23 CEMS Club Presidents and 2 organizing members from the Student Board gathered online on Zoom for the Spring 2021 CCC this year. It was the second time that the conference was held online, allowing Presidents from all over the world to join. To account for the varying time zones the usual two-day conference was spread over three days. Here, Presidents or Vice-Presidents or Head of different departments and Student Board Representatives shared best practices on event management, sustainability efforts, and club management while also discussing local and global issues, including the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Student Board Representatives (SBRs) Angelique De Schrevel and Natan Saraf welcomed the Presidents to the conference and moderated the group sessions. The content discussed during the conference was restructured to make the sessions more actionable and discussion focused. During the first day CEMS Clubs had the chance to connect with members from the CEMS Global Office and Roland Siegers, CEMS Executive Director, while asking questions during the open Q&A session. This was followed by a social hour where Presidents had the chance to get to know each other and play some games.
The first day was concluded with the highly anticipated CEMS Club Awards Ceremony, which was organised by the SBRs Julian Schroffenegger, Nadia Heeb, and David Flückiger. The ceremony was also hosted via Zoom allowing the CEMS Club board members from Fall 2020 to attend the event together with the Presidents from Spring 2021. The Oscars-themed event attracted over 40 participants via Zoom, whilst additionally being streamed live via the cems_alliance Instagram channel. For a third time in a row, the winners will receive a generous sponsoring by our Corporate Partner zeb for their hard work in the last semester! We congratulate the winners CEMS Club St. Gallen (1st), CEMS Club Prague (2nd) and CEMS Club Vienna (3rd), for their great achievements!
The second and third days were designed for Clubs to generate ideas and discuss common issues. Each of their committees, namely marketing, corporate, alumni, social and social responsibility, were discussed separately. Each session was structured to have an introduction by one of the Student board members, followed by an allocation into breakout rooms where clubs either found solutions to common challenges faced by the respective committee or exchanged new event ideas. Afterwards, all ideas were consolidated in the main room.
As expected, the Covid-19 pandemic has a large impact on the organization of events this semester, so a separate discussion round was focused on how CEMS Clubs can keep their cohorts engaged given varying local regulations. This was complemented with workshops focused on financing, board and committee recruitment as well as handover processes.
The CEMS Club Support Function and the Student Board would like to extend their gratitude to our Corporate Partner zeb for sponsoring the CEMS Club Awards, as well as the participants for their insightful contributions during the CCC.