The Silver Times – Silence is golden, the rest is Silver

BREAKING – The Wall is gone!

Breaking News from Bielefeld: The wall between the CD house and their neighbours (The main office of BEST) has been torn down! After the inauguration of BEST within AEGEE earlier this year, rumors of the wall being taken down have been in the air for quite a while.

Recently, a speech by president of board of ASU (the American Student Union) with the phrase “Mister Daniel, Tear down this wall!” gained international popularity and caused many protests among members of BEST.

Side note: This is quite ironic as the president of the board of ASU himself is now working on a garden fence between the headoffices of ASU and BoMex (the Board of Mexican Students). The reason it’s not there yet is because BoMex is not willing to pay for it.

Many young Europeans have been waiting for years to cross over to AEGEE and hope that the now defunct borders between the two associations will finally allow them to pass through.

The members of the Comité Directeur of AEGEE-Europe and the Democratic Dictatorial Rulers of BEST-Europe (which is their board) celebrated this great event by sitting on the remaining parts of the wall and celebrating together, while many members of both AEGEE & BEST pass freely from one headoffice garden to another.

Herzlich Mauerfall! Today, 30 years ago the Berlin Wall was torn down. This meant a lot for the network of AEGEE, because now antennae in cities behind the Iron Curtain could be founded.

Hemmo de Vries, member of AEGEE-Eindhoven, AEGEE-Aachen & AEGEE-Düsseldorf is currently in Berlin and wrote an article about the day the wall came down on his personal website.

Photo by Raphaël Thiémard, taken in 1989 after the Berlin wall came down.

Thank you for reading the Silver Times!

Dear participants of the Agora, Visitors, Delegates, members of European Bodies,

Thank you for reading the Silver Times during Autumn Agora Salerno! I am really glad that this silly project was a big success, and that so many people enjoyed reading it. I got so many positive and lovely comments about the articles I wrote, it really warmed me up. I absolutely love writing the utter utter bullshit that the Silver Times can sometimes be.

What I love even more is the instant smile I see on peoples faces in the seconds after I published a new article and push messages get sent out.

AEGEE is a great organisation, but sometimes arguments or discussions that are important to our whole network can get a bit heated. This is normal, and this is good, but AEGEE should above all be a place of fun. One of the most powerful ways of controlling the mood is humor, especially when things seem heated.

That is the exact reason why I founded the Silver Times. I hope that The Silver Times helped even a tiny bit to lighten moods at moments when things were though, long and boring, or just when you could use a good laugh. Agora Salerno was a though Agora. It was though for the participants and even more though for the organizers.

What I absolutely adore is the massive effort that the organizers put into organizing this Agora. No matter how much went wrong at the least predictable time, this Agora was amazing.

Enjoy your last moments in Salerno, and have a safe ride home.

See you somewhere in Europe!

With lots of love, Anna Pamplona
Member of AEGEE-Bielefeld

Hemmo de Vries
Chief-in-Editor of the Silver Times

LEAKED: Remote CD team building activities

Being a member of the Comité Directeur is hectic and hard. That’s why normally the members of the Comité Directeur have quite some team building activities. For example, the previous Comité Directeur regularly played minigolf and they also did some Escape Rooms. In one case, Matis took just under 5 hours to escape the cheapest ‘Budget Room’.

These activities become more difficult if not all the members of the Comité Directeur are able to live in the CD house in Bielefeld. Today, during the pyrtania about the Activity Plan 2019-2020 for the Comité Directeur, president Daniël revealed that they managed to adapt quite some activities to a format that works when not at the same location.

Aside from having shared “Skype Drinks”, where some members gather for drinks in the house and others join in from home through Skype, they are also doing “Escape Google Drive” where they tried to escape from within the deepest folders of the shared team Drive.

Another activity they participate in is Remote Bowling. Oksana became world champion in bowling after doing a strike from 2000km distance. Furthermore, in order to make the board meetings more interesting, they all join in on Skype while standing on an intersection.

Daniël in the bowling lane, in a round before just before Oksana’s remote attempt.

Finally, the Comité Directeur are planning on doing a Christmas CD post crossing.

European Night will become Plenary night!

All the people talking and Veva’s remark about it inspired the local organizers to a way to still have a fun night alltogether!

The closing plenary and therefore the agora, will not be closed until 4AM. The plenary will continue with several added agenda topics:

Normally during the opening plenary, the Statement of Principles is read, but during the Plenary Night, the whole CIA will be read by the members of the Comité Directeur.

Chris from AEGEE-Delft will give a speech called “Points and Comma’s, a personal story”.

President of AEGEE-Europe Daniel will read a few chapters from his recently released fan fiction book “Harry Potter and the Vote of Confidence”.

Several games will be played, like “Random Roll Call”, where all antennae are announced in a random order and the antenna who responds the fastest will receive a free trip to the CD House in Bielefeld.

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Twin Antenna Signature mixup – AEGEE-Passau now Twins with Comité Directeur

During the signing of the Twin Antenna Agreement between AEGEE-Delft and AEGEE-Passau, the signatures of AEGEE-Delft and the Comité Directeur were switched. This means that AEGEE-Passau and the Comité Directeur are now officially Twins!

Quentin from the Juridical Commission confirmed it: “According to Belgian Law, when a signature has been placed, it’s final and cannot be changed anymore.”.

