg - Stockholmo Secretary: Andrea Grosso – Torinoo GA Organiser: Tomas Martinec – STU

• IV int. Board of BEST April 1993 - Oct. 1993 o President: Katrin Lervik - NTH Trondheimo Vice-President: Dusan Meszaros – STUo Treasurer: Julien Desjardins - ENSAM Pariso Secretary: Nathalie Quentin - Ecole Centrale Pariso GA Organiser: Maciek Bud-Gusaim - Warsaw

• V int. Board of BEST Oct. 1993 - April 1994 o President: Jari Nisula - HelsinkiVice-President: Ovidiu Sandor - TimisoaraTreasurer: Isa van Grunderbeek - SupelecSecretary: Anders Josefsson - LundGA Organiser: Paolo Bianco - Torino

•VI int. Board of BEST April 1994 - Oct. 1994 o President: Filippo Catalano - Torinoo Vice-President: Claus a. Fantoni Andersen - Copenhageno Treasurer: Matthieu Jopin – Paris

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o Secretary: Katrin F Madison - Stockholmo GA Organiser: Cristian Bogdan - Timisoara

• VII int. Board of BEST Oct. 1994 - April 1995 o President: Michelangelo Calabresi - Romao Vice-President: Pirre Salonen – Helsinkio Secretary: Ciprian Zah - Timisoarao Treasurer: Petra Posselius - Lundo GA Organiser: Doros Isidoros – Patras

• VIII int. Board of BEST April 1995 - April 1996 o President : Flemming Weissman – Trondheimo Vice-President: Manuel Tiago - Lisbono Vice-President: Busse Pettersson - Lundo Secretary: Margherita Bruni - Napolio Treasurer: Alfredo Loreto - Roma

• IX int. Board of BEST April 1996 - April 1997 o President: Jonas Murby - Chalmers (Gothenburg)o Vice-President: Morten Uttgård - NTH Trondheimo Vice-President: Carla Carvalho - IST Lisbono Secretary: Luca Nosetti - Torinoo Treasurer: Anna Lipowska - Warsaw

• X int. Board of BEST April 1997 - June 1998 o President: Vitor Santiago Nunes – Coimbrao Vice-President: Guy Brusselmans – Ghento Vice-President: Luis Miguel Munoz – Valladolido Secretary: Theodoros Mastrokostopoulos - Chaniao Treasurer: Christian Amor Kvalheim – Trondheimo GA Organiser:aurelian bria - Bucharest

• XI int. Board of BEST 1998-1999 o President: Vitor Santiago Nunes – Coimbrao Vice-President: Andrei Hohan – Bucharesto Vice-President: Clara Edman – Stockholmo Treasurer: Ana Luisa Pinto – Portoo Secretary: Valerica Telcean - TimisoaraAssociated member: The SPOC Co-ordinator o Urska Demsar (May 1998-Nov1998) - Ljublijana o Viktor Iklodi (Nov 1998-May1999) - Budapest

• XII int. Board of BEST 1999-2000 o President: Georgia K. Rouni - Athens o Treasurer: Giovanni Alfredo Camorali - Torino o Secretary: Elisabeth Modin - Stockholmo VP - EduCo Coordinator: Lucia Gregorio - Valladolid o VP - ITC Coordinator: Paolo Cravero - Torino

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o VP - SPOC Coordinator: Risto Koivunen - Helsinkio VP - TIGro Coordinator: Kasia Lech - Krakow

• XIII int. Board of BEST 2000-2001 o President: Anna Håkansson - Stockholmo Treasurer: Hugo Ramos - Porto o Secretary: Frederik Habils - Ghent o VP - EduCo Coordinator: Pim Bonne - Ghent o VP - ITC Coordinator: Stefan Baebler - Ljubljana o VP - SPOC Coordinator: Bozo Frajman - Ljubljana o VP - TIGro Coordinator: Riinu Lepa - Tallinn o Minerva Coordinator: Andrea Casamassima - Rome o markeTeam Coordinator: Yiannis Zevgolis - Athens

• XIV int. Board of BEST 2001-2002 o President: Peter Zvirinsky - Kosice o Treasurer: Carlo Spellucci - Rome o Secretary: Maria Håkansson - Luleao VP - EduCo Coordinator: Isabel Arribas - Madrid o VP - ITC Coordinator: Josefin Berg - Uppsala o VP - SPOC Coordinator: Claudia Chituc - Bucharest o VP - TIGro Coordinator: Lubomir Ziak - Kosice o Minerva Coordinator: Niki Chronopoulou - Patraso markeTeam Coordinator: Nicolas Chauveau - Grenoble

• XV int. Board of BEST 2002-2003 o President: Wim Farasyn - Leuven o Treasurer: Magda Neagoe - Bucharest o Secretary: Céline Guivarch - Ecole Polytechnique o VP - EduCo Coordinator: Juan Manuel Ortiz - Valladolid o VP - ITC Coordinator: Priit Potter- Tallinn o VP - SPOC Coordinator: Ludovic Charpentier - Grenoble o VP - TIGro Coordinator: Irene Escolar - Madrid o VP- Minerva: Thanasis Vlahogiannis - Athens

• XVI int. Board of BEST 2003-2004 o President: Wouter Schaekers – Leuveno Treasurer: Kristjan Mitt – Tallinno Secretary: Tina Toni – Ljubljanao VP for Internal Education: Aneta Blaszczyk – Lodzo VP for Educational Matters: Iulia Gherasim – Bucharesto VP for Complementary Education: Gabriela Popescu – Bucharesto VP for Information Technology: Gwenael Alizon - LBG Lundo VP for PR and Marketing: Tarvi Olli – Tallinno VP for Career Support: Piotr Bryk - LBG Lodz

• XVII int. Board of BEST, aka Flowers, 2004-2005

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o President : Miha Pelko - Ljubljanao Secretary : Eva Sturtewagen - Ghent o Treasurer Stefan Hallez – Ghento VP Complementary Education : Giorgos Athanasopoulos - Patras o VP Educational Involvement: Joao Rei - Almada o VP Career Support: Panagiotis Isigonis - Chania o VP Internal Education: Angela Scaueru - Bucharest o VP for Information Technologies: Vilius Benetis - Copenhagen o VP for Public Relations: Gregoire Toussaint – Grenoble

• XVIII int. Board of BEST, aka Jazzers, 2005-2006 o President: Nadina Busuioc - Bucharest o Treasurer: Jihad R’Baiti - ENSTA o Secretary: Susan Langer - Copenhagen o VP Local Group Support: Xavier Rondé-Oustau - Ecole Centrale/Helsinki/Stockholm o VP External Services: Elina Seppänen - Tampere o VP Internal Support: Michal Wojtera - Lodz

• XIX int. Board of BEST, aka Sailors, 2006-2007 o President: Bartosz Lipnicki - Gdansko Treasurer: Luka Vidmar - Ljubljanao Secretary: Bram Simons - Eindhoveno VP Local Group Support: Katy Vanbrabant -Brusselso VP External Services: Tzveta Dimitrova - Sofiao VP Internal Support: Manuel Gay – Lyon

• XX int. Board of BEST, aka Lemons, 2007-2008 o President: Ömer Hantal - Istanbul o Treasurer: Seger Decombel - Ghent o Secretary: Peter Verwilst - Ghent o VP External Services: Adriana Garboan – Bucharesto VP Internal Support: Cristina Dumitru – Bucharesto VP Local Group Support: Giulio D’Aversa – Rome

• XXI int. Board of BEST, aka Bunnies, 2008-2009 o President: Tim Govaert- Ghent o Treasurer: Cristian Arteni - Bucharest o Secretary: Triin Lohmus - Tallinno VP External Services: Tassos Natsakis – Thessalonikio VP Internal Support: Karina Herman – Timisoarao VP Local Group Support: Xavier Duchatel – Paris, Ecole Politechnique

• XXII int. Board of BEST, aka Surfers, 2008-2009 o President: David Salamon - Budapesto Treasurer: Andres Ütt - Tallinno Secretary: Nataliia Gurianova - Lviv

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o VP External Services: Lucien Romagnoli - Ghento VP Internal Support: Vladimir Bulgaru - Chisinauo VP Local Group Support: Paal Lohne - Trondheim

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Honorary members of BEST

BEST is able to grant Honorary Membership upon persons having rendered important services to the organisation. Honorary Membership is recognition of excellence for contributing to the development of the goals and values of the organisation. No special privileges are connected to the title of Honorary Member of BEST.

Honorary Membership of BEST is regulated by the Statutes of BEST and Internal Regulations of BEST.

Only on very special and rare occasions in the past, Honorary Membership was awarded. As of 2009 there are only four Honorary Members of BEST. Ida Lau BorchShe is founding member of BEST and President of the 1st Advisory Committee of BEST (April - October 1989). Alumna of LBG Trondheim, Ida was elected Honorary Member of BEST at the General Assembly 1992 in Helsinki & Tallinn.Gabor David He is also founding member of BEST and President of the 3rd and 4th Advisory Committee of BEST (April 1990 - April 1991) and Vice-President of the 5th Advisory Committee of BEST (April 1991 - October 1991). He is from LBG Budapest. Gabor was elected Honorary Member of BEST at the General Assembly 1992 in Helsinki & Tallinn.‘Shortly afterwards, it was decided that from then on Honorary Membership could only be granted to people who had never been a member of an LBG.’Jean François PicardAlso known as JFP, he is a former businessman of Procter & Gamble. Jean François has largely contributed to the development of BEST by supporting BEST in the organisation of events and by giving soft skills trainings to BEST members. JFP served as a kind of advisor to BEST and has attended several General Meetings of BEST in the first half of the 1990s. He was elected Honorary Member of BEST at the General Assembly 1993 in Bratislava. Philippe D. GrosjeanHe is a consultant and former secretary-general of CESAER. Philippe was the man who got BEST involved in educational matters, when BEST was asked to join the H3E project in 1996. Philippe introduced the (inexperienced) BEST people in the world of educational matters and has, during the lifetime of the H3E project, always supported students’ interests in the project. In the academic world Philippe D. Grosjean was a controversial person due to his straightfor-ward style and outspoken opinions. He was elected Honorary Member of BEST at the XVIII General Assembly in Stockholm in 2000.

In 2000 the XIII Board invited the four Honorary Members of BEST to attend the 6th Presi-dents’ Meeting in Budapest. Ida Lau Borch and Gabor David were able to join the delegates and share their memories of the early days of BEST. Jean-François Picard and Philippe D. Grosjean could not attend the meeting. Philippe sent a letter to the PM, which was read in the plenary by the speaker, Yannis Rammos.

Article written by Pim Bonne


Chapter 6

BEST Internal Events

• Cultural Exchanges• Workshops• Short Intensive Meetings • Trainshops • Committee meetings • ICF-IPF • GMs

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Cultural Exchanges (CEs)

Cultural exchange is an event organised by two or three Local BEST Groups. At least 30 groups visit each other in groups of around 10-20 BEST members. Participation on this event offers students to understand and get in contact with culture, traditions, academic and social life of the other country. Even from the beginning of BEST, Local Groups were attracted by the concept of Cultural Exchanges and most of the LBGs registered at least one CE during these years. Some of them even have these events once per year. Because we do not keep track of all these kind of events, we cannot say exactly at what point BEST members enjoyed them, but official documents like BEST Magazine record them even from 1996.

