Whether you watch it with your family, with your friends or with The AEGEEan, it doesn’t matter if some songs are “ unlisteneable” or just awesome, if some performances are genious or lame, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is always a unique experience, that keeps fascinating Europeans year after year, and is always the subject of discussions and emotions. 

Watching ESC with the AEGEEan

There’s no doubt that the Eurovision unites people. That’s why this year the AEGEEan decided to try to watch it with as many people as possible and created a very successful Facebook group. The Eurovision Song Contest is one of the most long-lasting television shows. It was launched for the first time in 1956 and every year the competition was a great success, whether you liked the winner or not. The Eurovision has become the symbol of a united Europe, something that goes beyond the border of the European Union as well as a tradition within families or between friends.

Should the Eurovision be free of political statements?
Some things that took place in Malmö touched upon big political discussions, and some of those opinions were shared on our Facebook group as well. One example was the debate following the Finnish kiss: should the Eurovision be free of political statements?

Some of you would says yes, others no. In my personal opinion politics are part of our everyday life, even though we don’t pay attention to it.  Art, and therefore music, is a means of expression, it’s a way to make  your voice heard and if your feelings are about changes in your society, then you are more than empowered to do it. Of course nothing on earth would authorize someone to make an electoral campaign, to insult someone or to support any form of  non-democratic government that harm human rights. Political messages are always incidental to music. ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ by U2, ‘A great day for freedom’ by Pink Floyd, ‘Hammer to fal’l by Queen, ‘London Calling’ by The Clash, ‘Blowin’ in the wind’ by Bob Dylan, and ‘Civil War’ by Guns ‘n Roses are only a few examples.

How about Finland’s performance? I think that it’s more than a political issue;  gay marriage  is a social and natural fact which still has to be legalized in Finland by law.  Miss Siegfrids was only trying to attire the attention upon a social need that hasn’t yet been solved so she was fighting for a cause for all 107.000 Finnish  people that signed the petition in favour of same-sex marriage. The more conservative part of Europe complained about the lesbian kiss, especially Turkey who refused to broadcast the ESC final.

Quotes from the facebook group
“At least Eurovision is being useful to raise awareness!” -Miguel Gallardo Albajar

“By not broadcasting they admit that it is a political statement for them, while it could have been just some people kissing, which their peoples can disapprove of by not voting for them…” – Paul Smits

“The glass box is a political statement”(Azerbaijan). But no one payed attention to that. Was the reference too deep? Or too far?  The answer is up to you.” – Patriks Kiršs

“Belgian heroes: Again a winner without shoes.” #trend – Mathieu Soete

“The eye of sauron watches over Azerbaijan in the back” -Patriks Kiršs

“What is Cristiano Ronaldo doing in Norway?” – Juan Luis Toboso Garcia

“Germans could have given us (The Netherlands, ed.) some points for taking our bikes” – Paul Smits

“Montenegro was the two astronauts rapping on dubstep, right?” – Marije Arentze

“The best comment by the German TV: “This is what we needed, Modern Talking reborn as Earl Dracula” – Stephanie Müller

Thank you for watching ESC with us and we look forward to repeating the experience again next year! 

Written by Cosmina Bisboaca, AEGEE-Torino

Pictures courtesy of FlickR

Some of you never might never have heard about the Events Committee, and those who have might have no knowledge about what it is and why it is necessary. If you are interested, then continue reading. 

The EvC (Events Committee) is not a new born committee – it was founded in June of 2011 with the aim to improve the quality of the European and AEGEE events and to support the locals in organising them. The new EvCom team was elected in october of 2012 and the four enthusiastic board members are ready to do their best to accomplish their mission.

How does the EvC work?

If an Antenna has decided to organise a European or an AEGEE event, except a Statutory Event, a Summer University or a Network Meeting, it has to contact the EvC first. And then the process goes as follows:

1. Make a plan with your local
2. Fill in the application form and send it to the EvC
3. Your application is evaluated by the EvC
4. While you are waiting for the reply of the EvC, you create an event on Intranet
5. You are informed by the EvC if your event is approved or not
6. If everything is fine we approve the event also on the Intranet and you can start the promotion.
7. If something is wrong or missing, we contact you and help to solve the problem. 

Filling in a form is not a big deal, but usually it used to be a problem to the locals to choose a Focus Area correctly. However this is the most important part of the application since it is the aim of the EvC to encourage the locals to organise events with thematical content. Organisers have to choose from the fields of Youth Participation, Bridging Europe and Inclusion of Minorities. Unfortunately most of the members in the Network do not really know what these topics are, but no worries; you can find the criteria in the Strategic Plan and the Action Agenda.

Future plans and present actions 

The EvC has a lot of ideas for the future. Soon the EvC homepage will be ready, where you can reach the application form easily, you can find the the descriptions of the Focus Areas there as well as all the other important information about the EvC .

