planner meeting

Happily, John is back is town, which seems to be a great opportunity for a planning meet-up. This Thursday, 8 PM, Cafe Pedia Universitate. meet you there :)

juicy week

Last week, i have been part of things that i appreciated a lot, and in whose potential i believe a lot.

IAA is launching IAA Young Professionals, a division that takes care of the interests and needs of young people (less than 25 y.o.). I was invited to the preliminary discussions last week, and i am priviledged to say that i am among the founding members of this chapter, together with a bunch of great colleagues. The reason i am so enthusiastic about this is that i know damn well what it means to be completely new in this industry, not knowing whom to turn to, where to learn from and all that. So i can only be glad we can make a difference for the passionate young people out there who need some support.

Speaking of passionate young people, the McCann Creative Mentorship that Mihnea and I are taking care of, has announced its first mentorees. It's been an amazingly refreshing experience for me, because some of the people who submitted their answers proved to be extremely funny and creative, and came up with crazily fresh ideas. And, what was even nicer, they also came up with interesting concepts, resisting the temptation to be creative just for the sake of creativity, to use one of the most loved cliches. However, i was quite disappointed by the very many who only submitted brief answers in Word format. I would have loved to see them at least trying to sell their ideas in surprising formats, which would have given them an extra credit for their work. Anyway, since this is an ongoing project, i am sure that more and more intriguing presentations will add up, making the selection more and more difficult.

And last, but surely not least, we had quite a productive planner meeting last Thursday, with many people coming and sharing their opinions on how to turn our APG into something useful for everybody. During the first months, APGR will try to become a sort of a knowledge-center, so that any person interested in planning can find useful information and support. This will be obviously doubled by trainings and conferences aimed at presenting the various forms and aspects of planning and research. And we hope we can attract as many members interested in planning as possible. In case any of you has suggestions or comments, please feel free to use our email apg@planning.ro.

Looks like there's plenty of work to do !

APG meeting - things starting to roll

As you might know, our APG Romania had a voting session last week, and the result is a short-term board. Let's talk about this board's starting objectives, as well as the first steps that our APG should follow on Thursday, at 8 pm, in Codecs.

Everybody is welcome to share ideas, suggestions, expectations from the APG and so on - the more ideas we discuss, the better chances we have to turn this into something useful for everybody. So, what do you think ?

Precise location - Codecs, 37-39 Agricultori street, room 104 (very close to PRO TV)

instead of counting sheep

We're dead curious to know how many planners Romania has (and making bets about it), as one of the first APG Romania actions. So please tell us about you here.

planner meeting

Apparently, out small APG Romania is starting to have a legal shape as well. I guess this means we'll gather every once in a while to discuss "serious" stuff like how to turn this into something meaningful and helpful and worthwhile. However, this seems to be fairly impossible every two weeks.

So, in the mean time, the Amsterdam series of planner meetings goes on with a brand new edition tonight, at 8 pm :). In case there are people still interested :).

APG Romania

i must admit i was really nervous before the planner meeting we had last night. very excited, but also nervous. cause i was not very sure about how things would turn out. But they turned out great. I think it was by far the most constructive meeting we've had until now, and it was also the meeting with most people showing up. And, with a little bit of luck and implication, we'll have a local APG running at the end of May.

Stefan proved to be a great moderator, while Razvan kept on answering all sorts of questions related to administrative and legal issues. Which helped us finish quite quickly with the logistics-related details. We're going to have to collect some money and Razvan has already set up a bank account where each of us can "supply funds" (i'll make sure the data reaches everyone present last night). And Razvan will also help us with other such formalities, while the social headquarters will be Bogdana's place. Since we agreed on the end of May being the deadline for the formal birth of the association, each person interested is supposed to read the status of APG London until our next meeting, when we will discuss how to adapt it.

We further shared some ideas about how this APG Romania is going to help local planning and planners - hopefully, we're going to have monthly meetings with an established agenda (planning-related topics, that is), we're going to share case studies, methods, presentations, create content and so on. In other words, i think it will be about getting to know each other and discuss and learn from each other. So we can even further organize breakthrough trainings, pompous events, creative planning awards, as well as set up an APGR fashion-wear line :)).

Until we get there however, i'm really glad people made it last night and i hope things work out as we planned :). Bogdana wrote about the meeting here, and, as she says, in case you're interested in becoming a member, just drop a word. And thanks to Razvan for helping us out with the location.

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.

no more planner meetings, right ?

well, apparently i got excited too quickly about the great planning team i was supposed to be part of. Therefore, among my current dilemmas, there's also one connected to the planner meetings Bogdana and I started some time ago. They weren't supposed to be something like formal, organized meetings of strategists, they were simply supposed to be some pretexts for meeting for a cup of something and a talk. That's why, while Costin insisted it was too early to "release the concept of planner meetings", Bogdana and I were stubborn enough to consider that certain likeminds don't mind meeting with each other, and don't necessarily need something that organized in order to have a challenging and fruitful chat. We thought that planners like to exchange ideas and to meet people, so that's why we initiated the whole deal; and we'd gather for a talk anyway, so if anybody was willing to join us, the more enjoyable the talk. Problem is, i am apparently left all alone. So, i guess the whole deal is off. I really am sorry.