Trainers on Tour - Open space Technology, Vienna

Everybody from time to time might feel frustrated with some pattern that
is forced on them. Surely, this didn't happen with the ESTIEM Event
“Open-Space Technology” that took place in Vienna from the 3rd to the
5th February 2012.
The great pleasure about this particular type of event lies in the
freedom of how it is held. Han and Mangesh, our trainers, came to Vienna
to give US the choice in which trainings we would like to focus on.

To kick it all off, we met on Friday night at “Figlmüller”. Rumours tell
that they would serve the best schnitzel in town. By looking at the
participants faces devouring plenty (and when I say plenty I'm talking
about dimensions, that makes it hard to cut on your plate) of crazy
schnitzel, even vegetarians understood, this piece of meat must be
delicious. Combined with Austrian style wine, called Spritzer, we
already started to feel more confident to follow the dinner up with some
presentation and body language training at the WINGnet Club-room. Some
discussion about how to give a good feedback also rose up and we learnt
about the “Sandwich”-Model of giving feedback.
Now that we got to know each other in situations where most people would
feel a bit self-conscious, many of the participants decided to sing and
spend the night there.

Breakfast Saturday morning gave the sandwich-model a more “eatable”
meaning and afterwards we started brainstorming and voting which
trainings we would like to work through. By games, group works and also
some theory lessons, we learnt a lot about the actual topics, which we
decided to be motivation, leadership, project management, but most
important, we learnt a lot about ourselves and what roles each of us
plays in a team. I found it to be a very inspiring experience to see not
only the topics as content of the event, but also to have a very
personal experience in every situation that we found ourselves in while
doing the teamwork. We had many open discussions which led to new ideas
and enabled us to reflect on what we have gone through during the
trainings.
To top the day, we cooked together and used our creativity to create a
new dish that we titled “faschiertes Händl” (like chicken cordon-bleu
but instead of cheese we put minced-meat inside and covered the chicken
in ham → for maximum meat experience). But of course, also more healthy
food was served that night and we all enjoyed it so much, that we did
not feel embarrassed anymore to sing SPICE GIRLS and AVRIL LAVIGNE in
the end.

Sunday we took half of the day to do fundraising training, including
call-simulations. It gave us a nice overview on how to call companies
and intensify corporate relations, which is often needed when an event
is organised. Mangesh later showed us ways how to come up with creative
ideas using certain techniques like brain writing and subtraction, so we
could see for ourselves how companies often develop new products.

Thank you Han and Mangesh for taking your time and for giving us very
productive input. I personally feel that I have gained a lot from it and
it was time well-spent in nice company and in a relaxed atmosphere.