Written by Christina B. Kragh, IMA Denmark

Within a span of four years we have experienced a pandemic that shook the foundation of our world as we know it, and before that was even over, we saw war break out in Europe and the Middle East again! Even with all that we still have to focus on the positives - we also get to celebrate our 50 year anniversary as a network. This is monumental! 

When the Covid pandemic broke out we were all shocked - our world as we knew it would forever change, of that we were certain. But not much else was certain. Each country handled it differently - and some countries were hit harder than others. In the midst of all that - we still had a network to run. How do you do that!? Your members lose their jobs, your world may be breaking apart because you lose loved ones, all you knew for certain is no longer a certainty - but we in IMA knew we had to stick together. We HAD to offer something to keep the sense of togetherness - even though we were as apart as we had ever been. 

The EC had new people coming in during Covid - they had never had a "normal" year so they had to invent what normal was during Covid. 

Suddenly we saw innovative ways of meeting without meeting - we saw cocktail hours on Zoom, we saw people writing articles about how life would return to more normal ways of working when all this was over - reassuring others but also themselves. This was how our Insights articles started out.

We saw the rebirth of webinars - as we all used Zoom and Teams extensively to try and cope with our work, why not also use it to learn something. Yes we were all sick of staring at a screen all day - but at least we could see our IMA family now and then.  The innovation going on in all countries was amazing - we reinvented our network to stay alive and relevant.  

When you know people around the world and something like this happens, you worry about them, what are they going through? I was glad I was able to write with those I missed and have Teams meetings - we connected because we simply had to. The friendships in IMA are strong.

I missed the training day in Luxembourg in 2022 but I got to go to Helsinki for the Conference in 2022 - now we finally dared to set up a Conference in person. There were tears and long long hugs. It was like it always is when we meet for international events - but next level. It had been so long without meeting each other, and the joy of seeing that we were ok - that was fantastic. 

And now we look towards the next big milestone in IMA - our 50th Anniversary which we celebrate in 2024 ending with a big party in Stockholm for our annual conference.