What are you doing for Halloween?

Dressing up? Boring. Attending some Atlanta party? LAME.

What about coming to Egypt and attending ACTIVATE 2008. (So cool it even rhymes!)

Let me know if you have questions or want some more information!

Love from Egypt,

Maddie

@Masr yoheb @GT.

Dear AIESECers of GT,

I have signed many emails and conversations to you as "Love from Egypt". And, although I love you incredibly, I wanted to explain to you that that love is by no means limited to me. AIESEC in Egypt loves you, too. From the exposure of our members through MENALDS in Morocco and MENAXLDS in Tunisia, to meeting up with Egyptians around the world (especially Mohammed and Ma'andi in our own city) - AIESECers who hail from Atlanta are loved over here.
I just returned (literally JUST walked in to my room and fired up my computer to chat with you all) from National Planning Meeting and National Interns Gathering 2008, a simultaneous conference for the leadership of AIESEC Egypt to plan their national and local directions with the brand new EB teams, both on the LC and MC levels, as well as interns from around the country (and around the world for that matter) to meet and develop themselves and their traineeship experience by increasing their position in the global network.
I was a Faci for the intern's track - and I can't tell you how many people either knew a member of AIESEC at GT or of our LC (very often through Bebot - which we danced anytime the music came on), and how much it meant to me that I could talk endlessly about how proud I am to be an AIESECer from GT. So continue to be the incredible organization that you are, the incredible people you contain, dear @GT.
You're kind of a big deal out here, people know you.

Love from Egypt,

Maddie

Tactical strike

It is currently the week after the end of the spring semester, and finals have come and gone. Two weeks ago, AIESEC at Georgia Tech had its final General Participant Meeting of the semester. It was a fun-filled evening put together by Birgitta and the TM team. There was a scavenger hunt, followed by a water balloon fight.







What a way to end the spring!


This summer, globetrotting AIESECers from AIESEC Atlanta will be spanning the globe:
Preston, Thomas, Kyle, Amira, and myself are heading to Markham, Ontario (just outside of Toronto) for Canada's National Leadership Development Conference of 2008. This conferences is Canada's yearly leadership development venue, and also marks the transition between MC terms.

Arcadiy, our trainee in Almaty, Kazakhstan, is currently in Kiev, Ukraine for AIESEC International's International Trainers Conference.

Johanna, Anna, and Michael have been matched on traineeships to Brazil, Costa Rica, and Malaysia, respectively. A few of them are already there!


As usual, things carry on here in Atlanta, and we continue to strive for excellence in the AIESEC network and in our local community. Keep an eye on us as we move through the summer and into fall!

Take it to the next level

This week quite a few members are off on fantastic adventures at various AIESEC conferences -- in Tokyo, in Tunis, in St. Petersburg. It brings me back to a year ago when I was in the midst of my own adventure at WENA LDS in beautiful Port Talbot, Wales. And it makes me think of the thoughts I came back from that conference with: I wasn't sure how, but I knew that I wanted to make an active contribution to the LC.

I'd like to see this happen; I'd like to come back from my traineeship (which is, by the way, going fantastically well) to see the LC having reached a much higher level than I remembered leaving. So, here's some inspiration, courtesy of AIESEC Almaty.

• Once my match finally goes through (thanks, MyAIESEC.net!) I will be incoming trainee no. 15 this year. And I am already aware of at least two more who are coming by this summer.
• AIESEC Almaty is, as far as I know, the only LC in the world to offer traineeships directly with the United Nations.
• At the moment, I'm participating in an AIESEC-organized project called CaseIT, which involves five companies working with groups of local college students over the course of a month to complete a detailed case study. (I'll write more about this elsewhere, as I am enjoying the unusual-for-me perspective of working on this as a representative of an AIESEC partner company.) There are roughly 40 students involved in total.
• In addition to that project, they are in the development stages of a Global Village (to take place in May), are working on their annual report, finishing off planning for a new member conference, and participating in a major national project.

The key factor here is that every team in the LC is firing on all cylinders, running its own projects and making things happen. This is a dramatic contrast to the situation that has tended to occur in Atlanta, where everyone on the leadership team works on everything constantly, and where we cannot seem to manage to work on or run two events in parallel. And while I value our culture of openness and "everyone helps out" attitude, as an LC we have to be able to multitask in order to reach the success we want and desire.

When I decided to go to Kazakhstan I knew that AIESEC Almaty was a reasonably strong LC. But I didn't realize just how strong: I don't think that by most well-rounded measures there is an LC in the U.S. that I would consider stronger (though Madison, Yale or Illinois might come close in some senses).

Like all things, AIESEC Almaty is not without its problems, and this post is not meant to be an ode to the EB here. Rather, it is a call to action and a request for each team to set a goal for themselves: to go all-out, be creative and do something to make AIESEC at Georgia Tech as successful in the rest of 2008 as AIESEC Almaty has been over the past year. You, the current and future leaders, are coming back from conferences that should have motivated you and made you re-evaluate your leadership potential. Keep the spirit alive and take the LC to the next level.

P.S. Registration for ITC 2008 in Kiev ends March 26. Get thyself over to MyAIESEC.net and apply!

The Great Flying-Out

WENALDS.
MENAXLDS.
APXLDS.
EUROXPRO.

All will be rocked like the Perfect Hurricane by the LC come the end of March.

Our own Seancy has returned from a great time at WENALDS in Bamberg, Germany, after carrying his luggage over hill and dale and braving unexpectedly cold water.

I sit with Ben James, Esq. who will take that trip with Firdaus, Denise, and Carleigh in less than three hours to jump on a White Horse to Londontown first, followed by their destination of Tunis, once Carthage, for MENAXLDS. The network has been massaged to produce anticipated good times.

Laleh, Stewardess of the Traineeship Rocketship, will slingshot to Tokyo with the beloved King Himself from up North to make them connections and facilitate more than a little exchange at APXLDS.

My visa for Russia just came in this morning. Naoufel and I will take it to St. Petersburg and EUROXPRO like no other.

I am proud of my LC for keeping strong connections to the global network, exemplifying what AIESEC is really all about. We continue to build a ladder and invite others to climb with us. Where is the top?