Mind-Bending Experiences

Petra Wille (0:04)

Hi, folks, this is All Things Product with Petra Wille and Teresa Torres. And we're so happy you're here.

Teresa Torres (0:16)

Petra, I have a weird topic for us today. I want to explore, I think I'm going to frame it as like mind-bending experiences.

So things, yeah, big time.

Petra Wille (0:30)

Context, context.

Teresa Torres (0:32)

Things that happen in your life at an event, like I know both of us have conferences that we've attended that fall into this category, and not like normal work conferences, but a little bit more. We can talk about that. Mind-bending conferences.

Or like for me, like pushing myself to do activities that are maybe outside my comfort zone, or like reading something that's like so counter to your point of view. Like something that pushes you to see the world a little differently, or see yourself a little bit differently.

And like whether or not companies should be trying to create these experiences for their employees, and is there a benefit to that? And so like maybe we could just start with like, what do we mean by mind-bending experiences? You could share a little bit about your House of Beautiful business experience. And then maybe we can get into like, is this something companies should be thinking about as a way to like help grow their employees?

Petra Wille (1:38)

Yeah. So it's actually really hard to pinpoint what actually happens if you attend this, the House of Beautiful business conference. Or in the past, I have been attending the conference in Malmö, Sweden, which had a similar vibe. It was always a mixed bag. You were never fully sure what you would get experiences wise, topics wise, formats wise.

But you knew you go there for, I don't know, new lenses, new angles, thoughts that you have never thought, but you see people comfortably thinking about these things all the time, which is massively inspiring. And it really brings you in this like, huh, is that something that I should think about more often as well? And then oftentimes it's not by the way. So oftentimes you just like, oh, I appreciate you thinking about the topic, but it has nothing to do with my corner of the internet or world. So I appreciate the beauty of your thought, but it's not helping me over here. And still, I always come back richer. I think it's very similar to the experience that you sometimes have when exposed to art, because you have to really immerse yourself in the art experience to some extent to build a connection with it. And these conferences are a bit similar to my art experience at least, so to some extent. Maybe you can share about your conference experience as well.

And they are still business events. So to some extent, you still talk business and maybe there's something about how to retrofit houses to the current changes in world climate or something like that. Is that something that I will need next week?

Teresa Torres (3:28)

No.

Petra Wille (3:29)

But will we maybe need to retrofit some of the software that we have written in the past? Maybe yes. So maybe it will come.

The point will come where this might be an interesting piece of knowledge. Maybe not. Maybe I can connect the dots. Maybe not. But at least it's inspiring. At least it creates this more artsy resonance in me. And it all, I always feel enriched and coming back richer than I, than I went. And it always has some very raw and, I don't know how to call it, personal interaction with other humans that I haven't planned for, that are outside of my bubble, that have other thoughts and I have other opinions, that I have other backgrounds, experiences, world views. So that in itself has a lot of beauty. And it's rare that you find dead places if you're not attending such a conference, but I see more and I see by the way, companies asking more for different types of events again. So I think the in-person offside was a bit dead over the last few years for whatever reason, maybe budget constraints, but I see them coming back to some extent. I have more companies saying like, hey, we're bringing the band together and we want to create different experiences than in the past. We don't only want to talk about our strategy on next year planning, and we don't only want to focus on improving a skill that we currently want everybody to improve. We want to really push everybody out of their comfort zone. Sports is often added to the mix. We can double click on that, I would say, in a second.