WorkShops (WSs)

Workshops are short, work-oriented events where about 20 BEST members discuss, plan, develop and get actively involved in ongoing projects during a face-to-face meeting. They are among the oldest internal BEST events that we have. Workshops are geographically spread all over Europe, to get as many BEST members as possible involved in the international work. The workshops have two main goals: to gather input from a wide range of active members on the work done in BEST and to provide a continuous training for participants. They are planned and organised in order to work on

Technical Committee WS Barcelona 1998

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projects that typically face difficulties to be handled in a virtual way. Up to 3 or 4 topics are worked on and each topic is lead by its topic owner. The content depends on the hottest topics at the time when the events take place.Until 2009, there were 77 WS announced in PA. The first one was organized in Turin, in 1993. Although we didn’t find any official documents about it, the first ones were about strategy, growth, 3-years-plan, international development and so on. First were lots WS organized per year because in the early times of BEST every event was either a GM or WS. Now we have an average of 3 WS per year.

Short Intensive Meetings (SIMs)

Short Intensive Meeting is very similar to a workshop, with the difference that it is focused on one particular project and on average involves fewer participants (usually around 10). They are usually planned only some weeks in advance according to the needs of the projects.The first event organized in this way was Minerva Development SIM in 2003 hosted by LBG Leuven. After this event, other 8 SIMS followed as intensive working days that aimed in developing several specific projects.

TrainShops (TSs)

TrainShops are events that last 6-8 days, during which 15-20 participants get trained and gain knowledge on a particular topic. Every year 3 to 6 TSs are organized and their topic changes according to the needs of the organization and are decided by the International Board together with the Training Group.LBG Budapest had the honour of organizing the first TS in 1997 in Balatonfoldvar. It was called “The International Training SEMINAR”. The next one was the “Trainshop Human Resources in Young Engineers’ Life” in 1998 hosted by LBG Timisoara. From then, TSs evolved and even got names and they are organized periodically ones or twice a year.

The topics can be various such as: Leadership(bePROUD), HR and recruiting(beMORE), PR and Image(PRIME) who was changed later on in beKNOWN on design and marketing techniques, fund raising (beRICHER), project management (beREADY) and organizing events(beABLE), IT(beNERD).

Trainers Camp

The Trainer’s Camp is one of the possible first steps towards becoming an acknowledged BEST trainer. It is a two-week long course, consisting of several training sessions aiming to equip the participants with all the skills and tools they will need in their BEST trainer career.

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The objectives are to learn how to build and deliver presentations in front of groups, how to facilitate group work, how individuals communicate and interact in groups and what are the most effective ways of designing and delivering training sessions. Apart from these skills, the future trainers also have the chance to get to know more about BEST, its structure, and how the organisation works. The course contains both theory and practice, with the possibility of delivering trial training at the end.

Trap 5 Sex-change party

The first Trainer’s camp was organized in 1999 and it has provided BEST with a trainer’s community with over 100 members most of them still active.The BEST Training system is self sustainable through this event.

4Ts Train the Technical Trainer

It is a new type of event that started in 2008 in which experienced committee members get trained in order to deliver technical training sessions in fields like: design, marketing, IT or fundraising.

Committee meetings (CMT meetings)

Every international team has 1-2 meetings every year in order to work on important topics and plan the year’s agenda. The number of participants varies according to the members

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of the international team, the availability of the members, etc, but they usually gather 6-20 participants and it lasts around 1 week. The first CMT Meeting took place in Helsinki in 1994 and it was about Strategy. Although it was considered a CMT meeting, the people present were members of Strategy Working Group that were discussing new ideas for developing BEST at European level. The first event of such way organized by CMT members was SPOC Meeting in Chania 1996.The trainers’ meetings are short events that are aimed to increase the skills and knowledge of its participants on a specific topic, or to develop new and existing training concepts. For example they can be organized to develop a new TrainShop or to train the trainers on a specific topic that is needed to be delivered during other BEST events.This kind of events is quite young, dated from 2006. Until then, TiGro CMT meetings sustained the needs and it wasn’t considered a must to have them in the CMT agenda.

International Projects’ Forum & Inter Committee’ Forum

International Projects’ Forum (IPF) is a yearly meeting where BEST members from international working bodies gather to work on specific projects of their body and cooperate with other bodies. Formerly known as Inter Committee’ Forum (ICF), its name was changed in 2006 when the work in BEST started to get more project oriented rather than committee oriented. More and more bodies of BEST got invited among the participants of the event as well as our NGO partners.

The first ICF was considered to be a Workshop(Committee kick-off) with all of the CMT delegates that needed to work on the common projects. LBG Warsaw was the first organising LBG of such an event. The main topics discussed were about the Future of BEST, development of Karamba and Vivaldi programme and discussions about the collaboration and structure of other student organisations.

Together with the name and participants, a major change was in the way the schedule was handled. The schedule of ICF was committee-oriented, each team having its day of discussion with another team. It was more or less up to them to manage the time and fit all the topics in the given time. IPF on the other hand, has a clear predefined schedule for each person participating. The sessions are project-oriented and each session benefits from exactly the people who need to work on that topic. Although a painstaking job for the person making the schedule, the efficiency it brought pays off immensely.

In 2008-2009 the event gathers 50-60 most active members of BEST International. It is one of the most important internal working events that BEST has and in 4-5 days its participants can work on more than 20 different projects.

The second edition got the name ICF and was hosted by LBG Tallinn in 2002. In the next years, LBGs like Timisoara, Ghent, and Bucharest hosted the following editions. The Inter

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First ICF -Committee Kickoff , Warsaw 2001

Committee’ Forum was prepared to be a meeting for people active on the international level of BEST. For four days the BESTies worked on current projects of BEST, and took a deep look into how they could continue serving BEST in the best way.

In 2006, ICF turned into IPF. For the first time, project coordinators were included and the discussions were project oriented. The first IPF was organized by LBG Riga, and until 2009, LBGs like Lund, Skopje and Zagreb helped BEST plan its activity for the next year.

Round Table

This event gathers representatives from our multinational partners, possible future partners and BEST members. The goal of this meeting is to evaluate the cooperation and to look for further cooperation possibilities. We very much value the feedback of companies and are looking for ways for them to be more involved in our organisation in order to ensure a sustainable way of working together. We aim not only at using our network for promotion of their activities, but also to use their expertise in areas to further develop our members and students we reach.

First round table concept was discussed at BEST-bonding partnership Workshop Porto 1997. In that autumn BEST and bonding planned for their future collaboration events like Round Tables where all of the hot topics where discussed freely. After that event, BEST considered this kind of approach with potential, so , in GA 2002 in Paris, BEST organized

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their first Round Table with their 6 companies (partners, possible future partners) and BEST members(mostly Board members). “The Round Table Meeting” consisted of a number of topics. Some were meant to give information, some to ask for feedback and other to discuss and evaluate. Some of the topics discussed were: opportunities given by Minerva, the interest of companies in UK students, opportunities for companies and students and FB from companies related to MinervaUntil 2009, 6 editions of Round Table were organized soldered with General Meetings.

Internal Events articles written by Cristina Dumitru and Mirela Andriescu

General Meetings What a general meeting is In the very beginnings of the organisation, the face of Europe was totally different from what we know now. Back in the late 80’s there was still no fast way of communication across Europe and mail, telephones and fax was the only way members could share experiences and information with each other. Thus the need for meetings was born. After all, the whole organisation was born during a meeting. The first meeting, even before BEST was created, was held in Stockholm in 1987, and it was the very first form of a General Meeting. Of course it was totally different and it was called differently (International Week) but it’s the origin of our meetings today. Three meetings and two years afterwards (after the International Week in Grenoble and the European Weekend in Eindhoven) there were thoughts of a working reunion, something that happened finally in Berlin in April 1989. However, this meeting was special, because it started as a Working Reunion and finished as a General Assembly, the first one of BEST! Story of General Assemblies The first General Assembly took place from 10th to 14th of April 1989 in Berlin. Back then, the discussions about legal existence of the organisation were quite a lot. These discussions led to the fist version of the statutes of BEST where they decided that: “What will exist in BEST is only a Board, the General Assembly and the BEST members with the following powers: The General Assembly of BEST elects the new board of BEST, makes the budget and decides on topics.” Something that led in the following article in the statutes: “The General Assembly (GA) is composed of all the active members. Two General Assemblies are held annually between January 1st and December 31st. The invitations and the agenda have to be sent to all active members by the president at least two months before the meeting.

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GA2004 sleeping area

The presence of at least 50% + 1 of the members is necessary to validate the decisions. The decisions are made by absolute majority of members present unless otherwise specified. The president with the assistance of the board guides the assembly and presents the biannual report. The treasurer presents the financial report. Both reports have to be approved by the GA. The GA elects the new board according to the IR.” Since the proposed statutes were approved by the people attending the Working Reunion, they were automatically turned into the General Assembly of BEST, making it the first official BEST event in the history. The vision and the powers of that very first General Assembly of BEST still remains the same today and it’s proud to be the longest living body in BEST.

First President’s Meetings After 7 continuous years of successful General Assemblies in BEST, a new idea was dropped on the table: since the organisation was already getting well established, and since the board would have from now on a 1 year long mandate, why not organising only one General Assembly during the year, and replace the second General Assembly with a smaller one, where there would only be one delegate from each LBG? This idea came to life for the first time in October of 1995 in Trondheim. The new meeting

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was called ‘Presidents’ Meeting’ and only one delegate from each LBG was invited. Having this event made the family of the decision making bodies of BEST to double, since decisions could be taken as well during the Presidents’ meetings. It was decided that more important decisions would be voted again only during a General Assembly, such as changes in statutes, elections of the board etc.

Development of General Meetings Even though the core of the General Meetings remained the same after 20 years, there are some things that changed the way General Meetings happened. Here is a short time-line of important changes concerning the General Meetings:

• 1989 First GA of BEST • 1989 in GA Vienna - Working done in subgroups • 1991 in GA Paris: Home-works are given to each LBG. They had to work on the topic they received and present the outcomes in the next GA • 1991 in GA Lisbon: Speaker’s Corner appears for the first time • 1992 in GA Helsinki-Tallinn: The board presents their half annual report • 1994 in GA Timisoara: First attempt to tell the history of BEST • 1995 in PM Trondheim: First Presidents’ Meeting • 1997 in PM Warsaw: Committee presentations slowly appear • 1998 in GA Romania: The focus of the meeting switched from working to informing, that’s why Discussion Groups instead of Working Groups were scheduled • 1998 in PM in Torino: First time LBG Reports appear. • 1999 in PM in Chania: Training for the delegates is delivered • 2000 in PM in Budapest: LBG Therapy is applied: Tips and tricks are given to LBGs that need them. Also evaluation of the event appears for the first time • 2001 in GA in Ljubljana: A Committee Rally is organised in order to help people understand what the work of the committees is. • 2003 in GA Slovakia: LBGs have the chance to show why are they proud during the LBG Show session • 2004 in GA Oresund: First GM that is covered by live video streaming. • 2006 in GA in Zagreb Gala awards are given to LBGs • 2007 in PM Valladolid: The wake up hour is moved one hour later. This proved to be very efficient for the whole meeting • 2008 in PM Bucharest: Alumni are invited to attend the plenary sessions • 2009 in GA Budapest: Parallel plenary appeared for the first time

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Group Picture PM Chania, 1999

New development in decision making in BEST After 20 years, BEST is proud to have organised 27 General Assemblies and 14 Presidents’ Meetings. However, things are moving and new technology gave us the right tools to change the way of making decisions in BEST. In GA2009 in Budapest, after 3 years of working, a new decision making body is made official in BEST: Virtual International Plenary! Read more about it in another paragraph.


