Christmas vacation is over and soon will be the application period for Ts’F 3.0. Nonetheless, the buzz around the event is slowly building up for some time already. Here’s a bunch of information regarding preparations to the third edition!

Trainers’ Forum is an event organised by BEST – Board of European Students of Technology, specifically by it’s Training Group (TiGro). At the beginning of September, a happy Ts’F ’12 team was chosen. If you want to find out who we are, or wishes to drop us a line, you can find more details here.

The challenge of organising the third edition was taken by Local BEST Group Ljubljana. At the beginning of October, the team met in the heart of Slovenia to kick off the work and discuss the shape of the event. One of the most important outcomes of  this meeting was clarifying the focus of the event, which this year will be directed onto Trainers’ Development.

The topic of Ts’F 2012 is a natural consequence of previous editions, where the discussions concerned wider area, like training systems in NGOs. This year, the focus has been narrowed down to a more individual approach, thus bringing Ts’F 3.0 closer to being a “2nd level of education” event for trainers.

The result of decision upon Trainers’ Forum 2012 focus area is reflected in the schedule of the event. During 3 working days following activities will happen:

• Trainers’ Meetings (TRAMs) – the “educational” block will be separated into 2 initial days, which will be followed by a full day of
• Open Space Technology (OST) discussions. We are looking forward to trigger many interesting discussions both by TRAMs and
• TEDx - like evening, where various trainers and other individuals will deliver inspiring speeches and presentations.
• Last, but not least, a NGO market will take place, where representatives of non-governmental organisations will have the opportunity to present a training-related content of their activity.

All of these will be supplemented by lots of social activities and networking between participants, who will consist of more than 60 young trainers, training company representatives, “celebrities” and other guests.

All of this will happen in Osilica between 15th and 19th March 2012. So, if you still hesitate whether to apply or not – stop! Go to ‘Apply’ section above and send us a letter stating your motivation and input you can bring to Trainers’ Forum 3.0.

Stay tuned for further info soon!

Have a great year 2012 and see you in Ljubljana!
Trainers’ Forum Core Team

Time has passed, many more training hours delivered across Europe, but the memories are still as bright as if Trainer’s Forum happened just yesterday! By now we have caught some breath and are ready to sum up this year’s edition in numbers:

• 100 passionate trainers from 26 organisations along with many active BEST Vienna members who made our stay nice and cozy;
• 67 fruitful OST discussions with topics varying from specific delivery techniques and exercises’ development all the way to external recognition system and trainers’ impact on society;
• 10 Trainers’ Meetings where the trainers got trained on applying specific delivery approaches in their future sessions;
• 6 TEDx-like pesentations held by 6 brave participants;
• 3 unforgettable days in Klosterneuburg!

Outcomes of discussions have been reported by the topic owners and are available to view/download for everybody here (1,1 MB).
Results are communicated back to all participants’ organisations and implemented in their training systems!

You can also check out some photos in photo gallery and TEDx-like presentations along with energizers’ videos here in videos’ section.

BEST is currently discussing opportunities forhosting the third edition of Trainers’ Forum in 2012 in order to focuson investigating new training areas, develop already existing ones and to establish a stronger cooperation between NGO trainers. Lets keep our fingers crossed and see each other again next year!

Big thanks to all participants – you made these 3 days truly inspiring and longing for more!

The second day of Trainers’ Forum started with opening up the OST (Open Space Technology) sessions. This years OST theme is “How to assure the quality of training and trainer’s development?”.

Many topics will be discussed, varying from coaching methods and communication and sharing tools between NGO trainers to training disabled people. Diversity and high passion for the topics is in the air!

Here are all the proposed topics:

Day 2

• Internal recognition
• Trainer development paths in NGOs
• Mentoring system for trainers
• External recognition
• How to trainer the disabled
• Accelerated learning principles in NGO trainings
• Quality measurement
• New exercise development
• Annual training strategy
• What determines a quality trainer
• Networking between trainers from different NGOs
• What to put in training reports
• How we as trainers can make a bigger impact on the world
• Giving training to external students
• How to make companies aware of us
• TTT options outside BEST network
• Exchanging trainers for training events
• Social network for trainers
• Cool things to improve training quality
• How and why to integrate alumni into the training system
• Goal setting techniques
• Coaching at TtTs
• Ethical issues of trainings
• Ways of schedule building for training
• Training coordinator meeting
• Dealing with difficult participants
• Online communication in training design
• Coaching after TtT
• Purpose of training systems in NGOs
• NGO Trainer – Pro trainer transition
• Different training and presentation styles – alternatives to powerpoint
• Knowledge management among trainers

