San Diego ’26 · VIP Dinner · Case study
Photos · Desmond Chua
On the night before DDX’26 San Diego, Appsfactory hosted fourteen design, product and AI leaders from Apple, Mastercard, Sony, Adobe, Netflix, Target, Qualcomm, Dexcom, Oracle, Ancestry, Travelers, UC San Diego Health and American Specialty Health at one long table at Nolita Hall. No stage, no slides, no name badges.
DDX curates the table. For every city we invite a short list of the most senior decision-makers in design, product and innovation, a mix of DDX speakers and the enterprise leaders who rarely appear on a conference stage. Appsfactory, with its design studio Edenspiekermann, hosted the evening and set the theme; at every seat a card read “Your culture eats AI for breakfast.” The conversation ran from the first drink to the last espresso, and every guest was in the room again at 9 AM the next morning when the conference opened.
That is the point of the format: three hours of unscripted exchange with the people who sign off on the next design organisation, the next AI feature and the next agency partner, in a setting that no booth or sponsored talk can replace. This page documents the San Diego edition so that the next host knows exactly what to expect.
I strongly believe we are entering a new design renaissance. For years, the industry focused on optimizing convenience and automating the easy things, while leaving humans with the most complex, emotional, and fragmented parts of work. AI is exposing the limits of that approach. The next era of innovation will not belong to the companies that automate the fastest, but to those that intentionally design systems in which humans and intelligent technology can learn, adapt, and make better decisions together.
As AI becomes more capable and generates more machine output, human originality becomes a scarce resource. We need to protect and foster the conditions where humans can continue to create original ideas.
People are chasing the next model or the next tool, but the winners of this era will be those who invest in curating and structuring their context and their knowledge, because tools change every week, but context never gets old.
Roles as submitted to DDX. Guests are listed by company; names are shared with partners on request.
DDX built a priority list of senior design, product and innovation leaders in San Diego: enterprise decision-makers first, DDX speakers second. Invitations went out in waves and Appsfactory saw every confirmation.
An invitation-only dinner the night before the conference, fourteen seats, a venue chosen for conversation rather than show. Appsfactory opened with its theme and a short welcome; the rest was unscripted.
Every guest was back at DDX the next day: at Appsfactory’s talk, in the table talks and at the happy hour. Photos, the guest list and this recap are part of the package for every host.