NeoCon LIVE: Tomorrow’s Impact

17:21Ethan Barbour:Is it just the fact that you got more answers or that it was a truly novelty in the answer that was given? And so there are different methods to sort of grade group creative thought, whether it's termed as like a big C creativity versus a little c. So we talk about how usable is the idea versus how novel the idea is. Much of AI is doing really great on the super novel, really cool ideas. But in terms of is this usable, is this practical, it's really falling flat. But I think if you take us back out of the present for a moment, what was the definition of creativity 100 years ago? 200 years ago?

17:57Ethan Barbour:So when we think about da Vinci, what was the definition of creativity in da Vinci's time? And what was that measured by? Is it truly artistic beauty? Is it that it was touched by a human? Is it that it was a grandiose idea? And so I think when we start to find ourselves challenged by artificial creativity versus human creativity, I myself am very interested and I'm currently, like I said, I'm just starting to roll up my sleeves on this. I'm hoping to make a CEU sometime soon. But I would love to look at how creativity and that definition and that term has evolved because I do think that it's changing.

18:29Ethan Barbour:And I think people would say the qualifications and the grades of what it constitutes as a creative idea is changing.

18:36Cindy Kaufman:I say what I'd like to challenge there in a sense is that what does support this is that I would say at IA, we have this group called ARIA, which is AI Research at IA. So this is a whole department that is devoted to researching AI tools for day-to-day usage. And their goal is very similar. They want to increase the creative output of designers, but not necessarily using AI as a tool for creativity, but using AI to free up time in your day to be more creative. Because I think one thing that's really important to remember with AI is that anything AI produces has already been produced before. AI is incapable of having an original thought as of this time, early 2025.

19:17Cindy Kaufman:Until that is quantum computing way down the road, maybe eventually then they can. But as of right now, using AI to schedule your meetings, check someone's calendar availability, maybe wordsmith an email, help with writing a presentation, those tools can free up more time in your day-to-day life to then ideate more, maybe using AI and come up with more creative solutions.

19:37Ethan Barbour:Which goes back to the needing to focus on those human-centric skills, because if it's the critical thinking that we're punting and or if it's that you know what I'm saying if it's the ability to solve problems or even emotional intelligence that we can talk about in a moment but those are all very independently human things that we could be really focusing on as we allow AI to automate tasks that are not as cognitively demanding for us or emotionally demanding. Those are the things that I think Ethan was saying are sacred those are sacredly human things I don't want to give those to AI.

20:07Kaelynn Reid:I want to come to Ethan's stat we I asked you guys all to prepare a stat and they shared their stats in advance with me. And we may say there's things we don't love about AI. That's very fair. But talk about the stat that you shared.

20:17Cindy Kaufman:Yeah, so I had, it's like a three-part stat. But the first of which was the scariest is that 68 % of leaders would not hire someone today without AI skills. So this comes from Microsoft's job reportings of 2024. This is also in partnership with LinkedIn. And then after that, they said that 71 % of leaders are more likely to hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a candidate that has more experience without AI skills. And then the last, which is on the positive side, is that 77 % of leaders say early in career talent will get greater responsibility due to the leverage of AI than they would have otherwise.

20:56Cindy Kaufman:So I think it tells a lot about not only our current job market, but what the expectation is of future generations. AI is not going anywhere. I think we can all recognize that. There are a lot of benefits to using these tools, but that's exactly what it is. It's another tool in your tool chest. It's a tool, not a solution. And I think that's how we have to approach it, both within our workplace and within our individual lives.

21:20Kaelynn Reid:Let me close this AI portion here with just a couple of little stats to give you perspective of where our industry is. We did a survey at ThinkLab beginning of 2024. And at that time, 6 % of our industry was using AI. Fast forward to about seven months later, we closed a second survey. 33 % of our industry was using AI then, with another third expecting to in the near future. Now, we have a current open survey that's going to measure our next stopping point on that train, but you can see the explosion of this AI use. And we had the privilege of hosting a group just Saturday, right before Neocon here, a group that was really having a roundtable around AI and what we need to be thinking about and learning about and knowing as we think specifically about our industry and the built environment.

22:05Kaelynn Reid:And I think one of the most shocking things about that were how many companies are still looking at AI kind of from the ground up, meaning each individual is doing their own thing. They're not necessarily sharing knowledge, sharing across individuals, experimenting with these tools to make sure that translates. There was only one company out of about two dozen people, two dozen companies represented that kind of had a top-down strategy or even a policy in place. So lots to think about there for anyone in our industry and outside of our industry. But we've hit a little bit on generations, a lot on AI.

