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From storytelling as a PM to storytelling as a film director
- Theme:Product building
- Topic:Collaboration
- Topic:Brand
- Topic:Strategy
Great products and great films have one thing in common: they start with a powerful story. In this talk, Ebi Atawodi explores how her experience as a Product Manager shaped her journey as a film director—drawing surprising parallels between PRDs and scripts, loglines and go-to-market headlines, and cross-functional teams in tech and film. Whether you’re designing a feature or directing a scene, storytelling is at the heart of bringing a vision to life. Ebi shares her life long passion for storytelling in product through a cinematic lens.
Ebi Atawodi
Director of Product Management, YouTube Studio
YouTube
Beyond agents: AI as a creative partner
- Theme:Design craft
- Topic:AI
- Topic:UX
- Topic:Strategy
Our metaphors for AI shape the expectations we set for ourselves and our users: Assistants. Copilots. Agents. What comes next? Come hear about upcoming areas of technical progress, and how they could unlock the potential for AI as a true collaborator. You’ll hear implications for the design choices we’re all making, and get ideas that will 100% totally not become outdated by an industry launch a week after the talk.
Joel Lewenstein
Head of Product Design
Anthropic
The maximalist theory of minimalism
- Theme:Design craft
- Topic:Hardware
- Topic:Independent
- Topic:UX
Craftsmen-as-rockstars once strove to stun even the most lavish nobility with their works of obvious complexity and decadence. In comparison, modern design prefers to obscure its opulent perfection of form while couching its works in a philosophy of minimalism. Striking a truce between these natural foes might yield the best results.
Keegan McNamara
Craftsman & Founder
Mythic Computer Co
Poetry Camera: How to fall back in love with technology
- Theme:Product building
- Topic:AI
- Topic:Hardware
- Topic:UX
Kelin and Ryan, cofounders of Poetry Camera, share their unexpected journey going from designing software to making hardware — with the help of AI. Hear the lessons they learned from the ongoing process of building Poetry Camera, how designers can take charge in a changing industry, and how we can still create a human-centered future in a post-AI world.
Kelin Carolyn Zhang
Co-founder
Poetry Camera
Ryan Mather
Co-founder
Poetry Camera
About the speakers
Ebi Atawodi
She/herDirector of Product Management, YouTube Studio
YouTube
Ebi Atawodi is the Director of Product Management for YouTube Studio and a LEGO board member. Previously, she held product leadership roles at Netflix and Uber where she also launched Uber in West Africa. She is passionate about creating sustainable products that have a multi-generational impact and infusing magic into the "everyday" through the transformative power of storytelling. Earlier in her career, she founded the Etisalat Prize for Literature and worked as a full-stack engineer. Ebi holds degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computing Science, specializing in AI and Infographics.
Joel Lewenstein
He/himHead of Product Design
Anthropic
Joel leads the product design team at Anthropic, the makers of Claude. He previously led teams at Airtable & Quora.
Keegan McNamara
He/himCraftsman & Founder
Mythic Computer Co
Keegan McNamara designs and builds physical objects. His work has been featured in The Verge, designboom, and The Free Press. Once upon a time he wrote software and studied math.
Kelin Carolyn Zhang
She/herCo-founder
Poetry Camera
Kelin Carolyn Zhang is a designer, artist, and educator based in New York. She is one of the creators of Poetry Camera, which is a camera that writes poems of what it sees. She also teaches as an Adjunct Professor at RISD.
Ryan Mather
He/himCo-founder
Poetry Camera
Ryan is a designer obsessed with play, learning, and inventing. He's one of the creators of Poetry Camera, and the designer at Sudowrite. Earlier, he worked at Google ATAP where he prototyped sci-fi AI hardware. He also created FlipTales, a roleplaying game which was funded on Kickstarter. Before that, he was a product designer at littleBits.