Giornalino BEST Milano

Written in English and Italian

REALIZZATO CON IL CONTRIBUTO DEL POLITECNICO DI MILANO

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FROM COLLEGE LIFE? BEST (Board of European Students of Technology) è un’associazione no-profit, apolitica, apartitica e laica. Dal 1989 offriamo comunicazione, cooperazione e possibilità di scambi didattici e culturali a studenti di facoltà tecnologiche in tutta Europa. Essere membro di BEST sarà una delle esperienze più entusiasmanti della tua carriera universitaria; avrai l’opportunità di conciliare progetti ambiziosi con l’apprendimento di nuove conoscenze e tanto divertimento. Potrai ampliare il tuo curriculum con conoscenze tecnologiche anche al di fuori dal tuo ambito di studi, migliorerai il tuo inglese, imparerai a relazionarti e a lavorare in un gruppo variegato. Ad oggi ci sono 94 Local BEST Group (LBG) in circa 32 stati europei, e in tutti questi gruppi giorno per giorno si forma il BEST Spirit che guida e permette l’organizzazione di fantastici eventi. E BEST è in continua crescita: ogni anno 4 nuovi gruppi si aggiungono e prendono parte alla grande sfida BEST.

Il magazine di BEST Milano

DECEMBER 2012

2 www.best.eu.org www.bestmilano.it

BESTie? BEST Spirit?!? BESTie è il nome che si danno i membri di BEST in tutta Europa. Un BESTie è una persona che vive a pieno il BEST Spirit, in grado di sfidarsi, crescere, prendersi responsabilità, e ricevere grandi gratificazioni. È una persona con un grande spirito di adattamento, in grado di risolvere i problemi organizzativi più disparati, seppur con risorse minime. A questo punto, dire cos’è il BEST Spirit è facile: è l’aria che si respira in BEST, e l’unico modo che avete per capirlo, è viverlo con noi. Qualcuno dice che è un cocktail di nuove amicizie, diversità a contatto, l’unione tra apprendimento e divertimento… Ma forse, la frase che meglio racchiude il BEST Spirit è: Work hard, Party harder! BESTie is how we call each other inside BEST. A BESTie is someone who lives the BEST Spirit to its finest, is able to challenge themselves, to learn, to take responsibilities and receive gratifications. It’s someone with a great adapting spirit, able to solve immediate organizational problems, even with minimum resources. At this point, it’s easy to define in one word what’s the BEST Spirit: it’s our fuel. But if you want to know more about what it is, there is no way that words can explain it. You must experience it. Some say it’s a cocktail of new friendships, diversity, mix between learning and having fun.. But the sentence that better embraces our BEST Spirit is: Work hard, Party harder!

LEISURE EVENT: Past and Future This is always the BEST part to start from: leisure events we’ve had and the upcoming ones. Since every event is completely unique, this article will talk about my own view on them.

It’s really hard to keep up with so many leisure events that BEST organizes because really often there are more than one happening in the same time, so you always have to choose to attend one rather than the other. The preparation for these events start way before planning the trip, though: you have, most of the times, to write a good application telling the organizers why they should accept your application instead of someone else’s. If you’re accepted, you should check if you need a special visa to visit the country in question (e.g. if you’re applying for a leisure event in Russia – exotic!) and buy your

tickets ASAP. Then, all you have to do is packing, make sure you bring something (drinks or food) from your country with you, because you will definitely need it for the International Evening Party. Afterwards, don’t forget to charge you camera and just get ready to meet at least 100 new people!

In October we had Jam Sultan, held by LBG Izmir (Turkey), to which I attended with three other BESTies from LBG Milan. The fee is always low, and we stayed in a great Hotel right by the beach, close to Izmir. We had three nights, three different parties, free access (and more) at the hotel’s bar from 11.00 to 23.00 that was next to their big swimming pool. Also, all meals were included in the fee, as well as the day trip to a typical Turkish village that was close to where we were, where we tasted different kinds of wine (life would be perfect if I could remember the name of this village). In addition, on one of the days we even went to an Aqua Park.

http://www.best.eu.org/


Upcoming leisure events: Alpine Jam, held by LBG Torino, is themed as December 21st approaches as “Apocalypse”. Who knows how that’s going to be! They say it’s the last event of your life. But that’s not true, because many LBGs are organizing events for the New Year’s Eve!

To make it short, BEST will be living around 6 leisure events on the 31st. Gdansk is the trendiest one, according to sources. Then there’s the leden – wait for it- dary Scarlet held by LBG Yildiz, Istanbul that takes something around 150 BESTies to the Bosphorus on the 31st’s evening. This year is Scarlet’s 5th anniversary, so we expect it to be awesome.