Chapter 7

BEST Projects

• BEST on paper • Visual Identity

• Recognition • University project

• VIP

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BEST ProjectsBEST on Paper

During 20 years of existence, BEST developed many materials of promotion, information designated for BEST members and students in general. Before the online promotion, the members all around Europe turned to promotion through flyers, brochures and catalogues.

Even from the International Week in Grenoble, 1988, the delegates wanted to make a brochure with the purpose of informing the students of Europe of the educational offer each university member of he EAU had. Even if the plan was simple there were some problems like bad communication between the groups and funding.

After 4 years, in 1992, the delegates of the VII-th General Assembly of BEST voted to create the BEST Magazine. This magazine was different from the initial idea and became a promotional tool for BEST. The magazine was supposed to be done by LBG Lund until the next General Assembly as LBG homework. The BEST Magazine was the annual publication of BEST. The publication was addressed to BEST members but in the first place it was used as an introduction for those who never met BEST before or had only a very vague picture on the association.

The content in general was meant to be informative for those who didn’t know too much about BEST, but it had to be still interesting for the ones who were working in the organisation. Therefore the main focus was on the previous year’s activities (state of the art of the major projects, reports from the most important events etc.) and some general information on the association. The magazine was used for promotion towards the companies that could be potential sponsors of BEST.

Besides this, each number contained presentations of one or two LBGs and their activity, background stories about topics, interesting for European students and guest writings.The aim was to get the president of the European Commission, the president of Poland back than, professors or managers to write an article in the publication.

Below are some words from the GA Bratislava report by LBG Lund:

“The goal of the magazineOur aim is to print 10 000 copies which will be distributed for free to all LBGs. The magazine will be so full of ideas and information that students reading this will become enthusiastic and will seize the possibilities to work and study abroad. The students will become aware of the happenings in BEST-Universities. The events at our Universities and in our towns will become more than just incomprehensible titles. This magazine can market BEST among

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students, administrative staff at the Universities and contact persons in the industrial sector.”In 1993 the first issue of BEST Magazine appeared. Realising that this publication was a success, the Board decided to make it a yearly publication. However, finding sponsors and good articles were some of the challenges the members had, but each year, BEST magazine was published and spoke about this student organisation.

cover of BEST Magazine, first issue

Through the years, the structure of it changed, many articles were inserted that talked about the Summer Courses, Cultural Exchanges between the LBGs, the educational involvement of BEST, different events that presented interest for the organisation, partners of BEST and different opportunities for students like internships or scholarships.

At the Workshop in Porto in 1997 the topic of the BEST magazine was discussed and were identified several problems like communication and sending of articles with delay, the lack of money to print the magazine, structure and distribution.

“It seemed obvious that it is necessary to build up an organisational structure for the making

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of BM. Otherwise it’s not possible to secure that the magazine consists the “right articles”, an acceptable layout and a keeping of the deadline”.(WS Porto 1997 report)

Other solutions to the problems were to have a representative of BEST magazine in each LBG and to create a chief editing board consisting of 3 members.

For the 4th magazine, the goal of the magazine changed into a more annual-report of the activity at an international level. From WS Lulea report, 1998:“The aim of the magazine is to present BEST in an interesting way to students (BEST and non-BEST members), companies, universities, professors etc. It should also be an annual report of all BEST activities and projects in the previous year.”

Also there was a shift in editorial style; issues from 1 to 3 had been done independently by individual LBGs (Lund, ENSAM, and Turin) while from issue 4 onwards the responsibility for content was more taken by the board.

For the issues from 5 to 7, the target group of the magazine was primarily on external audience (students, universities, companies) and no longer on BEST members.

All of the issues were printed except issue number 7. Issue 6 and 7 were published online. Issue 7 was originally also planned to be printed, but was in the end only published online due to lack of interested advertisers.

For these last issues it was easier to collect articles because BEST had a growing activity at international and local level. All of the BEST magazines were financed purely by sales of advertisement space to companies/universities, since there was no money on common account to be able to finance it. This was also a bottle neck in the procedure, since problems in obtaining advertisements could lead to delays or cancelling of the publication. In GA 2002 there was a discussion group that decided to split the BEST magazine concept into two different publications, with tighter focus groups (instead of trying to cover companies, universities and students):

• Official Annual Report, aimed at companies• BEST magazine, aimed at students

Also the responsibility for these two was moved over to markeTeam from the board. However, no actual work was started to put together a new issue of BEST magazine (though there was work on the Annual Report), and eventually by summer 2003 the whole concept of BEST magazine was abandoned by decision to produce instead other types of promotion materials aimed at students.

For the issue no. 6, the editor, Risto Koivunen from LBG Helsinki said: “With another advertiser that bought a half-page advertisement, there was a misunderstanding

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about the dimensions between us and their designer. So while we had reserved a 210 x 150 mm space in the layout for this advertisement, we instead got a one with 150 x 210 mm dimensions. Apparently the standards of expressing width x height were different in advertisement trade than the ones found amongst engineers. In the end we decided to just give them a full page advertisement for the price of half a page.

The delivery of the magazines to LBGs for this issue was done in PM 2000 (organised by LBG Budapest), so the layout and printing responsible (who was from Zagreb) ended up travelling to the PM with a rented van, loaded full of magazines. And the presidents had to figure out a way how to fit their 100 copies to their luggage on the way home.”

For the Annual Report of 2001-2002 the structure was more corporate oriented and all of the inside information was not published anymore. The topics were the presentation of BEST’s activity for that year, the projects and relevant events and all of the educational, complementary work and career support BEST has done that year. For the next issue, more space has been given for advertising but without neglecting the topics that represented BEST. The AR grew in pages from 20 at its first issue to 28 at the second. Year by year new approaches and improvements were brought to the AR. “Just some really few ideas for future designers to think of:

• To structure clear, “maybe by different colours”, services, internal management, etc.• Instead of the headings like they were this year maybe some slogans, that are highlighting the quality idea” (Board Summer Meeting 2004 report on AR session)

Year by year a new BESTie is elected to plan and coordinate this project. After gathering the articles, the responsible inside markeTeam takes care of the design of the magazine.For all of these issues we can thank the AR team that year by year worked in finishing the publication on time. However, there were a couple of years in which the AR was published and handed out to the LBGs and other parties with delays.

These are only a few of the materials that speak about the work and efforts of this students’ organisation.

Article written by Risto Koivunen and Mirela Andriescu

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VISUAL IDENTITY of BEST

The first logoThe beginnings are never easy. The great organisation called BEST was born and it needed some visual element that would show our identity. From the international week in Grenoble in 1988, the participants wanted to define the aims, structure and identity of the newly created students’ organisation. Sketches were made defining a common visual identity and by the meeting in Eindhoven, the map of Europe below the BEST acronym was used on reports.

The logo on the Eindhoven report

At the meeting in Berlin 1989, there were 3 proposals for the logo of BEST.“Three new designs have been made and it was voted whether to keep the old one, accept one of the new ones or design a totally new sign.” The new concepts were “the atomic model”, “the sinus wave” and “the circle”. Since none of the new designed logos were accepted, it was decided to combine the sinus wave with the old logo. The responsibles for the new logo were the members from Switzerland (Zurich). However, Zurich didn’t have much activity in the next future and didn’t succeed in their task.

The first official logo was the logo of LBG Trondheim produced before the BEST meeting in Trondheim around 1990 by a senior architecture student Anette Dietrichson. It contained the map of Europe, sinusoid on an oscilloscope screen that represented the engineering students, and a Viking ship. All of the other LBGs were enthusiastic about the logo, but because Trondheim made a personalised logo for their university and town, the LBGs replaced the Viking ship and kelp all the other elements. The first time it was used on materials was on black cotton sweaters that all participants received at the BEST meeting in Oslo in 1990/1991.

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Official logo of BEST from 1990 till 2007

At the same time, the delegates were keen on having a colour representative of BEST. It was voted that the official colour of BEST should be a dark green and the counter proposal to have it blue was rejected. Even if we had common elements, the logo was different from one LBG to another. One aspect was its dimensions. For example Warsaw and Tallinn had it really high and thin in comparison with the other groups.

The BEST members realised that there was still work to be done considering the Visual Identity. Meetings were made and lots of LBGs discussed how they can improve the Visual Identity of BEST and reach a Common Image. The path was rocky as the group members of the organisation were so diverse, but with the determination of some international involved members, it was possible in PM 2007 in Valladolid.

First attempts to change the logoStarting from 1995-1996, every 4 or 5 years there were attempts to reach a Common Image of BEST. As rocky as the path was, it was interesting and exciting in the same time. After some time, the people interested in marketing realised that the logo was not really fitting us. It was complicated, what made it more difficult to print on promotion materials, like t-shirts for example, and it was not that obvious that there shape is supposed to be oscilloscope with sinusoid on it that should represent the engineers.

At GA 2000 in Sweden we faced one of the attempts to introduce a new logo. Yiannis Zevgolis, markeTeam coordinator at that time, made a proposal to change it....into a “worm”. That was the name that the proposed logo got, even though some people say it should be called “hanging tits”. The proposal was rejected.

“One strategy of putting common image into order and to get LBGs to follow guidelines was through new Logo, however we were only after achieving a way of organization displaying

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the same graphical face to the world and not each LBG doing whatever they wanted. “(Mitjia Pirc)

The graphical profileEven though the logo has not been changed, there was a new proposal at GA 2004 Copenhagen about BEST graphical profile. The document stated the general rules of how the logo should be used, what colours are allowed or that the ratio of the logo rectangle should be 4:3. The proposal to have a graphical profile of BEST was accepted and markeTeam managed somehow to convince the LBGs to use it. There were some exceptions as some LBGs were keen on keeping the local logo(a mermaid) like Warsaw or specific colours like Eindhoven(red and blue).

For a certain period of time, LBG Eindhoven made proposals at every GA to change the Official Green to orange-blue ... they even offered nice quantity of Dutch beer to each voter in 2002.

The Worm proposal

Other tools, like pins, templates (presentation, 1-pager, and webpage) helped also a lot to harmonize identity and gave the LBGs proper tools to promote a unified, European organisation.

The shieldAt the same time, during GA 2004 markeTeam was empowered by the LBGs to develop a common image of BEST. As the result, there has been a workshop on the topic. One of the results was the creation of the BEST shields. The idea was to have one shield in the top left corner of the design and one in right lower corner - there would be an inverted shield with the old logo on it in order to slowly replace the old logo. In that spring, members from markeTeam made a proposal for making the shield elements official for BEST, meaning obligatory for all LBGs to use in all BEST materials. As they were made during IPF06 Riga and there was not enough time to show them to LBGs, after a long discussion the proposal

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was withdraw-ed. The Shield elements remained as “guidelines” and “it would be good to use”. Still, some LBGs started using them with quite some success, but we were still pretty far away from the common image.

