“Dear Network, it is my great pleasure to announce that at the recent local Agora the new board of AEGEE-…. was elected.” An e-mail with such information ticks into many AEGEE members e-mail account day in and day out and in numerous times ends up deleted.

Announcing the new board of an antenna is made on Announce-L, and contributes to the large number of e-mails entering accounts of young students around Europe every day. The question was raised not so long ago about why there is the need of boards announcing themselves on the Announce-L, and one might wonder if this procedure could be improved?

Some commissions would like to prefer that contact information for every board member of the different antennae to be included. This way the Audit Commission can connect to Treasurers, The AEGEEan can connect to PR Responsible and the Human Resource Committee gains the opportunity to reach out to HR Responsible across the antennae.

However, others might have the opinion that announcing the boards on the Announce-L is spamming, and a measure that should either take place in another way or simply not take place at all through e-mailing. In The AEGEEan we keep stressing the fact that anybody can publish more or less any news in our magazine. With the six different sections we reach many areas, and for people who find it difficult to compose an article we have journalists and editors happy to help out. This for example happened in the case where AEGEE-Napoli contacted the magazine, eager to announce their new board to the Network and the things that they were working on.

This made Patricia Anthony, editor of European Events section, wonder if it is possible to announce all boards through our magazine? Her idea is to separate the announcement of boards from the Announce-L and create a new list with the only purpose of announcing boards. That could be for example be named Announce-Board-L. This way commissions, committees, and people who are generally interested in receiving such news in their inbox can subscribe and still stay informed about new boards.

Some might be scared that not enough people obtain the information about the change in their antenna, but this can be solved as well. As mentioned before, there is the great opportunity to announce such information in The AEGEEan and there are many possibilities to do so. Antennae can write the article themselves, or they can reach out to the team behind The AEGEEan stating their desire for such article, or if more people are in favor of the idea The AEGEEan can create a standard form that antennae can fill in, and the creative journalists of the magazine will then put it together as an article.

What do you think? Are you bothered by the large number of boards being announced through Announce-L since it is for many useless information? Would you like to see a change? Would you like it to stay the way it is? What is your opinion?

Written by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-København

David Guetta

Founder and member of AEGEE-Kazantip*

Speaker of the Party Working Group

Active member of We-do-Nothing Commission

Editor-in-Chief of Monthly Party Newsletter

Member of EXIT** Committee

AEGEE/European Students’ Forum

Familiar signature, isn’t it? How many times it happened with you that reading the signature of the sender under e-mail, you already forgot which was the content of it and what sender initially wanted from you?

With me it happened few times. However, recently I received an e-mail from one AEGEE member, with excellent sense of humour, under which I saw the signature:

“_ _

Name Surname

to do: insert dozen lines of AEGEE title”

and I understood that this topic needs to be investigated as soon as possible with an urgent definition of diagnosis.

As most of my inbox emails are coming from AEGEE I decided that this is a perfect place for research!

Which situation in AEGEE we have with signatures? Figuratively, we can divide all AEGEE members into three groups: those who do not care about their e-mail signatures and put just name-surname in the best case; those who put in signature only necessary titles connected with the topic of the e-mail and recipient; and those who put there all possible titles (AEGEE + official job positions + all universities they studied in + position awarded after last Summer University in Riga etc.)

Spending hours and reading different theories about e-mail signatures I found out one of the most popular business theories which sounds like: “The more important person is, the shorter his e-mail signature”. Is it true? No idea, I never was emailing with a billionaire. However, both limit situations with an absence of e-mail signatures and with endless ones are not correct.

Let’s see first what is better NOT to do:

What to do if you want to destroy the impression about your e-mail and you as serious person:

• include all your personal websites, blogs, Skype and Twitter names
• write all positions and committees you were ever involved in
• specify all universities you were ever studying in
• write all possible ways to contact you (dozens of phone numbers, e-mails, your home address etc.)

If you anyway wrote everything above mentioned, but still the reader has last pieces of hope that you are an adequate person – write under your e-mail signature funny jokes or popular motivational quotes. This will kill this last hope once and forever.

Indeed, everything written in the previous paragraph rather says something about the absence of knowledge of simple business etiquette and your unprofessionalism, than how cool you are.

Now let’s try to answer the question “What should be put in your e-mail signature?”

There are existing few lines which are indeed very important to be included in your e-mail:

• Your name and surname
• Current position and company
• Preferred way to contact you (one phone and one e-mail address)

Maximum one or two lines can be added here, but only if it is related to the recipient or topic of the e-mail. The fact that you are a member of all the Working Groups in AEGEE and projects is better not to specify as it shows more that you are showing up, than that you have magic skills to do everything in the world in 24 hours.

So, what is your e-mail signature? These are final words in your message giving the last impression about you. What to put there is always up to you, but writing your next e-mail ask yourself:  If reading your signature the recipient will still remember what you wrote in the beginning?

Written by Olga Iatsyna, AEGEE-Dnipropetrovsk

_ _ _ _ _ _

* Fake name of local dedicated to famous party festival Kazantip at Crimean seaside, Ukraine

** Famous EXIT party festival in Novi Sad, Serbia