BananaCorp

I arrived at NFT Tallinn in May 2022 as an invited speaker. Sander was looking for partners to grow the event into a larger brand. I proposed joining him. We went on to co-found BananaCorp and develop a company around the gathering.

Armin ZadakBar joined us as a partner during this period. Sander led operations, Armin partnerships and I communications. I also held a board mandate at BananaCorp OÜ, incorporated in Estonia in December 2023.

Web3 builders and established brands had reasons to work together, but often struggled to speak the same language. We built occasions for them to meet around a business question: how digital ownership could affect a product, a customer relationship or a creative collaboration.

In Milan, we took that conversation into fashion’s own calendar. Traceability, loyalty and collaboration gave the discussion a starting point beyond the technology itself.

BananaConf became our conference platform. Banana DAOquiri connected the community between gatherings. Web3x[Industry] focused the conversation on a particular sector, beginning with Web3 × Fashion in September 2023. Smaller community activations included 90 Bananas during NFT Paris in 2024.

We also developed ways to work beyond events. BananaSolutions brought together business development, design, engineering and marketing, with its first projects under way in January 2024. BananaVentures began connecting deal flow and investors; investment syndicates were part of its plans.

As co-founder and head of communications, I carried responsibility for marketing, content and community communications. Sander and I shared the planning of event visuals, stage material, signage and onsite updates. My responsibilities also included speaker and partner outreach.

Programming was another way to connect the worlds we were bringing together. I moderated a discussion on brand NFTs, joined the attention-economy panel and took part in a music-and-community session with Spottie WiFi.

Garage Italia created the company’s brand identity and brand book, along with BananaConf Tallinn 2024’s physical and digital materials. Our communications and production work brought that identity into the experience of attending the event.

For Tallinn 2024, Sander reported 589 participants from 57 countries, including 407 builders. Foreign visitors accounted for 1,600 hotel nights, and 25 percent of attendees had attended in 2022 or 2023. The organising team interviewed more than 250 potential speakers, contacted 400 companies and reviewed more than 1,500 art submissions.

Tallinn included BananaConf among recurring international flagship conferences when recognising its 2024 conference organisers. The platform had grown beyond a single gathering.

Banana DAOquiri gave us a way to keep the community connected between editions, alongside smaller international events. The returning participants mattered: a gathering could become an ongoing relationship rather than a once-a-year encounter.

In September 2023, BananaCorp, European Web3 Organization and AKQA organised Web3 × Fashion at Talent Garden Calabiana in Milan. I joined the Virtual Fashion & Collaborations discussion. The following September, I co-created The Future Fashion with Zarina Izy and Sander Gansen, organised by IZY Studio and BananaConf at Lynk & Co Milan.

The Future Fashion’s programme opened the conversation to AI, AR, 3D and physical and digital fashion. We were following the industry’s questions as the tools expanded.

Alongside the venture, I delivered Web3 Made Easy in Bilbao for PwC at Talent Garden and adapted the framework for the High Atlas Foundation’s US board members. Education and my European Web3 Organization board role added other ways to make these technologies understandable.

BananaCorp brought company building into my work on brands, culture and technology. It meant developing a platform, maintaining a community and finding reasons for people from different professional worlds to meet.

That experience still informs how I approach emerging technology. Today, through Quantum Branding, I work with AI: what people need to understand, which possibilities matter to their organisation and what it takes to put them to use.