President: Peter (Pepe) Zvirinsky, Kosice
Treasurer: Carlo Spellucci, Rome
Secretary: Maria Håkansson, Luleå
Vice President for Educational Policies: Isabel Arribas, Madrid
Vice President for Information Technology: Josefin Berg, Uppsala
Vice President for PR and Marketing: Nicolas Chauveau, Grenoble
Vice President for Career Support: Niki Chronopoulou, Patras
Vice President for Complementary Education: Claudia Chituc, Bucharest
Vice President for Internal Education: Lubomir (Kubo) Ziak, Kosice
The XIV Board was the first one with six Vice Presidents voted upon by the GA.
XIV Board in the official Picture of President's Meeting in Madrid 2001. From left to right: Kubo, Niki, Josefin, Claudia, Maria, Carlo, Isabel, Nicolas and Pepe
A few things we remember from our board year, 2001-2002:
One of our main goals was to support the LBGs in their daily work. We tried to reach it mainly by providing training (via activities of TIGro) in LBGs or at international internal events and by having consultancy meetings within regions. A working group made the LBG handbook more accessible and easy to read by making an online version.
The approach towards supporting companies changed during our mandate. Due to the recession at the time BEST lost two Support Group companies and we worked hard to develop our approach towards companies. From being a one-person-show run by the Treasurer a new team was born, the Support Group Team, which later evolved into Financial Team. The concept of a Support Group company changed and several levels of possible cooperation was introduced. At GA 2002 in Paris the first Companies round Table took place, where the companies supporting BEST met in one room and shared experiences and influenced each other. This felt a bit risky at first, but it worked out well and was repeated in the following years.
The year 2001/2002 was meant to be the final stage of moving BEST to its new IT system, including Johnny, Private Area and the member database, and Minerva. We decided to give all possible support to IT development. Three workshops and ICF had sessions for ITC work, and many people put numerous hours in work on our new systems. Support was also given for needed hardware, with a new server for development being bought and installed in Tallinn, so that BEST services shouldn't be affected by intense development. The new Private Area was launched somewhere around GA 2002.
XIV Board of BEST during their Board Training: Claudia, Carlo, Josefin, Kubo and Isabel and in the front: Maria, Pepe, Niki and Nicolas.
We continued the discussions on Future started by the previous board, and on winter board meeting we realised a need for longer planning than one year ahead. Thus we initiated work on a three-year plan (3YP) for BEST, in order to support continuity in BEST.
During our mandate we also had to deal with a sensitive political issue considering the name of a country; Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic Of, because of the happenings during and after GA 2001 to which an observer group had been invited from Skopje. Especially considering that BEST is a non-political organisation this was an unusual and difficult question for us. We put together a working group to help us figure out a solution to the problem and at the PM in Toledo BEST settled a definition of official documents and the use of country names in those documents, based on ISO standard. At GA 2002 we again invited the group as observer, and we are happy to see that there is today a Local BEST Group Skopje.
We successfully developed the cooperation with CFES. Both organisations sent delegates to study the core business of the other. A couple of Canadians came as co-organisers in the summer of 2001, to study how we do our summer courses, which resulted in a test run of a similar project for the Canadian students in 2002. And we were able to send a delegation of seven BEST members, including two boardies, to take part in the yearly Canadian Engineering Competition, to see if engineering competitions could be something of interest for us to organise for the European students of technology.
At GA 2002 we presented examples of smaller competitions for the GA delegates and a working group was created to develop a concept for a BEST Engineering competition. The first competition was organised by LBG Eindhoven and LBG Ghent in 2003.
Some more things in short:
Treasurer: Carlo Spellucci, Rome
Secretary: Maria Håkansson, Luleå
Vice President for Educational Policies: Isabel Arribas, Madrid
Vice President for Information Technology: Josefin Berg, Uppsala
Vice President for PR and Marketing: Nicolas Chauveau, Grenoble
Vice President for Career Support: Niki Chronopoulou, Patras
Vice President for Complementary Education: Claudia Chituc, Bucharest
Vice President for Internal Education: Lubomir (Kubo) Ziak, Kosice
The XIV Board was the first one with six Vice Presidents voted upon by the GA.
XIV Board in the official Picture of President's Meeting in Madrid 2001. From left to right: Kubo, Niki, Josefin, Claudia, Maria, Carlo, Isabel, Nicolas and Pepe
A few things we remember from our board year, 2001-2002:
One of our main goals was to support the LBGs in their daily work. We tried to reach it mainly by providing training (via activities of TIGro) in LBGs or at international internal events and by having consultancy meetings within regions. A working group made the LBG handbook more accessible and easy to read by making an online version.
The approach towards supporting companies changed during our mandate. Due to the recession at the time BEST lost two Support Group companies and we worked hard to develop our approach towards companies. From being a one-person-show run by the Treasurer a new team was born, the Support Group Team, which later evolved into Financial Team. The concept of a Support Group company changed and several levels of possible cooperation was introduced. At GA 2002 in Paris the first Companies round Table took place, where the companies supporting BEST met in one room and shared experiences and influenced each other. This felt a bit risky at first, but it worked out well and was repeated in the following years.
The year 2001/2002 was meant to be the final stage of moving BEST to its new IT system, including Johnny, Private Area and the member database, and Minerva. We decided to give all possible support to IT development. Three workshops and ICF had sessions for ITC work, and many people put numerous hours in work on our new systems. Support was also given for needed hardware, with a new server for development being bought and installed in Tallinn, so that BEST services shouldn't be affected by intense development. The new Private Area was launched somewhere around GA 2002.
XIV Board of BEST during their Board Training: Claudia, Carlo, Josefin, Kubo and Isabel and in the front: Maria, Pepe, Niki and Nicolas.
We continued the discussions on Future started by the previous board, and on winter board meeting we realised a need for longer planning than one year ahead. Thus we initiated work on a three-year plan (3YP) for BEST, in order to support continuity in BEST.
During our mandate we also had to deal with a sensitive political issue considering the name of a country; Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic Of, because of the happenings during and after GA 2001 to which an observer group had been invited from Skopje. Especially considering that BEST is a non-political organisation this was an unusual and difficult question for us. We put together a working group to help us figure out a solution to the problem and at the PM in Toledo BEST settled a definition of official documents and the use of country names in those documents, based on ISO standard. At GA 2002 we again invited the group as observer, and we are happy to see that there is today a Local BEST Group Skopje.
We successfully developed the cooperation with CFES. Both organisations sent delegates to study the core business of the other. A couple of Canadians came as co-organisers in the summer of 2001, to study how we do our summer courses, which resulted in a test run of a similar project for the Canadian students in 2002. And we were able to send a delegation of seven BEST members, including two boardies, to take part in the yearly Canadian Engineering Competition, to see if engineering competitions could be something of interest for us to organise for the European students of technology.
At GA 2002 we presented examples of smaller competitions for the GA delegates and a working group was created to develop a concept for a BEST Engineering competition. The first competition was organised by LBG Eindhoven and LBG Ghent in 2003.
Some more things in short:
- A new rule was decided upon to limit participation of students to 2 summer courses (no limits to other events).
- Deposits for some internal BEST events were decided upon (Workshops and Trainshops, starting in 2002).
- A brochure about BEST was made by markeTeam meant as a PR tool to use when approaching companies.
- We discussed Local Minerva, which we understand has finally become true.
- We decided to move the bank account to a fixed location, instead of having each Treasurer opening up a new account. This was finalized in the transition to the XV board.