This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending and being a facilitator for Coastal Conference 2010 – probably my last AIESEC conference for awhile. This was my 5th coastal conference. Holy smokes thats a lot! There were 80ish delegates from UBC, SFU, UVic, and Kwantlen. We had one delegate from San Jose too which was super cool.
Getting to Know You activity on Fri night
Coming out of this conference I feel so content and happy. Typically after a conference you get this conference “high” where you’re so excited about AIESEC, and the people you meet. This time around I still have that “high” but its not the normal one. Instead, I’m happy and excited that the conference was a good starting point for the new VPs and for the new members. Receiving sugar cubes (little notes about memory or an inside joke or something shared between the two of you) about how I was able to teach people new things, or inspire others to try something new was really uplifting and it made me happy that the things I’ve learned have been passed on to another generation. I also received a number from the organizing committee (OC) thanking me for leading a session back at Western Regional Conference (WRC) about how to organize a conference.
During the conference I also volunteered to be on the fun team. J. and I were responsible for planning interesting games and tasks to make the conference more enjoyable for the delegates. We played a game of “gotcha” (aka assassin) and I was so thrilled that the delegates actually participated! I’ve seen this game played before at conferences and most of the time, delegates were not that engaged in the game. The winner of this game had something like 13 names! Runner ups had 10 and 9. We were also responsible for gathering gossip and wishes to be read out to the plenary and to put together slideshows documenting the prior evening’s fun.
Reading out gossip with J.
Friday evening started off with some get to know you games and a challenge your world view sessions. A statement was read out and we had to decide if we strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement. It was cool to see that even within our society, how differently everyone thinks or how differently people interpret the same thing. No wonder there are misunderstandings! Friday ended early and we all headed out to Bar None for a traffic light party.
Almost all of Saturday, I was busy leading sessions and talking about my experiences. The morning started off with a personality test based off of the Myers-Brigg test. My results were no different than before which is good I guess. After that, we broke into two sections and I helped A. with the executive board (EB) track. For a team building exercise, I put together an obstacle course for them to go over with their eyes closed. Along the way they needed to pick up post it notes. They could talk to each other if they wanted. This was an activity that we did at National Leadership Development Conference (NLDC) last year in Halifax that I just revised.
A., then finished the session to talk about team management and personal management. Its pretty amazing the amount of stuff you learn in a year about yourself. Following lunch, it was portfolio track time. N.T. from UBC and I led the track about finance, which surprisingly had a lot of people in it. Then it was time to prep for simulation. Simulation was a 2 hour session where teams had to stimulate the running of a local committee (LC) from doing a year plan to recruiting new members to “sending” individuals on exchange all while managing their finances. There were some hairy moments, but it went off a lot better than I thought it would have.
Wow Saturday was a long day! After simulation, we had portfolio fair, where delegates went around and learned more in detail how their specific portfolio relates to all the other portfolios. We had dinner – delicious roast beef – while two Board of Advisor members for SFU shared a little about their AIESEC experiences. They ended up staying through the night and partied with us. After dinner, was one last session, opportunity fair and I spoke about being on an OC and what it is like to organize a conference. That night we went to a nearby pub for a graffiti / nerd party. I now have a t-shirt filled with random AIESECness. It still smells like sharpie hah…
With this conference, I’ve really experienced all aspects of an AIESEC conference. First as a delegate, then as an organizer and now as a facilitator. I’ve lead sessions at conferences before, but I had never been so involved in the process. It was definitely an amazing way to end my AIESEC career. ^_^
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