Secretary General of the Comité Directeur Monika was shocked at first, but looks forward to the new possibilities: “It’s going to be a bit complex, but CD meetings can be held in Passau, and the Social Drinks of AEGEE-Passau can now be held in Brussels.”

Liaison officer Person 1 Interview

During this morning’s plenary, the new Liaison officers were announced and ratified. Our special reporter Salme Kaljurand had an i with some of them last night during the party.

Person 1 during Summer University [Name] in [Year]

How are you feeling about being elected for this position?
In the beginning I felt very [emotion1], but now I feel [emotion2]

Why did you decide to become an Liaison officer?
[Personal story about youth]

Most people think that Liaison officers are just CV hunters. For how many of the current LOs is it true?
[Long monoloque with slight disgust towards even suggesting that this is a thing]

Which tangible results did you produce in the past year?
Well, we achieved [Goal 1], [Goal 2] and [Goal 35]. That’s [Percentage] of the goals we had!

How much work in hours per month does the LO job require?
[Vague story about variation and difficult to keep track]

Do you have advice for AEGEE to improve it?
No.

Silent Disco during Morning Plenary

This morning, a silent disco was held during the morning plenary. Many participants rented a wireless headphone and listened to music in stead of to the plenary. Sunmoon from Nijmegen was a big fan: “I really loved the music, and it was very good to have some distraction from the discussion on wether the Schulze or de Jorge method should be used.”

There were three channels participants could choose from, one being ‘Roll Call Reggaeton’, and the other ‘Gunnars Greatest’. The third channel ‘AEGEEan Anthems’, played music like Key to Europe, Europe on Track , but also several regional and local anthems, like Brabant and Noorderplantsoen. Like with AEGEE itself, national anthems are not allowed.

Franz from AEGEE-Bielefeld loved the idea: “I really loved listening to all the 70’s and 80’s classics played by DJ Gunnar. We were dancing with our whole row to Take on Me.” The present members of Les Anciens d’AEGEE members were also all tuned in to this channel.

The silent disco was a big hit: About 80 visitors and 20 delegates rented a pair of headphones. Both Veva and Timo from the Chair team confirmed they are wearing a special invisible earpiece tuned in to Roll Call Reggaeton. It is unknown if Timo is wearing it in his left or right ear.

Autumn Agora Vladivostok 2020 Confirmed!

If you missed yesterday’s most important news, here it is: After a difficult procedure, the Autumn Agora 2020 is finally confirmed to be in Vladivostok! Today during the evening plenary, the Agora ratified the decision to hold the Agora at the venue of our easternmost antenna!

Misha Kavronov, main organizer of the Agora: “It is so great we’re finally able to organize an Agora in Russia. We are part of Europe too and we’re really glad to be able to share our Eastern European culture with you while hosting a really great statutory event. To share our enthousiasm with the network, we will soon release our AEGEE-Vladivostok song: Stranger in Vladivostok!”

Participant will be transported between the Plenary hall and the Gym in St. Petersburg by Trans Siberian Express, and to accomodate for this, the Agora will take 2.5 months.

Funny detail: After some fake news from the Golden Times, AEGEE-Moskva accidentally claimed the agora to be theirs and launched a campaign called #agoramoscow.

Minute mysteries reveal: Shortcuts used for questions & Dutchies

Writing minutes for the plenary sessions is a very difficult and intensive task. It requires a lot of fast typing to include all that was said in real time. Some people wondered how they are able to do this so well, and our reporter Anna Pamplona was sent to investigate.

We asked Secretary of the Autumn Agora Salerno 2019, Tomislav, to reveal us some secrets: “It’s quite a bit of work, but we actually have a lot of automated things. We have a special text editor that allows for faster writing and has an automated formatting tool. Aside from this, we have a lot of shortcuts for frequently asked questions, so we don’t have to type them out every single time.”

It turns out, there are quite some shortcuts. For example, when Tomislav types Ctrl-Shift+E, it enters ‘Education’ into the minutes. Ctrl+Shift+Q stands for “Question Line closed”, Ctrl-Shift+B stands for ‘Belgium Law’ and Ctrl-Shift+W for ‘wrap up please’. Further more, some people have their own shortcut. David from AEGEE-Aachen has Ctrl-Shift+🍺.

Actually, all 26 letters of the alphabet combined with Shift + Ctrl + Alt are in use just for Dutchies who ask a lot of question. There is one even more special exception: “Marlijn from AEGEE-Delft has a special shortcut that inserts 5 blank questions at once. During one prytania, I once had to press it three times in a row!”

Daniël autographs Harry Potter fan fiction

During the lunch break today, Daniël held an autographing session for his self-written Harry Potter fan fiction. We already knew that the President of AEGEE-Europe is a great fan of the Harry Potter universe after he misspoke while reading the statement of principles, but it’s new to us that he is actually writing his own stories.

“I really love the works of J.K. Rowling. I often dream about the CD house being Hogwarts, and that I have to deal with all the magical challenges, together with my friends Hanna being Hermione and Oksana being Ginny, to name a few examples.”

A lot of people were waiting in line to finally get an autographed copy of ‘Harry Potter and the Magic Antenna’, and the session was a big success.

If you missed out, no worries! Tomorrow you can get your autographed copy of the book in the Gryffindor house on the Delegates camping, between 21:00 and 22:30, just before European Night!