22:39Kaelynn Reid:Cindy, I know you came with a stat about sustainability. Maybe you'd like to share your stat with us. I did.

22:44Ethan Barbour:I'm going to read it too, so I don't mess it up. Because before when we were preparing for this, we were talking about a lot of things, AI and sustainability. And I want a full disclosure, I am not our sustainability leader at Mannington Commercial. Shane Totten holds that space. But I have come to a place right now where I actually talk about this every single day, which I think he would be probably pretty glad to hear. But this really floored me and it scares me a little bit. But so according to a recent analysis, the sixth mass extinction of wildlife on earth is accelerating. More than 500 species of land animals are on the brink of extinction and are likely to be lost within 20 years.

23:23Ethan Barbour:The same number were lost over the entire last century. So that to me is terrifying. Scientists say that without human destruction of nature, the rate of loss would have taken thousands of years. So to me, there's a lot of reasons that I care about that. I happen to be an animal lover, but I also believe in beauty of nature and that the natural world is, we are part of the natural world. Obviously, I think we're probably all familiar with biophilic design. It's really important to me to focus on what are the choices that we're making as an industry and what are the choices that we're making as an industry having as an impact on our planet.

24:06Ethan Barbour:So it's not a marketing story. It's not just a sustainability narrative. These are real things that are actually happening. we are so carelessly treating our natural resources and our planet as if they're all somehow renewable. And that stat really terrified me. So we have a responsibility. In particular, this industry has a distinct responsibility in this area. And if we're not paying attention, and even thinking of it in terms, if Shane were here, he would talk about chemicals of concern and other things that I'm not going to talk about. But thinking about extinction of animals, that's the impact that's not that far afield from understanding what we're doing in the built environment.

24:48Kaelynn Reid:Puts it in perspective. And I think for any interior designers in the audience, another fun ThinkLab stat, fun fact, is that the average interior designer has around 40 times the recommendation power as the average American consumer has buying power. When you think about the interior design giants of design, that's like the top 200 firms. Think of it like the Fortune 500, except there's only 200 and they do interior design work. That number is 140 times on average the recommendation power as the average American consumer has buying power. So simply put, the choices our industry is making matter.

25:20Kaelynn Reid:Metropolis has another stat that talks about the carbon emissions. I think that interior design, the interior design industry is responsible or will be responsible for 10 % of the world's carbon emissions by 2050. It's big decisions and this matters. Ethan, I want to come to you here because, again, we are talking not only to our industry, but to people making decisions for the built environment. Like, what do you have to add to this from a design firm perspective, from a generational perspective, just in terms of what we should be encouraging the world to think about?

25:50Cindy Kaufman:Yeah, it's a big topic that I think a lot of designers grappling with right now to be transparent in the industry. There's a lot of unknowns in how to even approach a topic that's as big as this. A lot of those big firms, those top 200 firms have signed the AIA 2030 pledge, which is a really great first step. But that's only five years away. And I think the one of the biggest challenges right now in the industry for designers is simply collecting the amount of data that is required to report and even understand how large our carbon footprint is. And you think of each individual material that goes onto a project.

26:23Cindy Kaufman:It's not just one spec for carpet. It's the carpet. It's the backing. It's the glue. all of that has some sort of carbon footprint, the labor to install it, where it's coming from, where it's being shipped from, the amount of data that's needed to process that is immense. And it's something that there are a lot of different parties in the industry that are trying to tackle right now. What's front of mind, not only is it something that's put onto the responsibility of designers most of the time, but it's also thinking about it from billable hours. We can't be naive here and ignore the business side of it, is that to survive in our industry, you do have to make money.

26:55Cindy Kaufman:And to make money, you have to be profitable from your billing standpoint. And to do that, you need a lot of time to record all of those things. So that's something that we have teams in IA that are working on this. Like I'm on one team that's developing the infrastructure to report this. You know, it's a big undertaking. And I know a lot of other design firms are doing the same thing. But what we're trying to start with, like today, I had just given a presentation earlier this year to our designers on how to just reframe thinking Thinking about pulling material pallets, thinking about it in lease terms.

27:26Cindy Kaufman:If your tenant is a 10-year lease, don't specify something that's going to fall apart in five years. Thinking about it from a trend standpoint, don't specify the trendiest furniture piece or trendiest material out there. Specify something that you know is going to last the full length of the project. And then lastly, our sample ordering process and how we present these ideas to clients, taking even steps to reduce the amount of packages that you're getting in. We're very lucky to be here in Chicago. and so I can come to the mart if I want to see something or go over to design days if I want to see something.

