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So the big conference you were never able to travel to is online this year. Now is your chance to finally attend, of course, you won’t be able to meet people live, but you will be able to hear from amazing thinkers, designers, and creators. “But, I’m too busy to attend a conference,” you say. NO, YOU ARE NOT. Let me prove you wrong.

Typically, design conferences are something I would avoid. In fact, anywhere with a crowd, I would typically avoid. It’s travel away from my family, away from my work, and away from my daily routine. 3 things I care deeply about and defend the time I put into them by keeping away outside distractions. This is what extracurricular activities like conferences can feel like to me; a distraction. Before the pandemic hit, however, I got caught up in the buzz. I hadn’t attended a design conference in over 17 years. Pretty much the entire time I’ve been working professionally as a designer. In college, I had the job of Art Director of our university’s student publication which stipulated that I had to attend and speak at one conference per year. The scariest moment of my life was when the talk I was giving on creative internships at the National College Media Conference got bumped from a small room to a large gathering space because of the high attendance interest. GULP! Nevertheless, I white-knuckled through it and was happy and surprised by the positive reception my talk received.

This experience didn’t scare me from attending conferences, I’ve attended many since then. Just none that focused on my own industry and vocation of design. As a business owner and solopreneur for five and three years respectively. I attended conferences focused on my target customer’s industries. They were the best place where you could see a majority of your clients and prospective clients under one roof. We were also responsible for a lot of their trade-show marketing materials, so delivering those in person was also an appreciated personal touch.

Why not attend conferences

The reasons to not attend conferences are many. Too much time traveling. They can be quite expensive. Maybe you’re an introvert. Perhaps you have dietary restrictions that make eating away from home a pain. Or possibly you feel you can get everything you need from Medium or perhaps you simply don’t want to take the time, whatever the reason may be. As I agree with all those reasons above, I am now a convert and want to tell you why the benefits of attending conferences far outweigh the negatives.

My first design conference in years

Once I decided I was doing this, the search was on. I looked at all the big names I receive emails about daily. The UXPA, the IXDA, the Awwwards conference, and more. These all seemed great but weren’t exactly scratching the itch. In the end, it was a simple google search that introduced me to the DMI (Design Management Institute): and the Design Leadership Conference in Boston, MA.

This was an organization and an event that I knew nothing about. The conference mission as listed on their website was: "Reinvention & Renewal" which sounded very interesting. The explanation of the organization leads me to believe this would be a worthwhile event.

“An international membership organization that connects design to business, to culture, to customers—and to the changing world. Founded in 1975, DMI brings together educators, researchers, designers, and leaders from every design discipline, every industry, and every corner of the planet to facilitate transformational organizational change and design-driven innovation.”

The Annual dmi:Design Leadership Conference, a gathering of exceptional leaders in Design and Innovation. Cultural and technological disruption provides opportunities for astute individuals and organizations for reinvention, renewal, and value-generation. Join us for a deep-dive!”

For me, design is fun, I’d do it if I didn’t get paid. Dealing with business is hard, you have to manage lots of different personalities and points of view. For myself, I see the best way to advance my career is to get much better at managing design inside large enterprise product suites. Being a good designer, a good business partner and a leader are not easy. Those who can straddle those roles though are indispensable.

I pulled into the Aloft hotel in Boston’s Seaport District which is worth the trip on its own and walked directly into my first workshop. “The Future of Design.” A good way to start right. The workshop was hosted by Lorraine Justice who just published her book “The Future of Design” and was attended by only a small number of professionals. So I got to have very intimate discussions about the future of design with designers and leaders who manage small teams, and those who manage many thousands of designers. It was eye-opening, to say the least, and got me thinking about how to implement new technologies like automation, AI, ML, VR. A lot of the discussion around these technologies focused on the fear of how these technologies can disrupt our careers and lives. After the workshop, however; I came away feeling that as a design leader, it’s my responsibility to learn and work with these technologies so we can help our businesses integrate them in ethical and valuable ways. New technologies are going to disrupt our industry without a doubt, but Lorraine has some great words of advice in her book:

“The design of these technologies needs to be human-driven, not just based on what the technology does best. As designers, we may become more arbiters of good taste and common sense, and our role may evolve into something more like a composer or film director.”

The first day ended with dinner and drinks and then it was off to sleep for early morning and a day packed with an expansive list of speakers. Day one of the full conference tackled subjects like ethics in design, design for social change, UX strategy megatrends, the data-driven economy, and critical design strategies for disruptive times. All great subjects and jam-packed with an amazing abundance of information, I think I filled up half my notebook on day one and the rest on day two. On top of these talks were a number of break-out sessions diving deeper into each topic.