New proposalsTime was passing by and the BEST still needed to find a way to make our visual identity. The XIX-th board, the Sailors, decided that a Visual Identity for BEST needed to be created, with a good concept .There has been a company with whom BEST collaborated to create a logo proposal for us and they came up with four different concepts, the human concept being one of them.

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

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

So by the time of GA France 2007 more concepts have been created: the flower power, the leaves and the shields. All the four proposals were presented at GA in 2007; none of them were approved but BEST realised that a change must be done soon in the Visual Identity of the organization.

New VIThe BEST Board restarted the project and elected a new Project Leader in the person of Marian Buhnici from LBG Brasov. Prior to Marian, the task was taken by Christian Banik from Stockholm.

New BEST signature

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In 2007 in September, the Visual Identity Workshop in Timisoara 2007 took place and 19 participants interested in the topic joined to create a new visual identity for BEST. The participants were divided into groups and came up with 5 different ideas. Each of these concepts was explained in detail in a brand book. At PM 2007 in Valladolid, all five concepts were presented to LBGs who voted on the new logo. The proposal of the Star Concept was approved. After many years of work to create a common image of BEST at a European level, the goal has been finally achieved. There has been a transition period for 1 year assigned in order to give time to LBGs to start using the new logo. This time has also been used for gathering feedback and at GA Tallinn 2008 the BEST Brand Manual together will all those changes were accepted. By GA Budapest 2009 all the LBGs had to implement the new logo and follow the BEST Brand Manual. BEST has made once again a step towards unity!

Article written by Diana Wosik and Mirela Andriescu

Recognition Project

The recognition of BEST Courses represents the official Recognition of the quality of BEST Courses by the universities. This improves BEST image towards universities, students, companies and other parties. The interest on BEST of all these stakeholders is increasing since our image is getting stronger. Striving for high quality was and still is a long term goal of BEST in order to assure the future survival of BEST. Following the Bologna Declaration, in the near future most European universities will have ECTS-compatible Credit Systems. So far, BEST aimed to find its place in the European Higher Education Area.

The Recognition Project started in 2000, with a joint effort of EduCo and SPOC (now EEC), in order to find a way to have BEST Courses recognised as part of a student’s academic curriculum. After GA2000 Sweden, recognition@ mailing list is created. Following the input gathered in several Discussion Groups, some guidelines and handbooks are produced until 2003. Some LBGs work locally to implement recognition and some in the end manage to get their events recognised defacto (Copenhagen, Louvain-La-Neuve and few others) by agreeing with their universities. At that moment there was almost no coordination from BEST side. Next big milestone in Recognition project was in PM2002 in Bucharest, where it was decided that since Summer Season 2003 the deliverance of the Course Information Form to the participants of BEST Courses is compulsory. The Course Information Form (shortly CIF) is a paper signed by the university of the organising LBG that mentions all the necessary information that will help participants get credits for the knowledge they got during the event. Among others all the lectures and lecturers are mentioned and also an estimation of the ECTS credits that equal the amount of learning hours during the event.

However the project didn’t move on much longer since around 2003-2004 it became inactive

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because the main drivers of the projects retired, the LBGs showed little interest and there was a lack of motivation of SPOC and EduCo members. Finally in EduCo SM 2004 it was decided to put the project on hold. From 2004 and 2005, no further work on Recognition was done. Since Recognition was a long term goal of BESTies though, one year after in summer 2005, EduCo decided to resume the project. Stefan D. was elected Project Coordinator and some preliminary discussion happened. Based on the positive answers from LBGs to the questionnaire at 2005 autumn RMs, it was decided to go further and to have a session about the Recognition project in the International Projects Forum 2006.

In Summer 2006 EEC took full responsibility of the project, having EduCo as a source of information and feedback. During the EEC SM2006 Porto the Project was analysed and later at the BAS Developers Meeting 2006 in Liege the work on recognition was resumed and new progresses were made, like adding a BAS field about the ECTS the courses issue and recognition@ was restructured. A strong promotion campaign started, more input from LBGs was gathered at RMs and GMs, a new CIF layout was developed and a proposal was approved at GA France 2007 making a university or company stamp compulsory starting from Summer Season 2008. Final steps of the project involve the development of a new CIF that is used since 2008, and also CIFs for engineering competitions and Events on Education. Last but not least a letter from the BEST President was written in order for LBGs to use it in their approach to their deans.

The project is moving on, and year by year more LBGs manage to take new steps towards the recognition of our main service: complementary education.

University Project (Centre) University Centre is probably one of the most important projects BEST does for students. Its history begins even before BEST was born as an association. In the International Week in Grenoble in 1988, where the delegates discussed the foundation of a new students association, one of the aims of this organisation was: “make available clear information about every university in the EAU to all interested parties”.

Even if they didn’t know how to do it, it was clear for them that all of the students must have as much information of the educational programmes and offers from the European universities as possible. The first idea was to make a booklet with the educational offers from the universities members of the organisation. There were some step backs because of financial issues and communication at European level back then.

In the Paris WS in 1995 hosted by LBG ENSTA, the concept of Information Centre was discussed.The idea was to have a new WWW page in all the LBGs containing the necessary information

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a student coming from abroad to study in a foreign university might need (general introduction, university matters and practical information).

“All the pages, prepared and kept updated at local level in each LBG, should have the same structure, so that the student could easily find what they need, also comparing the equivalent information in different universities. To make it in a very simple way, we have prepared a skeleton that should be filled following this common structure: it contains explanations and examples that just need to be substituted by the text and the links you already have referring to your university. “(WS Paris Report, 1995)

In GA Tallinn 1996, a proposal to approve the structure of the new formed database in WS Paris was presented. Until PM 96, all of the LBGs needed to have their information uploaded in the Information Centre. As this was quite a short DL, the project wasn’t finished in time. In 2001, during the WS hosted by Cluj-Napoca, the goals and next steps for University Project were discussed.

“On university web page, students will find a lot of information about each university. Students that will want to study abroad (internships, scholarships, thesis, postgraduate studies, Ph. D, research assistants) will have here the best tool. We will offer them general, statistical and practical information. This will be an information guide for all students that will want to study travel or just to inform.

With UNI project we will help universities to promote their activities to all the students around Europe and also among BEST (and best...) students, who are very active, motivated to learn/work, experienced with working with other people. We will offer the international minded students.” (WS Cluj-Napoca Report, 2001)

A list of expectations from students, universities and companies was made at the same WS. According to that list, the BESTies discussed the detailed structure of the new database for University Project. The plan was simple on paper, but when it came to implementing a couple of problems aroused. In ICF Timisoara in 2003, these problems were discussed by EduCo and Minerva members. The main problems of this project were:

• The layouts of the page need to be improve (mT and webteam)• The questionnaire itself it is difficult to fill in.• How to present to the university the project in order to convince them to fill in their profile • Materials needed

They tries to find solutions for each identified problem. After discussing the promotion of the project at Regional Meetings to the LBGs, the delegates concluded that some materials

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with information about the project must be disseminated inside the organisation and to the universities. To convince the universities to fill their profile, the LBGs must make a presentation with the benefits of this project.

Although the project was sustained by EduCo and Minerva CMTs, in short time, a new and independent team was created to involve in this project. This way, in 2005 a new mailing list was created to sustain the communication abut this project and in the spring of 2006, the cooperation with ITC started and the coding was in progress. The project should have had 3 databases (universities, offers, city/student life) but the last part was taken out to be independent and called European Travel Guide.

In October 2006 the LBG Admins pages were ready on ParaDe and the first profile was filled in and in November, ITC launch the project for testing by the LBGs. Until February 2007, the FB was implemented but fewer profiles were completed than expected. After discussing with EduCo and Regional Advisers about encouraging the LBGs to set their university profile, a large promotion campaign was made in September towards the LBGs. In 2007, at the Unification Meeting in Vienna, ITC and UniPRo members decided to integrate the university profiles into the unified system.

“Academic representative logins should be unified, but after login the representatives should see only the information relevant to each of them:

• Teachers should see courses• University project representatives with full access should be able to edit the profile and offers• University project representatives with access only to offers should see only those”

In time, University Project developed into University Centre. Many people both from LBGs but both members of the University Centre team put a lot of effort so that this project comes to an end and students can be better informed about the educational offers of European Universities and not only that . From the ones that dedicated their time and believed in the project are the coordinators of University Centre like Vincent Layec and Marlene Winkler from LBG Vienna. Although the number of LBGs that have their profile finished has grown, there are still more things needed to be done until all of the profiles are ready and active.

Article written by Mirela Andriescu based on the University Project History wikis

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Virtual International Plenary

In February 2007 fourteen BESTies gathered to a workshop in Ankara. Not only was it the first international event organised by the Local BEST Group from the Turkish capital, it was also the first time when open space technology was applied for the whole workshop. The goal for participants was to find answers to the question: “How does the decision-making process in BEST influence the future of the organisation?”

In an open, brainstorming atmosphere, one of the topics discussed was the efficiency of the decision making process and the effects of the fact that international decisions can be made only twice a year on GMs. Suddenly an idea appeared to create an online voting system for BEST, so decisions could be made much faster. Everybody liked the idea and it was developed further. Martin Varvas from Tallinn became the topic owner, because he initiated the discussion.

It is also interesting to know where the name VIP comes from. It had to be cool and catchy so people would remember it. There were many proposals with words online, virtual, international, voting etc.Finally, VP - Virtual Parliament was proposed. But BEST was already using VP for Vice Presidents and parliament sounded too political. Then Noelia Bear from Barcelona proposed VIP and everyone agreed with laughter. Then it was only a matter of seconds to find a meaning for I and P.

After the workshop the only toilet with a seat and a plug in the Ankara - Istanbul Express train was occupied by us to write there port. The queue behind the door got quite long, but nothing can stop a true working BESTie. And the report got celebrated well in the restaurant wagon, because the train was four hours late...

Practical historyAfter these first steps, BESTies needed to kick off the project; most of the work was oriented towards technicalities and fine-tuning. The internal regulations needed to be changed so they would include a new decision making body, which means all details had to be defined and well tested beforehand.

After GA 2007, a new working group started working for this. The first VIP Speaker (Karina Herman) was announced in September 2007, having a mandate until GA 2008. In this period, the main steps forward were defining a procedure for selecting a deputy speaker, testing the mailing lists (both technically and the way LBG delegates understand to use them), designing the IT system (voting and conduction of the Plenary) and promotion of the project to LBG members. The year between GA 2008 and GA 2009 saw the birth of the IT System, built as a graduation thesis by Diana Daradici, creative solutions for all the issues popping up from the several situational tests for the behaviour of the Virtual

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Plenary, clear regulations and enough trust from LBG delegates to make VIP an official decision making body of BEST.

During GA 2009, the proposals to change the regulations for including VIP were approved. The working group, lead by Diana Daradici in the last year, will continue existing for a short period, to ensure support in using the plenary.

Article written by Karina Herman and Martin Varvas


Chaprter 8

BEST and Partners • Non governmental organizations • Companies

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Chapter 8:BEST and Partners

BEST and Partners

bonding

bonding is our partner student organisation in Germany that was founded in 1989 by some committed students of engineering and sciences of the technical university of Aachen. Even though their goal is to create contact between students and companies, and even though they were born in the same period of BEST, our roads didn’t cross till the mid 90s. Since May ‘94 LBG Turin had contacts with a German technology student organisation called “bond-ing”.

