Experienced, sociable, and easily distracted. Our meetings always lasted much longer than necessary because we were easily distracted and would start talking about other things. Of course, this was a lot of fun, but sometimes work had to be done too. Luckily, I had a very experienced committee with five (former) board members, which meant that during the short periods when we were productive, a lot could be accomplished.
This year, as the Symposium Committee (Symco), we were responsible for organizing the National Day of Communication (NDC). This event was significantly larger than a regular symposium, as it was a full-day program. Most of the committee’s tasks involved contacting speakers and promoting the event.
Super fun! Initially, the plan was for me not to be a commissioner this year and finally just be a regular committee member, but things turned out a bit differently. Fortunately, I ended up in a committee with only people I am really good friends with, so it did not feel like a heavy responsibility at all.
The biggest difference compared to last year was, of course, the event we had to organize. Additionally, the committee consisted of seven people this year instead of four.
Really great! It was also genuinely fun to reach out to speakers, as these are people you normally wouldn’t have the chance to connect with. For example, I really enjoyed and learned a lot from getting in touch with the director of CliniClowns, which also helped me expand my own network. Promoting the event was also fun, since our committee came up with some out-of-the-box ideas that ended up working really well.
At the start of a day like that, it is always a bit nerve-wracking to see whether everything will go according to schedule. You plan everything down to the minute in advance, but it is never certain if it will actually turn out that way. Fortunately, that was the case for us, nothing really went wrong on the day itself, and everything went exactly as planned. I think this was partly due to the experience within the committee.
I think I would want to organize a sort of festival with all kinds of interesting speakers and musicians, so you would not have to listen to speakers all day but could also relax a bit in between.