Day 3

• Evaluating trainers’ performance
• The perfect learning & sharing tool / platform for trainers
• Trainers’ Profile
• How to keep old/new trainers motivated
• Psychology in trainings
• People with Special Needs as Participants
• Online training
• Local trainer pools and their impact
• Trainers’ personal brand
• System to register/monitor trainers’ activity
• Agenda of TtTs from different NGOs
• Debriefing and how to learn it
• Goal setting techniques
• Geo-based outdooor activities
• Sharing training materials
• External evaluation
• What motivates trainers
• How to start a training system
• Trainers’ Forum 2012
• Training system in Europe in 10 years
• 2nd level trainer education (training for trainers)
• Boosting creativity during training
• Technical trainings
• Cooperation within trainers’ team
• Crazy ideas to use new technology in/for/instead of training
• Acoustical learning in training
• Visualization
• Sources of knowledge for training
• Ethical issues of training
• Vision of Ts’F wiki – think big!
• The perfect TRAM – how to organise it

The first working day of Trainers’ Forum has started! We have already went through the official opening and now the participants are attending Trainers’ Meetings.

Today’s topics for sessions will be very different and carried out by the participants themselves. The first five topics are held as morning sessions, the second four after lunch and the last session is lasting for the whole day. Here are the topics:

• Needs analysis for working on the methods of figuring out the needs of trainees before designing the training;
• Training delivery for sharing about delivery techniques, training gadgets and other related issues;
• Experiential learning for talking about how to use the method of developing meaning from direct experience to our trainings;
• Appreciative Inquiry as an organisational development philosophy;
• 5th Habit as one of the 7 habits of highly effective people (seek first to understand, then to be understood);
• Communication techniques for training trainers about new approaches to general communication related trainings;
• Debating for training trainers how to adapt it to trainings;
• Conflicts and negotiation for training trainers on the interaction between these topics;
• NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) for learning more on the topic and the possible ways of using it in NGO trainings;
• Coaching for training better coaches from the trainers to be able to monitor the success of  trainees after the training they attended.

After these highly interesting sessions we will have an activity called Trainers’ Market Place. During this all trainers have the opportunity to share their training gadgets, interesting training topics and the ways of approaching them and whatever else is interesting and worth of sharing from their training system!

Stay tuned for the outcomes, they will be published latest at tomorrow lunchtime

Guess what, Trainers’ Forum 2011 has already started! Today, on the 2nd of March, a local training day is being held with the purpose of developing the soft skills of students from Vienna Technical University.

Altogether almost 100 young Austrian engineers are being trained on the following topics:

• Presentation Skills
• Conflict Management
• Body Language
• Team Management
• Time Management
• Persuasion/Negotiation

Each training is designed for 4 hours session and takes place twice, making it possible for each student to participate in 2 different sessions. The trainings are delivered by BEST trainers – core team members, BEST Vienna trainers and some Ts’F participants.

Learn more about the training day on BEST Vienna website!

We can proudly announce that we have received almost 200 applications from trainers all across Europe and even further! Cross your fingers, deliver some trainings and wait for the results – the Core Team is expecting quite some sleepless nights to complete the selection!

We also have some interesting insights from behind the scenes to share with you:

• Our webiste has been seen by 910 unique visitors with 5500 pageviews during 3 weeks of application period;
• 1/3 of the unique visits happened during 3 last days of application period
• Average time spent on the application form page was 4min 20sec;
• We had visitors literally from all across the world – altogether 70 countries!

Stay tuned for more updates about Trainers’ Forum 2011 – now the real show is about to start!

It’s time to bring out your markers and post-its collection and start brainstorming on the discussion topics for THE event – Trainers’ Forum 2011 Vienna!

The second edition of Ts’F, taking place 3rd – 7th of March,  has grown bigger – we’re welcoming all together up to 100 young and passionate trainers in various age and experience level from all around Europe to meet, network and have fun together. This time we’ll focus on discussing about the quality of training and development of trainers in our organisations.

The event will be mainly built up on the innovative method of Open Space Technology. It’s a self-organising approach for discussing heavy and complex topics, driven by the synergy of participants, who design what is going to be discussed and carry out awesome outcomes, lead by their diversity and high caring about the topic. Moreover there will be a TED-like talks, Trainers Meetings and many more activities taking place for boosting the power of networking event more. In short: it’s simply cool!

Apart from young trainers we’re also welcoming professional speakers and companies from various fields of work to give us a hand with the preparations and to inspire the participants with their experience and wisdom at the event itself.

We invite you to explore on this website and hope to see you soon at Trainers’ Forum!