Back then, bonding contacted BEST to have a help in the promotion of the European work-shop held in September 1994 in Aachen. Since many universities in Germany were target universities for the growth of BEST, it was a great way to connect with German students. After this contact, more and more LBG Turin members went to Germany during bonding company fairs and bonding members attended BEST workshops. The first cooperation plan between BEST and bonding was voted upon in GA1997 in Belgium. It was mentioning cooperation in promotion of the organisations, participation of bonding students to BEST events, and representation of BEST and bonding, in bonding and BEST General Meetings respectively. This cooperation plan also helped the establishment of the first joint project of the two organisations, which was a workshop called ‘Dasa’, organised in Turin. This event was attended by Turin and Berlin students and a German company called Dasa participated and did a case study for these students.

Since this event was characterised as a success, new projects started running, with the next big one being the first summer course organised by a bonding group. The event happened in summer 1998 and it was organised by bonding Berlin. Only 10 participants from BEST universities attended the event, and thus is was not recognised as a learning event.

At the same time, BEST and bonding started collaborating in more areas than those men-tioned in the cooperation plan. bonding members were present at the beginning of the Min-erva project in 1997 and they introduced Lotus Notes in BEST. BEST members joined a lot of job fairs in Germany and got experience in organising them, while at the same time more courses started getting organised by bonding groups. Lastly, the cooperation in training matters also started rising, and in the summer of 2000 TRAP II was organised in Dresden in cooperation of TIGro and Con Moto, the bonding group dealing with training.

Till summer 2003, more than 500 students from bonding applied to BEST courses and 200 of them had the chance to live the BEST spirit, while at the same time around 150 students from BEST universities had the chance to attend one of the 7 courses organised by bonding groups. A full scale cooperation went on running with more additions in the initial coopera-

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tion plan such as promotion of Minerva in the job-fair catalogues of bonding and a lot of TrainShops being attended and organised by BESTies and members of bonding, full access of bonding to Private Area and public archives.

During PM 2003 in Belgium, a first crack in the cooperation with bonding appeared. Several BEST members questioned our cooperation and made a proposal to revoke the right from students who are coming from bonding associated universities to apply for BEST Season Courses. This proposal was rejected and a suggested timeline was approved in order to improve the cooperation with bonding.

Later on, besides the official events between the two organisations, several cultural ex-changes between LBGs and bonding groups were realised, bringing the students from BEST and bonding closer. All those contacts proved that BEST and bonding can cooperate to realise joint projects and especially to exchange know-how that helps the development of both organisations.

Not much has changed since 2003 in the cooperation plans. Since there was a decrease of knowledge exchange (less people attending bonding job fairs and less German students at-tending internal BEST events) and people exchange (less courses organised by bonding and less German students sent to BEST courses) between the two organisations, new projects had to be found. The next big project that got initiated was the International Engineering Competition, where together with CFES, BEST and bonding started preparing a big Engi-neering Competition (IEC) for students coming from all three organisations. The discussions about IEC started in GA2006 in Zagreb, and a timeline was made in order to have the event in 2010.

In the end of 2008, a workshop was organised to evaluate the cooperation between BEST and bonding. As the cooperation was found to be unbalanced, several proposals were sub-mitted during the General Assembly 2009 in Budapest. Many of the LBGs agreed with the concerns stipulated in the workshop. Nevertheless they insisted in having a life meeting with bonding to see how the balance can be regained.

At the moment of writing, this workshop is scheduled but did not take place yet. Let’s see what the future holds!

CFES

BEST was officially introduced to the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students (CFES) in Spring 2000 at the GA in Stockholm, where the president of CFES (Amitabh Saxena) did a presentation of the CFES for the members of BEST. No project however was defined there for the organisations to cooperate on. Since January of 2001, discussions were initiated and CFES started thinking of their own courses programme. In spring 2001 and during GA

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in Ljubljana serious discussions on how to cooperate on projects took place and the main exchange activities, complementary education courses and Engineering competitions, are identified. CFES was also interested in a Career Support program for its members, but this interest died after some time.

The cooperation went one step further in 2002, when in March teams from BEST went to Quebec city in Canada, in order to compete in the Canadian Engineering Competition. The bad news is that one of them wins the Team Design category and the Canadian sponsors are not really happy about it. At the same time, the first international workshop took place with representatives of bonding and NAESC (National Association of Engineering Student Councils, USA).

After 2 years of collaboration with CFES, BEST was also ready to take one big step in its history: to organise the first demonstration of a competition during GA2002 in Paris, where representatives from CFES were present. At the same time, the representatives of CFES get the very handy electronic voting system, that BESTies had developed few years ago, and bring it back to Canada to use it in their voting sessions and they name it ‘votrön’.

2003 was a very important year for the cooperation of BEST and CFES. It was the year that the first education course and the first full scale competition was organised by CFES and BEST accordingly. All the experience and knowledge sharing was extremely fruitful in the end, with two very successful events. BEST and CFES proved that a cooperation between two organisations can have good results. The first course of CFES was organised in summer 2003 by Ryerson Polytechnical.

After the very successful events, new ideas for collaboration between BEST and CFES started to get developed. One of them was the Sister schools pairs and it was introduced in GA2003 in Slovakia. For such an idea to proceed though, a cooperation plan between BEST and CFES had to be adopted. After almost 1 year, this new idea started functioning and the first two pairs were selected. They were Lund - Sherbrooke and Patras - Calgary.

However the “Sister schools pairs” idea was not developed further and no more pairs got selected. This was also one reason why BESTies and CFES members tried to find a new common working project. After a lot of discussion the idea of an International Engineer-ing Competition (IEC) together with bonding was brought in GA2006 in Zagreb. After long discussions and planning, the event was planned to happen in 2010. The reason for such a long timeline is the complexity of the event, and also the quality standards that have to be met in order to assure a good competition. Besides all, big preparations from all three organisations were needed in order to prepare their competitions system and to be able to send good quality competitors to the IEC.

The cooperation of BEST and CFES is a good example of a fruitful cooperation. It has

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resulted in big projects and a lot of improvements and new ideas in both organisations, regardless of the big distance and the relatively few exchanges between members. Let’s see what the future holds!The website http://www.cfes.ca gives more information about CFES.

Unofficial Gossip Starts here:Deep Grewal & Guillaume Renaud (BEST Ambassador & CFES VP Comm) attended PM 2004 in Porto.Both quickly adapted to the BEST Spirit and demanding schedule of the Portuguese lifestyle. While Mr. Deep developed an appreciation for the food, drink and locals, Mr Renauld was fascinated by the hotel elevator and was found asleep early morning on a couch within the elevator. Typical GM events continued; highlights include marathon working sessions, mara-thon drinking sessions. Deep & Guillaume were introduced to 95% Alcohol Polish Spiritus and Deep’s favourite Vanna Tallinn!

Other NGOs

There are several European and worldwide student organisations, each offering some spe-cific services to the students of their target group.

BEST is collaborating with these associations, which helps to improve the existing projects and share the experience in the various fields of expertise, and at the same time to lower the barrier for students to find the right organisation fitting to their studies. Take a look here for an introduction to most of those student organisations.

Besides the organisations that BEST is officially cooperating with, there are numerous or-ganisations that BEST is in contact in order to exchange ideas, projects and people among each other. Some of them are:

AEGEE, AIESEC, EDSA, EESTEC, EFPSA, ELASA, ELSA, EMSA, EPSA, ESN, ESTIEM, EUROA-VIA, FISEC, IAAS, IADS, IAESTE, IAPS, IEEE, IFMSA, IFSA, IPSF, IPSO, ISAVCP, IVSA, JADE, PRIME and WISE.

Each of these organisations are different, however what they all have in common is the aim of promoting mobility and exchange among students. Exchange and communication is vital for all of them in order to sustain their services and develop their members so that each one can reach their goals.

Besides the individual communication, there are more ways that these organisations com-municate. One of them is IFISO (Informal Forum of International Students Organisations). This forum brings organisations even closer and reaches the goals of communication and exchange in a more structured way, even though it is informal.

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BEST and Companies

PrehistoryGrenoble 1988. EAU (European Association of Universities) was just getting the idea to change its name to BEST. Those were great times. Those were the times when the wheel was just being invented for the first time!!!

One of these wheels was the one that fuels most of our activities: the money wheel. A short term goal of the association was to get companies interested in the EAU.

Yet, money was not the only thing the EAU was expecting to get from the companies. An-other goal (long term this time) was to create international job-shops where “foreign firms” - as they were called - would propose jobs to students. The goal was indeed very long term, as to this day BEST has still not organized a live international job fair although the idea circled around many times. However it is interesting to see how after 21 years, some local BEST job fairs still bear the name JobShop.

The short term goal to get companies interested worked well though. Already during the next meeting in Vienna in 1989, BEST was in contact with P&G, Schlumberger, Fiat, and Thompson.

The very first company meeting took place in 1991 with P&G during the BEST Conference and Members Meeting - GA - organized by ENSAM, but it wasn’t one without problems. Strangely enough the problem was in choosing the BEST members that would attend the meeting. Eventually, the arguments ended and 4 people were chosen, but this started an-other discussion: Would BEST need to elect a board?

In preparation of this meeting, the GA delegates also held a brainstorming session on what BEST can offer to the companies and what the companies can offer back - and so was formed the first fundraising strategy!

The Industrial EraOne of the first steps taken towards starting the contacting of companies was BIN (BEST Industry Network) Born during GA Liege 1992, this was meant to be a tool through which LBGs would share contacts of Industrial Partners with each other and with Global BEST (or international BEST as we know it now) We might say this was the first Company Database of BEST! ...though it never really developed.

GA Liege also brought along the first set of guidelines and limitations regarding Global Part-ners, such as not advertising products, or not cooperating with companies in the cigarettes, alcohol and arms industries.

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Another wheel was invented for the first time in GA Warsaw 1993: STED (Students of Tech-nology European Database) The very first mention of a CV database! Ethical limitations were imposed here as well, the strongest one being: “The personal data of the members of the database cannot be given to any Company” The idea was for the companies to read the competencies of the student, and only if they decide (s)he is interesting, a member of the STED team would facilitate the contact.

Of course, a CV database so early in the internet era was not very feasible, so the idea died quite soon after.

At the same GA in Warsaw, a new project was launched: GPI (Global Partnership with the Industry) which could be looked upon as the first wheel for the later Support Group and Partnership Levels. This project was being led by one of the committees of the time: The Industry Subgroup.By PM Timisoara 1994, STED, GPI and BIN had become things of the past. So much so, that a discussion group was already reinventing the wheel when they proposed that a Global partner should get promotion in all local groups.

The Dark Ages ended quickly, and already in 1995 huge steps were being made. The first fundraising handbook for LBGs got released in GA Patras, and... tam-ta-raaaaam! The first Global Partnership! And not just any kind, but a three-year contract with ENSPM (Ecole Nation-ale Superieure du Petrole et des Moteurs). Huge step, but it was still not a company.

One more wheel got reinvented (luckily) during that GA, when after being elected, the new treasurer (Alfredo Loreto) stated he would start a new committee to deal with global fundrais-ing. No more than one year later, in GA Tallinn the GFC (Global Fundraising Committee) was established, after a set of very strong proposals.

Proposal 1 (in PM Trondheim ‘95): To allow the treasurer to speak to potential partners on behalf of all LBGs. He would be allowed to give tasks to LBGs according to what the global sponsors required. These tasks would range from collecting CVs or questionnaires to even organizing company seminars.

