Squeezing out the juice
In my family recipe for chicken soup, you boil the chicken for an hour, take it out, boil the vegetables for an hour, then take them out and return the chicken to the pot. Let the vegetables cool, then physically squeeze out their juices and add that back to the pot. If you skip that step, the soup has far less flavor.
I spent all of February living in Nairobi. 28 calendar days. 20 work days. 12 of those days included at least one big event, if not an all day event, plus 3 days doing site visits. 15 out of 20 work days networking, presenting, and leading a business accelerator.
One month squeezing the juice out of living in Nairobi.
Someone asked me to day whether it was worth the effort? I have no idea. I have piles of cards from all these events that will get scanned it this week, with all the follow-up conversations this month and next month, as there just wasn’t time in February to do that.
I’ll bet you a shilling good things are to come from that effort.
Networking, not Panels
I’ve attended, spoken at, and sponsored many dozens of conferences in my 30+ year career. Most have been worth my time. Mostly due to the fact that I attend global conferences where people fly in across multiple continents, and thus I can meet people face-to-face who I’d otherwise only ever meet over Zoom.
That soup metaphor is perfect. A lot of people go to events or travel but don’t actually squeeze the value out of the experience the way you described.