7th Annual Alumni Conference

Each year, for the last seven years, we have held an alumni conference in parallel with our annual exchange conference. The idea started as a way to involve alumni in IAESTE beyond their internships. Holding it at the same time as the exchange conference meant that participants could be part of a much larger event and have more opportunities to meet friends and make new contacts.

This year’s alumni conference took place in Berlin from 19-22 January. Not only did participants get to experience the alumni conference, but with it being IAESTE’s 70th anniversary, they also got to join the special 70th celebrations in the evenings and opening plenary.

The conference programme included presentations from alumni on how their IAESTE experience affected their careers, opportunities to meet German employers and the Board of IAESTE A.s.b.l. as well as workgroups on how alumni can help the association.

35 participants attended for the weekend from 15 different countries, making it one of our most popular alumni conferences. Additionally, through our alumni supporter pins and donations, we managed to raise an impressive amount of money for our development fund to support new IAESTE countries develop their programme.

Check out the video and photos from Berlin and look out for information later this year about our 8th IAESTE Alumni Conference which will be in Cyprus!

Here is Johan Baijot on his experience at the alumni conference:

"Our members have easily made it to the four corners of the world with IAESTE, but the opportunity of being present along the AC still eluded us for the last years. As it always take place during January overlapping with the exam period at our university. But two years ago Robin our former president already set his eyes on Berlin. It was but a vague idea at the time. Until last autumn when he came back to me saying he and Audrey were tempted to go. I was tempted to so we ended up signing up for the AAC and convincing Tim along the way.

Arriving there we found out that we knew way more people than we expected. Old trainnees we had met when we had our internships, people we had met at various conferences and even Yahia from Tunisia told me hey I know you, we had a long conversation last April on fb so this was the first time I met him in person. But reconnecting to old friends is not the only thing the AAC is good for it allows you to meet plenty of interesting new people and hearing how it is in Colombia, North Korea, France, New Zealand how they see opportunities in IAESTE.

We also got the opportunity to meet people who are way more dedicated to IAESTE as we are having stories that go back more than forty years ago. Although it went all over so quickly. Our last panel discussion opened up some new interesting perspectives for the IAESTE Alumni's. And at the end of the conference there was no goodbye, but people simple said to each other: See you at next years conference in Cyprus! So what about you do you join us next year as well?"

Thanks to Anli Tang for giving us permission to use his photos and to the IAESTE Motion Team for making the video.