An experience from an international Conference: ScaLDS

I am just sitting in the train back to Kaiserslautern and enjoyed a week of Skill Workshops, talking to delegates from all over Scandinavia, also having an official dinner and visiting Copenhagen in the end. But let’s start the story in the beginning:

After a short night at Dusseldorf Airport I already met some girls from Cologne before boarding who were also on their way to the conference. At Copenhagen airport we met two more girls from Gießen, that had already stayed for a night in Copenhagen and together we went to the Copenhagen Business School where the Conference took place for the first day.

There we met more Delegates: From Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Cologne ;-) (there were 12 people from Cologne attending the conference). After some confusion where to store our luggage, when does the opening plenary start and in which room does the opening plenary take place, we made it to the room and had a warm welcome of the facilitators of the conference.

And then it began: Every country introduced themselves in a short time and the chair(man) introduced himself: Jake is originally from Australia, is currently the president of AIESEC in Latvia and came to Copenhagen to chair the conference. Even if his English had a broad Australian accent we made it to understand him and he presented us some interesting facts about Australia.

After two external speeches about “Ethical leadership” and “The 7 habits of highly effective people” (which was really cool even though he gave as some small homework to think about the stuff again), we went to the city center of Copenhagen. There the Global village took place: Here every country presented themselves in typical clothes and with typical food to the other delegates of the conference but also to the pedestrians. The Icelander were costumed as Vikings and I learned that even the Norwegian have great cheese.

In the night we travelled to the main site of the conference and the next day we started with a field report of one who did an internship in India. Afterwards we continued a discussion about future chances and challenges of the Scandinavian in the globalized world. It was very interesting to have input from people from Sweden with origin in Iran, from Norway with origin in China, with an Icelandic guy and also a girl from India – you see: our group was really diverse and thereby the opinions were also diverse …

The rest of the day we talked about leadership and management, our experience with both, the differences and had simulations were we could feel the difference between being managed and being lead. And as in the following day we gave feedback about the conference to the facilitators in the evening that they can make the conference even better in the next days or the next year. After that there was a nice party with all the delegates until the early morning.

At the next day we could decide between several workshops which we could attend: Efficient meetings, reward & recognition, how to create and use a vision, performance assessment and many more. I liked most the efficient meetings workshop because on the one hand I know the theory how to have an efficient meeting but on the other hand I do not always get it. Discuss about it with other people and having a small simulation helped me hopefully to use the theory also in future.

After some nice dinner (the organization committee cooked great pasta like every day) we had a fair for all of the local committees: They presented themselves, their strengths and weaknesses so that every local committee could learn from another one. There started also some cooperation: e.g.: at our university we have a lot of engineering students, so I asked if they can look for traineeships in the market of renewable energies in their cities. It was great to see these synergies and how the people could help each other and learn from each other.

On Saturday the Germans had some time to chill because the other delegates had sessions with all of the delegates from their countries (e.g. all Danish delegates were together). So we enjoyed the day in the sun and shared our experience, talked about god and the world or tried to find the lake that was nearby.

After this really nice day the last evening of there conference was there and there was planned something special: official dinner where everyone was dressed up and so there were taken some nice photos. The atmosphere was great and the Scandinavian shared some of their traditional songs with us. We had also a performance of a girl from the organization committee who played the piano and sang for us. There were also given some awards: to the best delegate and to the best delegation and they decided that the best delegation was from Germany!

After a nice party with additional Scandinavian culture (got to know a Nordic circle) and a lot of talks during the night it did not make sense to use the bed and so we packed our luggage and left the site at 7 am for another long bus trip to Copenhagen. There we could also catch up the lack of sleep of the last night.

The last two days I enjoyed Copenhagen with Christina and Diana from Augsburg. Bitten, a Danish friend of Christina, was such nice that we could stay at her and her boyfriend’s flat and she also showed as Copenhagen from the view of a Copenhagen citizen. But also the boat tour and the mermaid were part of our sightseeing tour. Thanks again to your hospitality!

This was an amazing week in Copenhagen and I cannot wait for another great time at another International Conference!

Stefan, Local Committee President 09/10