The first edition of the Landing Festival was in 2015. Its goal was to be the largest tech community event in Portugal, bringing together tech professionals, companies and other players to discuss technology and the future in an irreverent and relevant manner.
At that time, we had the unconditional support of Startup Lisboa (through the late João Vasconcelos) and our partner iMatch, and with the presence of a set of great companies, including some of the future Portuguese Unicorns like Outsystems, Feedzai, Talkdesk and Farfetch.
The first Landing Festival in 2015. 📍Lisbon, Portugal
The late João Vasconcelos, the founder of Startup Lisboa and former Deputy of the Assembly of the Portuguese Republic
The first edition was a success and helped cement the relevance of the tech entrepreneurship ecosystem in Portugal. Fun fact: that year, we sent a sardine (yes, a real fish) to space in a balloon, which was later successfully retrieved from the sea by the Portuguese Navy. We thought (and still think) tech can also be fun.
Landing Festival grew quickly, year after year, in terms of speakers, companies, and tech talent, getting the attention of international companies like Sky, Volkswagen, Natixis, Nuxeo, Mercedes-Benz, among others.
Landing Festival 2016
Landing Festival was instrumental for those companies to know the quality of Portuguese tech talent and to make the decision to open tech centres in Portugal, helping create thousands of qualified jobs, boosting the overall tech scene in Portugal, and increasing the visibility of Portugal as a preferred destination for international companies looking to expand their IT capacity.
At Landing.Jobs, we’re really proud to have been (and still be) a significant player in this movement and for the role Landing Festival had in it.
But other than Portuguese Unicorns and international companies, many big Portuguese companies also participated in Landing Festival along its editions: EDP, Novabase, Critical Software, and others.
It also helped to reinforce the Portuguese tech community, bridging and connecting different stakeholders like Lisbon Municipality, AICEP, Startup Portugal, InvestLisboa and more.
But, more than all of the above, Landing Festival helped thousands of young tech professionals bootstrap their tech careers, and senior tech professionals improve their professional paths. That has always been Landing.Jobs’ main mission.
The first Landing Festival in Berlin, in 2018
Landing Festival didn’t remain just in Portugal, though. In 2018 we took it to Berlin for the first time, and went back the next year for more. The line-up of speakers was incredible, as well as the venue, and we flew tech professionals for free to Berlin to attend the event. The Berlin edition gave us a lot of lessons learned and valuable experience for sure, and gave us the opportunity to connect a bigger part of the tech community.
Landing Festival 2019 📍Berlin, Germany
On September 2021, after more than 1.5 years of social isolation due to the pandemic, we dared organise this event onsite once again, rebranding it from Landing Festival to Future.Works Tech Conference. It was the first major onsite event after the pandemic, and it was a success again. This last edition made us think about the hidden potential of this event, and what its future should be.
Future.Works 2021 📍Lisbon, Portugal
At Landing.Jobs, we believe mostly in the Future, in building it. We believe this event can be much more than it has been—with a greater dimension, going beyond just tech to the broader scope of the Future of Work, one of the most relevant topics nowadays due to its importance to the future of our civilization.
Subjects like the impact of remote work, the evolution towards a 4-day work week, the globalisation of tech work, digital nomads, workers’ relocation and Visas, salaries in a remote work reality, distributed tech teams and many others cannot be left to chance, they need to be discussed by all stakeholders if we’re to have a say in our future.
We believe Portugal needs and deserves an event about the Future of Work with an international dimension.
That’s why we decided it’s time to take it to the next level. A specific brand for this event was created—Future.Works—and its organisation was trusted to our longtime partner, iMatch.
Future.Works will happen on the 7th and 8th of October 2022 in Lisbon, featuring more than 150 national and international speakers, 100+ sessions and workshops on the Future of Work, Tech and Careers, and an estimated audience of 4.000 attendees from tech professionals and other professionals looking to change to tech, companies, government, media and many more.
With the help of everyone who has been with us along the way and of those who will be a part of the future path, Future.Works will come to be an international landmark event on the Future of Work.
To create the future, we need to look at our history and then have the courage to change. That’s what we are doing with Future.Works.
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