APG Romania

i know that Bogdana already wrote about our intention to start an APG Romania, but i must admit that i am so excited about this, that i couldn't help myself writing some lines as well. Hopefully, next week on Wednesday, we're going to have a planners meeting in an extended version and talk a bit more about action plan, details, updates, individual intentions and so on. In the mean time, it appears that Razvan was kind enough to offer us the domain apgromania.ro, while Razvan (who's not even a planner) also expressed his willingness to help us with all sorts of things. And in case anybody reading this has been involved one way or another in a similar project, and is willing to share a bit of his/her experience, we'd be more than grateful to hear all about it [diana.ceausu at gmail dot com].

Since i'm sure that there are at least some skeptics among us, i thought i'd post here a starting mail i got from Malcolm White, current Chair of APG London - cause his message seemed really encouraging to me (i hope posting this is ok, Malcolm):

"There is absolutely no magic formula the most important thing is just to do it and get it going (rather than to spend loads of time talking about it which is definitely a diesease of planning in the uk and probably the rest of the world) and no money is needed to get started if you start off really modestly and just think of your apg as an informal social club -which is what I would recommend that you do in the first instance...and was in fact how the APG in the uk started out in 1978. The only thing that I would do in a formal manner is meet regularly (maybe once am month)

I would start of really modestly because you will find-of course- that the busy day jobs of you and your fellow planners will intrude.

To make your meetings more interesting I would follow the principles of a book group and discuss an interesting planning/business or general text at each meeting

If you find that this way of working works, then you should gradually think of formalising things even more-and that's when money is needed, therefore probably membership fees, therefore probably a paid for secretary like our esteemed Steve Martin.

If you find that you want to organise evening events, talks, even in time an awards like our biennial APG Planning Awards, then my advice would be to focus on one thing a year and not to overstretch nor overreach yourselves. It is disheartening and demoralising when big planns come to nothing.

In the short term we can of course help by carrying details of your APG on our website (please get in touch with Steve Martin on steve@apg.org.uk), and in other ways which you should define as you feel your way towards what it is that you want to do.

Any way best of luck and best wishes...and remember, just do it!!!"

pic from here.