There are plans to adjust the system of EVENT-L, but probably the biggest project will be the classification of the events by taking the guidelines of organising them more seriously.

Photo competition

Right now the EvC is working on making a collection of the pictures of last year’s events, for which a photo conest is hereby announced. Everyone is asked to send in photos of AEGEE-events of 2012, hoping to see which was the greatest one and for participants to share their memories with the rest of the network. The pictures will be uploaded on the Facebook page of the Events Committee so everyone can vote to their favourite ones. The winner gets the title „The Best Photo of 2012” and the chance to write a nice summary in The AEGEEan about his/her experience and memories of the event where the winner photo was taken. You can read about the details in the mailing lists or you can contact the EvC at  events@aegee.org

Even though the Events Committee is not “new born”, it is still in its infancy and it is believed that with persistence and hard work the EvC can make great changes and become an essential part of AEGEE.

Written by Liliána Tóth,  Speaker of the Events Committee

We communicate all the time, especially online and it has already been mentioned once but will be mentioned again that there seems to be lack of interest in AEGEE about how we choose to handle cases especially such as PR, and e-mailing each other. Being a member of the Sports Working Group board, I have experienced myself that people feel overwhelmed with all the mail coming in to AEGEE members’ accounts day in and day out – leaving me to wonder, have the communication guidelines worked at all?

Comité Directeur (CD) members of at least “three generations” have been trying to improve the structure of communication within AEGEE especially with a focus on Facebook and the different AEGEE lists. Michael Makowiecki started working on the communication guidelines back when he was a CD member (Communications Director), but that how-to-communicate manual was not released until recently after hard work from now already former Internal Relations Director Jüri Kirpu as well as Public Relations Committee (PRC) members such as Michael Makowiecki and Reká Salamon to name a few. The AEGEEan had a talk with Jüri and Michael to find out the story as well as the intention behind the communication guidelines.

First of all, why did you see the need to update the communication guidelines?

Jüri: The way in which we communicate in AEGEE is very chaotic and the need for a communication policy, or in our case the Communication Guidelines (CG), is of high importance because, let’s face it, we cannot follow rules if there aren’t any. Michael created the version 0.9, but it was never published. Lots of things had changed to how they were a year before, for example that the creation of new committees and working groups had been put into practice, which again changed our structure of communication. For this reason, a need arose to compile an updated version of the guidelines.

Michael: Since the first version was drafted, a lot of things started to develop and change in the AEGEE communication channels, for example the Forum appeared. Also a reform of the communication channels was taking place, so I couldn’t finalise and publish the Communication Guidelines until this process had ended, but as many open questions remained, the task to make the document its final version was moved to my successor.

What have you changed?

Jüri: Many things. Although the current CG was compiled on the basis of version 0.9, the exact usage of lists was included, a list with the European level bodies was attached and many bulk texts from the previous version were re-written, so that it would be very understandable. The cherry on top was the design, which was different from the previous, and after a long process of getting comments and suggestions it bonded everything together in an extremely nice shape.

Michael: Many bigger and smaller things were changed or added. This mainly applies to a better description of mailing lists, the usage of the Forum and also a template for board change announcements, which was not in place in the previous version.

What are some of the most important parts of the communication guidelines?

Jüri: Everything. What is the most important part of a motor? This would be a question that amounts to the same thing, since the guidelines went through a round of comments from the Comité Directeur, then suggestions from the PRC, the Network had a chance to pass suggestions and criticism to me personally after it was sent to ANNOUNCE-L, and all of it was finished off by a Progress Meeting during the Agora, where Michael and I presented the CG.

Michael: It is difficult to choose one part as the most important or prominent one, but for me the clear definition of our communication channels is the key element of the Communication Guidelines. Following these will make the way in which we exchange information within the organisation more reliable and structured.

It seems that the majority are still not following the guidelines, why is that the case?

Michael: In the first place it may be difficult to understand why we need such a document, as we are used to a very informal way of exchanging information in AEGEE. Nowadays it is getting even more informal, as major parts of it have simply been shifted to Facebook. People may find it difficult to understand why they should first check some document before actually writing a message. Moreover they already have their habits and common behaviour, so they might not see the need to change this. It is definitely a big challenge to make the bigger picture more understandable and to explain what kind of benefits we will all get from following the Guidelines.

Jüri: Well, this is one of the general problems that we are facing, because roughly only 10% of members actually view what is being sent to the lists. Also there are alternative ways of how information is spread to our members, there is always the Network Commission, the following of our social media channels or simple word to mouth, which usually travels among friends. Information quite often travels in an incoherent way, which is why we would not be facing these problems of “How we should communicate?” if at least all the board members in our Network followed the announcements  sent via ANNOUNCE-L.

