JCI World Conference 2019 in Tallinn, Estonia

Do you remember the times when you were frantically studying diverse topics (at e.g. university), because the week after was a week full of exams? (Or perhaps some of you are still in the middle of doing that)And do you remember the feeling of finishing a year (at e.g. university) with the Summer break full of partying opportunitites just starting? (Or perhaps some of you live your life like that) Well, did you ever try to do both intense studying and partying hard at the same time (with a sprinkle of inspiring presentations as the cherry on top)?

Well, then welcome to JCI WEKO 2019 in Tallinn.

I was completely unprepared for the whirlwind of experiences that would be the core purpose of the event in Tallinn. 4.5 days (for some even longer) of work(/study) hard and play hard. It was a blast that left me with my voice crippled for days. And not in a good way either, as I didn’t get a nice deep voice, instead I got a raspy, old-man-stalker style wheezing tone. Oh well!

As for the content and experiences: the WEKO had presentations, workshops, training sessions, networking sessions, breaks (if you chose to take them, haha), full-day programs, panel discussions, dinners, parties, a gala night, afterparties and probably a handful of more activity types that I missed.

It would be meaningless to capture everything that was on offer in detail, since the choices were just so extensive. And that is perhaps one of the rare negatives I would say about the event: you had quasi too many choices. Many very interesting programs overlapped and so you always had to pick. No big deal, but it did leave a feeling of missing out on things for some.

Just so you get an idea of the program contents, here are a few that were especially interesting/inspiring/educational:

Robin Sharma as keynote for the „Transformation Day“. Even if you don’t believe in self-improvement topics, you can’t deny that he is an incredible public speaker with numerous inspirational thoughts that can help further tweak your lifestyle choices (and here and now, in front of all of you, I commit to joining the 5AM Club – you can read more about what that is if you Google the topic)

The Digital Innovation Day, with presenters such as the former Prime Minister of Estonia and one of the Co-Founders of Bolt. Both presentations were nothing less than impressive. Hearing how the country of Estonia developed significantly – riding the wave of public sector digitalization – over the last ~25 years does make you question the mindset and behavior of the governments of other countries. Granted, the population of Estonia totals to ~1.3 million, but majority of their solutions can definitely scale. Just as the success of Bolt is scaling across Europe and Africa (for those who don’t know, Bolt is in essence a direct competitor of taxi companies, Uber, Grab, etc.). It definitely is worth to read more about how Bolt is taking over the social car sharing space in Europe/Africa, especially starting in a „small“ country, such as Estonia.

Some of us also attended Clean World Day, which I found to be covering some fundamental topics as it relates to numerous UN Sustainability Goals (and thus normally of particular interest to JCI). It was a special privilege to hear the President of Estonia present on this important topic too.

Besides educational topics, we had a plethora of partying and fun night life opportunities, ranging from an Irish themed bar party, through a masquerade ball, all the way to an event called „Global Village“, where over two dozen countries offered sample foods/drinks from their countries. It has to be said, we should be proud of the Swiss delegation, as the raclette offering had the longest queue practically throughout the whole evening. It was absolutely delicious! (The Swiss team actually drove with all of the raclette equipment from Switzerland to Tallinn; respect!).

It just dawned on me at this point: I didn’t mention that if all this wouldn’t be enough for you, you could also join various tours, either about Estonia, Tallinn, the years of Soviet presence in the country, KGB activities in Tallinn, craft beers and many more. Super opportunities to learn and to network/meet new people.

Last, but not least, what also gave the event a special feeling for me was that as JCI Basel we largely stuck together in a completely unpressured way. Someone would always organize a dinner, a recommendation for a program or something similar. Then if you wanted to and could, then you joined. For me this gave a feeling of companionship, which – especially for a newcomer like me -, was helpful.

I could go on and on, but in order to keep it to a reasonable length and to sum-up, I would like to leave you with a quote from one of our dear members (Oliver) who sent me this as kind of a reflection for his week in Tallinn:
„I don’t know how we will survive a regular working week anymore!“

P.s. Keep improving your German and French. The better you speak both, the more JCIS (Swiss) you will be able to connect with!

Daniel Racz