Although all the topics and speakers were great. The talk that absolutely set me on fire was Mauro Porcini’s “The Evolutions of the Successful Design Leader.” He talked about how being able to communicate what he does, how design can change the culture, and the value of design in large organizations is what ultimately led to him becoming Chief Design Officer @Pepsico. His passion for design and for how design can influence business was inspiring and contagious. Not in many years had I been so excited to be a designer and to explore how in my own way I can tap into that passion to help bring change to my own organization and work. Read Mauro’s Love Letter to Design for a peek into his thinking. Also, read his thoughts on design thinking and heed his advice.

The second day was no less action-packed than the first. Topics hit on even more intriguing topics such as: Transforming a Brand, Human Experiences for New Realities, The Operations & Financial Side of Design, Corporate Catalysts Driving Innovation, The Ins and Outs of Buying and Supplying Design, Rethinking The Routine and Using Service Design to Bring Experiences to Life. Speakers again ranged from some of the industry's superstars to start-up disruptors, educators, and others I’ve never heard of. I’ll be in all of their debt however for introducing me to ideas like humanity in AI design, the customer experience gap, the pre-mortem workshop, and invaluable other advice I downloaded throughout the day.

As if one full-day workshop and two full days of conferences weren’t enough. I still had one last full-day session on “Business Models and Strategic Innovation Tools,” hosted by Maaike Doyer from BMI (Business Models Inc.). An intense design thinking workshop that walked us through a number of strategies, exercise canvases, tools, and tricks to align design with business objectives. If anything, check out the designabetterbusiness.com website which has just about every exercise canvas you could ever want. All free to download. I used the Storytelling canvas to plan out the writing of this article.

Why I will make attending conferences a habit going forward

I got way more than I intended to out the Design Leadership Conference, I had hoped it would be about managing designers, but it was really about how the management of design can link innovation, technology, and customers to your competitive advantage across a number of factors. As their website says: “It is the art and science of empowering design to enhance collaboration and synergy between "design” and "business” to improve design effectiveness.”

Reason #1: Connections and Inspiration.

I met a number of amazing people whose excitement I couldn’t help but take away with me. Ideas were whirling and I was so inspired to put the concepts I learned into action, I started writing again for the first time for quite some time. I came away with new understandings about my role as a designer, my interactions with others and it was a feeling I could not have found sitting behind my desk.

Reason #2: Escaping burnout.

I typically don’t like presenting to large audiences, but as payment for attending this conference, I had to present my experience to the design team back at home. For the first time, I was so excited to tell everyone what I learned and share the experience that I found myself enamored with design in a way I hadn’t been for a while. I was so excited, I even found myself rehearsing my talk on the car ride home instead of listening to yet another podcast.

Reason #3: Opening up to new ideas.

To think you can know everything you need to know about the design and the world by sitting behind your computer takes a lot of ego and probably a little bit of lying to yourself. Challenging your paradigms by listening to new ideas, being introduced to new ways of working, thinking, and interacting will all help knock the dust off your creative receptors and allow the neurons to start firing again.

Reason #4: Your own self-interest.

Yeah, that’s right. Conferences can be good for your career. It’s hard to network if you’re only talking to people you already know. Without getting out and meeting the people you really want to interact with (even if it’s only online for now). How can you know what their team cultures are actually like, how will you know that this is the type of leader you’d like to work with. Also, when you are asked in your next job interview what you do to keep up with the industry. You’ll at least have something more interesting to talk about than, “I read some blogs”.

Reason #5: Attracting Talent.

Yup, conferences are as much about others as they are about you. Having your team present at events and interacting across boundaries, industries and professions open up a whole new talent pool. If you’re serious about attracting top talent to your team, this could be your secret weapon. Enter the design competitions, speak and contribute as much as you can.

Make time to attend conferences.

Tony Robbins once said, “If you don’t have 10 minutes, you don’t have a life.” He was talking about a 10-minute daily meditation practice, but I think the same can be true for making time to attend and contribute to conferences. If you can’t spare 1 day out of 365 days of your year (approximately .27% of a year) to attend a conference. Are you really prioritizing your time in the right way to help you keep up with and thrive in this glorious, nuanced, ever-changing field we call design?

Now that conferences are online. You can save money on travel while still downloading the info.

Here is a list of conferences I’m looking into for the year. Let me know if there are any good ones I missed. Hope to see you out there.

UXLX Master of UX

UXDX APAC 2021

Canvas Conference

The UX & Product Conference

The UX Conference

Designing the Perfect Navigation

Okay, this one is a class and not a conference, but still seems like it would be worth the time.

DMI: Design Leadership Conference

Psychology for UX and Product Design (Workshop)

UX Fest! A month-long celebration.

SIGGRAPH 2021

MobileHCI 2021