So if you are having difficulties with communication within your board, local, project team or simply in general, then have a look at the Communication Guidelines that the PRC worked hard on to finish. From Facebook to AEGEE lists to general explanation about the working groups and more, the PRC has really made a great effort to cover whatever area in AEGEE might need improvement when it comes to communication. Maybe you should ask yourself, “how do I/we communicate?” and then head to the intranet of AEGEE to download the CG and see if your answer is in accordance with what the PRC suggests is the best way to communicate.

Written by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-København

The discussion about Facebook (FB) and AEGEE’s representation there is an ever returning topic. The AEGEEan Editor Patricia Anthony has been studying web communication design few months ago and made a project on AEGEE. A project with the result that the way that AEGEE is organised in the Internet is very chaotic, as Jüri Kirpu mentions in the interview about the Communication Guidelines. So to continue the research Patricia chose to contact Miguel Gallardo who is the new Projects Director and who has been posting information about how Facebook is planning to delete invalid Facebook profiles, such as profile pages of antennae which many AEGEE antennae, unfortunately, still have.

People argue that they are not interested in changing their antenna from a profile on Facebook to a page because of the fear that they might lose their followers on Facebook as some antennae already have 1000-2000 friends or more linked to their Facebook antenna profile. This makes it harder for such people as Miguel to convince others to make the change anyway, but fortunately he is not the only one from the new Comite Directeur (CD) interested in this topic, and he explained together with fellow new CD member Pavel Zbornik (European Institutions and Communications Director) why change of the AEGEE representation on Facebook would be good.

Why should people not worry about going from a profile to having a page for local?

They should not worry, as they can easily convert Profile to Page without losing any friend, AEGEE-Bamberg can be an example of that. And in case they already have a page and a profile, they can convert the profile into page and then merge this page with the second page (however this is only possible when merging a smaller one into a bigger page).

Why should antennae make Facebook pages instead of profiles for their local?

Example of which statistics can be seen when administrating your own Facebook page

One reason could be because of Facebook rules, but we all know how well we follow rules in AEGEE. We can try to motivate antennae signaling the risk of losing valuable contacts and information in case their website is closed (without prior notice). But the main reason should be the added value of having a Page instead of Profile. With a Page the members can more easily subscribe to it and there is no need to wait for approval to start receiving information. As the owner of the page you can get deep insight about your fans: where do they come from, their age, how they found your page. You can see how many people see your post, and the cruel reality on Facebook is that thanks to EdgeRank algorithm in general no more than 10-30% of your fans or friends (in case of person Profile) see your post. With a page you can get relevant information to be able to increase the reach of your Facebook updates.

It is not so long time ago that AEGEE-Alicante changed their Facebook strategy and started a new page. Why did your antenna take that decision? 

Well, our board and active members discussed if a FB group was the best option to channel all the communication with our members and stakeholders. We also discussed this topic with one of our members who had done a Master in Social Media and Communication, and her contribution was very helpful. What we finally decided is to keep the FB group for communication with our members and potential members (young people interested in AEGEE or in our activities) and we installed the FB page for externals, like the Youth Council of Alicante, local governments, press, companies (and whoever else is interested) … So this is the Facebook URL that we promote on our website and in emails.

Pages can be linked to other pages. For example, The AEGEEan “likes” close to all AEGEE pages out there on Facebook, but a Facebook page cannot “like” a Facebook profile. Actually, the Facebook profile seems to be the first domino brick in the game who fell and made other antennae create a Facebook profile for their local, which went on and on and has created a big mess. It is against the rules of Facebook, which many people might not care about because it has not been deleted yet so why would Facebook employees bother deleting it?

Example of Facebook pages related to AEGEE already "liked" by The AEGEEan

However, antennae should care about the fact that you can do a greater PR on a Facebook page than on a profile because the page is there to follow a company, organisation, or some famous star; get news, post on the wall etc. In fact the most options that are available with the Facebook profile are also there on the page, and it grants a much bigger opportunity to reach externals for cases such as FR and finding new members. Let’s face it, if you did not know about AEGEE then you would probably not befriend such an antenna on Facebook, meaning that the profile has a very limited audience in comparison with the Facebook page. AEGEE-Bamberg did, AEGEE-Alicante did it, and AEGEE-København has done it recently as well. Miguel, Pavel, and The AEGEEan members hope that your antenna will follow these steps towards having a more structured presence of AEGEE online in the nearest future.

Written by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-København

It is common to get friend requests on Facebook. Even more common if you are in AEGEE. Even more common if you are an “AEGEE celebrity” but in many cases you could read a name on Facebook thinking “who is this” but then reading that you have more than 50 friends in common would make you accept the friend request despite not being sure whether you know this person or not.

