6 years in - some considerations

As the ‘founder’ of the project, here’s some considerations looking back

When I had started the project, I was 5-6-7 months AEGEE member, and despite all the reading I made I didn't understand fundamental things. As I read about the technical design and challenges so far, I had not considered the domain: an umbrella organisation. For me, at the time, there was AEGEE-Europe and "members of AEGEE-Europe" being common people (divided in groups like A-Voronezh etc). Now I know that the "members of AEGEE-Europe" are exclusively the locals. Then there are beneficiaries of AEGEE-Europe, i.e. the members of the respective organisation (A-Genova, etc). This is a difference that never really struck me until shortly before my term in CD.

As a result, when I started the development I was very oblivious of the fact that an organisation may already have their own internal methods and tools. For me the problem was “hey there, we need an intranet, in order to know who is member of what and who goes where”.

Only in CD (2 years as member of AEGEE) I had got to know the method that ESN uses: they give a “package” to new locals, which contains an instance of wordpress, customised for the local to have a membership manager (and obviously an internet presence). Of course their use case is different: members of ESN-cityA don’t have to apply to an event organised by ESN-cityB. Yet, the starter-pack gives a good insight on a possible way to approach new locals and how to best support them.

That said, BEST has an approach similar to ours: a single intranet with membership being “inside MyAEGEE” and inserted into a “group” (their own local). All information shared among members, because “we’re one single big family”. This happens because their intranet provides board members with tools to manage the “group” (the local).

AEGEE’s reality is different, as members do not register “inside MyAEGEE” as I mentioned above. They register to their own local’s system, and the locals “upload the members list”. Sometimes the locals make them subscribe to MyAEGEE too, the problem stays though.

AEGEE-locals will not use MyAEGEE as long as spreadsheets will provide better information. Do we want to make MyAEGEE connect to the spreadsheets? It works for locals who use spreadsheets, not for locals with their own system. Yet, these locals can easily integrate with our API…

End of the reflection