discussion – The AEGEEan – AEGEE's online magazine – AEGEE-Europe ../../.. AEGEE's Online Magazine Mon, 25 Sep 2017 23:20:57 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.7 ../../../wp-content/uploads/cropped-The-AEGEEan_logo-FBprofile-32x32.png discussion – The AEGEEan – AEGEE's online magazine – AEGEE-Europe ../../.. 32 32 PROPOSALS #1: EPM Topic Selection at Spring Agora, On Resignation of Members from Elected European Bodies, Vote of Confidence and Comité Directeur ../../../2017/09/26/proposals-1-epm-topic-selection-at-spring-agora-on-resignation-of-members-from-elected-european-bodies-vote-of-confidence-and-comite-directeur/ Tue, 26 Sep 2017 06:15:00 +0000 ../../../?p=41183 Agora Catania is starting in a few days and as always, the AEGEEan will try to help you better understand the Proposals which will be discussed during the Prytania. These following ones are all proposed by the Comitè Directeur.    EPM topic selection at Spring Agora Proposed by Loes Rutten on behalf of the CD. This proposal aims at anticipating… Read more →

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Agora Catania is starting in a few days and as always, the AEGEEan will try to help you better understand the Proposals which will be discussed during the Prytania. These following ones are all proposed by the Comitè Directeur. 

 

EPM topic selection at Spring Agora

Proposed by Loes Rutten on behalf of the CD. This proposal aims at anticipating the selection of the topic for EPM to Spring Agora, in order to have a better correspondence of the timeframe with the preparatory work of the hosting local. Moreover, the announcement of hosting local of EPM would be made at the previous EPM, so that this factor could be taken into consideration for the topic selection. The proposed emendments to the Working Formats of Agora and EPM replace the expression “Autumn Agora” with the expression “Spring Agora” (in the Agora WF) and “the preceding Spring Agora” (in the EPM WF).

On resignation of members from elected European Bodies

Proposed by Fabrizio Bellicano on behalf of the CD. This proposal’s intention is to limit the possibility for members to apply for an elective position before they finish their duties, in case they where already elected for a different elective position at a previous Agora. The proposed changes to the WF of the Agora add that members who hold an Agora-elected position cannot run for a different elective position at the following Agora, except when the end of the previous term and the beginning of the following one do not collide. The same rationale would apply to resignations, unless announced three months in advance before Agora.

Vote of Confidence and Comité Directeur

Proposed by María Ballesteros Melero on behalf of the CD. This proposal is based on the fact that a vote of confidence against the CD is automatic in case the interim Action Agenda fulfillment is not approved by Agora, but the CD doesn’t -and shouldn’t- have control over the Action Agenda fulfillment. It is proposed to link the vote of confidence to the lack of approval by Agora for binding documents for CD such as their Activity Plan or interim Activity Report. This last provision would be added to article 21, (1) of the Statutes of AEGEE-Europe, while at article 3, (3) of the Strategic Plan and Action Agenda, point 5 (“Disapproval of the interim evaluation leads to a vote of confidence for the Comité Directeur”) would be removed.

You can find all the proposals here.

 

Written by Federica Soro, AEGEE-Cagliari

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Meet the AEGEE Forum, the Online Space for Discussion, Communication and Feedback ../../../2015/05/29/meet-the-aegee-forum-the-online-space-for-discussion-communication-and-feedback/ Fri, 29 May 2015 15:12:35 +0000 ../../../?p=30901 One of the plans of the Comité Directeur 2014 – 2015 was to bring the forum back to AEGEE as a means of communication and platform for discussion. We spoke to Ivan Bielik, Human Resources Director, about this potential new place-to-be in the world of AEGEE! The AEGEEan: To start at the beginning: when, why, and how was the forum… Read more →

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One of the plans of the Comité Directeur 2014 – 2015 was to bring the forum back to AEGEE as a means of communication and platform for discussion. We spoke to Ivan Bielik, Human Resources Director, about this potential new place-to-be in the world of AEGEE!

meansThe AEGEEan: To start at the beginning: when, why, and how was the forum first set up?

