I get invited to the strangest meetings
A week has passed since the events of the Easter Revolution which took place on April 7th … and life in Bishkek is returning to normal.
How can I tell?
If I was being cynical, I suppose that I could answer: “because I have had a string of visitors asking for sponsorship”.
A more realistic answer is that I am now being run off my feet, going from one meeting to another. I sometimes feel that Kyrgyzstan could lay claim to the title of the “Meetings Capital of the World”. There always seems to be a meeting being conducted somewhere – seminars, conferences, consultations, round tables or just meetings. The Kyrgyz have a traditional consultative meeting of elders, called a Kurulltai, and they have given this new traditional assembly a new lease of life in recent years by calling them at what seems to be at almost any opportunity …
For some reason, I seem to get invited to participate in quite a few meetings. My opinion is sought on all sorts of topics … usually, I am pleased to say, on topics related to tourism, but also I get invited to meetings about of other topics, some of which are related to our everyday activities as a tour company and others less so: tax and tax reform; reform of the court system; protection of investments; improvements to the educational system; employment issues; attracting foreign investments … and so on.
Sometimes, it seems to me, I get invited to the strangest of meetings.
I can’t go to all of them, strange or otherwise, because there may be a clash in the diary … I cannot be at the round table about investment policy because there is a conference about the visa regime … and so on. Where there are a number of meetings happening at the same time, then I obviously have to decide which one to attend. Sometimes the decision is easy – if the topic of one of them is vital to our interests here … but if there is an equal interest in both, then I normally give priority to the first invitation that I accepted.
To be honest, I sometimes wonder why I bother … it’s not like some people seem to think, a case that that I enjoy meetings. They take time and effort and are a distraction from the tasks that I am supposed to be completing. My investors also wonder, and occasionally they ask me. The answer that I usually give myself is that I go to keep myself informed; to lobby for the changes that we would like to see – and against those that we don’t want to see; and, also, to avoid being caught out by having a decision taken which would cause us problems in the future.
It doesn’t always work. There have been more than one occasion when I have attended a meeting, argued my point, (forcefully argued my point, probably), but lost the argument as the decision went another way … but I am prepared for that to happen, that’s the whole point about democracy and the nature of consultations … On other occasions I have listened to the discussion and not intervened because I missed a point which turned out to be vital, perhaps because I hadn’t grasped the full implications of what was being proposed – and that’s really frustrating.
Well, as I said, I am fairly sure that life is returning to normal her in Bishkek because the continuous round of meetings is well and truly under way. I have recently got back from one such meeting … and as I sat at the table I asked myself what on earth I was doing there. I recognized two of the people sitting around the table, but no-one else. The topic was about proposed changes to the laws on registering trade marks and firm names. Most people that were there were specialists that work in this field but neither of these are topics which have a direct bearing on our day to day business, but as a businessman who has had to register both in the past, and maybe will do so again in the future, I suppose that as a “client” I did have an interest in the topic.
Actually, I quite enjoyed the meeting … it was well run, constructive, very informative and achieved realistic results and a good consensus.
I have got just question: Why was I invited? I do get invited to the strangest meetings.
Bishkek