The end of October had been long-awaited: Prezi and IBM LAB organized Europe’s most exciting tech conferences in Budapest, which all happened to coincide in time and location – the Crunch, Amuse and for the first time, Impact.
Although I took part in the Amuse-Crunch combo in 2017, this occasion was even more inspiring, as I’m a huge fan of product management and organizational development topics.

A bit more about the Blue, Pink and Yellow:

• Amuse is mainly for UX professionals, but the presentations could prove useful for product managers, digital product designers, and in general all the attendees who are interested in what’s happening on the other side of the screen.
• Crunch is designed for those who want to build the most advanced data driven business. The event is open to everyone, not just data engineers and the speakers offer something useful to everyone that’s interested in using data to improve their business development and processes.
• The Impact conference focuses on product management, which in turn deals with the umbrella of customer, business, and technology matters. The event primarily revolves around product management related questions and practices for software development but the topics could be applied to everyday life, too.

Since the three venues could be visited with one ticket, my first question was: how should I choose from the more and more interesting presentations? Most of the performers came from Silicon Valley, from companies such as Google, TransferWise, Slack, Uber, and Marty Cagan, the father product management also held a lecture.

The conferences were hosted at Railway History Park, which can be reached within a few minutes from the Western Railway Station, and the organizers also helped with scheduled trains to the venue. It was an amazing museum, there are over a hundred vintage trains, locomotives, cars and other types of railroad equipment on display. The stages, by the way, with the exhibition area of the sponsors were separated in a huge, old ’train-garage’. Breakfast and lunch were waiting for the participants during the event days, and the free servings of coffee helped us to sustain energy levels during the lectures. Sponsors set up various creative competitions, so we not only had the chance to get to know them better, but we also played funny and entertaining games.

Of course, the essence of the conference is not just networking, but also knowledge sharing and learning: I just enjoyed having the opportunity to meet people from all around the world and share ideas and knowledge with the international crowd. I’m personally quite certain that guests from all the various backgrounds have found something to take home to their professional and personal lives as well. So, what were my key learnings?

• Building an empowered team is the key for a successful product squad. More on this can be read from Marty Cagan on his page.
• Design has a powerful influence on the world, and we should take the right actions today to ensure that we get positive reactions in the future. Check out Leyla Acaroglu’s talks!
• We learnt about animation principles and practical tips to make UI micro-interactions more meaningful from Pablo Stanley. Useful comic series, and other pearls can be found on his website.
• Nilan Peiris told us how they scaled a mission-driven startup from 60 to 1200 – more exciting topics daily on his Twitter.

So overall, I’m really grateful for this opportunity to attend the Amuse-Crunch-Impact conferences this year. It was an amazing event, hats off to the organizers for putting it all together.