Look who came to share stories and chat along in the beautiful July summer evening last week. We had a good turnout of 28 people, many first-timers among them:

POSITIONS FOR IVYPLUS MEMBERS
More and more companies and executive search companies find IvyPlus and would like to draw your attention to jobs opening up here in the area, in Europe or in the US as well as other exotic locations...:

AVAILABLE JOBS:
Business Analyst (Energy Service) - Budapest
Business Development Director (B2B Energy) -
Finance Manager (Manufacturing) - Budapest
Supply Chain Manager (Manufacturing) - Eastern Hungary
International Hospitality Operations Consultants - of one's choice
Group Sales Director (luxury hotel) - Florence, Italy
Assistant Engineering Manager (luxury hotel) - Florence, Italy
Residential Compound Manager - South Sudan (US citizens only)
Senior Sourcing Director - Online Tour Operator - San Francisco, CA

and more to follow..!
In a response to the overwhelming popularity of FB overseas and here in Hungary too, we are adding a new connection to the site. Click here to go to our FACEBOOK IVY LEAGUE PLUS page. You will find many other IvyPlusers who have not signed up here yet...

The first IvyPlus social of 2010 was a great success. Several organizations showed up - IvyPlus, for sure, Insead Alumni Association, Fulbright Scholarship Alumni, HAESF, CTP, HABA. In total we numbered 35.

John gave a very interesting speech about personal branding. It was fascinating to see how the internet helps individuals better define themselves and make them more conscious of the details of their personality, value-system and view on the world. John brought some copies of the book, however, none were for sale. If you are interested in buying a copy, send an e-mail to office@ivyplus.hu

Please give us your thoughts and feedback about future events of IvyPlus.

Find more photos like this on IVYPLUS

As per the request of the organizers of this global initiative:


“Be part of Guidewire Group’s Innovate!2010 global competition to identify and promote up-and-coming technology and media startups. We're looking for early-stage companies that have what it takes to be named one of the world’s most promising startups.

The top 100 companies will be featured in a prestigious list known as the Innovate!100 – and the best of the best will receive a share of prizes valued at nearly $250,000. In addition, every startup that applies will receive promotional exposure and free training designed to improve their chances of success.

Participating startups will be evaluated using Guidewire Group’s proprietary G/Score assessment methodology, which is based on our team’s experience vetting more than 20,000 startups for DEMO and Guidewire Group. Finalists will then be invited to deliver rapid-fire pitches in front of a panel of expert judges and audience members at one of our Innovate!2010 Pitch Slams.

We have scheduled Innovate!2010 Pitch Slams in over a dozen European cities between March 1 and March 29, and additional events will be held in the United States in the coming months. There will also be an online evaluation process for finalists that are not able to attend in person.

A few of the cities and dates where Innovate!2010 Pitch Slams will be held include:

• Barcelona, Spain – March 1
• London, UK – March 3
• Paris, France – March 4
• Dublin, Ireland – March 8
• Milan, Italy – March 10
• Tel Aviv, Israel – March 15
• Berlin, Germany – March 17

Additional dates and deadlines can be found on the Innovate!2010 application form.

We’re also looking for qualified individuals who are interested in volunteering to judge one or more of the Pitch Slams, and registration is open if you’d like to sign up to attend a Pitch Slam so you can meet and mingle with the finalists. More information is available at Innovate100.com.

Please help us spread the word about Innovate!2010 by sharing this information. You can follow us on Twitter at @innovate100, and you’re invited to join our Facebook and LinkedIn groups.

Questions? Suggestions? E-mail me at hildimre@gmail.com

JOBS! JOBS!
JOBS JOBS - .NET Rockstar WANTED
Do you find yourself reading blog posts and articles about new C# language features, ideas that use LINQ in unprecedented ways, mocking frameworks that make test-driven-development a breeze or how ReSharper 5.0 will improve your productivity tenfold only to realize it's already 2am in the morning? Read on.

HAESF and IvyPlus working together
Marking a new era of cooperation between alumni organizations HAESF and IvyPlus embarked on a new initiative, in which HAESF members, currently employed in the USA at various reputable firms introduce themselves at the IvyPlus website. The goal is to help these young professionals improve their chances of landing on a good job upon returning to Hungary. Please check them out at the link below, they are all very interesting and talented people. They would welcome any advice or help in finding a good position here in Hungary.
HAESF - IvyPlus intro site

The second US Alumni Summit took place in the Pilis at the Shaolin village. It was decided there that we will start to foster relationship between the member organizations. We chose two avenues to do this - 1. Establishing a US Alumni webportal and 2. organizing a periodic, so called US Alumni Cafe. The first one of these took place at Cafe Bacardi.

A fair number of people turned up from almost all of the member organizations. It was good to hear that many of us think along the same lines and believe that there is value in sharing ideas because by joining our resources we can better guarantee that our goals will be reached.

OCTOBER NEWS

Our October meeting took place in Central Cafe where we browsed over the new developments and plans to open up IvyPlus as a platform.

