Behind the Scenes
Every edition of Nekst, you can read about a different committee of Asset | Econometrics. This time, we thought you might be interested in how we decide which committee we allow to present itself. Therefore, this edition you can read about all ins and outs of the Nekst committee!
Text by: Anouk Claassen
While thinking about this article I wondered where I should start, just like when we are all sitting together for the brainstorm of the next edition of Nekst. For every edition, we have to start almost entirely from scratch. Every edition needs a new bunch of creativity and we have to ask ourselves: how can we make this edition of Nekst even greater than the previous one?
In the past we had some great articles about interviews with several important persons like Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Rector Magnificus Emile Aarts. But sometimes, interviews with persons somewhat closer to us as students are just as appealing. For example, who was aware of the fact that René Peeters loves to practice shot-put or that Floor van Helsdingen has her own handmade bags? All those wonderful articles find their origin in the brainstorm session of the Nekst committee.
The Nekst committee comes together every quarter. Those meetings are always a lot of fun. We do not see each other very regularly, so there are always lots of stories to share with each other. Did you know, for example, that Claire Vink is known as Claire Vink Vink to the university administration? After a chit-chat session, we start evaluating the previous edition. Keeping those feedback points in mind for the next edition makes sure that we can keep the quality of Nekst as high as possible. After the evaluation, of course with a lot of chit-chatting in between, we start brainstorming about the articles for the next edition.
There are several columns for which we have to think about an interesting person to interview. Furthermore, we have to decide who is going to take the interview and who is going to write the article. Every interview is done with two persons: one is taking the interview and the other one is making the minutes. There are also some articles that are written about a special topic. These are topics outside the regular columns, but of which we think they are interesting to read, see for example the interview with former board member Arnoud. Then, last but definitely not least, we have the articles written by our beloved association and faculty members. Some of those are asked in the beginning of the year for all four editions of this volume, others are asked because they were present at one of the Asset | Econometrics’ activities, or have done something special like going on exchange or doing a graduation internship.
When all those articles are written, Nekst is definitely not ready for going to the printer. First all, the articles have to be checked by the committee members. When the Editor-in-Chief (Pepijn) receives an article, he forwards it to one of the committee members. After a check by one of the committee members, Pepijn checks if he agrees with the corrections and sends it to the next committee member. When all articles are checked twice, the Layout Editor (Steffi) can start placing the text in the final Nekst document. Steffi makes sure that all articles look attractive to make sure that you are actually going to read it, by choosing some nice quotes and add some lovely pictures to the articles. Furthermore, Steffi is the creative brain behind the mid page and the cover page.
When Steffi has finished the complete lay-out of Nekst, the final editor (Ennia) gives her feedback on the proof version. Pepijn and Steffi are sitting together to discuss at each point if they want to take the feedback of Ennia into account or not. Then, finally the Nekst is ready to go to the printer and just a few weeks later you can all lie down on your couch and enjoy reading it.