27:55Cindy Kaufman:So really trying to take what actions we can now that affect our projects today, even though we know that there are these larger questions that the industry as a whole is grappling with.

28:04Ethan Barbour:Kaylin, anything to add there? I think to me that highlights some of the, I guess the sense of hope that I have around data and AI and being able to leverage that for good. When you require that much data and that much information to be able to aggregate and understand the impacts of that. That is one of the hopes that I have in the next three to five years that with the help of things like blockchain and AI and being able to aggregate that data, having that at your fingertips is going to be a tremendous superpower that will only magnify that 140 % of influential power that our industry has. And so I am looking forward to that because I do think that will help decision making and it will help hopefully make it feel less like a big hairy monster to have to solve.

28:45Ethan Barbour:Right. So I think that makes me feel very hopeful. Anything to add?

28:50Cindy Kaufman:I agree. wholeheartedly. I'm super excited about the potential that AI has to tackle that solution with us. I think it's also something that the entire industry as a whole is going to have to look at. Right now, there's so many ways of reporting carbon emissions, the chemicals that go into things, so many different certifications, product labels that, like I said, I know multiple parties are attempting to decipher a way of how to even present that information to designers. I think it's something that's also integral to designers' education at this point. I know sustainability courses are incredibly important.

29:23Cindy Kaufman:I took them when I was in college. I know a lot of other designers do as well, as well as just coming together as an industry and sharing resources. I know, for example, Gensler has a really great kind of way that they're tackling the materiality of things. They've made that public so that everyone can use it. And I think that's a good example for everyone else to follow is that this is a communal effort, a humanitarian problem, not just a design industry problem. And we have to tackle this together. It's only going to be solved with collaboration. Exactly.

29:49Ethan Barbour:I represent a manufacturer, and it's so different on our side of the table than it is from the design side. Being collaborative with our competitors is challenging, let's just say. But that's the only way it's going to be solved. It's industry-wide, and there is no single solution. It has to be collective solutions. So I think you're absolutely right.

30:11Kaelynn Reid:I think that's true in the sustainability realm. It's also, it was very loud and clear in our AI workshop that the way forward is really this coopertition or not competition, but coopertition. I want to push us to the future a little bit more. And I want to challenge each of you to fast forward to 2040. I think we've done a great job with some stats about maybe alarming stats about where we are today and that have given us a lot to think about around sustainability, around AI, around generations in the workplace. But I want to fast forward a bit and think about what is one radical possibility that you might imagine for the future?

30:47Kaelynn Reid:One that might feel maybe a little bit wild now, but could actually happen. Who wants to start this one? Everyone's avoiding eye contact. That's a good question. If I could whistle.

31:02Ethan Barbour:I had a thought about something. I don't know that I would call this radical, but it was just. I'm just going to say it. I was thinking a lot about workplace in particular and thinking about how in my own personal experience in my recent career years, the workplaces that I've been have been wildly different from one another, but also shared some alarming similarities. We all know that the open office environment is a big failure. People crave territory. They want their own safe space. Biophilic design also tells us people need a space of refuge, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. And then I look at the rise of co-working and the rise and then the crash and maybe the rise again of co-working.

31:46Ethan Barbour:And I started to think about, when I think about my work modalities, the way I work personally, my modalities, which I started to figure this out before COVID. So we talked about this a little while earlier. I have three typical modalities. Number one is I'm in a meeting with colleagues. So that's number one. Number two is I'm heads down and I need to be alone in a place that's quiet. And number three is unless I'm traveling. So I guess that would be four. But if I'm not traveling, being on the phone or on a now a team's meeting, but in prior to COVID on the phone on a conference call. So those were the three basic like day to day modalities without traveling.

32:23Ethan Barbour:And what my needs were at different times of the day, I have a different energy frequency than And all of my colleagues, I'm energetic in the morning and I wake up and I go to the gym. And then in the afternoon, I'm like, just leave me alone. I need a nap. So just thinking about everybody has their own version of that. And everybody has their modalities. Everybody has their energy frequency. Everybody is introverted or extroverted or whatever they are. So what does, how can a workplace work for all those people? So I started to think, what if there's this somehow this merging of a co-working environment and the thought of a university campus?