We are finishing the last touches on it in the first week of November and will present it to you all soon. The meeting reinforced that there is a need for active membership and constant flow of information among members. Ivyplus can become a very useful platform in sharing information and knowledge in order to help all involved. Information about deals, trends, jobs, markets etc. are all vital and valuable to everyone.

SEPTEMBER NEWS
September was rather eventful for IvyPlus. Thanks to Alex Manaila (Harvard), head of Ivy League Excellence (the Romanian sister organization of IvyPlus) managed to organize a great event at the Carol Parc Hotel.

The event featured a presentation of a top economist from a major european institution and was followed by a reception. Imre attended the event in the company of fellow Cornellian Gabor Patko who made the event happen. Thanks, Gabor, thanks Alex!

The IvyPlus Budapest event on the 17th of September at Cafe Farger was a success - total headcount at the event was 23.

A lot of good people in a very small space - could be the motto of the event. The good news is that we will organize the next event at a venue with more 'elbow room'.

June 24 - IvyPlus Hungary visits Ivy League Austria

8 willing and ready members of IvyPlus Hungary braved the stormy weather of this past week and went to Vienna to visit Ivy League Austria. The venue of this informal meeting was the first floor of the beautiful and cozy Zeiler am Hauerweg restaurant. Thanks to the organization of Antoinette Van Zabner Zinn-Zinnenburg, head of Ivy League Austria, approximately 60 people turned out - most of them from Ivy League universities and including many from other top US schools, the Oxbridge formation and graduates of the Scottish universities.

The meeting was held in an extremely cheery mood and we made many good contacts. Outstanding of the many new initiatives was the one we started with Richard Lax, President of the LSE Austria. We talked about organizing a joint meeting with the LSE Austria group along the Austrian Hungarian border, commemorating the Pan European Picnic of 1989 and also potentially invite Ivy League Austria folks to some of our Budapest events. Lots of opportunities, if anyone has good ideas for the cooperation, dont hesitate to voice the initiative.

June 17 - IvyPlus Hungary

A handful of our members showed up at Café Buena Vista this past week at the last IvyPlus meeting before September. We had four members from Cornell – Gyorgy Herczeg, Eszter Karsza, Jennifer-Dell Elström (+Harvard) and Imre Hild, Peter Solyom from Wharton, Piroska Zoli from Georgetown, Laszló András and David Keresztes from Columbia. The mood was great and we have great expectations regarding our visit this coming week – we (5 of us) will drop by the Viennese meeting of Ivy Leaguers. We will definitely report how they are doing these days...

June 17 - IvyPlus Romania

Great week for IvyPlus in Romania too - our Romanian sister organization had a great week, those of you who can read Romanian click here for the newspaper article.

In short, our Alex Manaila has organized a meeting where approximately 50 people showed up - invitees were either professionals with Ivy League background or distinguished personalities of the Romanian business society. Great job Alex..!

Last week IvyPlus and seven other organizations were invited by the US Embassy to the first ever two-day Hungarian US alumni organizations leaderships development seminar. This special event was organized by Public Affairs Alumni Coordinator Ágnes Frehr and turned out to be a resounding success. It helped alumni organizations get to know each other, the organizations" objectives and showed how they could cooperate - although this latter proved to be more illusive than actual, as the team building 'games' brought home the point.

IvyPlus was represented by Péter Sólyom (UPenn), Zoltán Piroska (Georgetown), Daniel Straub (Columbia) and Imre Hild (Cornell). We learned that there are numerous ways in which we can cooperate, build each other by sharing information rather than working as individual groups. Other organizations present were:

Kellner Scholarships
Fulbright Scholarships
Calasanctius Training Program (CTP)
Hungarian American Coalition Congress Internship Program (HAC)
Hungarian Association of British Alumni (HABA)
Hungarian American Enterprise Scholarship Fund (HAESF)

For more information on the organizations, click here.

The event is also featured on the Embassy's website.

Thanks to Ágnes for organizing this event!

The first joint Insead and Ivyplus meeting of 2009 was a truly a success: close to 40 invitees showed up despite the gruesome weather on January 15th at the Ybl Club.
The highlight of the event was

Peter Zaboji"s (Insead) speech about his experiences as the CEO of a major European corporation and what it meant to marshall the Change(!) throughout the entire organization. Thank you Peter!
We hope to establish an ongoing relationship with the Ybl Club and cooperate with them in creating programs in the future.

NEW CONNECTIONS
We have started a paralel site on FACEBOOK for those of you who always wanted to but never had the reason to use Facebook :)
IVYPLUS ON FACEBOOK

ESSAY - FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Where should Hungary be in 2028...?

MEETINGS ARCHIVES - In case you missed one...
DECEMBER 2008
NOVEMBER 2008
OCTOBER 2008

To all members using this social website, I kindly ask to stick to the following basic rules:

LANGUAGE OF THE SITE – English.

PROFILE PHOTO - Please try to find a photo (cartoons do not suffice) of yourself to upload to the site. 70% of the site members have a photo on their profile.

USAGE - the use of the site is set to 'real liberal' i.e. no one censors, adds or deletes material. It is ours, over time it will look like us. I am interested in seeing that picture. :)