BananaConf / NFT Tallinn

We wanted people outside the crypto community to understand what blockchain could do for them. We invited executives, lawyers and public servants alongside developers and enthusiasts. Discussions about identity, ownership and regulation helped us examine how the technology might be used in practice.

After NFT Tallinn in May 2023, we wanted brands to have more room to explain their needs directly to the people building new tools. We chose the BananaConf direction that summer. Web3xFashion in Milan followed in September and gave us a focused setting to try it. The interest I heard was in practical applications, which helped us develop the wider BananaConf programme.

In 2022, speaker interest led us to change the format late in preparation. We added discussion sessions and hands-on workshops alongside the main stage, delivering 32 sessions in total. The smaller sessions were more popular than we had expected, so we kept practical learning in the programme as the conference grew.

Preparing the 2023 edition took me to Paris, New York and Helsinki. I contacted hundreds of builders and recorded 35 NFT Tallinn Talks while working on speaker outreach, promotion and partnerships. Heili Teder and Andre Veskimeister were part of the original organising team, and more people joined us over time.

For BananaConf Tallinn in 2024, we organised five stages for main talks, executive discussions, open debate, learning sessions and developer workshops. We added an Executive Day and connected the conference with community events such as ETHTallinn and DeSci Nordics. FrankNFT helped with the programme and Garage Italia provided the branding. Cost cuts left us short of people, and the Web3 Estonia team, Alvar, Hendri and other friends joined in the final weeks. Their help made a big difference to getting the event delivered.

In Milan, we worked with AKQA and the European Web3 Organization through BananaCorp. Web3xFashion in September 2023 brought together 120 attendees and 14 speakers for one day on one stage. The discussions covered tokenisation and traceability, loyalty and personalisation, and virtual fashion. We returned in September 2024 with IZY Studios for The Future Fashion.

The audience grew beyond the technology community we had started with. Public-sector representatives took part in 2022, and we had attendees from 52 countries in 2023 and 57 countries in 2024. I enjoyed bringing together people whose work gave them quite different views of the same technology.

William Entriken encouraged me to schedule an email to the NFT Tallinn speakers, thanking them and asking who wanted to get involved in our next steps. More than half wanted to continue. We developed the Banana DAOquiri community from those conversations, and I kept meeting its members at events beyond Tallinn. Asking people how they wanted to participate gave us a way to keep working together between conferences.

After airBaltic and MetaBrewSociety presented their loyalty and membership applications at NFT Tallinn in 2023, brands asked me how they could do something similar. I researched providers and made introductions. A few months later, some brands returned because the platforms had changed direction or did not fit their needs. Those conversations helped us develop the idea for Perxify, which we began building in early 2024.

I burned out during the 2023 preparations. I had spent months working with too little time off and reached the end of the conference without much energy left. I learned to take recovery seriously and leave time for thinking, especially when the next project is already waiting.

Our cost cuts for 2024 left too few people to deliver the programme comfortably. Friends had to join close to the event to help us finish the work. I now look at staffing alongside the budget: if we remove a role, I need to know who will take on its work or which part of the programme we will drop.

The second Milan edition went ahead, but we missed the targets we had set for it. We also dropped the other industry events planned for 2024. I had underestimated how much we needed experienced local partners and a sufficient delivery budget for each event, even with a community willing to travel.

We held one more, smaller BananaConf in May 2025 and then stopped organising events. I no longer assume that a conference should return simply because it has become an annual event. Each edition needs enough reason, resources and team capacity to justify doing it again.

I pay more attention to the questions people bring back after an introduction. With Perxify, I only understood more of the problem when brands returned and explained why the suggested providers had not worked for them. That meant following up and listening to the details, even after I thought I had helped.

I also learned to give people a specific way to stay involved. The email to our speakers made it easy for them to reply and tell us what they wanted to do next. I could then continue those conversations individually instead of hoping that everyone would simply turn up at the next conference.

The events made me more careful about taking on work. I want to know who has time to do it and whether the budget covers the programme we have promised. Having needed friends to step in so close to the deadline, I would rather reduce the programme earlier than ask the team to keep stretching.