May the Mental Health be with you
Removing the third-person angle and a bit of journalistic professionalism, allow me to share my personal reflections of the JCI Basel – FrühjahrStartUpapéro event @WestHive Basel, focused on ”Mental Health & Me”.
Thanks to all the preparation Simi Nadia Schnidrig and I did upfront, we were more than ready for the event; by 17:00 there weren’t too many things left to do, besides warmly welcoming guests.
Being up on the stage and hosting the event for me was an absolute blast. We had amazing speakers, an incredibly engaged audience and a wonderful support staff, who all made it possible for us to have such a high-quality event. Which was fantastic, as expectations were high, with the event being overbooked (in the end we had around 60 participants, 5 speakers, 1 photographer – thank you Patrick Kunz, 1 host).
I also had the possibility to ask what audience members enjoyed the most and to my great happiness, the 20-25 people highlighted different parts of the event, meaning that likely we offered inspirational moments for most.
My personal takeways:
- I was really humbled to receive a lot of positive feedback regarding my opening about time management (note: feel free to reach out, I’m happy to share what tools I use; how I do it, etc.)
- I sincerely appreciate how openly and down-to-the-ground Michele Matt (Founder, Chairman of MyCamper) talked/talks about his (burnout-related) challenges; I wish more of us could do the same
- Valentino Megale (CEO, Co-Founder of Softcare Studios) shared some absolutely fascinating use cases about how his company uses VR as pain relief; patients being able to play VR games during invasive treatments to significantly dampen the pain
- Chris Baeriswyl (COC Deputy Director for the JCI World Congress 2023), who, next to communicating the mandatory items of the World Congress 2023 in Zürich, also opened up about the mental health challenges around its organisational difficulties
- The panel/fishbowl discussion turned into a really nice, family-feeling conversation with Killian Fjellbakk (Co-Founder at Zario) stating – for example – that everyone is responsible for their own mental health and the main highlight from Naomi MacKenzie (Co-CEO, Co-Founder at Kitro) being that the glorification of the hustle culture needs to stop
- The closing remarks of Aude Gessler (JCI Switzerland Vice-President 2023) really stuck with me, highlighting that JCI is your safety network where you should always feel free to speak up about any challenges you have
I would like to extend a huge thanks to all the supporters who made the event possible (Basler Kantonalbank, EOTEC, honegger, westhive, gally websolutions, handelskammer beider basel, Pax, Startup Academy, Baloise) and also a special shoutout to all the people who greatly supported on-site: André Konrad, Désirée Harmuth, Karina Steiger-Gonzalez, Oliver Kühnel.
May the Mental Health be with you,
Dani
Daniel Racz
JCI Basel President 2023