#32 Big Ideas, Lasting Impact: Creating the Perfect Conference Experience for 2025
The room was buzzing with energy. I was in Amsterdam, attending my first-ever conference, completely wide-eyed, surrounded by pioneers—Hiroshi Ishii, Amy Bruckman, Christopher Alexander. Big ideas from big stages. That experience shaped my vision of what conferences should be. But is this really the best format?
I love people. I love events. Most of all, I love meeting open-minded individuals eager to learn.
In 1994, my professor, Bo Helgeson, sent me to my first conference—Doors of Perception in Amsterdam. Half of the MIT Media Lab was there: Hiroshi Ishii, Amy Bruckman, and Patty Maes, along with Christopher Alexander (architect and “father of design patterns”) and John Perry Barlow (EFF founding member and Grateful Dead lyricist).
A few years later, in 1997, I attended ACM CHI for the first time, met Jared Spool, and… fetched coffee for Jakob Nielsen (I was a student volunteer). Since then, I’ve attended countless conferences and events—some academic, but most industry-focused.
In 2007, five years after we founded inUse, we launched From Business to Buttons. It started as a small event at Malmö University with a few hundred participants and peaked in 2016 at Münchenbryggeriet in Stockholm with over 1,000 attendees—and former US Vice President Al Gore on stage. It was surreal.
Many of the conferences I’ve attended, including those I helped organize, featured exceptional talks—big ideas from big stages. But, in hindsight, is that really the best way to share knowledge and help people grow?
From Inspiration to Impact
Three years ago, we started Ambition Empower—an online community built around continuous learning and shared insights. Week after week, we’ve seen members turn inspiration into action. But we always knew something was missing: a physical event to strengthen our virtual community.
But, in 2025, the best conference experience isn’t just about inspiration. It’s not a one-time spark that fades. Learning needs to be sustained, built upon, and connected to an ongoing journey of professional growth.
That’s why we’re launching The Ambition Conference. It’s not just another event—it’s the next natural step for the community we’ve been building.
Together with my amazing colleagues—Nathalie Tindsjö, Jane Murray, Pontus Wärnestål, Anders Thid, and the rest of the Ambition team—we’re shaping an experience that builds on everything we’ve learned throughout the years.
Unlike traditional conferences, this isn’t about passive listening. No long keynotes. No packed auditoriums. Instead, we’re focusing on short talks, small group discussions, and plenty of space for meaningful interaction and reflection. We believe that this format will help all of us have a much greater impact in our everyday work.
The Ambition Conference
To make it as easy as possible for the majority of our members to participate, we’re creating two editions of the Ambition Conference: one in Stockholm on May 7th, and one in Gothenburg on May 13th.
We’re bringing together some of Sweden’s most experienced designers, leaders, and educators—people who, like us, believe that real growth happens when knowledge is built over time. Pernilla Johansson (Volvo Group, Digital & IT), Elinor Qvant (Voyado), Marcus Janzon (STIM), and Björn Lindqvist (ICA) will be there. And we’ll be joined by Georgiy Chernyavsky (Mastercard, and Empower thought leader), one of today’s foremost experts in DesignOps and design systems.
We’re also incredibly fortunate to have Kim Goodwin joining us online. Kim is one of the smartest people I know. We’ve collaborated since the very first From Business to Buttons conference, and she was the first to join Ambition Empower when we launched. At the conference, she’ll share her insights on creating experiments and MVPs—something we all need to get better at.
This year’s theme how to maximize your impact as a designer or leader and drive real change in your organization. We’ll explore how to integrate design into our organizations in a way that actually works, how to scale customer-centric approaches, how to use customer journeys as a tool for better decision-making, how design systems best can be used to improve collaboration, and much more.
Something Truly Special
So, will this be the perfect conference experience for 2025? That remains to be seen, but I do believe this event will be something truly special, and I can’t wait to experience it with our community.
If this sounds like something for you, join Ambition Empower. Your membership includes a ticket to the conference plus a full year of professional development.
At the end of the day, it’s not just about inspiration and big ideas—it’s about making sure those ideas take root and lead to real, lasting impact in people's lives.
Hope to see you in May!