I joined the Bitrise booth at the TNW Conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands a few weeks ago where I met fellow tech enthusiasts, learned about Amsterdam’s tech culture, and hung out with the Bitrise team. 👌
This was my first time attending the two-day TNW Conference in Amsterdam, and I was joined by product marketing, field marketing, people, and other Bitrise teams. What’s great about working with this team is that people come from all over the world to get together and collaborate. Since joining Bitrise two months ago, this was my second time meeting some of my international colleagues – like Rita Vass from the field marketing team who’s based in Hungary, and Paul Brien from the people team who’s based in the UK. And, it was my first time meeting some new colleagues from Amsterdam as well. 🥹
When I wasn’t chatting to people at the Bitrise booth and giving away the amazing Purr-request/Bitbot Bitrise swag, I attended a few talks. There were several interesting discussions hosted at various locations around the conference – including conversations about scaling businesses, a cashless society, the metaverse, web3, fintech, and more
Particularly, I was interested in the talks that centered around diversity and inclusion – and I was happy to see that there were many on the speaker’s agenda. Tracy Benson, the CEO & Co-Founder of Obsesh, shared her story of what it’s like to be queer in tech 🌈. Then, there was a panel discussion with Marian Spier, the founder of Fem-Start, Mursal Hedayat, CEO of Chatterbox, and Tim Rehder a partner at Earlybird Venture, where they discussed how to remove the bias in investing 💸. We also heard from Gillian Tans, the founder of Diversity Hero, and Terence Guiamo, the Global Director of Inclusion, Diversity & Belonging at Just Eat Takeaway.com, about improving diversity in the European tech industry 🔥.
There were also a number of interesting fintech discussions at TNW. With Apple and PayPal unveiling new payment plans, the ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) chat with Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, a Financial Times banking and fintech correspondent, and Claire Jones, an international economy news editor at Financial Times, was a very prevalent discussion.
Going to TNW in Amsterdam gave me an opportunity to learn more about the tech scene in the Netherlands, which is especially helpful because I just moved here recently. The conference was full of interesting industry leaders, fun UX/UI designers, talkative salespeople, and content marketers (like me 🥰). I met some people from MessageBird, a communication API based in Amsterdam, who were so friendly and welcoming. I also visited the booths of ABN (a Dutch bank), Mapiq (a workplace technology solution based in Delft), Stream.io (a chat API company with an Amsterdam office), and many more.
Being able to meet people in person and network with fellow techies was such a nice experience – I almost forgot what it was like! I’m thankful that big events are back, but I also re-learned some important networking lessons:
- Remember that not everyone is as eager to get back into meeting people as you might be (or is that just me? 😂) so give people their space if they need it. Also, take time for yourself to recharge and prepare for a long day.
- Prepare your best elevator pitch about yourself and what you do.
- Write down a few notes about the people you met and what you talked about – you think you’ll remember, but you probably won’t (oh, just me again? 😅).
If you’re nervous about going to events and meeting people again, remember that everyone was also stuck in their mom’s basement for two years over the pandemic (okay, that was definitely just me ðŸ˜).
If you’re interested in joining me at Bitrise and events like TNW, why not check out our career page and job openings?
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