33:03Ethan Barbour:Think about where you went to school if you went to a university on a proper campus. And there were buildings that were dedicated typically to some sort of field of study. And then there were some classrooms. But that every year you would go into that same building multiple times a year. And you would go to a different class with a different instructor. typically at my college there would be like a different layout the classroom would be reorganized or something like that and then if you had a different class you would go somewhere else and do something else and then there were people at the cafeteria and people at the library and there was just this sort of fluidity that that flowed with what the modality was why are we together are we in a class are we studying at the library are we shooting the shit at the cafeteria Period.

33:49So what if that's like, why don't we do that as adults?

33:54Ethan Barbour:It works in the university setting and there's constant change. That's the thing. It's like the university is this sort of space that contains things that are constantly in motion and constantly changing, but you're still in the same space. Could there be a place that's like a co-working version of that where you're like, for the next six months, we're working on this project. We're going to do it in this space and we're going to keep coming and going out of here. But then this afternoon, I've got six conference calls. So I'm going to go home and I'm going to be in the quiet of my own. I don't know if that's radical.

34:28Kaelynn Reid:Very interesting. And even when the first rise of co-working, there was a great study that was done by the GCUC, GUC is what they call it, Global Coworking on Conference is what it stands for. And what they were looking at is in co-working, what do people pay for? If you think about this was back in 2014 timeframe where, you know, work is not something you pay for or an office is not something you pay for as an average user. You just get a key card, you walk in. So they wanted to know what was selling out first and what was selling out the highest rates. Can anybody guess what it was? Coffee. Private offices was the space, right?

35:04Kaelynn Reid:Because people want their little cave and then they want to be able to join. So I feel like that was like a message way back then, if we could rewind time, that was good. So what about Ethan Kalen? Any thoughts on your radical future?

35:15Cindy Kaufman:I think to address the elephant in the room, It's such a difficult thing to grapple with, I think, with just everything that's going on in the world right now between the introduction of AI, how that's affecting industry, the large, I can't remember the word you used for it, but the large questions of sustainability, where climate change is going, how generations will be affected by this, obviously makes it hard to predict the future. So I forgot my crystal ball today, unfortunately. But what I think what I truly think is going to happen from the perspective of the built environment is that our clientele is going to be radically different today than what it is 40 years from now.

35:51Cindy Kaufman:I think entire industries will develop and cease to exist within the next two decades. Yeah. One, two decades. Yeah. I'm doing math. I, there's so many jobs right now that are really about data processing, analyzing data. We think about consulting, we think about economics in that way. All of those jobs, not all of them, but a large portion of them could be changed, erased, rewritten by AI and by the introduction of AI. And so I think we're going to see new industries emerge about management of AI, about implementation of AI and sectors that we haven't yet thought or thought about using it for.

36:25Cindy Kaufman:I also think that it's going to greatly affect our medicine studies. I think that we're going to see a vastly different biological era 20 years from now than we will have now, just with the ability to study medications so quickly with the use of AI. But that also means that a lot of industries we see today are not going to be present. How does our industry as the designers and architects, how do we adapt to stay relevant with maybe we're not doing legal offices anymore. We're doing managerial offices for legal AI. Vastly different world that we're going to be living in 20 years from now.

36:59Kaelynn Reid:Absolutely. And we forgot our crystal balls, but luckily we brought a futurist with us. So I know she's excited for this question. And really, as we look forward, what is one radical prediction you have?

37:11Ethan Barbour:So I, as a foresight professional, a lot of what my job is building what's called scenarios of the future. And so a lot of it is taking a lot of what Amanda does in terms of looking at data and research and evidence-based studies that we have today and really just projecting into the future and looking at sort of the intersection of multiple trends and multiple uncertainties. Uncertainties is what you can't possibly know about the future. It's like what happens about these wicked problems and challenges that we have to solve for. So I actually created a mini scenario that I think will actually scaffold and bring to life Cindy's forecast a little bit.

37:44Ethan Barbour:So when things tie together. I know. It's so fun. So I'll read it for you. By 2040, AI has turned the built environment into a living, dynamic ecosystem of experiences that can adapt and change to users' needs and preferences in real time. Operating off of things like your body data from your Oura Ring, from your Fitbit, your Apple Watch, taking into mind your chronotype, how you work, whether you're an early riser or a late night worker, or your emotional state is all part of the consideration and how the built environment adapts to you in real time. Imagine if a lounge chair could change the seat firmness and adjust things like the ambient light and the sound cues simply based on your stress state in a given moment, or if an entire office could update overnight like your iPhone iOS update does.

