So here I am, suitcase packed, coffee in hand, and a head full of thoughts about the past few days.
The UIA Congress is over, and it has been an intense few days. Between panels, meetings, business conversations, gala dinners, and social events, the schedule was packed. I also managed to squeeze in a couple of extra days because of the weekend. And they were highly packed… Quad biking, a camel (well, dromedary) ride in the desert, wandering through the souks, a hot air balloon ride, and a visit to lovely Essaouira.
International congresses are fascinating creatures. They blur the line between business and pleasure, and everyone seems to draw that line in a different place. Which, I guess, is perfectly reasonable.
On one side, you have panels, speeches, and professional opportunities. On the other, dinners, parties, excursions, and people you normally see in suits suddenly appearing in shorts and sunglasses by the hotel reception
Some people seem to be on holiday, occasionally interrupted by a conference. They bring their families, skip sessions, and fully embrace their tourist side. Others manage to spend an entire week in suits, turning every coffee, lunch, and dinner into a business conversation. One of them proudly told me he had managed to fit in 70 business meetings in seven days.
And yes, there is everything in between.
I don’t think there is a right or wrong approach. Personally, I try to stay somewhere in the middle. When I work, I work. Organizing an entire panel with ten speakers was hellish. Then I was a speaker on two other panels (which meant plenty of preparation), and I also made time for business conversations and additional sessions. All of this while keeping Better Ipsum running, because, well, you still need to put bread on the table.
But when I enjoy myself, I enjoy myself, whether it’s smoking cigars by the pool or indulging in some adrenaline-junkie activities. You barely sleep, and someone might remind you that you no longer have the body you had in your twenties, but that’s another problem… I like being able to switch between the two, and I’m reasonably comfortable with where I draw the line.
That said, there is something else about these events that I find fascinating. A certain bittersweet feeling that follows me almost every time, usually creeping in at night, just before I fall asleep.
The sense that, whatever I do, I could have done more.
More meetings. More meaningful conversations. More business opportunities. More time with colleagues that suddenly become friends. More exploration. More rest. More fun.
If you focus on business, you wonder whether you should have enjoyed the place more. If you focus on pleasure, you wonder how many opportunities you might have missed.
And if you try to do both, you inevitably feel that neither received quite enough attention.
After many congresses, and even more business trips, I’ve come to realize that a certain degree of dissatisfaction is almost guaranteed. There will always be someone I didn’t meet, a conversation I didn’t have, a place I didn’t visit, or an experience I missed.
Perhaps that’s simply the price of having too many possibilities and too little time.
The curious thing is that, despite knowing all this, I keep coming back. And when I look at these experiences from a distance, the dissatisfaction tends to fade, while the memories, relationships, and unexpected opportunities remain.
So yes, Marrakech was wonderful. Exhausting, stimulating, occasionally overwhelming, and inevitably incomplete.
I could have done more networking activities . I could have enjoyed myself more. And I could have slept more (definitely).
But perhaps the problem is that I keep measuring these experiences against everything they could have been, rather than everything they actually were.
And looking back, they were quite a lot.
.
And here I am, saying hello to mama before risking my life for the umpteenth time…