Proposal 2 (in GA Tallinn ‘96): Every LBG will have a Global Fundraising Responsible.

These local responsibles are to be used for implementing what the companies require, in case this implies work on the local level (such as promotion or events). As a benefit to the LBGs, if a company wants to have a local partnership, the GFC member will establish the contact, and the money will be divided between the LBG and BEST International.

LBGs had 1 month to elect a GF responsible and communicate the name to the treasurer.

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The GFC (Global Fundraising Committee) was formed not of these responsibles, but of very experienced BESTies (current and former boardies) which were aided at the local level by the GF responsibles in case a partner needed some local promotion.

Still, with all of this, one year later (1997) there was still no partnership signed apart from the one with ENSPM. This could be attributed to several factors: lack of things to offer to compa-nies, lack of company contacts, and lack of international FR experience.

But then, in PM Warsaw 1997, the lack of things to offer was a lack no more! MINERVA was born! The dream of STED (long time forgotten) was now becoming reality and BEST was building an international CV database.

By 1999 MINERVA was up and running and Fiat became the very first company to pay for access to the CVs. In the same year, we also had another thing up and running: the Support Group. As it was thought of, the member companies would work together with BEST for the same purpose of offering personal and professional development to students. The companies’ involvement was not just limited to money (though this was also a part of it) but they also had to give input and support in the design of new initiatives. The members of the SG were P&G, Price-waterhouseCoopers and American Management Systems.

The Great WarsMuch like human history, BEST financial history had its Great Wars too.

The First Great War: Alcohol, Cigarettes and Guns.If you remember the prehistory part of this story, in 1992 a GA had decided that BEST should not cooperate with companies from the above mentioned industries.

Well, in 1999 when MINERVA and the SG were just picking up, a very simple and clear pro-posal made by LBG Budapest removed that limitation from our Internal Regulations. There were no heavy discussions on the topic, just a clear vote that would remove a rule people were not so sure about.

Of course a hot topic like this couldn’t stay dormant for long, and in GA Greece 2005 it picked up again. Proposals and counter proposals with one or more options were pouring in. We shouldn’t cooperate with alcohol producers... cigarette producers... arms producers... or any company that does not have good ethics. Things got hot there. Between all the ethics and the shades of grey, no limitation was voted. The reasons that popped up were:

• It’s very hard to draw a line between ethical and non-ethical companies• It’s hard to tell which work with arms, as many make software for arms• We are non-political so we shouldn’t discriminate• Some LBGs are part of Military Universities

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• We promote career opportunities, not the productsFor now, this war is quiet.

The Second Great War: BEST is not a companyThis war was not nearly as dramatic or hot as the first one on the one hand, but it is surely not over on the other. We could say it is a cold war.

One the one foot (hands are already busy), BESTies are aware their organization is built and structured after following the examples and input of several companies, and that many training topics and organizational knowledge that we have comes from the industrial world. They are surely also aware of its value.

On the other foot, BESTies are afraid of the companies’ influence on their spirit and pureness of heart. They get suspicious when a company gives input on a session in plenary, feeling like the company is trying to elbow its way into our ways of work. They get defensive when a company proposes organizing an event, because we shouldn’t organize what the companies want (this is part of the IRE since 1992). Trying to make a point about BEST work by giving an example from a company or corporation is a sure way to lose an argument in plenary.

This is a war that will never be over (hopefully) and the balance will be kept, as neither way is a good way to go in itself.

The Corporate EraAt the change of the Millennium, BEST international FR was on the rise. MINERVA was launching and going seemingly well, the Support Group had 3 companies at all times... BEST could finally afford travel refunds and administrative expenses.

In 2000 in The Hague, BEST held its very first Partners Round Table! (entitled Support Group Meeting) It’s interesting to see that the structure of this meeting is the same as the one being used in BEST Partners’ Round Tables today: presentations about BEST structure, activities, and opportunities for companies, plus input on 2-3 hot topics in BEST.Things were going well.In 2003, the Support Group Team officially became finTeam and soon after Partnership Lev-els were born to replace the Support Group.Two years later, when CaSCo was dissolved and the CV database went into finTeam’s ca-pable hands, FR results sky-rocketed.The BCS - BEST Career Support (former BCC, former MINERVA, former STED) - was gather-ing lots of CVs and Career Newsletter Subscribers, and the partners were lining up.

Even more tools were developed for the companies, one of which was LCE - Local Career Events (former Jimmy). This is a place where all LBGs can upload their upcoming events so that companies from all over Europe can get the info quickly and possibly attend.

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In 2008 BEST already had 18 annual industrial partners, and the budget went into the 6 digits. Of course this was the perfect time for an economical crisis.

Evolution in a nut shell

LegendBIN = BEST Industry Network, STED = Students of Technology European DatabaseGPI = Global Partnership with the Industry, MINERVA = Moving Into a New Era of Recruitment with Virtual Access, SG = Support Group, BCC = BEST Career Centre

Article written by Cristian Arteni


Chapter 9

BEST Culture

• BEST Traditions

• BEST Stories

• General Meetings

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Chapter 9:BEST Culture

BEST CultureBEST Traditions

Portuguese scarf/flagIt all started at Summer Course Lisbon 2005. At the city-rally we were given the task to bring pictures of the Portuguese scarf. In my team we wanted to do something original and I came up with the idea that our 3 girls can pose topless and cover themselves just with this Portuguese scarf. I did not think they will accept but they were crazy enough to do it. So we did it in the middle of the street in a quite exposed place. I remember an old lady saw this out of the window and started to shout at us. Then the guys took their pants off for another picture and the old lady got really mad ... she was screaming ‘go away, whores!’ and threatened to call the police. But we managed to escape ... with the picture :)

So this is the first one ever in the history of BEST, August 2005, taken in Lisbon:

Initially I did not pay too much attention to it; I just uploaded it together with the others. But some people forwarded the link and soon it started to get hundreds of visits from all over BEST. After that I saw it in many places ... including presentations.

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The next famous one was taken at Alpine JAM 2006 Turin:

This one was the best organized picture. We collected all the scarves and then we promoted the idea to the girls at the party. Many of them wanted to do it. So we went in a room and started to practice the order of the girls, the position of the scarves, etc. The boys did some topless pictures in the snow just to test the light, distance, flash, etc. When everything was ready the girls stripped and got out in the snow. Because of all the preparations they were only in the cold for a few seconds, we took it and they went back in.

At Pekmez 2007 Serbia there was also one:

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By this time the girls already knew the concept and many of them wanted to be in the picture ... but there were not so many scarves available.At PM 2008 Bucharest, Nuxa (Ana Relva Pereira) really wanted to do another one. So she prepared the scarves and recruited all the girls. She told me to be ready at a specific time. I went for 5 minutes in my room and I was so tired that I fell asleep. Later I saw they did it without me ... I am still thinking how stupid I was to miss it :)

At JAMon 2008 Madrid there were many scarves and many many girls. We did it but the room was not big enough for one good shot of the entire group. So I took 3 shots and somebody later stitched them into a panorama (sent later on junk@).

However the thing became too disorganized. A lot of horny guys wanted to get inside the room and take pictures while the girls were changing. Also it has been done so many times it’s not original any more.So maybe it’s time to stop doing it ...and leave it just a part of BEST History...

Article written by Sabin Popa

Roof Parties

The original roof parties were at the GA in Patras 1995, when a bunch of people met up before the GA at a youth hostel. The best place to drink and chat happened to be on the roof. Later at the same GA, a larger bunch of people managed to climb a shelter on a beach to induce more alcohol and sing and dance. The most notorious roof party at that GA was when some BESTies convinced a bunch of people it would be a great idea to party on the roof of the hotel. The tricky part was that the best way to get to the roof was by opening a window, squeeze out through a net, and climb on the neon lights (hotel name) on the facade of the hotel. It was a rather dangerous proposal. This party was abruptly finished as

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the hotel personnel had their quarters just below and called security. That was probably for the better as the amount of alcohol consumed in no way could improve the climbing skills for getting back down... After the Patras GA there were a set of small roof parties, but the real memorable roof party was the one at the Lisbon GA (1999 I think) where everyone, still standing or being carried up, gathered on the top of the hotel to meet the sun and celebrate the ending of the GA. It was probably the last but the greatest roof party BEST had.

Article written by Busse Pettersson

International Evening

If you are a BEST members, for sure you attended at least one International Evening …at a Course, or a Summer Meeting, a SIM or Trainshop, not to mention the ones at General Meetings.

The International Evening was first seen in BEST at the GA in Tallinn 1996. Busse Pettersson, then vice president of the VIII-th board, had been at one international evening the year before at the Erasmus Student Network Annual General Meeting (or ESN AGM for short) and thought it was a brilliant idea. He proposed it to the GA organizers who managed to squeeze it into the GA agenda.

Greeks at IE GA Ljubljana in 2001

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International evenings are the party where each country has a table, and the participants present their country’s most specific foods and drinks. Some people try bringing the best and finest their country has to offer, but most of them go for the strongest and the unique. It is very important to know that you can’t touch any food or drink before the table was presented to everyone.

It is also not uncommon for each country to have to sing a specific song. Once again, national anthems are not as big as you’d think, but they would rather sing short and funny songs that everyone can remember. Another BEST tradition connected to the International Evening is the Death Tour. This is an honor reserved for the Event Main Organizer / Coordinator / LBG President / BEST President or even all of them at once if they are there. They have to prove their leadership by going to each table as soon as it is presented and drinking a shot of the country’s strongest potion.

It is probably the most interesting and craziest party that BEST keeps on having event after event and for sure it will be present on more and more event’s schedules.

Article written by Busse Pettersson and Cristian Arteni

Zoltan’s Mother

As many people know, during each GA, Zoltan’s Mother is proposed for president, and she never confirms. Few of us know where it comes from, so here it is. The history has been told by Ludovic Charpentier on alumni@ and junk@.

“I can tell you as I am the author of this joke (with Jesus Hidalgo’s help) during GA02 in Paris.

At the first plenary session, delegates have to introduce themselves, which can be quite a boring exercise except when some of them put some fun. After N presentations of “Hi my name is ..., I come from LBG ...” it’s Zoltan Bartalis’s turn and his famous: “Hi, my name is Zoltan Bartalis, LBG Lulea, and I want to thank my mother!”. A few rounds after, it’s Jesus Hidalgo’s turn, saying: “Hi, my name is Jesus Hidalgo, LBG Barcelona, and I also want to thank Zoltan’s mother!”.

So, naturally, during the first nomination round for the board candidates, I’ve nominated Zoltan’s mother for president. Unfortunately, Zoltan’s mum resigned and Zoltan read the delegates a nice letter when she said she was too busy taking care of her lovely son to run... As Zoltan also attended GA03, she was also nominated there... but I didn’t expect her to get nominated again, and again, even when Zoltan stopped attending GAs.” Last time Zoltan’s mother was nominated was GA09 in Budapest (last GA before the

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book was written), when she also got a first name. The people editing the excel file with the nominations suggested the name Boglarka Bartalis for Zoltan’s mother, but this was never confirmed. We bet that Zoltan’s mother will be nominated over and over again…..