38:34Ethan Barbour:We're adjusting the layout, the arrangement of a space based on predictive occupancy data, based on team needs or a project need for a given month. Designers may increasingly be the ones choreographing possibilities versus building artifacts. I'll say that again. Designers may increasingly be the ones choreographing possibilities versus building an artifact. That's amazing. You're the one pushing the domino chain reaction instead of controlling the outcome. We would enable spaces to change, to be generative, and to be co-designed by the people using it. That's 2040. Okay, mic drop. I

39:12Kaelynn Reid:love that. I think it's so fascinating, and I love that it gets to how people can think about maybe the built environment differently, but also my passion is process innovation over product innovation. So she probably did that on purpose, but I think it really talks about even some industry shifts and how that could happen here. So we're quickly coming to the end of our time together. And we knew that this would go fast before I ask the last question though. Let me see if anyone up here has responses to Kaylin's future scenario. You said what was like in my head, which I did without AI, by the way, but that was amazing.

39:47Ethan Barbour:I loved the use of the word choreography there. I think that's underrated. I want to dig into that because that's what this is. It's constantly in motion. Yeah. That's beautiful.

39:59Kaelynn Reid:Ethan, any other thoughts?

40:01Cindy Kaufman:Other than it sounds amazing and I'd love to be there already. No, not necessarily. I think that there's a really interesting, I think we will be having, we already are, but we will be having over the next five, 10 years, a very interesting conversation surrounding AI usage and data privacy. It comes to, say, adapting a built environment to someone's nervous system and regulations that also requires consenting to give over your nervous system and emotion data to large companies. And I think right now we're still in a period of time. I likened it back to when I was growing up with the internet prior to internet regulation really existing.

40:36Cindy Kaufman:We're in a period of time before AI regulation existing. And right now, AI is somewhat running rampant with data that we don't really understand where it comes from, where it got it. And so I'm hopeful and optimistic that we can achieve that future in a regulated and safe way that still protects end users and the next generation just as much as it does the built environment.

40:58Kaelynn Reid:And I think a lot of this leads to change. And if anyone listened to our episode two, this most recent season, my 14 year old son, Austin introduced me. Anybody listen to that? It was very cute. My favorite line is, and I love that I get to share my mom with all of you. So if you didn't listen to that, you should totally hear him. But one of the interesting things is he is right on the border of Gen Z and Gen Alpha. And by the time he is in the workplace, 65 % of the jobs he will have available to him don't exist yet. So I think that's interesting to think about and really tie to what you were saying, Ethan, about some of the change and how we make it plausible and even the shifts that are going to happen in this industry.

41:37Kaelynn Reid:But let's land this plane here because sometimes when we talk about all this change, it makes us uncomfortable, right? Like change is hard. Change might be happening to us. We want to put our audience and our listeners in the driver's seat. So I want to close with a piece of advice that makes me feel maybe a little bit better and less uncomfortable about all this change and makes our audience feel like there's something that they can do about it. So my closing question to each of you is what is one thing you or our audience today or listening later or even our industry can do differently tomorrow?

42:08Kaelynn Reid:We're talking about tomorrow's impact. Get that there can do differently tomorrow to move forward to this future. I think especially the one Caitlin just painted, which is definitely a better one. What is your advice to our listeners?

42:21Ethan Barbour:I think right now, I think the task is beginning to think about how our design process would need to change. So if we think about that, the scenario of the future, and again, one of many friends, the goal of foresight is not to get the future right, but to simply get your brains thinking and changed a little bit as to, wow, could that be a possibility? Because from there, you can create an action roadmap to Amanda's point that feels a little less scary and a little less nebulous, right? But if we were to, let's say, agree that, again, noting the ethical concerns that Ethan, which is valid, and I omitted just for the sake of having a really fun scenario, but very important.

42:53Ethan Barbour:But I would say, as an industry, those that are responsible for the built environment, those that are experiencing the built environment, how can we think about these spaces becoming more dynamic, becoming more responsive, these just-in-time designs? And how does that change a few traditional parts of our design process? When we think about the client relationship, okay, so it's likely that your client relationship is going to extend post-install day. So if it's going to be something where those environments are constantly changing, guess what? You've now created a loyalist client that is going to be your client for a very long time.

43:24Ethan Barbour:We think about furniture. We think about the cyclical nature and the specification of furniture, right? Whether it gets specified one time and it's just getting changed out parts that are obsolete or perhaps failing. We think about creating a circular system with furniture and being able to change that out. And so there are things about the fundamental shifts in the way that we've approached design as this static, it's designed and it's good, walk away, let it go kind of experience that I think as we move in the future, it would behoove us to think through how does our design process change to embrace something that's a bit more generative, that is a bit more flexible and fluid.

