Proposal #59: Same AIM.

I propose that from 2010 the AIM is hosted always in the same country. It should be a major European airport-hub and tickets-costs should be shared among NAs/Participants.

Rationale

Having AIMs being hosted every year in one continent is quite fun... We get to travel every year to a different country, and usually take some time to travel around the area. Fun - but not worth it.
Keeping in mind that an AIM (including tickets) probably cost to the Organisation and its volunteers more than half a million Euros (yes.), think about it:Changing AIM hosting country makes the staff change every year. With that, it’s impossible to have relevant quality increase at the AIMs themselves.A lot of time of the planning of AIM is spent in actually giving information (“what do you need”, “is this fine?”, “not sure we can make it”). If this part was taken care of by itself, we could actually focus on improving the content.People say we change where AIM is hosted to “give a change to develop every NA”. This is a joke. With the money we save by having AIM at the same place, we could host at least 10 additional chapter workshops every year. No development project costs half-a-million.
So, I suggest CISV hires one full-time employee to work to organise the conference with a team of volunteers. This could be either in Frankfurt, Paris, or wherever is cheapest to fly to. We would host it every year in the same site, what probably can make things more adequate and cheap.
Maybe not at many people will go (since many are more attracted to the scenario than to the work), but well - it could be good.

Respectfully submitted, Marcos (BRA)

{ Background: Annual International Meetings take place every August following a rotation scheme: Every other year the conventions takes place in Europe, in between the location switches between Asia and the Americas. In the next years the AIM will be hosted in Guatemala 2009, Germany 2010, Indonesia 2011 and probably France 2011 }

Marcos summarized my last sideblog post nicely with a quotation from Neil Young. Looking at the number of comments on Proposal #58 today, I wonder if it's already to late for burning...

No, it's not a joke, by December 31st 2008 CISV Devils will be retiring. Why? There's a bunch of reasons, that contribute, let me explain:
- The majority of people that led to the birth of CISV Devils are not involved anymore as much as they used to. Aside from the fact that I just *know* this to be a fact, it can be seen by the amount of proposals coming in and the frequenty of commenting. Teo, Marcos, Basti and the likes are doing other things these days. I know there is a new "devilish" generation of CISVers out there, but they don't seem to view CISV Devils as their home - which is ok! In CISV (just like anywhere else) people take ownership upon projects mostly, if they were part in the creation, formation and development. It's only logical for me, that CISV Devils needs to close down, to create "space" for new people to start new projects. You can take the Devils website away, but the thinking-outside-the-box, the creativity, the rebellion against the CISV establishment (wow, what an expression) will always be there. Which leads me to my second point...
- The rebellious and revolutionary aspect of anything is lost, as soon as becomes part of the establishment. So CISV Devils has become an institution. People know about it, it was in the AIM newspaper, there was a session at the Mococo-Workshop - but at the same time CISV Devils is losing some of it magic. It's like city development: The day the bourgeoisie discovers a part of town as vanguard, the artists have long moved elsewhere. I don't think that CISV Devils is "gentrified" yet, but I really don't want it to be.
- Even though the website is not much work, it takes some time, effort and motivation, to keep it running, cool and interesting. All three resources are running on low battery here, so I'd prefer a strong cut instead of having it phasing out.
BUT...just in case you still have a great proposal in your drawer, or think CISV is crap for some specific reason, please do send me your stuff, I'll publish them until the end of the year. I'd love to see a final firework before the CISV Devil will forever be silent.
Oh, and it should be mentioned that I'm not planning on taking the website down: So the old proposals will be available until the average internet erosion makes them inaccessible.

Today is Marcos' birthday - happy birthday, buddy! One a side note, CISV Devils is exactly three years old today. 11 proposals have been posted in the past year with a total of 122 comments - 38 alone to Eli's infamous Children-living-happily-proposal. I have to admit that after proposal #50 (Paul's CISV Exit Strategy) I wondered if this should be a good time to close down CISV Devil's and leave it like that. In fact it would have been woderful to close Devil's with suggesting to shut down CISV. Unfortunately there were still too many great proposals in the pipeline, and retrospectively it would have been sad, if we had missed great proposals, like "When I'm twenty-wow-wow-one".

So with an average of one proposal per month I think CISV Devils is doing fine. It also seems to me that some proposals are causing a stirr-up in many a meeting that is taking place around the world - without us (as in the ones reading this website) taking notice: I was delighted to discover that CISV Devils proposals were published in the AIM newspaper in Florence this year. Also I know that some Devils sessions took place, even though the idea of a "Devil's Meetup" didn't become reality. Although I welcome this multiplication of ideas, I would like to see comments and feedback make the full-circle and re-appear at this website, which ist still not happening. I'm afraid, that CISV still doesn't have a culture of openly discussing aspects of the organisation in this public space - which I guess is ok, but won't work with the concept of this website. But well...

At any rate, I hope you guys will keep proposals coming, questioning every aspect in every level of our organisation, not afraid to kick open doors, regarding what we do and how we do it. I also hope that we will continue learning how and why CISV is the way it is, yet be critical if we are doing it best thorugh all the great comments by you guys.

Let's keep the devils rolling,
Sincerely, Nick

PS. As a birthday present, I changed the silly speech balloon on top of every page into a "Latest Crap"-link, also now you can buy CISV Devils Mugs! (Don't worry, I don't earn a penny!). Have fun.