The Next Web Conference 2018 Experience

The Next Web or commonly known as TNW is a leading technology publication. They organize the TNW conference every year in Amsterdam and more than 15,000 people participate. This year me and my colleague Vishwajeet went there 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 features top people from the tech world as its speakers, ranging from the founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, to the head of space-technology in MIT Media Lab to top entertainers like Will.I.am and Ryan Leslie. For us, it was a great experience to listen to leading experts in the technology world, music, entertainment and 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 most interesting talks was by the author of Hooked, Nir Eyal on how to keep ourselves focused in the age of the internet. He spoke about how our actions are distracted by different internal and external triggers and how essential it is to identify the source of distraction, because most of them start from within. He also spoke about how we can use tech to block out those distractions.

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

Our key learnings from the conference were the following:

• The future will be full of Artificial intelligence and we need to adapt it.
• Decentralisation will also play an important role in the privacy sector over the next years.
• The space and technology world will integrate more and smaller companies will be able to collect a lot of data using their own satellites.
• The future of work will have more and more remote working professionals.
• The 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 flexibility in work is more important than a regular 9-5 schedule.