I’m a strawberry. Eat me! Well actually, the first time the sentence was ever heard was at Skiozart 1995 in Les Arcs (it is the annual ski trip organized by all ENSAM schools in France). I was talking with some of the ENSAM students and asked them if they could teach me something in French. “What would you like to say?” they asked. During the 2 seconds I was thinking, the best I could think of was “I am a strawberry” and got as a reply “aaaaahh” (some hand waving) “Je suis une Fraise!”. By then I had had a few more seconds to think and thought “Eat me!” would be the natural continuation and even better phrase to learn. “Mange moi!” After Skiozart there were a few more trips before Patras GA and everywhere I went I tried to learn at least the strawberry phrase. At the GA in Tallinn I also got a nice flip-chart where people had written “I am a strawberry” in their respective languages (I still have it somewhere). Interesting to see that a phrase coined by a drunk Swede with poor imagination has lived on for over 10 years! The hardest language I have found so far is Chinese, which I have never managed to remember more than 5 minutes (and with horrible pronunciation).

Article written by Busse Pettersson

WebTeam Birthday tradition

First of all, it was NOT a bug in the system. The tradition goes back to the PM2000 in Balatonfoldvar (organised by LBG Budapest). At that time Daniel Buxeres I Petitpierre (LBG Barcelona) was the web-master of BEST (webTeam didn’t exist yet, it was officially founded a bit later). He was a funny guy liking practical jokes a lot.

At a certain moment, when he entered the dining room, Cristi (one of the founding fathers of ITC), Toto, I and some others decided to run a joke on him: we started singing happy birthday. This was very funny since he didn’t really know how to react when the whole room joined us in our song. There we got “the joking master” finally back.

We liked it so much that we started to sing every day this song for him. Sometimes it was just a song of two minutes, sometimes it really got super-funny because of the reactions of the people.

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Stefan Baebler (another practical joker around) decided then to continue this joke by adding Dani on a daily basis to the birthday mailing list. He didn’t know (again) how to react. He received hundreds of emails by people wishing him a happy birthday.

Later onwards, the tradition was started by transferring it to Maria Alandes Pradillo (LBG Madrid), the next webTeam coordinator. It happened with a small delay (so at first it was not a webTeam coordinator thingie, but a Dani-feature). At the closing dinner of the PM01 in Toledo (organised by LBG Madrid), there was a particularly good atmosphere. There was plenty of drinks around (for free) and good quality food. Maria had contributed greatly to the PM as well, but preferred to stay ‘behind the curtains’. Together with Fred Habils and Dani, we decided to ‘reward’ her for her efforts (both in webTeam and also during the PM) by making the whole room sing ‘happy birthday’ to her. A clever ITC guy (I have no clue whom) did some programming one of the next days and suddenly a tradition was born: the webTeam coordinator birthday tradition.

Since then it has had its heights and lows, but in the beginning it surely was a tradition to sing every day during the international events where the webTeam coordinator was present. Sometimes we even had a birthday cake (taken care of by internationally involved local organisers).

After my mandate as webTeam coordinator (2002-2003) the tradition got a bit less intense, probably caused as well because the new webTeam coordinator (Iulian Tatarcan, LBG Timisoara) was overloaded by studies, job, girlfriend, LBG presidency and webTeam on top. He was thus not very present.

The tradition still didn’t die out and when Zanda Sproge was elected webTeam coordinator it got a small new boost. But the main showing of this tradition was on the birthday mailing list from that moment onwards. And still a bit during the General Meetings, where (as I remember) the birthday song was sung right after the approval of the new webTeam coordinator.

Article written by Nico Deblauwe

Stealing the mascot One of the most famous thing BESTies do, is creating mascots. Each group, LBG, board, team, person or any entity has a mascot and they are very proud of it! They carry it around and show it off to people that are not in their team. This habit can only be overruled by another, even stronger habit: BESTies stealing those mascots. It is normal that this habit is stronger for three reasons that can be proven mathematically:

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• There are more people outside than inside each group: Meaning that all BEST members are around 2.000, and each group is usually 30-40 people. Do the math and you’ll find out why it’s most probable to want to steal a mascot than having one! ;) • There are people inside each group that steal their own mascots: Yes, it sounds crazy, but craziness didn’t ever stop BESTies from doing something. Desperate teams that nobody cares about their mascots, might refrain to such tactics in order to gain publicity for their mascot and feel a bit better themselves. • You can steal each mascot more than once: That is easy to understand.

There are mascots that have been stolen (and restored) for about 15-20 times. Something like this increases the balance of people that have stolen a mascot, over those that never stole a mascot. Read more to find out ;)

It all started with one of the most (maybe the most) famous mascot in BEST: Nijntje! Nijntje, a famous children book character that started in the 1950s in the Netherlands was a present to LBG Eindhoven from the participants of the Summer Course in 2001. Since then she’s travelling and exploring Europe and the same time conquering the hearts of everyone she encounters. Of course this results to the mascot being stolen, but members of LBG Eindhoven are always happy for their child to be able to see places and people in all four corners of Europe. Of course other mascots tried to imitate the mascot of Eindhoven. It’s what is known in BEST as the “Nijntje effect”. Teddy bears, snakes, chickens, bunnies, bodyless plastic heads, little fishes that look like Nemo, and many more mascots appeared in BEST. However, none of them left a mark in BEST for so many generations as Nijntje: The only mascot with a blog http://nijntje-best.blogspot.com/

Roll me over

What BESTie never heard Roll Me Over? What song-book does not contain it?

The original song is performed by “The Sassy Lassies” and it’s a soldiers’ song, popular during World War II. The rhyming, melody and rhythm probably have stayed the same over the years, but it seems like it’s very tempting to change a verse or two in this song.

And this is exactly what BEST did!

Roll Me Over is present in BEST culture from the very beginning of the organisation. This song was extensively used as one of many songs that was known to the early BESTies at “nachspiel/late parties” with more than one bottle of wine...and this was already back in

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1989.BEST members sang this song at every event back then, including the “I like this feeling” line; from the Lisbon GA in 1991 was included in the first BEST song-book at the time.

From that point, Roll Me Over conquered the hearts of all BESTies and many versions were born. At the BEST-bonding workshop in Nuernberg/Muenchen in 1998, other versions were even recorded by the BESTies and bonding members: Bach, Oktoberfest, orthodox and country versions. The most popular BEST version of the song is the following:

“This is number one and the fun has just begunCHORUS: Roll me over lay me down and do it again (Women yell: I like this feeling) Roll me over, in the cloverRoll me over, lay me downand do it again, again, again...

This is number two and my hand is on her shoe.… three and my hand is on her knee.… four and our clothes are on the floor… five and the girl is still alive… six and I show her all my tricks… seven and she says: “I’m in heaven”… eight and we start to masturbate… nine and I take her from behind… ten and I use my tinted pen… eleven we start it back from the seven… twelve and she says “Do it yourself!”… twenty and my gun is getting empty.… thirty and the song is getting dirty.(very slowly, tired… till the end)This is number one thousand two hundred and forty four and shesays: “I want some mooooooooooooore…”(repeat chorus with an everlasting “do it again, again, again...”)”

In 2001 on GA Ljubljana, there was a brave attempt to remake the song from a woman’s perspective. The result was still a basic draft, but it was worth the try. After 20 years of BEST, Roll Me Over is still rocking hard! Do it again, again, again…

Article written with the help of many alumni

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BROWN

Have you ever noticed that there are some people who are not able to say “NO” when you propose them a task that normally nobody would be willing to accept happily? Well, in Spanish they have a name for these tasks: marrones. And if you translate it to English you get: BROWN.

As all groups that have strange names have acronyms (and BEST loves to have acronyms for everything), this way it was found what BROWN stands for:

BESTies Replying Always Without No

It goes against the membership rules of the group to say NO when someone is offering you a task. However, since no structure inside BEST can survive without a Handbook, one was developed in order to support and sustain the health of the committee. Besides tips and tricks for the possible BROWNer, there is also a terminology developed, that was used by its members in order to avoid possible incoming BROWN.

These people officially do not exist, but everybody knows that these people are everywhere, in every corner of Europe working passionately for the organisation, day and night, 24 days a week, 30 hours per day, 24 seconds per minute. Are you maybe one of them?

Simply the BEST “I call you, when I need you my hearts on fire You come to me, come to me, wild and wild

You come to me, give me everything I need Give me a lifetime of promises and a world of dreams Speak the language of love like you know what it means And it can’t be wrong, take my heart and make it strong, baby”

There is something that shaped and still shapes the heart of every BEST member, and of the people that attended one of the BEST events. If BEST had a hymn, then this song would most probably be it. If BEST had a wish, it would be to have Tina Turner joining a General Assembly. If BEST had an official movie, it would be the video clip. We’re talking of course about ‘Simply the BEST’ as sang by Tina Turner!

“The Best” a.k.a. “Simply The Best” is a song written by Mike Chapman and Holly Knight. The song was originally released in 1988 by Bonnie Tyler on the album Hide Your Heart a.k.a. Notes From America in the United States, and later was re-released as a highly successful single by Tina Turner in 1989 on her hit album Foreign Affair. This version was

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made widely popular inside BEST.

It is not known when exactly did the tradition start, but there seems to be a strong connection between the date that BEST was founded, and the release date of the song. An interview with Mrs. Turner would clear it all, but we just didn’t have the chance to meet her yet. However, for some reason the song became very popular and it is THE soundtrack that connects all the people that tasted BEST. Is it the passionate lyrics? Is it the magnificent saxophone? Is it the repetition of the word ‘BEST’? No one knows, but whenever the guitar starts playing the rhythm of the song everybody grabs each other and they all start jumping up and down forgetting all the tiredness, the disappointments, the bad moments of the day, celebrating like this life and the joy of being again in a BEST event!

“And you’re the best, better than all the rest, better than anyone, anyone I’ve ever met! I’m stuck on your heart, I hang on every word you say Tear us apart, baby I would rather be dead, ooh you’re the best!”

Worst (World Organization of Radical Students of Technology)

The World Organisation of Radical Students of Technology was meant as a tension relieving moment at GAs, in the evening, after day sessions were over. People having made interventions during the day would play a kind of parody of themselves in a funny and informal way together with the others. BEST spirit and spirit in general, was abundant.Worst members know the meaning of terms like “Board of Worst”, “Moral Keeper”, “Treasure of Worst”... Saying that, too much has been said. WORST had a main rule that nothing written about WORST shall exist. But it’s a BEST tradition that has been passed along in the most traditional way (by voice, noting written) and that is probably still alive today, even though it’s hiding. For this reason, not many things are going to be written about WORST, in order to preserve the original tradition of passing everything by voice.

Going against the rules (or better the Traditions, as WORST has no rule) a presentation of WORST was made since people realised it was forgotten during GA2003 in Bratislava. That presentation was never seen again...

WORST was the counter-organisation of BEST, living in parallel with it. WORST and BEST brought balance to the force, even though that many people believe that WORST doesn’t exist any more... But remember, always two there are.Board names

During the last years, a new tradition got popular in BEST: the board names. A board name is a word (it can be anything... from a fruit till an animal an object.... anything) that characterises the team that consist the board. There are several purposes behind this:

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• People feel like having a name, rather than a number for their board• It makes the team feel closer• It’s fun!• People are curious how you got your name• There is an extra reason to make t-shirts, sweaters and other nice stuff

The first board that had a name was the XV board, and their name was “lighthouse”. Then “the gliders” came, just to be followed by “the flowers” and “the jazzers”. The next three boards were “the sailors”, “the lemons” and “the bunnies”.

