Coaching Seminar

The beginning of the year seems to be a good time to get more familiar with coaching, counselling and related topics which have the potential not only to support our career development but also to balance our lifes and develop us as human beings.

Therefore the CEMS Alumni Association Prague is organizing a coaching seminar led by professional coaches.

TOPICS

Some of the topics the seminar will cover are:

• What is coaching? What is the difference between coaching and mentoring?
• What type of coach should you look for?
• What is counselling? How could it help you?
• Is there something that would keep you from having a coach, counsellor?
• Cultural aspects of coaching/counselling. How is coaching/counselling perceived in CZ vs. other countries?

Also, there will one or two practical examples of a counselling session - we will just need volunteers for that :-).

SPEAKERS

The speakers will be two experienced professionals with different background and different approaches to coaching and counselling

• Joel Cooper, coach, partner of learn2grow
• Dominka Kratochvilova, counsellor, Counseling.cz

PLACE AND REGISTRATION

Please register in the google form.

Update: the event will take place at VSE, Rajska budova 438 (for the older ones - it is the newest building at Zizkov).

After the event there will be a chance to move to a nearby restaurant and continue discussion in an informal environment.

So - mark Tuesday 15 January 7:00 PM in your calendars and register here. We will confirm your registration by 7 January as the paying members of the CAA will be given priority places.

We are looking forward to meeting you there!

Vojtech

News from St. Gallen: CAA General Assembly 2012

Dear CEMS Alumni, we would like to bring you summary of the biggest CEMS Alumni International Event of 2012. The University of St. Gallen (SGH) hosted this year's CEMS Annual Events, traditionally connected with students' graduation, academic meetings and most importantly for you, with General Assembly of the CEMS Alumni Association.

The official Alumni meeting took place on December 1st and we had representatives of 10 Local Alumni Commitees voting this time (CZ, AT, DE, FR, UK, IT, DK, PL, BE, CH). Based on new statuses of the CAA, local committees could elect some members of the new CAA executive body - the CAA Board (it should stay in active mandate for three years). See new structure of the elected CAA Board below, there were some great candidates among junior and senior Alumni and also among dedicated members of Local Committees who are willing to help promote CEMS Alumni network on international level. This new board now has to vote on the position of the upcoming CAA President.

St.Gallen was beautifuly covered with snow and with Xmas markets season starting, it was a very enjoyable stay for both students and alumni, not to mention great Swiss organization skills around the whole event. Alumni program was also very full this time. Besides Friday's and Saturday's parties, there were special Alumni Cheese Fondue dinner on Saturday and Alumni Brunch on Sunday, both organized by LC Switzerland. This created nice atmosphere for Alumni to talk, get to know each other or meet again. If you want to participate as Alumni enjoying the power of CEMS network, do not forget to pay your CAA membership fee for 2013 and you can enjoy next year's event in Barcelona :-).

Other key callouts from Alumni Assembly:

• CAA Board will hire the CAA director in first half of 2013 and this will be full time paid employee responsible for operations of the CAA Board. CEMS Headquarters did not sponsor CAA anyhow in 2012, but in 2013, they plan to contribute on professionalisation of the CAA, under condition of hiring the CAA director (could be up to 72,500 EUR).
• Alumni membership fee stays at 60 EUR per person for 2013.
• CAA holds 109,996€ in open reserves and 50,900€ in reserves on funding of life-long members (split in multiple accounts, 76,500€ is now in risk-free savings account since 11/2012), CAA can propose how these funds could be used going forward or LCs could propose to organize a bigger pan-European event, new CAA board will be able to decide on use of these reserves. These are international CAA funds, they do not belong to dedicated LCs.
• Update on Linked In Group: 5250 members connected, we should more promote to raise awareness of CEMS through LinkedIn, please add CEMS ecucation to your profile, among those 5250 members, we have some very good senior profiles, they might not be paying members anymore, but they connected through LinkedIn.
• CAA needs to work on career service offerings – besides personal networking, this area has never been very successful, CEMS job market is empty and LinkedIn group slowly starts bringing some interesting job offers, but we should have a separate professional db where paying alumni can look for job opportunities – very good added value. Torsten R. presented proposal to use French company manageurs.com which is active with alumni associations in French speaking countries. They would need to translate their product fully into English and also start offering more opportunities outside of French speaking regions, but they are very flexible in terms of systematic solution. Corporate partners could also use special access, paying alumni could access exclusively.

Pics from winetasting

Have you ever been thinking of the difference between Frankovka from Southern Moravia and Southern Hungary?

Actually, the difference is big, indeed. While the Hungarian one was pretty complex and rich resembling some of good Italian wines the Moravian was little bit less balanced and, surprisingly, somehow smoky. According to the sommelier the smokiness is related to the special vineyard area it comes from. Interesting stuff.

The CEMS winetasting event was just great – the selection of wines from the Austro-Hungarian region as well as the choice of food matching wines and last but not least interactive approach of the sommeliers. A pity more alumni couldn’t come. Let me share with you also several pics.

Our thanks go both to the participants and the sommeliers from Via Vinum who lead the degustation.

I believe this wasn’t the last wine experience of CEMS in Prague. Next time I hope more of you will join us!


Vojtech