Relic

Found a very old email from October 2006 containing a story (not sure if/where it was published):

International Fair brings new perspectives to UW campus

Belly dancers shimmied and shook. The steady beats of African music floated through the air. Shirtless males swayed back and forth as they practiced the Afro-Brazilian dance of capoiera. Where would one find such an exotic setting, Timbuktu, Rio de Janeiro, Cairo?

Actually, students found this International Fair waiting for them as the passed through Library Mall on Friday afternoon.

Sponsored by AIESEC, a French acronym that stands for the International Association of Students in Economic and Commercial Sciences, the fair featured more than 30 student groups ranging from the UW-Belly Dancing Club to the Model UN to the African Student Association.

According to AIESEC president Katie Hayes, the international exchange program allows UW students to intern in countries around the world while also offering internships to foreign exchange students living in Madison.

"One of the main things we're trying to do on campus is to spread cultural understanding from all the different countries in the world," Hayes said.

As the fair began, however, few students showed interest in the colorful booths surrounding the Library Mall fountain. "I was just passing through on my way home," said Karly Tjadem, a UW sophomore.

Like Tjadem, most students cut through the mall not sparing any time to learn about cultural understanding. For much of the afternoon, the organizations outnumbered curious students. One Wisconsin senior, who asked not to be named, called the fair, "a bunch of hippie nonsense."

Nevertheless, others saw the fair as a learning experience. "It helps bring people to other places," said a UW student named Bunny, who declined to give her last name. "It helps expand horizons."

Wisconsin senior Mike Williams spent a semester studying in Cairo and praised the exchange programs. "It's just a mind-blowing experience," he said.

Although many of the organizations stressed the differences between America and the other nations of the world, Williams focused on the similarities.

"Life over there really isn't that different from our lives that we experience," Williams said. "Guys are chasing girls. Everyone wants to get a family."

Williams also described his first night at a Cairo bar where he and his new Egyptian friends smoked shisha, a type of molasses and tobacco mixture, into the hours of the early morning.

The International Fair may have helped some students appreciate the great diversity between the different cultures of the world, but it also showcased how all people share some common ground.

After all, UW students might not smoke shisha, but they are certainly familiar with early mornings at the bars.

Ships, Pirate and Rocket in Nature

When I was in AIESEC, I'd often fantasize about getting to hang out with my conference friends on a regular basis. The amount of awesomeness that they'd pack into a weekend, night, or road trip was not 1 iota away from forcefully blowing brain out of my nose.

Images of what we could create Out There were regular guests to my dreams and I constantly schemed (then and now) of how I could bring us all together to concentrate, create, and change.

Fortunately, I had a solid tribe in Madison that regularly gave me that urge to blow, and the cohesiveness, respect, and unforced teamwork that they displayed rests as the model I aspire to create in all endeavors now and forever.

I had never thought of my network as an asset before, largely because I was too dumb to do so. I was too caught up in it.

But, as I alluded to, if the past 2 months have taught me anything, it is that now we are There. The deep, absolute friendship, generosity, time, and invested energy that I've received has left a tangible mark on me. Asking for nothing, giving of everything; true shoulders of giants.

this would definitely be a marked chapter on the DVD

In Madison. This is probably the part in the movie where it starts to get really interesting, especially in 80 minutes when I seek to make a mark of significance on 115 beautiful babies.

I'll post the video intro tomorrow.

The Take-Aways

Here's what I've taken away from our discussion. You may or may not agree, but that's ok. I think we made some progress that can now be finished in the offline world.

1. Hero is right I think; there may not need to be a huge number recruited to maintain the pipeline, due to the increased speed of member-development and longer average lifespan of members (can these be measured? Or at least roughly measured to find out if that's actually true or not?).

However, when making decisions, don't let your vision just encompass this semester; be thinking at least 3 years ahead. Don't want to put future babies up a creek with no paddle and a bear creeping up.

2. As such, make sure you know exactly how a 1-semester slow-down in recruitment will fit into your overall impact-expansion strategy. Keep the eye on the prize.

3. The "give meaningful work & follow up" model of development might need to be re-taught or re-emphasized to managers and leaders.