Ivan: To be honest, I do not know when exactly the original forum was established. What is important, is that it is here right now. It exists to provide an online space for AEGEE where members can discuss, communicate their ideas and give feedback to others.

What other ways of communications have been and are still used?

As far as I remember there have been different tools for internal discussion – mailing lists, YPart, the forum and social media. YPart has not been used recently because we did not get what we wanted from the company to necessarily improve the tool for AEGEE. The mailing lists are still here and social media are used by members as well. In the last year, the forum has been reintroduced. With this Comité Directeur (CD), we wanted to create one coherent platform for internal discussion in AEGEE. YPart was not useful for this, because it is mostly a tool for feed-backing proposals, which makes the discussion limited. Mailing lists are not structured and not properly visualised for the audience. Usage of social media scatters the discussion into different places and there are serious concerns about the privacy of such discussion. Thus, the forum had the best trade-off from the four options. That’s why the CD would like to move every discussion to the forum, so that there is one coherent place.

What has changed for this new forum?

We changed the design of the forum to fulfill the need of a modern responsive design on cellphones and tablets. The biggest change however is that we finally started to talk again about the place where to discuss matters that are relevant to us. Participation in online discussion is not determined by how beautiful an online forum looks, but by people who care enough to go there and discuss what is relevant to them. Thus, the current CD believes that we need to talk about this online discussion in our organisation to slowly change the pattern of lack of online participation.

Which information can be found on the forum?

There are places for discussions about statutory events, internal matters and thematic discussions related to different interests in the Network. Moreover, there is a new area for local antennae to share solutions for their problems and to exchange best practices. It has a huge potential to be beneficial for locals, but right now it is heavily underused by members involved in local antennae.

_DSC0952Why should people join the forum too?

I do not have the need to forcefully persuade anyone to go there. In my opinion, it should be natural that if I am a part of an organisation that I care about, I am interested in discussions about matters that are relevant to all of its members. But I guess that is kind of idealistic to expect. The sad reality of our organisation is that the culture of discussion is low. And it takes time to change such patterns.

What are the future plans for the forum?

I would like to install a plugin on the forum that would create automatic digests once per week and then post it on the mailing list (either AEGEE-L or FORUM-L). This way, people get an overview of the developments on the forum directly in their email inboxes. And then there is the option to adjust the structure of the forum, so it reacts to the needs of the organisation. But I need others to express their needs and suggestion about it.

What are the advantages of the forum for users?

These are not different from any other online discussion place. An AEGEE member has an opportunity to take part in discussions and express their point of view. They can participate in forming the opinion that might spill over into something bigger than casual discussion. They can connect with people of similar interest. Additionally, they can help others either by explaining something (like why it is useful for organisation to have an online space for discussion), providing them with something (IT solutions for a local antenna, for example) or supporting other ideas (put forward any idea you support in AEGEE).

And what are the downsides?

It is an online tool, so the contact and bonds will never be as strong as they are with face-to-face discussions. Also, the structure of forum is not very intuitive and sometimes it is hard to find relevant things. It requires a bit of time to get acquainted with the structure of the forum. Even though it is not something everyone is willing to do, the structure is very fluid and easy to adjust if there is a constructive suggestion. The forum is not perfect and never will be, but as I said before the overall trade-off between benefits and problems is prevailing on the side of the forum.

Proposals2How do you plan to attract more members to the forum?

The usage of online discussion platform is a long-term process. It will not happen from one week to another. I can use the analogy of the implementation of Visual Identity. Even after two years of existence, more or less only half of the organisation uses it. The same happens with the forum. I do not expect that people will start using it immediately. The best way to attract attention is to provide content that matters. If there is content on the forum that is relevant to AEGEE, its members will find the way how to gradually become involved.

