After unforgettable editions of our flagship event, the Annual (Alumni) Meeting, we decided to give a small twist to its organization for next year, leveraging the talent and creativity of our alumni. For this reason, we announced an Open Call and invited all the members of our community to tell us their favourite locations, applying to join the official Working Group who will help us bring the Annual Meeting there.
During the application period, which ran for one month from November 8th to December 8th, we received in a total of four applications offering beautiful locations and exciting side activities. In alphabetical order, the applicant teams and proposed locations were:
- Amsterdam Crew: Limassol, Cyprus
- Croatia (Hrvatska) Local Group, Split-Dalmatia County: Split, Croatia
- EIT Digital Alumni Helsinki: Baltic Sea cruise between Stockholm and Helsinki
- EIT-Rods: Cluj Napoca, Romania
The Alumni Board thanks all teams listed above, because all applications were carefully prepared and provided sufficient details about the aspects we requested, such as the estimated budget, possible venue and partners, or the available options for transportation and accommodation. We were surprised (in a good way!) about the number and the quality of the applications, thus making it harder for us to reach a decision.
After careful evaluation, which forced us to postpone the announcement a couple of days after the date that we had originally planned, we are happy to finally tell you that the Annual Meeting 2020 of the EIT Digital Alumni will be held at the end of April / beginning of May in...
Split, Croatia!
Even though all applications were good, the proposal by the team "Croatia (Hrvatska) Local Group, Split-Dalmatia County" clearly stood out in all discussions and was rated the strongest proposal by most Alumni Board members. One of the decisive factors was that the applicant team proactively engaged in conversations with the local university to host the presentations and workshops in their facilities, requested price quotes and negotiated discounts with local hotels, and identified several other potential partners. Furthermore, the Alumni Board considered the proposal was reasonable in terms of overall costs and found no major risks left unanswered in the document. The full detail of the evaluation criteria and scores can be found here.
We congratulate Kristijan Korać and Josip Vukoja, who will lead and coordinate the new Working Group for the Annual Meeting 2020. We share their excitement for "stepping up the game" and agree with their motivation statement that "bringing top-notch EIT Digital ALUMNI professionals would be beneficial not only for Croatia but for the whole Balkan area and other Eastern Europe countries as well (most of them ARISE)".
Regardless of this result, we want to reward the effort of all members of our community who answered to our Open Call. Thus, we have decided that all alumni who submitted an application will get priority sign-up for the next Annual Meeting. In other words, they will be notified in advance when registrations open and therefore, will have extra time to confirm their spots.
Once again, we thank all applicants for their engagement and invite them, as well as the rest of our alumni, to keep in touch for more updates!
(Photos of the Annual Meeting 2019 in Porto, Portugal)
EIT Digital Alumni and EIT Digital are supported by the EIT, a body of the European Union