4. Start working relentlessly on constructing the structures necessary to make this work (like increasing average output from each individual member), and uniting around the vision (which we first set 1 year ago and needs to be followed up on).

5. This encompasses much more than a member-number game, and we acknowledge that, but let's also not forget that bigger probably is better.

6. MP called me condescending, but I still like him. And miss him.

7. Take the rest internal, figure it out, and blow shit up.

Thanks for the conversation. That was exciting, kinda.

Blog your take-aways or leave them in the comments, it'd be nice to have a few summary conclusions from others and for others to take with them. It's a good mental exercise as well.

Mixxing Them Up: Growth, Community, Integration, and Goals

I'm drinking Jack Daniels. It's pretty spicy, but the Hobo will look sweet atop that mother ship.

I've been pondering this discussion since my first comment, and have been delightedly following the discussion and occasionally chirping in here and whence.

Several themes have arisen, but I'm deliberately only addressing a few. Not all would be appropriate for me to comment on. I'd encourage the people who brought up points not yet addressed to act on these within the LC - have a discussion, initiate some work, whatever. Just do it.

I haven't listened to Floyd in quite some time, but Terminal Frost is taking me somewhere deep. Here we go.

GROWTH

First off, I am not (and I don't believe anyone here is) advocating growth for growth's sake. I'm advocating a sizable recruitment to protect the LC from a major leadership gap in the future.

Let me illustrate with an example.

Just a few semesters before I joined, the LC was a very capable position, in its own eyes. The EB decided they didn't need to recruit anyone that semester, taking the opportunity to not get bogged down with added members and instead focus on execution.

Yadda yadda yadda, they ended up taking 1 newbie (for the record she was quite hot and bit my ear in a casual way once - jawesome).

A year later, shit hit the fan within the EB, and several of the power players - the pillars in the org - dropped out. Just up and left.

This left a huge void. Guess how many people were even remotely capable of filling these gaps?

...1

Now I'm not saying that our EB is going to melt down, but hopefully this illustrates my point why you NEED an appropriately sized influx of new minds every single semester. You need to keep the pipeline full. It's not just for this semester, it's hedging for the future.

Look at the current LC. Take away 1 recruitment class. What sort of gaps now exist? Who IS NOT there? Would the LC be where it's at without those people? Are you willing to even make that bet?

If you take 0 members, you completely eliminate one inflow of the leadership pipeline, and it won't fuck you now, but it will fuck you later (see example above).
Plus, the larger the size of the LC, the larger the batch of people needed to fullfil the required roles.

If you take 0, 10, 20, or perhaps even 30 members, will you acquire enough people to fill the roles necessary in an LC of 100 people (let's use that as the current benchmark for now)?

And not just formal roles like VP of Doing Shit, but the other, informal (and just as critical) roles generally filled by unsung heroes. Anything under 30 and I say NO, but I'd still be more comfortable with at least 40. Could just be semantics at that point, but 1 great person could EASILY result in mental output that makes those additional 10 people seem trivial.

So, paradoxically, maintaining the current level requires a certain level of growth from Day 0 of the semester to 1st day of newbies. I think an LC should ideally be able to take on 50% more members with ease. Let's get there.

And lastly about growth, a little perspective. If you asked me 5 years ago if an LC of 80 was possible, I probably would have laughed. When we got up to 40 people, we nearly filled up a small room - filling up that huge lecture hall was pipe dreams!

That would take years, I surmised. Yet lo and behold, we got there before I had to leave.

There are 2 key reasons for this collective achievement, I think.

First, we finally set Fucking HUGE, Fucking SCARY goals. I remember the first time Trent said we could fill up that hall during a recruitment drive. "That many people interested in joining AIESEC?" I asked. I swear to god I straight up lied to Trent straight in the eyes when I eventually said I agreed.

Now we fill up that room with MEMBERS.

It took 3 years, but we got there. And it started with a fucking scary goal, and then came in increments.

Set huge goals, and get there incrementally. Measure your progress the entire time, but never lose sight of that finish line. And be ready to set a new dash for a new goal.

Second, we started growing very rapidly and with that, the very feeling of our LC was changing rapidly as well. Except, our new members had NO IDEA the scope of changes that were taking place.

Members in their 1st semester merely saw this as the Starting Block. 2nd Semester members were still maturing as members and were a bit oblivious to these rapid changes as well.

