Seattle Interactive 2026 Agenda
Creative
How I Became a Better Artist by Doing Things the Wrong Way
Most creative tools come with instructions. Rob Sheridan has built much of his career by ignoring them. In this highly visual talk, the Grammy-nominated artist and creative director traces a career path from early digital experimentation and pioneering glitch art to immersive storytelling, filmmaking, game design, and arena-scale concert visuals.
Along the way, he reveals how some of his most distinctive work grew out of corrupted files, malfunctioning hardware, obsolete technology, unexpected limitations, creative accidents,and simply trying things he wasn't "supposed" to do. Drawing on more than two decades of projects across radically different mediums, Sheridan explores why failure can be useful, why giving up control can lead somewhere more interesting, and why stepping outside your area of expertise can help you develop a stronger creative voice.
Rather than a formula for making better art, Sheridan makes an argument for curiosity, experimentation,and becoming comfortable enough with uncertainty (and failure) to follow an idea before you know where it's going. Sometimes the noise is the message.
ROB SHERIDAN Rob Sheridan Productions / Artist / Creative Director
UX / UI
Make the Case: The Business Impact of Your UX Skills
User Experience (UX) is critical for product success, but too many UX professionals don’t talk about what matters to the founders, execs, and other stakeholders. Learn a practical framework for talking about your UX skills in the context of the outcomes they help you achieve—whether you use AI to do them or not.
Torrey Podmajersky Catbird Content / President
Creative
Drawing Your Conclusions: A Case for Art in Your Creative Practice
Author, music journalist, and comic artist Dusty Henry shares how drawing and doodling can be used as tools for thinking, unlocking ideas, and making creative work more human. This isn’t a session about becoming a better artist. It’s about giving yourself permission to make bad drawings and discovering how that simple act can help you work through ideas, make unexpected connections, and get unstuck.
Drawing has been part of how humans communicate and make sense of the world for thousands of years, but somewhere along the way, many of us decided that making art was something we had to be “good” at. Dusty shares his own experience of using illustrations, comics, and doodles throughout his writing practice, and offers a simple case for bringing art back into our everyday creative process – even if no one ever sees what we make.
Dusty HENRY Another Thought / Author, Music Journalist, and Comic Artist
Marketing
Building a Revenue Engine that runs while you sleep
Most brands don’t have an email strategy, they have an email calendar. Teams focus on what to send next without first defining who they’re speaking to, where that customer sits in the lifecycle, or what behavior they want to influence. The result is often disconnected campaigns, underused customer data, weak segmentation, and missed opportunities to generate revenue automatically.
In this session, Richa Nevatia will share a practical framework for building an email marketing system from the ground up. She’ll walk through the process of growing and structuring a database, mapping acquisition, retention and win-back funnels, using cohort analysis and segmentation to identify meaningful customer groups, and developing messaging and positioning for each stage of the customer journey.
Attendees will also learn how to determine which touch points should become automated flows, how campaigns and automations can work together to drive seasonal and always-on revenue, and how to document and measure the system so it continues to improve over time.
RICHA Nevatia Strong Dori / Founder
DESIGN PROCESS
Not on the Process Diagram
Most design process diagrams start with a problem and end with a solution. My experience has been messier. This talk explores the moments that changed how I approach design: realizing the problem wasn't what I thought, letting go of certainty, and learning to move work forward without having all the answers.
Carina DEMPSEY Wind River / Senior UX Designer
Marketing
Where The Bones Are Buried
The top media platforms, including Google and Meta, keep pushing automation and AI harder every year, promising simplicity and better performance. But that convenience comes with a cost, and knowing where the tradeoffs actually live is what separates advertisers who thrive from those who get quietly steamrolled. This session digs into the real give-and-take of platform automation: where the "bones are buried" in features like Performance Max, Advantage+, and AI-driven bidding, when it makes sense to let the algorithm run its course, and when manual overrides and tighter controls are worth the fight.
Takeaway for Audience: Attendees will walk away with a real-world examples to help them decide when to trust the platform and when to push back, so they can improvement performance.
CHRIS OKROY DNW Digital / Founder
Marketing & Branding
The Future of Brand Authenticity
The creator economy, AI-generated content, and an endless stream of brands competing for attention have fundamentally changed what authenticity means (at least compared to its 2016 buzzword spotlight). As consumers grow more skeptical and brand fatigue intensifies, standing out is no longer enough—brands need to work harder (and smarter) to build genuine trust and lasting relevance. While it’s never been easier to launch campaigns, creating real brand affinity has become increasingly difficult. What will authenticity look like in the next decade, and how can brands build equity that endures?
