Can you believe it’s already been a year since the last edition of Techsylvania?! Yeah, it’s hard to believe even for us, but here we are, having just wrapped up the 2022 edition of the event.
Techsylvania 2022 was, as usual, loads of fun, and we’re glad we were able to attend it in person and enjoy some awesome talks and chat with like-minded techies again. We’ve continued our streak as a Techsylvania Bronze Sponsor, which means our TappSquad attended a lot of talks, chats, Q&As, and did a lot of networking and knowledge sharing. What’s more, we got to host again our own Techsylvania Satellite Event; it was great fun and incredibly insightful for everyone who attended.
So, let’s go through all the cool things that took place at this year’s event, and try to jot down some of the highlights we’ve learned during the latest edition of Techsylvania.
Our Satellite Event at Techsylvania 2022 – A Fireside Chat with Minderful
This year, we had the opportunity to host our own Satellite Event again within Techsylvania, and we were stoked to be able to organise an online get-together with Minderful. Our event, ‘Tech for Mental Wellness,’ was held on June 30th, and revolved around mental health, leveraging tech to enhance our mental wellbeing, and finding balance in our daily lives.
The event was hosted by Erika Kramarik, Marco Botticelli and Samantha Marinho from the TappSquad, and featured Minderful’s CEO Dr. Nicholas Prior and Creative Director James Harrop as guests. We talked about finding the right balance between technology and mindfulness, what strategies to use to protect our mental health, and how an app like Minderful helps us take better care of our minds. James and Nicholas also provided valuable insight into what it takes to build wellness apps in this day and age, and what updates are in the pipeline for the Minderful product.
Sharing how we work is always something special, and organising this Satellite Event with Minderful’s founding team was the perfect occasion to do this. I’m glad our audience found two reasons to be interested in the topic: firstly, because mental fitness is on all of our minds, secondly, because they got to hear an authentic story of ‘how it’s made’. Thank you to our great speakers, and everyone who showed up!
In case you missed the live event on Zoom, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. You can watch our chat below and learn more about Minderful and what makes it stand out out from other wellness, mental health, or habit-tracking apps:
If you don’t have the time to watch the full thing, we’ve got some highlights for you that we think stood out during our chat.
- Mental health doesn’t always have to be this serious, heavy subject that we only talk about behind closed doors. Things like going outside for a walk, playing catch with your dog, enjoying a nice hot chocolate while reading a good book, or laughing out loud at a goofy comedy on Netflix – these fun activities help improve our mental health and we don’t even realise their importance. It’s crucial to keep trying to remove the stigma surrounding mental health and help people understand that taking care of our minds doesn’t only happen in a therapist’s office – it can happen anywhere, anytime, and this is where technology plays a big role.
- Building a wellness or mental health-related app means walking a fine line, between using technology as a tool to encourage healthy habits, and something that can become addictive and ultimately damaging to our mental wellbeing. That’s why Minderful tries to encourage users to embrace healthy habits, discover tools and strategies to improve their mental health, and be better-equipped to go out into the world and enjoy all that it has to offer. The goal is not to spend hours on end on a mobile app, as that’s not going to help much, but to put aside 10-15 minutes every day to discover ‘mental fitness exercises,’ and then go out there and apply what you’ve learned.
If that sounds interesting to you, and you’d like to learn more about Minderful, check it out on the App Store – Android users, don’t worry, Minderful will soon be coming to Google Play, too!
What else happened at Techsylvania?
Our satellite event was great fun, but we were also itching to get out there, get the TappSquad together, and attend cool talks and discussions in person at Techsylvania. Our team was determined to soak up all the knowledge and we tried attending as many events as possible.
Our Product Consultant Andreea Chiș was determined to make the best out of Techsylvania this year, and share it with our followers, too. She took over our Instagram account during the event and managed to capture all the best moments at Techsylvania 2022. As an added bonus, she won an iPad for posting the most useful content from Volley, this year’s community app of the conference. It’s safe to say that she was quite busy!
We missed offline events. I missed offline events. Techsylvania was the perfect opportunity to not only join a thought-provoking event in-person, but to also share the experience with Tapptitude’s followers on social media. The results of my online activity? Hundreds of views, dozens of likes, a handful of memories worth keeping, and an iPad!
The TappSquad at Techsylvania – 2022 Highlights
We were so excited to be able to go to this year’s Techsylvania event in person as a team. Beyond attending the talks, Q&As and workshops together, we enjoyed getting to meet new people and greet old acquaintances. The last two editions were held exclusively online, so this was a much-awaited comeback!
We asked our TappSquad members to share some highlights from the event; here’s what they had to say.
One of the product-oriented talks that I enjoyed was by Mark Porter of MongoDB, and it was called ‘From Start-up to Scale-up: Growing Teams, Leaders, and Culture.’ It covered the topic of company culture in growing teams and how, over the past years, many well-known companies shifted the focus of their culture from money and growth-at-any-cost to more individual-oriented principles. I found this takeaway to be really important since, in my opinion, the success of a company should not be obtained at the expense of its employees’ wellbeing.
Zach Coelius of Coelius Capital talked about the impact of getting a huge partner like Facebook for a startup, and the advantages that it brings. The most interesting part of the talk, however, was about what happens when you lose such an important partner, and how to manage and recover from it.
Key takeaways from Techsylvania 2022
Techsylvania 2022 had something for everyone, from budding developer to founder and investor. The information shared during the event was invaluable, especially to those working in the app development field, like ourselves.
There were talks about company culture and how it’s shifted since the pandemic; a lot of chats about health, work-life balance, and avoiding burnout as a founder; we learned about new and innovative ways to leverage technology to improve our lives, our products, and our services; we talked about how entrepreneurs should strive to build products that users can’t live without; and there were even discussions about the crypto winter and the deepfakes industry.
Basically, there was never a dull moment at Techsylvania this year. Of course, we like to think that our satellite event with Minderful was also a highlight and that you enjoyed it as much as we did. For our team, it was great to finally attend the event in person, after two years of virtual editions, and connect and network with other like-minded people who are eager to learn more about what’s next for the industry.
We’re already looking forward to the 2023 edition, and we hope to see you all there! Cheers!
Tapptitude
Tapptitude is a mobile app development company specialized in providing high-quality mobile app development services, and a top-rated app company on Clutch.