Only us old members new the changes that were happening. Everyone else saw it as Point A... so their perspectives were different than ours.

So when we visionized and talked about what was possible, if we old members kept our mouths shut to an extent and didn't down play ideas, an 80 member LC didn't sound that bad to a newbie coming into a 60 member LC.

And then there was me, over in the corner, shitting my pants.

McKim has no idea what it's like to be in a 20 person LC. Imagine that? How sweet is that? His base is 60 or so! That's a full THREE TIMES what my basic reference point started at.

And so the idea of what is possible changed as well, as the collective reference point of the LC caught up.

But, once you say its ok to take some small number, that becomes a point of reference for future generations and grounds their own ideals of what Could Be. Remember that.

FINALLY, the key here is to still build in a solid inflow of talent, and then use this time to figure out how to catch up the org structure (may need to read some OUTSIDE books, cause lord knows there ain't much besides our own brains to help us here. Books are the only other option).

I agree with re-assessing the structure of the LC, but don't let that need fully stunt your incremental growth, and always be sure to have that end vision in mind.

Make sure people know you are taking a moment to set things up and that "we only took 40 this semester so that next semester we can recruit 60 totally new people again."

Make this a goal: "recruit 75 more people in next Fall semester."

COMMUNITY, INTEGRATION, AND ATTACHING MEMBERS TO THE DREAM

As I said, your perceptions of the LC get grounded in your own experience and can be a bit slow in adapting to the new realities of a quickly changing LC. It's a weird phenomenon in AIESEC, but as a member ages, they often get more conservative, not more aggressive in pushing the envelope.

This inability to mentally evolve quickly enough could be a cause of that. For the record, I myself probably fall into this category and I'm not saying it judgmentally, just observationally.

So as this conversation progresses to action steps, you may need to evolve YOUR idea of community (remember, it doesn't always adapt as quickly as required by the the LC evolution). Find a common idea of it that most people can mostly agree on and start moving towards it.

A new person may actually be better at "adapting" than you because they aren't carrying as much "baggage" of prior experiences. They're more open.

The exciting part here is that we COULD potentially create a "community" where you don't necessarily need to know everyone's name, but you WILL know that you are linked by your aspiration towards this common vision/mission (everyone gets integrated through giving them work). Out of this common thread a community could evolve.

What a great opportunity!

While you can't ever really be sure if someone is "integrated," you can usually tell if they aren't. Also, Just because you can't tell they aren't integrated, doesn't mean they ARE integrated.

** I think the key signal, which has been alluded to in some comments, is that if someone's executing on a good deal of valuable shit, they probably feel integrated.

Thus, by focusing on expanding the work the LC collectively does, you are inherently also working towards a better sense of community and probably better integrated members. This is the pillar I myself would probably use to approach the issue of integration. However, this is a discussion the LC itself must conclude and act on.

All my opining in the world won't do jack to better integrate Chris McKim. But if I give him a few worthwhile tasks, show them why they're valuable to our team, the LC as whole, as well as to his own development, then he'll probably feel pretty damn good about getting the tasks done well.

A celebratory drink at Echo Tap should probably seal the deal.

Give someone substantial tasks that matter. Follow up and assess afterwards.

How can you take those 2 basic interactions and scale them up to a 100 person group, then take it up another notch to 200? That's a question worth exploring.

A good first step would be making sure each person understands the value of those 2 basic interactions, how to do them as a manager/leader, and why you should teach it to other people (spread the word about the idea underlying these 2 interactions).

FINISHING THOUGHTS/MOVES JOHNNY CAGE STYLE

We didn't get to the moon by saying let's make a plane that can fly a bit higher than the current altitude leader.

Instead we said LET'S GET TO THE FUCKING MOON.

Big ass goals matter, and inspire big ass results, so even if the goal isn't huge growth for this semester, make sure your B.A.G. is measurable and large. And make sure you are fitting this all into a grander vision, with concrete ideas for the following semester.

Remember Trent's idea of filling that lecture hall with recruits? It all started with an idea that seemed radically outlandish. And then we even overachieved.

One of the biggest and most important thing I've learned in my 4 months of working experience is that incremental tests can get you far, but they take a long time.