As it’s visible, the names don’t have any special meaning for people who are not inside the team, something that makes it even more interesting and funny at the same time.Of course the naming doesn’t only happen with the boards, but also with other teams inside BEST. Coordinators have names since the restructuring of the board (being “the ONEs”, “the Smurfs”, “the Trees” and “the Force”... as you see their names follow their number… Apart from that, whole committees and working groups can have a name (we have a clear tendency towards animals. See: Tigers, Kangaroos) or even trainers generations (see: Cows).

Having a name for your team is something definitely cool. It can increase the team-build and also the motivation for the members to work for the ideals that are represented by their name.

BEST Spirit

What is BEST spirit? Now that is a question that is very hard to answer. The reason is because the definition of BEST spirit is not coming from the brain, but from the heart, and it’s coming from thousands of hearts at the same time.Since, no historian could ever give an accurate definition of BEST spirit, a kind of survey was conducted among all BESTies. The question was simple: Define BEST with one word, and the result... we made it a picture :) The bigger the word, the more frequent the word appeared....

So this is the BEST Spirit:

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BEST Stories

Majlosh’s Mother

On Monday 16th of July 2007, something came that would change the life of every helpdesk member active at that moment. It was a request that no equal to it had ever appeared, and that its solution would require the mobilisation of the whole BEST mechanism.

The request was submitted and it was like this:“Hi,I’m Majlosh’s (from Czech Republic) mother. Because I have no chance to contact him (probably he is abroad with his friends from BEST), please send him a message, if it is possible:-His mobile phone should be ready for roaming using.-He must switch it off primarily and switch it on next.-If the provider isn’t applied automatically, it is necessary to try it by MENU handy.-In other case he should contact me by e-mail (‘’e-mail removed for privacy issues’’)

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Thank you very much and tell him please of calling me immediately. (‘’phone removed for privacy issues’’)With kind regards, Majlosh’s Mother (the real name is omitted)”

In the few minutes that followed, a lot of e-mails were exchanged between BEST members, with the result to track Majlosh down in Ljubljana, and let him know that his mother was looking for him.The request was proposed for ‘request of the summer of 2007’. Another successful operation by the Helpdesk team!

The tragedy of MS Estonia

Not all stories in BEST are happy….even so, all stories are pieces of BEST’s life.

In the beginning of October 1994, LBG Lund organised a Workshop that gathered many participants, especially from northern Europe.

The Estonian delegation consisting of 4 members were planning to attend the workshop and boarded on the ferry MS Estonia, on September 28th, to reach Sweden. That night, while cruising in the Baltic Sea, the ferry sunk, claiming 852 lives, among which some members from LBG Tallinn. The ones that perished in the tragedy were Vice-president Andres Avekukk and member Merle Juust and the lucky survivors were President Maiko Kalvet and member Marek Kaasik.

“I was at the workshop in Lund at that time, and I remember the unreal atmosphere… suddenly cheerful students were confronted first hand with the tragedy.” (Michelangelo Calabresi, participant of WS Lund, 1994)

Many years have passed since then, but we have not forgotten. Rest in peace!

General Meetings

Gwen!

Everybody knows the story behind Murphy... When things can go wrong, they will go wrong. And again, everybody knows that technology fails you when you mostly need it... Combining these two together, mixing with a bit of BEST spirit and adding a lot of fun makes us... what else: Gwen!

The story is like this: Back in GA2004 in Oresund, Gwen was the VP of ITC in the board for that year. As each self respecting board table has to have one little geek behind it, so did

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that table in Oresund. The geek of the table is responsible for all kind of technology that is around: microphones, computers, server links, presentations, USB keys and many more. That computer though was a bit more ‘naughty’ than the usual ones.

When things got a bit messy, mighty Gwen tried to solve things out... However as things were talking a bit longer to be fixed, plenary started to become anxious. It was then when they all slowly started saying rhythmically the magic word: ‘Gwen!... Gwen!... Gwen!... Gwen!’ As eye witnesses have described his face was just indescribable, and thus it is left up to your imagination.

Ever since, when difficulties appear and technical problems are to be found, people are calling the old magic words hoping that the problems will be fixed ASAP: ‘Gwen...! Gwen...! Gwen...!’

Speaker’s Corner

Getting the idea from the pretty famous corner in Hyde Park, London, where all kinds of people can stand up and talk about whatever they want. Other people can, of course, listen to them or, (and it seems to happen more often) boo at them.

Based on this corner, a similar idea was developed during GA1991 in Lisbon in a form of a session. People had the chance to get in the middle of the plenary and talk about anything they wanted to share and talk about. Of course, some of the time, the ‘booing’ was inevitable, but most of the times, BESTies were touching topics that couldn’t be touched during the sessions and whole new ideas got developed in this unique way.The speaker’s corner is still going on in every General Meeting since 1991, and it’s the responsibility of the speakers to facilitate and organise it. So, do you have something that you want to share with the rest of the BEST world? Then go ahead and attend the next speaker’s corner in a General Meeting near you!

I foolly-fully support As usual, during GA 007 in France there were some presentation of the candidates to organise next PM.

It was just after the presentation of LBG Madrid for PM08, when Patri from LBG Valladolid read 2 times the same sentence of her “Fully Support Statement” with Fully support inside :) After that, everybody started to Fully Support everything and now it’s also used when the delegate of the LBG nurse of an observer/baby LBG speaks a bit about all the great things-progress-potentiality of the observer/baby LBG and supports it.

After a while, the sentence “We fully support the LBG XYZ to become a baby/full member”

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came almost every time and became an “expression”.Nowadays, when you agree with someone’s idea, you can just say/write “fully support”...However, during PM07 in Valladolid, a new form of the statement appeared in the plenary. Various people started holding signs with the words ‘Fooly support’ written on them, just to make fun of the tendency of BESTies to support all the ideas that appear, while at the same time playing with the word “fully” that existed in the famous sentence.Last but not least, T-shirts were produced with both expressions on them (one in front and one in the back) in order to be used whenever is needed.

Passing gifts One of the oldest traditions inside BEST is the passing of gifts from person to person.The first things that were transferred had a very important role. It was the archives of BEST, back then in paper, and they had to be transferred from one board to the next. Without them a lot of working hours would go for nothing, as it was the only way to store and transfer information back in 1989.Later one, other objects started getting transferred, but with a more symbolic character. The president’s wooden whip was the only gift that was passed by the current president to the new one during every election. It was first given in 1992 and it was used to symbolise the authority of the president. The words that were usually said while it was changing hands were: ‘so you can handle your board’. BEST presidents engrave their name on the handle of the whip. Some say that at some point, one of the presidents though was playing too much with it, and it resulted in fracturing the whip in the middle. Other say that the whip broke for the first time during transportation, not by playing. It was finally repaired, but no other president dared again to use it…

BEST Presidents with the BEST whip

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Of course, not only the president could pass gifts. One other special person present during the General Meetings was the speaker, and (s)he was also in need of authority and power.

order to symbolise this power, a wooden hammer was needed and so a hammer was found. It was first used in GA1995 by the speaker and since then it is transferred from speaker to speaker. Like the president’s whip, the hammer has engraved the name on the handle. However, since the speaker could not always travel to the next General Meeting, the tradition says that the delegates of the LBG of the previous speaker had to bring the hammer in every General Meeting and deliver it during the opening session to the new speaker.

After the years, a lot of other people got jealous and started passing gifts. A lot of items including small pigs, weights, little chickens and teddy bears were transferred over the years. However, only the whip and the hammer are the original old ones.

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Acronyms and AbbreviationsAdmins = AdministratorsAR= Annul ReportBAS=BEST Application System BCC= BEST Career CentreBCS = BEST Career SupportBEST = Board of European Students of Technology BGMDSC = BEST General Meetings Demographic Statistics Committee Boardie, boardies = member/members of the International Board of BEST BTCN = BEST Co-ordination for the Thematic NetworkBWoE= BEST Workshop on EducationCaSCo=Career Support Committee CE=Cultural ExchangeCESAER = The Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and ResearchCIF=Course Information FormCMT= CommitteeCV= Curriculum Vitae DG= Discussion GroupE4, ETNET21= two thematic networks on engineering education EAEEIE= European Association for Education in Electrical and Information EngineeringEAN = European Access Network EC= European Community EduCo=Educational Committee of BEST EEC= External Events CommitteeEFC = European Fairs Club ENAEE = European Network for Accreditation of Engineering EducationEoE = Event of EducationERABEE = Education & Research in Biosystems Engineering in EuropeEU=European Union EUCEN = European Universities Continuing Education NetworkFEANI=European Federation of National Engineering AssociationsfinTeam, fT=Financial Team GA= General AssemblyGFC = Global Fundraising CommitteeH3E= Higher Engineering Education for EuropeHRs=Human Resoreces ResponsiblesIBS= International BEST SymposiaICF = Inter Committee Forum /International Committees’ Forum IE= International Evening IFEES = International Federation of Engineering Education SocietiesIPF = International Projects’ Forum IR=Internal Regulations ITC= Information Technology CommitteeIW= International WeekJAM = Jamboree

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JobShop= Romanian Brand for BEST’s Job Fair Johnny=Application system for the BEST CoursesLBG= Local BEST Group Leonardo 2000= a project connecting engineering education institutions and industry MINERVA = Moving Into a New Era of Recruitment with Virtual AccessmT= markeTeam NExUS = Needs and Expectations of University StudentsP@B=Professors at BAS, a BEST project regarding the academics for the courses made by BESTPaRade =name of a server of BEST PM= Presidents’ MeetingRecognition= project of BEST that aimed to the recognition of the BEST CoursesREVE = Real Virtual Erasmus Project RM= Regional MeetingSC= Summer CourseSEFI=Société Européenne pour la Formation des Ingénieurs / European Society for Engi-neering EducationSIM=Short Intensive MeetingSMILE = The Strategy CommitteeSP=Summer ProgrammeSP96=first attempt to optimise the application system SPOC =Season Programme Optimisation CommitteeSPUTNIC= Seminars Promoting the Use of Technologies for Networking and International CollaborationSTED= Students of Technology European DatabaseTiGro = Training Interested GroupTN=Thematic Network TRAM = Trainers’ Meeting TRAP = Trainers’ CampTS= TrainShopVI=Visual IdentityVIA=Very Important AimsVIP=Virtual International PlenaryVM-BASE = Virtual Mobility before and after student exchangesWG= Working Group WR= Working Reunion WS= WorkShop

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Thank you ...

Many passionate people took part in the creation of the book, for which I, coordinator of the History Book Project have enormous gratitude: Karina Herman, Risto Koivunnen, Cristian Arteni, Nikola Gajic, Lucien Romagnoli, Martin Varvas, Diana Wosik, Teele Kundla, Panagiotis Isigonis, Pim Bonne, Busse Pettersson, Nico Deblawe, Beatriz Santos, Andrei Ganci, Sille Metsvahi and many others. Without the support of LBG Istanbul, Trondheim, Grenoble, the XXI and XXII International Boards of BEST this project wouldn’t have been possible.

A big “thank you” goes to the persons that year after year have preserved the archives or were available to give details about some periods and aspects of BEST.

Mirela AndriescuCoordinator of BEST History Book Project

history of best - 20 years in europe

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