1. Can you tell us a little bit about your event?
I like to think of FAIL! as a reverse-TED. People come on stage for about 10 minutes to share a story, only this time their story isn’t about how they spent 20 years conducting very specific research and had great results, but rather about how they have previously failed.
Our world has become a very competitive place. People often suffer from external judgement and unrealistically high expectations. Our belief is that failure can happen to anyone, anywhere: to our bosses, to our friends, and even to ourselves!
Even though most people probably know the famous mantra “I never fail: I either win or learn,” it still seems like we live in an environment which is very unfriendly towards failure. The goal of FAIL! Is to promote the virtues of failure, in order to reframe our culture of it. To fulfill this goal, we will welcome 5 speakers from all over Europe (France, Germany, Slovakia, Spain, and Switzerland) with very different backgrounds to share a personal failure and the lessons they learned from it.
2. What inspired you to launch this on an EU trainee scale?
The main thing that inspired me is the supportive framework of the traineeship towards trainees’ personal initiatives. From the moment we join, we can see that many projects and subcommittees exist, and we want to be part of it. One of the wonders of the Blue Book traineeship, besides the insights it gives to the work of the European Commission, is the possibilities it offers to trainees to develop personal projects aside from work. I seized this opportunity to launch a small conference.
Starting to think about it, I realized the environment was more than appropriate for an event about the virtues of failure. It’s very easy for our generation to feel very pressured into having a perfect run in life, especially in such competitive programmes as the Blue Book or Schuman ones. Having some successful people sharing stories of how they have failed in their career or personal path is a much-needed relief.
Looking back, I am amazed at how everything seemed aligned for me to organise this event. I discovered the concept of FAIL! during an internship at MIT two years ago, where I met one of the organizers helping us today. Through my participation at a TEDx talk, I was in touch with professional coaches who agreed to coach the speakers of FAIL! for free. I also met Estelle, who is one of our speakers today. Doing the TEDx talk also helped me a lot with how to prepare events, especially with regards to the preparation with the speakers.
3. What do you hope the participants will take away from the event?
Above all, I hope that the participants will have a pleasant time during the conference. In these times, we are all spending long and lonely days in front of our computers. That is why Orlando, my co-host, and I are doing our very best to prepare a funny, warm and relaxed event.
The format we came up with on YouTube really ensures that this won’t be another zoom meeting, but a moment of entertainment and inspiration. We will be there to bring all the emotions of the audience onstage and make sure their questions are being answered. With the help of the coaches, the speakers have been working hard to prepare dynamic talks with powerful messages. Our speakers are not some personal development gurus who come to say “don’t be afraid of failure”. Rather, they are people with different backgrounds that have the courage to reveal a very personal episode of their life during which they failed. They each have different experiences and different notions of success - and therefore of failure - but come here to share them in a transparent and honest way. Working with them, I realized that stories of failure are much more powerful than stories of success. Because failure happens to everyone, such stories create a connection between the audience and the speakers, and in the end the messages of resilience give the audience hope and really inspire them to take action.
I think one of the main messages from our event is about the role of our generation as the next leaders. Estelle Lovi tells us we have the responsibility to redefine work , and Lucia Klestincova - as an EU official - insists on our responsibility to do our best to bring in what we believe is good for the EU, instead of fitting in the institutions’ mold.
4. Where do you draw your personal inspiration from?
I’m a big fan of theatre. When I lived in Paris I used to go to the theatre at least once a week, and I practiced improv. I miss this a lot. My favourite plays are Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, Rhinocéros by Eugène Ionesco and An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen. I like to think of the latter as a modern version of Galileo’s story, in a world where money has taken the place of religion. I feel very inspired by theatre, and I always look for an opportunity to be onstage, whether it be for professional, personal or leisure motivations.
Even though I am a slow reader, I still love reading.
On April 15th 2019, I turned 22 years old. I was meeting some friends at a bar when, at around 6pm, the Notre-Dame Cathedral suddenly caught fire. The entire world watched it burning in tears. In the streets, thousands of people were gathering in silence to watch the spire of the church fall. I used to live close to the cathedral, and for months before this I passed by it every morning and was amazed by this centuries-old building. I used to think that it would still be here in centuries, when I will only be ashes. And yet, that night, I realised that even one of the most famous cathedrals in the world can turn to ashes within just a few hours. Fire doesn’t care if you’ve been there for a thousand years. I realised also that if the whole world was watching it, and if everyone would still remember about it, it wasn’t thanks to the beauty of the building, but thanks to the fame of Victor Hugo. Not only did the novel Notre-Dame de Paris make the church famous, but most importantly it gave it a place in eternity. Even if only ashes remain of the building, the book will always be there and give life to Notre-Dame. The only condition is that people read. I started reading a lot after this experience, and I still do. My latest pearl: East of Eden by John Steinbeck.
As I said, I am a slow reader, and I am not a very good writer - I’m better with numbers as you can guess. But I wish to improve my writing skills and some day eventually write something myself. One of our speakers, Antonio Nieto Rodriguez, advises us to identify one thing we want to become great at and spend time working on it, embracing our failures on the way. For me I guess this thing is writing.
5. Your background is in Engineering, you are currently a trainee at EUROSTAT - would you say there lies a connection between numbers and motivation?
I believe that “what we cannot measure, we cannot understand.” I am fascinated by the way numbers can allow us to deeply understand the world and tell stories. However, I am convinced that we should never think that “numbers don’t lie”. They say that an image is worth a thousand words, I say that a number is worth a thousand interpretations.
The first step in reducing the risk of making a number lie is to have good quality control. I am very happy to be able to work on the improvement of data validation processes as a trainee at Eurostat. While my studies in engineering and data science focused on complex topics like machine learning, this complexity sometimes risks losing sight of the basics. My work at Eurostat ensures the statistics that policymakers refer to are accurate: without such high-quality statistics, numbers may easily lie.
6. Has the organisation of this event made you think about your own life and professional goals?
I have to be honest: when I was young, my dream was to be an actor. For some reason I ended up studying engineering - part of me still regrets that and I still feel the burning passion for the stage. At 21 years old, I decided to apply to speak at a TEDx talk, and I managed to speak in front of 1000 people. Without a doubt, this is what I am most proud of today.
The organisation of FAIL! reminded me of how great it feels to inspire people, but it also showed me how great it is to lead an important project of my own initiative that I am passionate about. I am also deeply moved by the stories of the speakers, that each impact me in a different way, and I am genuinely happy that I had the opportunity to meet these people and that I gave them the opportunity to share those powerful messages.
The main thing I get from their messages and the experience of organising this, with regards to my childhood dream, is to take baby steps every day to get closer to what I like, and that to move in the right direction, writing daily about your feelings and thoughts helps.
7. If you were to take the floor and share a story of failure and resilience, what would you tell?
I started university being at the bottom of the class, irrespective of the number of hours I spent studying. Compared to the former top student I was in high school, this was a big personal failure. I entered university convinced that I was some kind of a genius, but reality hit me. At the end of junior year, my mathematics professor urged me to change my curriculum. But I didn’t let that stop me. Gradually, I started asking questions whenever something was not clear. I was mocked by my classmates for asking "stupid questions," but ultimately, these questions allowed me to understand the subjects in my own words, and I started getting very good grades. Bachelard said that "doing science is questioning the obvious." This is how I began to always be curious in life. At work, I was never afraid to ask a question, however silly it may have sounded. Being curious allows me to understand things very deeply. Most importantly, it shows the people I work with genuine interest, therefore creating a stronger and trustful relationship with them.