LBG Trondheim

The start of LBG Trondheim

Once upon a time, Ida Lau Borch was invited on behalf of the Student Council at NTH, later the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, together with Espen Volden from IAESTE, to the first BEST-meeting in Grenoble in March, 1988. As Vice President of the Student Council the invitation from Grenoble intrigued her and the thought of an international student organisation and exchange of summer jobs, which the invitation proposed, made Espen Volden attend as well. IAESTE in Trondheim had exchange of summer jobs as their main activity, but it turned out that this was not the case in Grenoble. When it was clear that BEST was not was being founded to compete with IAESTE, Ida went back to NTH and wondered if it was possible to make a Local BEST Group (LBG) at our university.

The Student Council was really positive and BEST were allowed to use the same facilities as them, which we still have today; a beautiful meeting room, copy machine and computers, a lovely sofa area and the Student Council's great secretary and consultant, Kari, which has supported LBG Trondheim since the beginning and is still helping us today. Full of anticipation Ida put up an advertisement in the main square at campus Gløshaugen and managed to recruit two enthusiastic and motivated guys Morten Fjeld and Jan Erik Saugestad. Together they started the adventure of LBG Trondheim!:)

In the beginning they worked a lot with getting a proper infrastructure in the LBG and started to think what they could actually do with BEST. They were active towards the next meeting in Eindhoven, where Morten and Ida participated, and right after this they recruited a couple of new members. Ida became the first international president of BEST at the 1st General Assembly in Berlin in 1989, which also meant that our LBG was very active from the beginning. In connection with the International Student Festival in Trondheim (ISFiT), LBG Trondheim organised the 3rd GA in 1990, reuniting students from all over Europe. When Ida became an alumni, Kari, the secretary, was afraid our LBG would not survive, but motivation from the Nordic meeting that year helped a lot and the remaining members got things on track.

For most of the years as an LBG we have carried out BEST's idea of a flat structure due to only a maximum of 9-10 active members, but two year ago we started to work on implementing a proper Board in our LBG. In the earlier days the responsibilities just circulated in the LBG, although the President and Treasurer were committed for a whole year. The group's biggest and most important sponsor has always been the International Section at NTNU, but we are really working on the fundraising and trying to become less dependent on them, as we are now more active than ever before!

What have we been doing? Our biggest achievements...

As one of the founding LBG's, with Ida Lau Borch in front, we were a very active LBG in the beginning. We arranged GA in April 1990, and our very first summer course in 1991, «High Speed Marine Vehicles». Our LBG has arranged a course every summer ever since, with topics ranging from «Industrial ecology» to «Safety and reliability» to «Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)» and «Sustainable shipping» in 2008. In addition to organising GA and the first ever President's Meeting (PM) in 1995, we had a great achievement last year when we managed to organize two courses in one year. We are constantly looking for new challenges and another great achievement for our LBG is the Local Engineering Competition (LEC) that we will be organizing in March 2009, as this is something we have never done before!

In addition to the annual summer course we have organised several Regional Meetings (RM's), two Short Intensive Trainings (SIT), four workshops, a trainer's camp (TRAP) and a TrainShop during our 20 years as an LBG. A total of five international presidents have been from LBG Trondheim, but in the recent years our LBG has not been that active on the international level. Things are about to change though and we are certain you will see more from us in the future!:)

Current status, what are we up to?

LBG Trondheim has grown a lot in terms of members and activity the last year and we are still working on managing our group efficiently. One step in the right direction was implementing a proper structure and board in the autumn of 2007, which we are continuously trying to improve. Our LBG faced a challenging start in August 2008 as many of our members went away for an Erasmus, or became alumnus. Most of the people we had left in our LBG only had one year or less with experience and with only two of the old board members left, the knowledge transfer had not gone too well. At the same time we have had a lot of activities planned, with organising both the Nordic Joint Board Training (JBT) and a triple CE with Brno and Valladolid in a period of less than a month.

We managed to do an excellent recruitment though and have now got fantastic new members that are very enthusiastic and highly motivated for BEST. We are now a great big, loving family of 23 members and are hoping we will be able to stay this way. By making delicious waffles to the students of NTNU , putting flyers in the toilets and making them throw darts on a map of Europe, we are brainwashing the students about BEST and becoming more and more known on campus. However, during the JBT we set visions and goals, and one of them was to increase the awareness about BEST at our campus even more. As we are constantly on the look out for new challenges and ways to improve, we will as mentioned earlier be organising our very first LEC in March, in addition organizing our first non-Nordic internal event in over three years, the TrainShop beRICHER 7!

By having all these new members we are able to do so much more and our potential as an LBG is higher than ever before! After hosting RM in November 2007, we arranged our very first winter course in the history of BEST Trondheim, in addition to having our annual summer course. During the last year we have finally managed to develop a proper alumni network which is truly valuable for us as an LBG, and we had our first ever alumni meeting in April 2008, a tradition that has come to stay!

Another one of our goals is to better the involvement in BEST on an international level. This has also improved a lot the last year, as we have now got two trainers in our LBG (TRAP X and XI), in addition to the Regional Advisor, Regional BEST Career Support responsible, members active in both ITC, finTeam and TiGro and we also had a participant at bePROUD 6.

With both beRICHER 7, LEC, our 2nd Alumni Meeting and the planning of our Summer Course that will be on the topic innovation and entrepreneurship, we have yet another challenging, but really exciting semester ahead of us!

LBG Traditions

Even though our LBG is 20 years old this year, we unfortunately have not had many lasting traditions. In November 2007 however, when we organised RM, we got our mascot, currently called Mr.Pig. He is a beautiful emperor penguin which has been more kidnapped and visited other LBGs than in our own! During a trip one of our members took to Barcelona in October 2008, a smaller penguin, Mr.Pig Jr, came to life, which also has got the destiny of being more in other LBG's than his very own unfortunately. We love our penguins to bits and pieces though, as they represent LBG Trondheim in a GREAT way. We act like the most Southern LBG in the Nordic Kingdom, we cannot fly and we always stick together!:I

Two traditions we have had for a long time though is eating a lovely breakfast together on the 17th of May, Norway's constitution day, and also having an annual Christmas party! We eat great food and have lots of fun one last time before the exam period starts. The last few years we have been dancing around our Christmas tree or Christmas plant in our office and singing traditional Christmas songs, in addition to Santa paying a little visit to tell which BESTies have been naughty and nice!:)