Driving home from the very first AI Engineering Porto meetup, I kept thinking: oh my god, I miss this crowd so much!
I had caught up with old friends I worked with fifteen years ago, personal friends who came to support me, and engineers I was meeting for the first time. Our conversations went deep into how AI was changing their work, their roles, and how they felt about it all. That openness caught me by surprise. I was not expecting it. At all. 🥹
That evening was one of many rooms I spent time in during September and October. In some, I was speaking. In others, listening, asking questions, catching up with people.
Looking back, I realise how differently AI felt in each room, and how much those conversations shaped what I want to focus on next.
People who feel they can fly
At Porto AI Week, I spent time with founders and people building AI products. Many already knew how to build with AI. They had things working. They were shipping.
What I kept missing in some of those conversations was the product thinking. The judgement. The customer evidence that could help them understand whether what they had built was useful, and what needed to change.
The hype made me uncomfortable. I know how much it takes to build a good product, and I felt that complexity being reduced to how quickly we could get something out. More mediocre products, made faster.
But I also left energised ⚡️
People who would never have thought of themselves as technical were making things they couldn’t have made before. The “normal” people, as I kept thinking of them. People who had an idea and suddenly felt able to do something with it.
They felt they could fly, and that’s beautiful to see. I want to help people take what they’ve built further, without losing that excitement!
Where do we fit now?
At the Hatch Mixer Porto, organised by Ladies that UX Porto and Friends of Figma Porto the mood felt different.
There was curiosity, but also uncertainty. People seemed to be walking on eggshells. Where do we fit now? What’s our value? 🧠
But designers are navigating these changes better than I expected. I felt they needed clearer direction and more trust in themselves. We still have our craft, products still need our judgement, and the creative possibilities are growing. We need more influence to make that value visible.
And peeps, we are the masters of change. Our roles have changed so many times already! Now we need to figure out what each of us wants to do with these possibilities.
Protecting the thinking
At CPO Night, Product Circle and Product Tank Porto, I met incredible product leaders. Experienced people who were eager to share the nitty-gritty of their day-to-day battles.
Some conversations became unexpectedly vulnerable. We talked about the pressure coming from “AI stakeholders”. Can we call them that now? 🫠
Underneath the humour were real struggles around how to recognise risks earlier and protect the thinking, when building has become so much cheaper and faster.
Shipping can help us learn. But the learning needs to be able to change a decision, including one people are excited about. Hearing experienced product people speak honestly about how difficult that can be stayed with me.
The crowd I had missed
Then came the AI Engineering Porto meetup.
Gui Ferreira created a space where people could be vocal about what they were thinking and experiencing. And people used that space. We had some of the most honest conversations I’ve had about this AI era.
There was something about being with engineers again that spoke straight to my heart 💙
They reminded me how much I love working with sharp people who go beyond the obvious. Who go deep. Whose brains are wired in a way that I love being around.
I had forgotten how much I missed that.
I went there to contribute, and came home remembering something about where I thrive.
Finding people to think with
Future Product Days in Copenhagen gave me an assurance I had been needing.
I went as an attendee, crashed the speakers’ dinners 😅 and made the most of the conference, side events and city. I spent time with people from design, product and engineering, and learned a loooot.
There was relief in realising that other people were noticing some of the same patterns I was. In this AI era, we’re so focused on building and shipping, and it’s starting to show in features and products that lack thought and craft. Users are paying attention. And I saw evidence of it.
Customer feedback is always what stays with me: support tickets, user interviews, social media comments, reviews. The workarounds people invent, the questions they keep asking, the things they try once and never come back to.
God, I am so passionate about understanding this. Spending time with smart, mature people equally obsessed with good products and beautiful design helped me think further, and reminded me why I do what I do.
I would love to return next year and contribute my thinking as a speaker too.
What came home with me
These rooms became a kind of field study for me. Informal, personal, and full of things I am still making sense of. They gave me evidence for some thoughts I had been carrying, and more questions about others.
They also reminded me of the people I want to keep learning and working alongside. That drive home from the engineering meetup is still with me.
Now I’m thinking about how to put my knowledge and experience in service of the people I met. What can I help them see? What can we work through together? Where would my experience actually be useful?
Those questions are helping shape what I’m building with wingmaker.co and the work I want to do through closetothesun.co and the ideas I’m still finding words for.
Thank you for being in the room,
Sónia
First published in the LinkedIn edition of In the Room, 27 October 2026.