First leg done!

So I've made it from Auckland to Wellington no problem! Big thanks to Aimee for getting me to the airport in plenty of time for my flight. 

Hooray! I'm on my way! love flying and airports, it's all so exciting. Weird being around late at night, still so many people around. I've got an early check in to Sydney so I'm going to get some sleep, will update you with more adventures tomorrow! 

Two sleeps to go...

And I'm getting down to business! 

Thanks to the help of the lovely Michelle, we set up my business cards with the date, time and room of my LEAP presentation to give out to people I meet at USMAG 2013! They look so cool and even though it was a mission to get the labels printed, they worked really well :)

Although there will be some promotion of LEAP events at USMAG, I'm also a big fan of working to promote our group myself, and I hope the people I meet will be interested in coming along to see what Young Members is about. I will be attending a few events prior to my presentation to talk to people who may want to find out more.

The amazing Laura also sent me the custom-made singlet she made me to promote Mensa New Zealand over in the USA! We made white writing on blue singlets for our promotion days at University of Auckland and Victoria University earlier this year, but we loved the white t-shirts we made. Laura definitely delivered on this and I can't wait to wear it in Dallas!

The last piece of the puzzle is my presentation, and I am just about finished matching the PowerPoint with the presentation. I will be doing a mihi at the start of my presentation (Thanks to Louise for your help!), and not having much experience with Maori it's probably the part I am the most nervous about. Hopefully  my pronunciation won't be too rough. It will be cool to share a little bit of New Zealand Maori culture while I'm overseas!

The countdown is on!!

Only 4 more sleeps til I head up to Auckland and off to the US! 

So I'm a busy girl getting ready.  My presentation is almost 100% completed, I've picked up my tickets from the travel agent and organised my various visas and insurances.

Now to try to get work sorted and get on the plane!

Having an awesome catch up with the Wellington Mensa members at LunchSIG today made me think more about what I want to achieve on this trip.

I want to be able to share the awesome things that Young Members of Mensa New Zealand has been doing, and how creating this community has made such a difference to our members and how they participate in Mensa.

I want to show them that it isn't impossible to connected Young Members and that Young Members are a vital part of making a Mensa organisation great to belong to. I want them to see how important the Young Members groups is to the Young Members.

I'm also using this trip to find out more what Mensa can offer its members here in New Zealand.

I want to learn more about how Mensa groups internationally are run and what activities and ideas we can bring back to Mensa New Zealand and try to implement them here. I am interested in knowing new things about how their Mensa groups interact, meet, and what activities and programs are in place around the world.

I'd love to know what other plans Mensa groups around the world have for expanding and making better connections between members. I want to know how they use technology, how they meet and how often.

I'm on a scouting mission! 

I'm a Guest Blogger today!

As part of New Zealand Gifted Awareness Week, I wrote a post for Creating Curriculum's blog for Gifted Children. 

You can find the post here.

I wrote about Young Members of Mensa New Zealand, what our organisation has to offer gifted young people, and what we hope to do in this future.

I am so proud of Mensa being involved in Gifted Awareness week this year, as well as being part of the blog tour we're going to have members at the Explorer's Gifted Children's Expo. More information about this can be found here

I hope everyone is able to get along to an event, post something about Gifted Awareness or write a letter to their MP. You can use the hashtag #NZGAW on Twitter to let more people know about your post!

Getting ready for take-off!

So it's now less than a month to go and planning and writing are in full swing for my trips and presentations.

I will be presenting at the USMAG at 6pm on Friday 5 July 2013 Dallas time. So exciting!

I'm working hard to make my presentation interesting and inspiring for those watching, and I hope it comes across how much our Young Members group means to us.

So at the moment, I'm working at getting data from all over the world about the ages of their members so we can use that information to help Young Members everywhere.

I'm also working with the amazing Young Members of Mensa New Zealand to put together a video about them to show off to everyone. They've been so amazing and supportive I love hanging with you guys! 

