Semester Report 2017 Autumn

Overview

Organised Events

  • first recruitment
  • party weekend in Slovenia
  • Workshop Balloon Adventures in Low-Level Space
  • ski weekend
  • participating in and travelling to events abroad together

Events Visited Abroad

  • Party weekend (IMW) in Ljubljana/Kranjska Gora, Slovenia (20 people)
  • Aixtec 2: Autonomous Driving, workshop in Aachen, Germany (1 person)
  • Autumn Congress in Zagreb, EESTEC general assembly (2 people)
  • Congress IMW in Zagreb, Croatia (4 people)
  • Regional Exchange for Cooperation in Karlsruhe, Germany (1 person)
  • Boozecamp: Loutraki Royale, IMW in Athens, Greece (1 person)
  • Once upon a time in Belgrade, IMW in Belgrade, Serbia (1 person)
  • SILilleCON Valley 2.0, workshop in Lille, France (2 people)
  • What does the Python say?, Workshop in Eskisehir, Turkey (1 person)
  • Winds of Snowy Entertainment, IMW in Bursa, Turkey (1 person)

IMW is short for International Motivational Weekend

Local Activities

As always, the new semester started with the most important thing of all: member recruitment.

We were once again represented at the Freshers’ Weekend and the Freshers’ Rally and also promoted our traditional party trip to Slovenia. Which, as always, was a breathtaking experience. We travelled to Ljubljana by night train with 20 people and started the weekend with a legendary train party. After exploring the Slovenian capital together, we travelled on to Kranjska Gora, where we spent another two days. To be fit for lectures again on our return, we rounded off the weekend at the spa in Ljubljana.

To make sure we didn’t get bored while waiting for our workshop, three of our members organised a VR event. They demonstrated VR games that they had created themselves during a workshop in Finland.

We decided on High-Altitude Ballooning as the topic for our next workshop. For the first week of December, we again welcomed 13 participants from all over Europe. The academic part started with an introduction to the atmosphere and weather balloons by the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science. Afterwards, the participants assembled a sensor board and programmed it under the guidance of a PhD student. The sensor board, together with a can of Ricola and a GPS transmitter, was then transported into the stratosphere by a weather balloon. The ascent ended at an altitude of 37 kilometres. Unfortunately, we will have to wait until the summer to retrieve the sensors (plus Ricola) – the sensors unfortunately landed by parachute on the side of a mountain in Austria.

In addition, soft skills training on team management was organised for the participants.

After the workshop, almost 50 people travelled to Graubünden for a ski weekend. Not only on the piste but also at the après-ski party.

Plans for Next Semester

From 23 to 25 March, we will be organising our local round of the EESTech Challenge for the second time. Participants from ETH and, for the first time, participants from all over Switzerland will be able to prove their skills in a hackathon. The winning team will qualify for the final round in Novi Sad (Serbia). We are also planning another workshop. After a long break, another edition of Women in Engineering is finally taking place. The organisation is slowly getting underway and it promises to be a very exciting week. The workshop will take place here in Zurich in May and will be followed by another weekend in the mountains. Once again, we are expecting many international guests! To keep in touch with previous generations of EESTECers, an alumni event is also being planned for the beginning of May.

Join

The planning for the events is already in full swing, but we need your help!

Are you confident and do you like talking to companies at eye level to raise sponsorship money? Or are you creative and keen to contribute your ideas to our planning? Or do you like coming up with unusual ideas for parties? Or are you simply cosmopolitan and would like to give our European guests the best impression of Switzerland?

Of course, you can also visit one of the many events abroad free of charge. You can always find the latest information at eestec.net/events. Why don’t you come to one of our fortnightly meetings and ask your questions to contact@eestec.ethz.ch or directly to us if you see one of us walking around in our bright red T-shirts/hoodies 😉

On behalf of EESTEC LC Zurich,
Philipp Butschle
Chairperson EESTEC LC Zurich
chairman@eestec.ethz.ch