Written by Svenja van der Tol, AEGEE-Nijmegen

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The Forum, or How We Missed The Magic This Time ../../../2015/03/05/the-forum-or-how-we-missed-the-magic-this-time/ Thu, 05 Mar 2015 14:56:57 +0000 ../../../?p=29099 One of the points in the 52nd CD’s Activity Plan that brought some expectation was the creation of a platform for discussion for AEGEE. As most of the readers probably know, one of the means of our beloved organisation is ‘a forum for discussion’. That implies that AEGEE has to serve as a space for discussion among young people in… Read more →

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One of the points in the 52nd CD’s Activity Plan that brought some expectation was the creation of a platform for discussion for AEGEE. As most of the readers probably know, one of the means of our beloved organisation is ‘a forum for discussion’. That implies that AEGEE has to serve as a space for discussion among young people in Europe, enabling them to discuss about important matters related to our society and of importance for youth.

Even though, that has been unrealistic for quite some time. AEGEEans discuss, but not in a whole, structured way. If you go to an AEGEE party you will probably hear groups of people discussing about such important matters as the lack of employment for youth, the problems with visas and the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Then what is happening to structured discussion?

Agoras do not have the time for it, EPM is not enough, and local events are not totally inclusive. Discussions got lost in the world of 293,000 posts per minute on Facebook and the maximum of 140 characters on Twitter. People do not discuss on the internet anymore, they comment, like and retweet.

What should the place for discussion be, then? One of the most powerful tools of the 21st century has been the web 2.0, which enables the average user to easily share and spread information and content among the world wide web. The revolution in Syria and Egypt and raise of awareness like the famous ice bucket challenge are just two examples of the great power that this tool provides.

So, ideally, the web and internet seem like the perfect channel for AEGEEans to discuss?

Historically, the mailing list AEGEE-L had served as a meeting point for discussion for AEGEEans, with the amazing feature that there is no filter for it (the messages one sends are sent to all the subscribers right away, without having to be approved by anyone). Even though, with the intoxication of information anybody with internet access suffers nowadays, people were ignoring the happening discussions. Nobody was interested in what was said in there, and they were complaining that too many mails were sent.

That’s when the 52nd Comité Directeur came with the brilliant idea of improving AEGEE’s Forum, created in 2009 by the 49th Comité Directeur. So, after the Activity Plan was ratified by the Agora in Cagliari in November 2014, they came back to the headoffice and started working on improving the forum. Just before Christmas it was relaunched.

It’s quite funny that one of the first discussions that happened in the forum was a meta discussion, pushed from AEGEE-L by members of the Comité Directeur, about the use of the forum as a means of discussion. Some experienced members were defending the use of AEGEE-L and the members of the Comité Directeur told people they had no right to complain about the use of the forum since nobody made any comment when the Activity Plan was presented in Cagliari.

The truth is that, with a 42 page Activity Plan, a 134 page Activity Report,  a 23 page Agora booklet, a 57 page Candidates booklet, a 42 page Proposals booklet, and a 13 page Thematic booklet it is no surprise that everybody missed something as the ‘Forum for discussion’ topic.

So, the forum became the official channel for discussion for AEGEE. But, is there life after the forum?

Since the forum was officially launched on 12th December 2014, 23 topics, of which 16 are related to internal work, were opened. In total, these topics have 120 answers, making it a bit more than 5 answers per topic. No single topic was closed, or a conclusion was reached, after it was opened. Among the 7 topics that are non related to internal work, 6 of them were opened by Policy Officers and one by a member of the Comité Directeur. (Data on 27th February 2015) With a network of 13000 members, these numbers are far from high enough or ideal to call AEGEE a means for ‘forum for discussion’.

Whose fault is this?

Maybe the Comité Directeur didn’t choose the best option for a platform for discussion, maybe Facebook is not structured enough to carry on a discussion or maybe AEGEE-L is not practical enough for discussions. What is certain is one thing, when AEGEEans get together, amazing things happen, but this time, we missed the magic.

Written by Ruben Navarro, AEGEE-Tarragona

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