I'm also trying to figure out how to make a video of what is happening on my computer screen so I can show other people. SO much harder than it looks....

I really want to show other Mensa groups around the world what an awesome opportunity this would be for their members, and I'm so keen to show everyone what little ol' New Zealand has done!

So I am a very busy bee at the moment, and thanks to all if I'm taking a while to get around to doing things for people :)


I'm also now on Twitter so you can follow my adventures @AnnikaVoulgaris

My travel plans are all in place and I can't wait to meet other LEAP participants and other Mensa members in the US and Europe!

EXCITING TIMES!!!

My speaker bio, description of my presentation, and work so far!

As most of you know, I am dreadful at talking about myself and my achievements, much preferring to take a back seat. So when I was asked to draft a speaker bio, I found it very difficult. I prefer sticking to the factual, but even then try to understate what I do and my involvement. It was very hard to find 75 words about myself!

Putting together information about my presentation was much easier, and I flew over the word limit with no issues so I pared it down best I could. I hope I'm able to live up to expectations. I found thinking about it in the third person was the easiest way to describe this, and so I don't think it's too weird that I wrote it this way.

Here's what I wrote:

Title: Taking Charge: Young Members Leading the Way

Bio: 

Annika Voulgaris is 25 years old and has been the Young Members Coordinator and Gifted Children’s Liaison for Mensa New Zealand since 2009. Annika runs Young Members, a group for New Zealand Mensa members under the age of 30. Annika graduated from Victoria University of Wellington in 2011 with a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Politics. She works in negotiation and mediation in the electricity and gas industry.

Presentation: 

Engaging young people can be a difficult task, but Mensans are always up for a challenge! Annika will discuss how to create an exciting, interactive group for Mensans under the age of 30. She will introduce Young Members, discuss relevant leadership models, keeping young members in touch, and how the model is working with Young Members of Mensa New Zealand. Annika will provide a structure that can be applied to national Mensa groups, to engage and increase interaction between Mensa members under 30, and Mensa members as a whole. This is an interactive presentation, so hold on to your hats! 

As for the presentation itself, I used the template of my youtube video to give me an idea for how I am going to structure my presentation, adding in more information about the structure of Young Members, why Young Members are important for Mensa, and why Mensa is important for Young Members.

 It is difficult to talk about Young Members without showing people how awesome it really is, so I hope the Young Members will want to be involved in my presentation in some way, whether through a video, or contributing something on the Facebook group specifically for my presentation.

I want the audience to be asking questions and able to discuss this with me, so I will be having a question and answer portion of my presentation. Knowing Mensans, some questions may be a bit hairy, but I think i will be able to handle it!

Flights are all booked, now for the fun part!

So I've got all my travel sorted for the two trips! What a mission.

To the US, I'm going Auckland to Sydney, Sydney to LA then LA to Dallas.

To Slovakia I'm going Auckland to Bangkok, Bangkok to Vienna and then by bus or train from Vienna to Bratislava.

This really will be an adventure! I'm looking forward to seeing a few new places and heaps of new people.

So now for the part that I'm hoping will be much more fun than sorting out travel!

I'm looking at putting together a presentation about what we've done here in New Zealand, why and how this has worked, and how someone else could put this together in their country if they wanted to.

I think the first thing Mensa New Zealand did that kickstarted the Young Members community, was to give other young members of Mensa a point of contact. Without another voice on the end of the call, there's no point for other young members to pick up the phone and get in touch.

So in 2009, I wanted to meet a few more young members of Mensa, and so I volunteered to take over the Young Member's Coordinator position and have someone on the end of the email address Mensa already had set up for the purpose. That gave other young members a contact point within the organisation, should they want to get in touch.

I think what was different about the person who took over that contact position, is that they were a young person themselves. At 21, the age of the contact person made this have a different feel than if it were someone older who was the contact for young people.

I think just setting up a young contact point for other young people, was a good genesis for a close, enthusiastic group of young members. This was something I feel allowed the group to grow and develop in the way it has.