2024 Make With Notion Conference

I booked a flight to San Francisco without even blinking.

Notion was hosting its first-ever in-person conference, and as a Notion Consultant Partner, I knew I had to be there. So without thinking, I booked the flight, packed my bags, and prepped for what would be my first trip to San Francisco.

Spoiler: I ended up falling for the city too. The fog, the weird microclimates, the long walks between coffee shops filled with people building things — it made sense why so many early startups began here. There’s a kind of low-key electricity in the air. It felt like the right place for a conference like this.

But more than that, I came to see what Notion was really doing. As someone who works with teams every day to roll out, scale, and clean up their Notion systems, I wasn’t just looking for flashy features, I wanted to see where this tool is actually heading.

A Tool Trying to Do More With Less

Let’s start here: Notion opened the event with a number.

93.

That’s the average number of tools companies are using in 2024.

Not surprising, honestly. If you work inside one of those teams, you already know the symptoms: too many apps, too many tabs, too much time spent figuring out where something lives instead of actually doing the work.

The vibe of this conference wasn’t “look how cool Notion is.” It was more like:

"Let’s fix this. Here’s what we’ve built to help."

What’s New in Notion

Notion Mail

A new email product built to work like the rest of Notion, clean, customizable, and flexible. You can create different “views” for different types of email (e.g. recruiting, client communication, internal updates) instead of letting it all pile up in one inbox.

It still looks like email. It just doesn’t feel as chaotic.

Forms

This one had been sitting on most people’s wishlists for a while.

If you’ve ever tried collecting structured information into Notion — client briefs, event RSVPs, feedback, whatever — you know it’s always required a workaround. Usually something like: create a Google Form, then manually move things over or set up a hacky Zapier pipe to push it into a database. Not ideal.

So when Notion finally announced native Forms, it just made sense.

Now you can:

• Build a form directly inside your database
• Share it with others via link or embed
• Have submissions go straight into the right place — no middleman tools

For consultants, community builders, operations teams… this feature just makes intake way easier. It’s one of those unglamorous updates that changes your day-to-day in a real way.

Layout

This one caught most of us off guard — in the best way.

While everyone was expecting big AI updates or new integrations, Notion quietly dropped Layouts, and it might be one of the most underrated upgrades of the whole conference.

The idea is simple, but powerful:

Instead of every page in Notion looking and feeling the same, Layouts let you customize the structure of a page based on what that page is for.

So your recipe tracker doesn’t have to look like your CRM.

Your social content calendar doesn’t need to feel like your SOP manual.

Your client dashboard can now look like a proper client dashboard.

You can:

• Choose different visual layouts per page
• Design pages that feel like their function
• Remove some of the friction that comes with forcing different types of content into the same structure

It’s subtle, but if you spend hours a day building and navigating inside of Notion, this one hits.

Automations

Automations got smarter, you can now trigger actions using formulas and buttons. Things like:

• Automatically emailing someone when a database item changes
• Reassigning tasks based on team tags
• Sending custom follow-ups after a support ticket is closed

Basically, the types of things clients have been asking me to do with Notion for years… without duct tape.

Notion AI

It’s starting to actually feel useful. The AI can now:

• Pull in info from Slack, Google Drive, and PDFs
• Summarize or generate content based on actual context
• And (soon) interact with your databases directly

There’s still more to be done here, but it’s headed in a direction that’s… practical. Which is refreshing.

The Marketplace

Notion is clearly leaning into its creator ecosystem. The new Marketplace gives creators a proper space to share templates, get paid, track performance, and protect their work.

The Best Part? The People

One of the biggest highlights for me wasn’t a feature, it was just meeting people.

I had the chance to connect with fellow Notion consultants and ambassadors I’ve only talked to online for years. These are people who live in the same space I do, helping others make Notion actually work across teams, projects, and growing companies.

There’s something refreshing about trading implementation stories and design tricks with people who understand the weird edge cases, especially when you're usually the one answering those questions in client calls.

And the best part? Being a Notion Consultant Partner and Notion Ambassador meant I got access to more than just the main event.

Going to the Notion office

In between conference days, I also joined an intimate event at Notion HQ, just for consultants and ambassadors.

We had the chance to sit down with the Notion team, ask questions, share feedback, and get a better sense of where they’re headed.

It felt like being invited behind the curtain — not just to see what they’re building, but how they’re thinking.

We talked about the roadmap, the evolution of Notion AI, and how tools like Mail and Calendar might connect into a more integrated system moving forward.

That’s the part that really stood out:

They’re not just adding features. They’re thinking about how these pieces connect — and how to build a workspace that doesn’t feel like work.

Sharing What I’ve Been Building

I also got the opportunity to present some of the work I’ve been doing around Notion-based client portals and websites.

It was a casual, internal session — just a few of us sharing what we’ve been experimenting with. I got to sit alongside people like Thomas Frank, Nick James, and others, seeing how they’re pushing Notion to solve real, nuanced problems.

We traded stories. Shared ideas. Asked questions.

And I walked away with at least a dozen things I’m excited to try — and apply with clients.

It’s those small, in-between moments that remind me why this work still feels exciting.

Final Thought

I left San Francisco feeling clear about two things:

1. Notion is moving in a direction that makes sense.
2. They’re thinking about AI the right way, not as a chatbot gimmick, but as something that’s actually built into the structure of your tools.

They’re one of the only companies I’ve seen so far that’s embedding AI with intention — not just at the surface, but deep into how the systems function. And that gives me a lot of hope for what’s ahead.

Between the product updates, the people I met, and the conversations that happened in between the keynotes, I came back energized, and ready to bring some of these new ideas into the work I do every day.

2025’s going to be interesting.

And it feels like Notion’s building for it, not just reacting to it.