By Janus Boye
Lunch after the product managers peer group meeting in Hamburg. Morten Elvang joined us from Copenhagen as a guest speaker and Florian Keitgen from B13 was among the new participants in the group
A few themes kept surfacing this quarter, across conversations, conferences, and member calls.
* AI and digital sovereignty stand out as areas where organisations are willing to invest significantly. Budgets are being found, and in some cases expanded, as decisions, discovery, and web traffic patterns are reshaped.
* Digital sovereignty is moving from policy into practice, influencing everyday choices about platforms, vendors, and control.
* Many teams are no longer reacting to change itself, but to accumulated complexity. Tools, processes, and expectations layered over time. The question is increasingly where to simplify.
* Who is still managing to grow in this environment. A few vendors, agencies, and analysts seem to be moving with the shift, rather than against it.
The conversation is also turning inward.
Less about new initiatives, more about how to organise, where responsibility sits, and how leadership keeps pace as the ground keeps moving. And how to make content actually work.
All of this played out across a packed Q1 2026.
From early January at our Kickoff in Florida to a long stretch of peer group meetings across North America and Europe.
The people making it happen
What stays with me is simple.
The people behind it.
A sincere thank you to the peer group leaders who continue to grow this community, not just in numbers, but in depth and generosity:
Anja Saabye, Brian Tomlinson, Jörg Schäffer, Kristina Larsen Brink, Mark Demeny, Matthew Garrepy, Matthew McQueeny, Simon Jones, Thorsten Jonas and Volker Graubaum.
And to my colleague Anders Skjønnemann Hansen, who quietly keeps everything moving, from securing venues to making sure each gathering actually happens.
We were welcomed into some wonderful spaces along the way, including Adobe, Assemblin, BBL, Danish Red Cross, Fielmann, Folketingets Ombudsmand, Havas, JYSK, Lynfabrikken, Mercedes Benz, MSQ DX, Muskelsvindfonden, NKT, NTT, Rambøll, Sydbank, Tangerine, TYPO3, and heard from more speakers than I can do justice to here.
A final thank you to everyone who contributed, hosted, spoke, and showed up across Q1. It is noticed, and it genuinely makes a difference.
Seeing it from the outside
In between, I made time to step outside our own events, and a bit outside my comfort zone.
Ibexa Summit held in Lisbon was themed From Composition to Orchestration, and signaled a move beyond the language of assembling components towards a story about coherence, continuity, and value over time. That shift matters, particularly in a European context where regulation, trust, and long-term client relationships tend to shape technology decisions more strongly than raw feature velocity.
More recently, CloudFest stood out as a useful reminder of the value of looking beyond our immediate circles. MORE TO COME
Looking ahead
Now we turn to Q2.
CMS Summit 26 in Frankfurt in May is just ahead, followed by UX Connect 26 in June.
A short pause, and then back to the work of making things a little simpler