International Congress 2008 Open!

Dear Members,

As yesterday on 21st of August International Congress 2008 was officially open in Brazil, Sao Paulo I decided to share with you on what is happening here and how are we using the time spent in Brasil to support you in achieving our ambitious goals.
Let’s say this is the first post of 10 that I will daily upload here throughout whole conference.
We also encourage you to visit IC Live WIKI here: http://www.myaiesec.net/content/viewwiki.do?contentid=10025190



Day No Zero
was mostly about celebration of the opening of IC. We woke up early in the morning and went to Holiday Inn hotel for the Opening Ceremony. We could admire many attractions such as Capoeira show (really cool, different to the polish ones!) as well a speeches of certain Personas.
Later on we were transported to Global Village. The event itself wasn’t different to others that I’ve already been to. It is a shame that it was indoor event, cause it was hot and … grey. What is worth mentioning the leaflet promoting GV contained photos that were taken on GV during IC 2006 in Poland – in front of PKiN. It means that our event became a history as role model . Cool!! Polish delegation had also its 5 minutes on the stage and what we did was Polonez dance to music from Pan Tadeusz movie by Andrzej Wajda. All in all - nice Polish accents! :)
Afterwards we went for Opening Plenary back in Holiday Inn. We did a roll call with visualizations aligned to our Poland Promotion Strategy and we danced “From Zero to Hero” as it is already a symbolic song for our term.
We all tired a lot went to beds earlier to be fresh and sound during morning plenary.



Day No One - today
On the morning plenary there was a launch of first campaign organized by XMU (global support team - eXchange Management Unit). It is called “I am an eXchanger Race”. It is simply awesome! In a period of time from Sep to Dec numbers of raises, matches and realizations will be counted and the highest scores will be rewarded! The competition includes both sides of exchange – TN and EP. Announcement: Poland participates in the race! :)
The first block of conference called GEAR UP started. We were talking about what thriving network is and what kind of people create as such and tried to answer a question whether we are those people.  There were also some goal setting session and about external trends (global,regional and local) that we can and should capitalize on this term.
And the literally sweet part: there was Cadbury Launch – we got sweets ;), also TCS Launch – we got something for computer mice.
In few minutes we will start a block of 60th Anniversary of AIESEC that will last till tomorrow evening.
That is all for now.

On behalf of IC Polish Delegation
Krzychoo

PS. The photo is from our first days in Sao Paulo! More pictures soon!