Smaller/yet not well known New Year’s parties will take place in Zagreb, Bratislava, Kyiv and Cluj-Napoca. The application deadlines for the last two parties close relatively on December 10th and 20th.

Text by Nina

Trips: be’er romano’ or beGerman Can’t make it to the New Year’s leisure events? Don’t worry, we’ll take you to Rome in January! Mark on your Calendar, Agenda, Desktop, smartphone and tablet: probably from 18th to 20th (dates to be confirmed) you will travel with BEST and have the BEST weekend of your college life. Oh, you don’t think so? Challenge accepted: apply, and then we’ll talk.

Last trip we’ve organized was a success: a whole weekend around Slovenia and Croatia for a fee equivalent to 75 euro all

included.. I say “you can never go wrong if you travel with us”. Once again, we’ve put on our motto, and like the last trip, Rome will be unforgettable. Here are a couple of words from our Slovenia/Croatia trip’s Main Organizer:

“Hi reader! My name is Ou Yan and I was one of the two Main Organisers of the trip to Slovenia and Croatia we organized in May 2012. At the time I had just joined BEST so I was really scared about it! I have to say that it went much better than I thought :-)



I made a lot of new friends inside our university and visited two splendid cities that are definitely underrated. In Slovenia the caves of Postojna are probably one of the most amazing natural caves I ever saw in my life but Croatia wasn’t worse with a lot of colorful and cultural interesting places and the Museum of Broken Relationships (check some photos online, I'll just tell you that they’re hilarious). Also as organizer it was a really amazing experience. Both under the sun and under the rain it was always a pleasure to be with some of the most friendly people I ever met in PoliMi and wandering together around the city was definitely fun :-) I learned a lot about organizing events and managing big group so it was useful for my self-improvement as well! Shortly after that I became Secretary of our group.”

This year we’ll take Politecnico students to Rome for a whole weekend in January, and then We’ll be heading to Munich in March for another unforgettable weekend. Funny facts about the organization: our Main Organizer for Rome Trip is actually Spanish (a “thanks a bunch” to Marc, who gave us his availability even being in Erasmus program) with Stefania, a brand new Italian sweet sweet member; while our Munich’s trip will be organized by our Brazilian member, who is also our Public Relations Coordinator. Big news about Munich is that on the first haft of March, the city organizes an “Oktoberfest”

revival, so we’ll have the great opportunity of (at least partially) experiencing the Oktoberfest Spirit in March!

We’ll be looking forward to having you in our trips!

Updates will be uploaded both on our website and on our Facebook Page.

Seasonal Events: SpC’s Applications closed Too bad if you haven’t applied for any of our 18 Spring Courses. The good side of this news is that now that you know we have Seasonal courses, you can get ready to apply for the Summer Courses and have the BEST vacations of your life, fully embracing our motto of Working hard, partying harder.



What are these courses? They can be either Basic or Advanced and they can be about ANYTHING (e.g. last year an LBG organized a course about beer). Most of the times they are appealing for many faculties, and hardly often prior knowledge on the matter is required. Each LBG organizes at least one course each year. How long does a course last? In average a course lasts 10 days, with at least one weekend trip where the organizers take the participants to a trip before and/or after the course. Who can apply for these courses? Any student that is enrolled in an University that has an LBG (Local BEST Group) Why should I apply for a course? Because not only they will expand your knowledge, but also will be the BEST opportunity to meet new awesome people, different cultures, a new environment and to build a good networking. Moreover, many Universities around Europe give extra credits for activities such as a BEST Course. When should I apply for a course? Whenever we have opened the application weeks, so keep an eye open and feel free to contact us for further information! This season was very fruitful for Milan: our course is going to be about start-ups, and we’ve received more

than 330 applications from all around Europe (and extra EU, to be honest) and we’ve “sent” more than 110 applications from Politecnico di Milano students. This number will increase exponentially, however, when summer comes.

How do I apply for a course? For your luck, every season we organize the MoL Day, that stands for Motivation Letter Day. We make a short presentation about BEST Courses followed by tips that one of our staffs will give present. If you need further help with it, you can always count on our members for feedback.

EBEC – European BEST Engineering Competition

We’re finally starting to organize the our local BEC! I hope you’re half as excited as we are, because we’re working very hard to make this edition the BEST one. We’ve been brainstorming about the Topic of this year’s competition and about cool things to introduce in order to make you guys have the time of your life!

