The Future Of… conference was created to inspire conversation and dialogue on the present path and trajectory of design. Where are we now? How did we get here? What might we learn with, and from others? What might we do together to reshape The Future Of… Design.

Speakers confirmed alongside the DBA’s Chief Executive, Deborah Dawton include PepsiCo’s Mauro Porcini, GE Healthcare’s Chuck Jones, 3M’s Brian Rice, Whirlpool’s Ken Musgrave, Newell’s Kris Malkoski, and current and former heads of Design from Verizon, Duracell, J.M. Smucker, Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, Burger King, McKinsey, BP, and more.

Brands and companies due to join the conference conversations include Frontier Airlines, Gallo, Georgia-Pacific, Haleon, Johnson & Johnson, W.K. Kellogg, Kimberly-Clark, KraftHeinz, Mars, McDonalds, Microsoft, Mondelez, Nestlé, Nike, SJ Johnson, United Air Lines, Weber Grills and others.

Agencies, consultancy, research firms and suppliers will also be in attendance. 

The first day of the conference on 12 March is exclusively for corporate/brand-side design and business leaders, while the second day, 13 March, is open to all client-side design and business leaders, as well as senior leaders in agency, consultancy, and supplier organisations (although the conference requests no sales or business development leaders, please).  

Friends and members of the DBA receive a 10% discount off bookings made by 28 February. Use promo code DBA2025 when securing your place.

The conference is hosted by David Butler, Fred Richards and DBA Board Director, John Gleason.

Says Gleason, “This is not a traditional Design conference. We are not talking about the artifacts that we create, of how brilliant we all believe ourselves to be. We do plan to talk about the things that we often do not say out loud, so that we might, then, do something about them.” 

More information about the conference programme and speakers can be found at thefutureof-conference.com and if you have any questions, contact John Gleason at john@GetABetterView.com 

The Future Of… conference will take place at REVEL Motor Row, Chicago, IL 60616 USA on 12 and 13 March. 

AI in productivity and practice 

• One thing AI can immediately support with is productivity: Fathom and Otter AI were mentioned as note takers that can not only summarise actions points but also enable people to re-watch meetings. Other tools mentioned included Motion (for planning and productivity), Perplexity (for research), Claude AI (for brainstorming).
• Agentic AI was highlighted as an emerging area of AI development to keep an eye on. 
• One member shared their 5 laws of AI and reinforced that human creativity remains central – AI can be the ‘filling in the sandwich’. 
• Another member described how they have integrated an AI brand manager into their internal Slack channels, demonstrating innovative ways of working with AI.
• If you’re looking for specific training in this area for your team, there are of course a multitude of options but Seedily, Pratt and Spark were recommended on the call. And a great point was made about training for all – try and build a studio-wide enthusiasm for this and how it could help in all roles – even the sceptics were enthused at one member agency.

Legal and IP considerations

• The IPO has a consultation open until 25 Feb on copyright and AI – do take part, it’s an important consideration for our industry. We at the DBA will talk to Anti Copying in Design (ACID) about a joint response.
• If you’re concerned about your work being used to train AI without explicit consent, ACID has published an open letter with recommendations. Contact Laura for further details on ACID’s work in this space, and to contribute your thinking.
• From a legal perspective, consider updating your T&C’s, Privacy Policy and internal policy as a triple lock.
• If there is collaboration between employers and employees in designing and building AI systems, ownership and IP rights of such systems should be set out clearly in the employment contract. Perhaps it’s time to review some areas of HR.

Finally, if you’re wondering whether AI is going to take our jobs? Remember what designers can do that others can’t – watch this webinar with Kevin McCullagh from last year.  

Coming up

There was much, much more covered in the hour. Our next meeting will be on Monday 3 March, 4-5pm GMT when we’ll be joined by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of ‘Work Less Do More: Designing the Four Day Week’ to challenge the ways that we think about productivity.