Apply tospeak
Design’s unfinished business needs your voice. Share a talk, roundtable, or workshop that trades polish for truth.
This is the formal proposal path. If you just want to raise your hand, use Participate — same team, lighter first step.
Pick the room
that fits.
20–30 minutes on the mainstage, or a panel with peers. Bold stories, not a keynote circuit.
10–15 minutes to spark an idea or share a sharp case study.
30–45 minutes where the room works. Leave with a tool, not a quote.
45 minutes, 8–12 peers, Chatham House Rule. You set the stage; the room does the rest.
Four threads.
One mandate.
The promise was bigger than the screen. What should design’s mandate mean now — for products, services, and decisions, not just interfaces?
What made the mandate shrink? Org charts, delivery models, rituals, and metrics narrowed the job. Show us how you pushed back.
What AI changed. The cost of making, testing, and synthesizing is falling — but new conditions don’t create better outcomes on their own.
What design must protect and raise. When output gets faster, the quality of decisions, systems, and judgment gets harder to hold.
We make speaking
worth it.
Round-trip to and from Toronto.
At a partner hotel near the venue.
Two invites, off-record.
A professional video plus attendee notes.
Start your
proposal.
Five minutes. No deck required. We review on a rolling basis and only follow up when there is a fit — DLS is curated.