44:01Ethan Barbour:Inerative. Yes. Yes. Yeah. There we go.

44:05Kaelynn Reid:Shall I jump in? Go ahead, Cindy.

44:08Ethan Barbour:I don't know if mine is like one thing to do differently, but mine is more advice on mindset. And that is really to just somehow make friends with change, make friends with uncertainty. There's a Buddhist concept around the illusion of permanence. And I think architecture and design specifically are mired in this illusion of permanence. we think of structures this building that we're in the products that we specify as permanent fixtures and yet we know we're going to rip them out and sustainability is only one tiny piece of the impact of that if you can understand that illusion of permanence and let go of a dogmatic attachment to that idea and make friends with change i think that is the way to approach the future.

45:00Kaelynn Reid:And I think that's great advice, not only for those in our industry, but those who are making decisions on behalf of these. Yeah, I think so. Good. Ethan.

45:07Cindy Kaufman:All right. The piece of advice that I had thought about prior to this, I let slip earlier, which was originally to not outsource your humanity, but I'm going to put a more positive spin on that. And that is to remember what makes your humanity sacred. So I think that there's going to be a lot of, a lot of decisions in the upcoming future that will require us in our day day jobs about whether or not we use AI, whether we hire someone who's more junior because AI could maybe do that instead. There's going to be a lot of those kind of quick decision making processes, of course, which led to my word again for today about reaching that kind of boiling point.

45:40Cindy Kaufman:And I think remembering what makes your humanity sacred is going to help propel us and our businesses and our design practices into the future seamlessly with so much change happening. Awesome.

45:53Kaelynn Reid:Well said. Well said. We started this out with our three words, emotional, human-centric, and say it one more time.

45:59Cindy Kaufman:Extengency.

46:00Kaelynn Reid:Beautiful. It's beautiful when he says it, right? So we hope that we've given you some stats that really help illuminate where we are and why it's so urgent. I'm just going to say urgent because I can say that, but also paint a more positive picture. I want to close you out with some excitement for this season. So again, this whole season is tomorrow's impact. We're going to be picking up on a lot of themes that kind of came up. I think this was a phenomenal introduction to it. Some of the titles that we have coming up, How Will Gen Alpha Shape the World? We Haven't Built Yet. We have actually one of the foremost experts in generational research.

46:33Kaelynn Reid:If you've ever heard of McRindle, they're out of Australia. They are the ones that have actually named each of the generations. They have some phenomenal research, and it's going to be a great conversation with him. What will work look like when Gen Alpha takes over? How will AI shape healthcare? We've got some brand new research about what is happening and a beautiful Italian accent to deliver it on that episode. What's next for hotels and hospitality spaces? We interview Marriott, who are you ready for this stat? Building a new hotel every 18 to 36 hours. Does that blow your mind? So we get to listen into what they are thinking about.

47:07Kaelynn Reid:What kind of homes will Gen Alpha want? We have a brand new study that's out on kind of homes and how that might shape the built environment there. and what does the future of learning tell us about the future of work? So we're going to be talking to some leading research experts in the future of education. So we will be sharing that with all of you and you'll be hearing more of that. It will actually start launching this fall. But in the meantime, I also want to invite you to go back and listen to season seven, which was built all around our digital futures. We have some of our sponsors in the room, Pilate and Wes.

47:39Kaelynn Reid:Go ahead and wave back there. You can talk to them. The Mart and Neocon, of course, were in that space. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and officially close us out. But I'll say I hope everyone listening really leaves here maybe a little bit more inspired about the future. One of my favorite reviews about Think Lab and DNA, the DNA podcast, was highest insights per minute. We didn't get to edit up here. This was live. You see how the sausage is made. But we hope that you've enjoyed this live conversation. And we hope you feel a sense of pride as it goes live. Thanks so much. Thanks, Amanda.

48:11Kaelynn Reid:And thank you guys so much for joining today. This was really great. If you enjoyed this and you want more live content, let us know what events we should cover next. And maybe we'll show up with a mic. Seriously, we love hearing from you. If you have ideas, feedback, or just want to connect, find me, Amanda Schneider, on LinkedIn. Send me a direct message. I read them all. And your ideas will shape where we take this show next. Design Nerds Anonymous is a proud member of the Surround Podcast Network. Special thanks to the podcast production team, Hannah Vitti, Rachel Senatore, and Rob Schulte.