Radical Tests are what create breakthroughs.

Both are important. Don't put all your bets on one or the other, but also don't discredit one or the other. And as you discuss what to do, what things to test, and hypothesize, remember there is never reason to be sorry for suggesting something.

We never get hurt by having too many ideas, only by TOO FEW.

Suggest ideas with reckless abandon and when you've finally exhausted every single brain cell coming up with ideas, systematically go through them and toss out those not appropriate. Yes, some ideas are in fact better than others. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't list THEM ALL. Ideas breed other ideas. They mate. They make baby ideas.

And one of those babies could be a winner.

So let's find a baby, and make her a winner.

Mix Master

PS - this is EXACTLY the issue that I could see NFT's driving forward. Their leadership and experience would be very useful in facilitating the conversations, crystallizing the information, and getting others involved. Great way to informally assemble a team and Get Shit Done. Not necessary, but just a thought.

As our scope progresses, the necessity to increase the speed with which you get newbies up to speed increases, as does the Level you need to get them up to, which makes this even harder.

But it also signifies progress.

And that is a good thing.

response point 5

To me, a proposal of recruiting a number that would lead to an actually shrinking of the LC- a shared proposal by more than one at the retreat- seems to be two steps in the wrong direction, and gives very mixed messages to newer members on how we actually plan on carrying out our mission. (Katy)

More on this later, but the instant you decide to decrease in size, you, your future members' experiences, and your past servants' legacies are FUCKED, and the foundation many others toiled to lay will have proven to be not nearly as mighty as they may have thought.

UPDATE: The conversation is delicious, and I'll weigh in more thoroughly tomorrow. A birthday party tonight got in the way. Keep the thoughts coming, here, there, there, or on your own blog. Let's try to keep the conversations on target (whatever the target of that exact conversation may be - some are focused around slightly different points), progressive, and DARING. Push your brain hard.

179....

... the number of applicants to AIESEC - Madison. Well played, well played. Maintaining cautious reservations was foolish.

May the Dream continue.

radio star

I'll be on the radio today at 6pm central time. 1670 am if you are in Madison, otherwise you can listen streaming online here. Podcast of the show will be here in the near future. I talked about, among other things, my time abroad and AIESEC. Haven't heard my own voice on the radio before.

Yes, Mix was locked in a room with women several years his senior... and it was awesome. Crazy, crazy vibes.

By the way, I'm glad this was not lost to History. I believe it was actually first revealed at a WSC, as it was crafted in a white minivan heading south towards St. Louis. The windows froze open at a toll, which was nice. I'll need some help confirming that, though.

still on the Quote Train

More proof that a embarking on a Traineeship Rocket Ship is the way to go:

...and I finally figured out why every American tourist thinks everyone here speaks English; the only places tourists go are populated by Turkish people who can speak English, trying to sell them things or help them order food in a restaurant. I´m getting a completely different experience in the city than most people will ever get. Jawesome. (A Ninja abroad)

Yea, jawesome.

Newark Navidad

AMERICAN AIRLINES
1392
ORD Chicago
Mar 02, 2007
04:30 PM

EWR Newark
Mar 02, 2007
07:45 PM
Economy
N

1253
EWR Newark
Mar 04, 2007
12:45 PM

ORD Chicago
Mar 04, 2007
02:15 PM
Economy
N

They are flying us to the NE Beast regional conference to deliver a Traineeship Power Hour sezchuan. The first real act cooperation between LC's, this is monumental on a variety of levels.

42

The answer, and the number of new members entering AIESEC - Madison this semester. My job is to make sure they come back next semester, which I think we can do... if I don't first get arrested or punch a gaping whole through someone's face. Or both.

Our management structure will have to change a bit, and more responsibility will now sit on those outside of defined leadership roles. These, I think, are the most critical people. They're the underbelly of the beast; making it either as hard as its outer shell or soft and juicy. Make or break. Do what you say you will do.

So let us craft.

pimped by the Uni

Through encouraging its members to step outside of their comfort zones by living and working in the Middle East and North Africa, among other regions, AIESEC Madison is encouraging an exchange of knowledge, potential and curiosity that is essential in today's increasingly globalized world.

Read on and party on.