The Next Web Conference 2018 Experience

The Next Web or commonly known as TNW is a leading technology publication. They organize TNW conference, every year in Amsterdam in which more than 15,000 people participate. This year me and my colleague, Vishwajeet went to attend one of the largest tech conferences in Europe.

The event was held at an old abandoned gas factory in Amsterdam with close to 10 stages and 18 tracks, ranging from Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence to blockchain to future of work, equality in tech and more.

The conference has top people from the tech world as its speakers, ranging from Founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, to Head of space technology in MIT Media Lab to top entertainers like Will.I.am, Ryan Leslie. For us, it was a great experience to listen to leading experts in the technology world, music, entertainment, etc on how technology is impacting each sector. There was a lot of focus on future of work and how both small and large scale companies are taking advantage of their remote working workforce. We at DieProduktMacher are also a big believer of the flexibility of our employees and allow things like surf-office, work from home, etc.

One of the very interesting talks was from the author of Hooked, Nir Eyal on how to keep ourselves focussed in the world of internet. He spoke about how our actions are distracted by the different internal and external triggers, how essential it is to identify the source of distraction because most of them start from within and how we can use the tech to block out those distractions.

Another great talk was from Åsa Nyström, Director of Advocacy at Buffer, in which she talked about how Buffer has a transparent salary structure and how this is making an impact in transparency within the company. We also have transparent salary structure which helps us in keeping the transparency within our staff.

The key learning for us in the conference was following:
- Future will be full of Artificial intelligence and we need to adapt it.
- Decentralisation will also play important role in the privacy in coming years.
- Space and technology world will integrate more and smaller companies will be able to do a lot of data collection using their own satellites.
- Future of work will have more and more remote working professionals.
- Tech industry is trying to have more and more gender as well as racial equality.
- More and more transparency in pay is expected by the employees.
- Work-life balance is becoming an important part of work culture, hence the flexibility in the work is also important rather than regular 9-5 jobs.