Coordinating beKNOWN9

TrainShops are one of the coolest, most effective learning events in BEST. How do I know that? I was a participant last year on a TrainShop called “beKNOWN8”, which taught me how to make my Local BEST Group in Ljubljana more recognizable. However, it did not give me just knowledge, it also gave me new confidence and a bunch of friends with the same goal as me – to learn and share as much as possible and to try to make BEST even better.
When they were looking for the coordinator of the next edition of “beKNOWN”, I was a little bit sceptical. Am I good enough to tailor the next edition of this amazing event? Fortunately, Local BEST Group Skopje decided to host it. Maybe it sounds strange, but this gave me a little bit of a needed push.
As a coordinator, my first big task was to help select the trainers’ team, who were supposed to pass their knowledge to the participants. Another huge task was to choose the participants for this TrainShop. Every year there are more people applying that we can accept, so it was really hard to choose just 20 of them.
The trainers’ team was preparing the schedule and started to even broaden their already huge knowledge about marketing, public relations, branding… In parallel I was also in contact with the organizers’ team in Skopje, with whom I talked about the logistics of the event: how billion of flipcharts we need, how many markers, post-its, rulers, projectors…
The trainers’ team and I were hosted in Skopje couple of days before the official start of the TrainShop in order to finally meet each other in person and not just via email and skype and of course to do the last minute preparations. To my nice surprise we also had chance to talk about the TrainShop on national TV and on the Student radio.

After moving ourselves to Ohrid “beKNOWN9” officially started. It is always amazing for me, how people easily trade some of their sleeping hours in order to share more among themselves. How participants happily agree with session extension and were very active on each session. Lacking of sleep was there through the whole event, but you were not able to notice between sessions. We got all the energy from wanting to share and deliver sessions and participants of course from their will to learn as much as possible. Thanks also to the organizers, who provided us with their traditional and may I add very tasty food.
Fortunately, the TrainShop is too long to survive it without a free day and we had a chance to do a little bit of sightseeing around Ohrid. As planned, we also had the best weather on that day. We did not manage to see all 365 churches, but we all agreed that Ohrid is a very lovely city, even in winter time.
To conclude, because I have so many great memories in my head and it is impossible to write down all of them I will just sum up – Coordinating beKNOWN is amazing, especially, with this trainers’ team and the organizers from Skopje. Truthfully, Skopje became my second home. I am really gratefully to every single person that helped to make this event unforgettable!

Urša Lokar, coordinator of TrainShop “beKNOWN9”