Maybe it is a special bond between AEGEEans, maybe it was one drink too many that makes one doubt and possibly embarrassed not to remember the person who is sending you a friend request. Whatever reason there may be, editor of The AEGEEan Patricia Anthony chose this topic as inspiration for a university assignment and an article for The AEGEEan, hoping it will make AEGEEans discuss how our organisation could be more structured online, especially in Social Networks.

124 persons, 44 males, 80 females (again the females rock) from countries such as Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Spain, Poland, Georgia, Germany and Turkey took their time to answer few questions. One proved the difference of ages in AEGEE.

18 – 20: 8

20 – 22: 30

22 – 24: 48

24 – 26: 19

26+: 19

So the majority of these people were between 20 and 24, and 50 percent of the survey takers (62) have been in AEGEE for more than four years.

Huge difference in number of friends

Maybe it is because of difference in popularity, maybe it is because of not everybody accepts just any friend requests, maybe it is a mixture, maybe it is something else, but what is certain is that there is no clear pattern of how many Facebook friends AEGEEans have. None of the survey takers have less than 100 friends, only three people have between 100 – 200, only 20 persons have what is said to be the “normal” number of Facebook friends 200 – 400 and the remaining 101 persons have above 400 Facebook friends with 20 popular AEGEEans having more than 1000 friends on Facebook. This might lead to the question “how can you know so many people?” and there is somewhat an answer to this. Because not all Facebook friends are “normal” friends: we have AEGEE antennae (101 are friends with one or more), 122 are friends with people met through AEGEE, 63 has chosen to friend cute AEGEE mascots, and more or less everybody are friends with relatives, co-workers, fellow students etc.

To share or not to share

What is interesting with the survey is that about 50 per cent (59) say that they have accepted a friend request not sure about who the person was, the remaining 60 persons say that they have never done so, and three individuals are not sure. Then again, another different thing is that the majority : 63 versus 60 persons share everything with their numerous Facebook friends whereas the remaining 60 individuals choose to keep some personal information, pictures more private.

"La Nave" - The Facebook group for "La Tripulación"

So many groups, so many pages, so little structure

Being active on Facebook The AEGEEan has a high understanding that there are many different groups, many different Facebook profiles of e.g. antennae and many different pages. The exact number is hard to tell but the document created by The AEGEEan editor Patricia Anthony is more than four pages.

To the delight of The AEGEEan 109 persons out of the 124 “like” the Facebook page. What could make some people wonder is that The AEGEEan has more “likes” than AEGEE Europe’s “official” Facebook page, which has 96 likes, which is only one more like than the Summer University Coordination Team. The Network Commission still has many potential “likers” out there because they only have 45 likers out of the 124, a number that is quite similar to the rest of the pages. What is the reason for that, one may wonder and there are numerous opportunities. Surely, it is easy to create a Facebook page but usually Social Network experts give these advices when making a page or group online:

• Have a strategy: Why do you have a Facebook page? Is it to promote something e.g. an event? What will be the purpose when the event has passed? It seems that many Facebook pages are just there to well… to be there. Too many have the focus of gaining likes, and some groups e.g. for past Summer Universities or Agorae tend to turn into Spam groups.
• Create a page for your cause: Usually, the advice is to create a page because this gives you the possibility to make deeper analysis of your followers and greater interaction. Facebook groups are great for that purpose as well but there is an overall belief among the Public Relations Committee as well as the AEGEEans that took the survey that the number of Facebook profiles for AEGEE causes is too high! Not only is it against the regulations of Facebook to have profiles for organisations that are not individual humans, but it also does no good in terms of interaction with the followers of e.g. your antenna.
• Be creative: Create a logo, make your page different from the others in some way. It can be through games, through a nice cover photo, anything that would make the page different from all the other AEGEE pages and other fan pages your target group may be fan of.
• Interact: Talk with the likers of your page, comment on what they post. Many AEGEEans agree that Facebook is good – to connect AEGEEans (on the question “do you believe that Facebook contributes positively to the work of AEGEE” 109 answered yes, one person answered no and 14 were not sure), but it seems that it is not being used in the best possible way these days. Right now, what many pages are doing is to post their events, their message on all AEGEE pages on Facebook, spamming people who are interested in following and receiving news about the different Working Groups and Projects Teams of AEGEE. In the end, The AEGEEan is not suggesting you to comment on every single post written on your page, but to interact a bit more with the people.

In general, there could be a great discussion between the ones who believe that there are too many pages or too many groups related to AEGEE on Facebook. Due to the survey being anonymous it is not easy to tell who likes what but what can be revealed is that 50 persons believe that the number of AEGEE related groups is too high, 52 disagree and 22 are not sure. When it comes to pages, 51 persons believe that that number is too high, 59 disagree and 14 are unsure.

Food for thought