STAR Management Week – The development booster

Being active at STAR is all about personal and professional development and seizing opportunities. As chairman of STAR Management Week 2008 I can testify that these are not empty phrases. During the past eleven months, I was fortunate enough to be part of a remarkable team that organized a remarkable project. Together, we worked our way from identifying our target audience to developing a concept, a program and a marketing strategy, and finally operationalizing our ideas. In the process, we met with illustrious figures in business, politics and academia such as embassy officials, CEOs of large multinational corporations, and professors. Besides that, we managed contacts with over a hundred suppliers, and stakeholders of STAR, RSM and EUR. In short: from scratch, to a week with forty events ranging from a conference with nine world leaders to a party with 4.500 visitors and top DJs.

Working together with seven people from 9am till 11pm for a few straight months is a challenge and a unique opportunity which has led to many strong friendships within our committee. Organizing a large project like this can also be a real pressure cooker of course. Everybody experiences highs and lows, and in most cases everybody experiences them at a different point in time. As you can imagine this can cause friction sometimes, but every difficulty we faced only made the many victories we had as a group taste even sweeter. Furthermore, it has taught all of us to be flexible and work together towards a common goal.

Taken altogether, I think the STAR Management Week can be rightfully qualified as a ‘development booster’, both for the participants and the people organizing it. I can hardly think of another setting where you can have this rare combination of freedom, responsibility and support to develop yourself, and would urge everybody who shares this view to apply and organize an even greater STAR Management Week in 2009!

Shiko Ben-Menahem

To me, organizing the STAR Management Week (SMW) has been one of my best experiences so far.

As event coordinator of the 22nd SMW committee, I was responsible for all the operational tasks during our events and all the social activities. I especially enjoyed the congresses with (inter)national top speakers and the closing STAR Party. It is absolutely a thrill to organize a large variety of events for RSM's most important annual highlight! Meeting top DJ's and partying till dawn was a fantastic end of a turbulent, instructive and joyful period. I would not have missed it for the world!

Rosalie Polder - SMW Events Coordinator 2009