Visiting Riga Comm ‘25

The end of the last week I’ve spent 2 days at Riga Comm conference. It was an IT and technology related conference, however that was business or sales conference. People on the stage were admitting they are not great at sharing technical details. Despite of them were great in something different. And they were sharing that.

Great storytellers

One things that was in common for all the good speeches was story telling. Simple or more complex - it was raising interest and immediately fulfilling it. Even many people were talking about things I’ve heard before I wouldn’t call it boring. Because that was a specific story.

Absolutely best speech I’ve been was the one given by Stjepan Zelic, who explained how random people from social media are getting access to our decision center. And this was perfectly crafted - in time, deep enough to note some anchors for further investigation. At the same time - it gave high level understanding of psychological mechanisms involved.

Discussion panels weren’t insightful. However, it was a great reminder and examples of the fact we can approach same goals and results following multiple paths. And sharing different perspectives.

Was that a place to learn?

Yes and no. I don’t think it’s a type of event where to get knowledge. But that are definitely the right place to get some motivation, courage and contacts. That motivational part work well for me for many years, and turned out IT-related business conference was good enough to catch my attention.

Moreover, willingness to move beyond the IDE and coding requires adoption of different perspective. And the challenge is not to learn finance or sales (yet it needs to be learned). The challenge is to avoid getting completely consumed by activities that I do well and enjoy doing. It must be mixed and this was a great place to learn skill of mixing and wearing multiple hats.