Sydney · For senior design leaders
Under the Bonnet
No corporate polish, no jargon. Just senior Sydney design leaders popping the bonnet on real strategies, messy orgs, and the trade-offs nobody puts on a slide.
This time, the thing under the bonnet is AI (as it is across the industry)
WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?
Design leaders don't have a safe space to talk about AI.
Every forum around you, whether it is a conference or a meetup, is busy and isn't the right place to talk about conversations that really matter. Honest & safe conversations often happen in DMs, in group chats, and at the end of long days — between people who are each privately navigating the same uncertainty, and have no room to say it out loud.
The format
One prompt. One honest challenge. Conversations that matter
One candid challenge
The whole evening hangs on a single, specific question or a topic. You are invited to bring in your questions and perspective on the topic nobody really is an expert about
One real challenge
There are no polished case studies or keynotes. It is really a honest conversation over food and good company
No prep homework
Guests get an “on-arrival anchor” that takes under thirty seconds to digest at the door. The conversations follow after.
The agenda
How the evening runs.
- 5:30 – 6:00 PM30 min
Arrival, networking & on-arrival anchor
Guests arrive, grab drinks and food. The host hands out an anchor prompt card paired with the keynote theme. Informal mingling around high-top tables at the venue in Sydney CBD.
- 6:00 – 6:10 PM10 min
Host kick-off & ground rules
The host gathers the room and introduces the meetup, along with Design Table's background, philosophy and ground rules.
- 6:10 – 6:25 PM15 min
The perspective
The host delivers a short, concise perspective focused on the core topic
- 6:25 – 6:40 PM15 min
Open conversation
The host facilitates a rapid Q&A across three key questions from the deck. No long-winded setups: guests state a quick reaction or a direct question, and leaders in the room jump in with short counter-points.
- 6:40 – 7:10 PM30 min
Open fishbowl Q&A
The conversation moves to questions submitted by the audience beforehand, plus the prompts that come up in the room, sharing stories and anecdotes across the topic.
- 7:10 – 7:25 PM15 min
Room share-back & wrap-up
The host brings the room together for two or three key insights from different tables, and offers closing observation on what they learned.
After this, people who have to go can leave, while the rest can mingle and stay back. Afterwards, an overview of the conversation and the insights that came out of it is shared with the group by email.
Ground rules
The reason people say the real thing.
- 01What's said in the room stays in the room.
- 02No selling, no recruiting, no pitch decks.
- 03A small and safe space for people to say their minds
- 04“I don't know yet” is a perfectly good answer.
Who's in the room
Design leaders, managers, director, heads of
People who are accountable for design decisions inside an org that's changing underneath them — and who'd rather work it out with peers in a safe space.
Events stay small and deliberately mixed, because the value is in who's sitting next to you, not how many people showed up.
After the evening
You leave with the thinking, written down.
Everyone who attends gets an overview of the conversation and the insights that came out of it by email — so the value doesn't evaporate when the room clears.