MICHAEL HUANG Milli / Founder
SOCIAL MEDIA
How to Grow Your Brand on Social in 2026
The days of mechanical advantage on social are over. The time of day you post, hashtags you use or trending TikTok audio are the least important things.
What really matters in 2026 is storytelling and how your content provides value to your community. This session will share best practices for focusing in your customer base and creating content that forms meaningful engagement and conversations.
MAREN Hamilton Popfly / Senior Director, Marketing & Growth
Marketing
The Discipline of Better Ideas: Three Frameworks for Expansive Thinking
Creative teams often move straight to solving a problem without questioning whether it's the right problem to solve. This session introduces the Human Creative Algorithm, a repeatable process for producing novel and valuable possibilities through curiosity, reframing, structured exploration, and adaptation, and presents three frameworks that reliably activate it.
The Generic Parts Technique breaks functional fixedness by deconstructing a problem into its rawest parts, revealing assumptions and constraints that are really opportunities. SCAMPER provides scaffolding for structured interrogation of an idea when a team is stuck for a starting point. Premeditation of Evils, a Stoic practice repurposed as a modern premortem, stress-tests an idea before resources are committed to it.
Through concrete examples of each framework in action, attendees leave with a practical, repeatable method to navigate ambiguity, generate novel options, reframe problems, and expand their thinking and three tools they can put to use with their own team immediately, with or without AI in the loop.
LESLIE GRANDY University of Washington Foster School of Business, Executive Education / Lead Executive in Residence
Marketing Systems
Adaptable Process for Messy Client Realities
Most work is divided into 3 major functions: tasks, people, and systems. Each category requires completely different skillsets but is usually built off mastery of the previous step. With the widespread adoption of AI, it’s never been easier for individuals to build and deploy their own systems. This democratization is empowering, but also introduces confusion.
Organizational AI adoption and even individual usage within companies will sit at widely different points and paces, and this creates friction between AI and human systems. Workflows and automation are designed for the happy path where systems are consistent, predictable and operating smoothly. Organizational systems are designed for the opposite - when clients are stressed, results aren’t there, and escalation is required.
These are the messy client realities and sustainable systems and governance need to be built for both pathways. This session will talk about designing processes that are responsive to the variable people, clients and tasks they support.
CORY LeBihan Add3 / GM
Marketing
Brand Is Back: What Performance Marketers Need to Know About It
Digital media buying changed how brands advertise. But it never changed how consumers pick products.
For fifteen years that discrepancy didn't matter, because the dashboard made it invisible. Every ad dollar had a ROAS number, every campaign had a report. Now the bill is coming due, in four places at once: a lower funnel that has been tapped out, audiences trained to wait for a discount instead of choosing a brand they trust, pricing power slowly diminished over time through transactional ads, and AI-driven discovery starting to decide what even gets recommended, based on brand equity rather than ad spend.
At the core of this problem is what was neglected in the age of digital advertising: Brand Awareness.
Attendees leave with a workflow, not a philosophy: when to know it's time to bring brand investment into the conversation, how to decide where and how much to invest, and how to prove it's working and how long it takes to show up.
LAUREN Ridgley Left Hand Agency / CEO
Creative Strategy
Start With the Dumbest Idea: A Case for Productive Weirdness
Great ideas don't always start with great ideas. Creative teams often kill interesting possibilities before they have a chance to develop because they’re trying too hard to be smart, strategic, or practical. Bennett Nestok makes the case for starting somewhere much stranger: the dumbest idea in the room. Through examples, exercises, and lessons from his work as a designer and educator, Nestok demonstrates how absurdity and creative risk can break habitual thinking and reveal unexpected solutions. Attendees will learn practical techniques for generating more ideas, getting unstuck, embracing productive weirdness, and turning seemingly terrible concepts into surprisingly useful ones.
BENNETT Nestok University of Cincinnati / Assistant Adjunct Professor
Creative / Content Strategy
Fun worth finding: why entertainment beats advertising every times
Advertising had a good run but now it’s limping onto the sidelines. What's overtaking it? Compelling content that’s actually worth discovering. Entertaining stuff that doesn’t interrupt audiences but excites them. Fun things that turn scrollers into fans and fans into connected communities where the brand isn't the ad break, it’s the main character. Discover why cultural curiosity, creative risk-taking and content co-creation are the only choices for smart marketers.
GARETH JONES Ralph / Chief Growth Officer
UX / VISUAL LANGUAGES
Fantasy and Reality Are Closer Than You Think: How Zillow for Warcraft Found A Common Bond
Gamers are savvy to marketing tropes and gimmicks, making them a difficult audience to win over with traditional advertising tactics. For brands looking to enter gaming, the challenge isn’t simply getting in front of fans—it’s earning their trust and becoming part of the culture.