Wait… You have no idea of what I’m saying? EBEC is one of the most important events BEST holds, and it has three levels: Local competitions, National/Regional competitions and the Final competition is the European one. On the local round, participants are expected to work in groups of four students (no matter which faculty they’re enrolled in) on two tasks that will be held in two different journeys: the first activity is the Team Design, in which each group must build an engine following



the topic that will be released on the same day. The second challenge is the Case Study, in which the students will be asked to solve a problem also given on the same day. The winner receives prizes and will go to the next round, until they get the final prize (hopefully). Last year we saw one of our groups go to the European finals (if you guys are reading this, we’re proud of you!), but unfortunately they got defeated (we’re still proud of you, though!).

This year, however, is a new year, and we have once again the chance to win EBEC in all levels.

Now if you ask me again why you should apply for one of our events, I can’t help but telling you that it’s a great opportunity of getting in touch with the companies that support EBEC (last year they collected CVs on the Case Study’s day), it’s also a great opportunity of learning how to work better in group, how to apply the knowledge you’ve acquired in classes, how to use your knowledge in a creative way. It’s an opportunity to get to know more people, networking, learn how to be a better problem solver. In addition, for the ones that will apply for EBEC, we will prepare a training on Team Work, so you get ready to rock the competition!

Last year’s competition fruited us many new friends, members and our Fund Raising Responsible (so called Canto). Here’s the testimonial of our dearest Neiples (evidently in Italian):

“Probabilmente a tutti noi, ingegneri e non, è capitato almeno una volta da piccoli di provare a smontare la radio di papà, di costruire improbabili veicoli con i Lego o costruire qualcosa con legno e materiali vari, spinti dalla curiosità e dalla creatività o per mettersi alla prova! Con lo stesso spirito l' anno scorso io e il mio fantastico "Alfa-Team" abbiamo partecipato a EBEC, competizione ingegeristica che si svolge al Poli organizzata da BEST. E' stata sicuramente un' esperienza unica: non capita tutti i giorni di avere la possibilità di mettere alla prova la propria manualità e capacità di organizzazione, divertendosi, e avendo la possibilità di vincere vari premi ta cui viaggi low-cost in Europa! La competizione si è svolta in due prove: team design e case study. Nella prima , con a disposizone legno, chiodi e spago, bisognava costruire un meccanismo a carrucola in grado di trasportare una palla da baseball da un tavolo ad un bersaglio, spostato di mezzo metro e rialzato. Facile, direte voi, ma molti furono i gruppi che non riuscirono nell'



impresa... la nostra macchina funzionò con grande sorpresa (soprattutto nostra, in quanto fino a due minuti prima non siamo mai riusciti a farla funzionare), regalandoci un meritato terzo posto! La seconda prova, svoltasi una settimana dopo, conisisteva nell' ottimizzare un processo di fusione di metalli,operando tramite un apposito simulatore, scegliendo le materie prime da fondere e le fasi del processo, cercando di ottimizzare costi, spesa energetica, e tempo....una prova di ottimizzazione del processo, che non richiedeva conoscenze specifiche ma proprio per questo ancora più avvincente e combattuta! Dopo un grande testa a testa e la presentazione del nostro progetto in ingese, ci siamo piazzati al settimo posto. Perse tutte le speranze, alla premiazione finale scoprimmo invece di essere ancora al terzo posto nella classifica generale, e con grande stupore, andammo a ritirare il nostro premio sul podio!! Finalmente abbiamo potuto festeggiare e recuperare le energie spese con un bell' aperitivo offertoci dallo Staff e "innaffiare" il nostro risultato con lo Spriz! E' stata sicuramente una bellissima esperienza, che mi ha divertito parecchio e dandomi la possibilità di toccare con mano i problemi del progettare e ottimizzare un processo, risolvendoli con approccio ingegneristico...un modo totalmente nuovo di apprendere e applicare ciò che ti insegnano al Poli! Il mio consigio è questo: iscrivetevi, non ve ne pentirete!! Poche settimane dopo ho deciso di entrare a

far parte di BEST Milano: ho viaggiato per l' Europa, ho organizzato eventi, parlato con molte aziende, stretto tante nuove amicizie e migliorato le mie skills...ho persino scoperto di avere doti organizzative, diplomatiche e addirittura culinarie che non pensavo di avere! Ho avuto enormi soddisfazioni, ma questa è un' altra storia.... ;)”

Alberto Napoli

We hope to see you in our Local BEC, and that you will spread the word about it!

For any further information, please contact us on [email protected]



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Giornalino BEST Milano

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