This session explores how brands can drive deeper engagement within gaming fandom by building immersive experiences that elevate them from advertisers to community partners. The speakers bring a firsthand perspective—not just as marketing partners to major gaming companies, but as lifelong players themselves.
Smart cross-promotions don't just borrow another brand’s audience; they create shared moments rooted in an authentic connection. Enter Zillow for Warcraft, which launched earlier this year, inviting World of Warcraft players to explore the game’s new Player Housing feature, with Zillow stepping in as their virtual real estate partner.
Blending the distinct UX and visual languages of two very different brands, the campaign transformed the familiar Zillow browsing experience into a portal to Azeroth, complete with fictional real estate agents grounded in the game's lore.
Loren JUDAH We Are Royale / Executive Creative Director
Brien Holman We Are Royale / Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer
Creative
The Creator Mindset: Rethinking the Process Behind Modern Content Creation
Creators have not only changed how content looks—they've transformed the speed and process behind how it gets made. As a result, brands are being pushed to reconsider how they develop, approve, and bring content to life. In this session, Adam Constantine will share how brands can rethink traditional creative processes to produce content that feels more timely, relevant, and authentic. He’ll also explore what brands can learn from the creator mindset, from embracing experimentation to moving quickly.
ADAM CONSTANTINE Ace Creatives / Founder & CEO
Marketing Process
Humans Are Behind Every System
Every agency now claims to be "using AI." Almost none can show you the org chart or the human standing behind it when something goes wrong.
Alfred "Fredo" Adarkwah operates across two very different houses: Ghost Note, a strategy, design, and brand marketing consultancy, and Integral Studio, a digital marketing and product studio. The work runs from SZA and Summer Walker to D'USSÉ, the NBA, the Obama Foundation, Nike, and more. On the surface, none of it rhymes. Underneath, it's one operating system and that's the point.
It starts with the relationship, never the pitch. He'll break down how that actually works: how a genuine, value-first conversation becomes a proposal that wins, and how the relationship gets maintained long after signing because retention, not new logos, is where the real growth is. Then he'll show the systems that scale it, including the internal AI agent workforce he built and runs as a non-engineer: named agents with enforced handoffs and mandatory human sign-off at every gate.
This is a session about trust at scale moving faster without losing the relationship that started the work or the human accountable for it. Attendees leave with two things: a relationship-and-proposal playbook, and the handoff map for building systems that stay authentically human.
ALFRED Adarkwah Integral Studio | Ghost Note Agency / Growth & Operations Executive
Creative
Don’t Just Generate Prototypes, Design Them!
Prototyping has never been easier—or more overwhelming.
GenAI tools have enabled creators to spin up interfaces, apps, and flows in hours instead of weeks. But the industry is quickly learning that generating code is not the same as landing meaningful product outcomes. Without a clear prototyping strategy or evaluation framework, teams risk drowning themselves in demos, struggling to decide when a prototype is “done”, and losing the thread between artifact and product impact.
This talk will challenge attendees to recenter intentionality in their GenAI-enabled prototyping craft. Drawing on concrete examples from design processes at The New York Times, it will walk through a lightweight methodology for identifying the questions a prototype must answer, its audience, and the level of fidelity that will actually move the work forward. Attendees will leave understanding how targeted reframes in the design process—paired with key design infrastructure investments—can make their prototypes meaningful again.
Megan woodruff The New York Times / Staff Design Technologist
Work Process
The Sprint: Make Better Work Faster & Teams Happier
Copacino Fujikado was facing the same pressures most organizations are confronting: Shrinking timelines and tighter budgets. To help their clients break through with speed and quality creative work, they developed The Sprint, a unique process designed to generate powerful ideas through close collaboration from the onset of a partnership.
The process helps streamline everything from creative ideation to writing to strategy, whether for a specific campaign or to develop broader brand positioning. Rather than working in silos and presenting only finished work, the entire creative department engages with the brief from day one, working closely with clients to shape ideas and incorporate feedback in real time. The result is bolder ideas, fewer wasted hours, and a more engaged and motivated creative department.
This session will break down the strategy and execution of the Sprint process, the cultural shift required to make it work, and offer a practical look at how this kind of collaboration can lead to stronger outcomes under time and budget constraints.
Ellie CALDWELL Copacino Fujikado / Head of Strategy
Mike Hayward Copacino Fujikado / Chief Creative Officer
Marketing
WHEN MAKING GETS EASY, JUDGMENT GETS HARD
Ideas, campaigns, prototypes, content, and customer experiences can now be produced at a pace that would not have been possible just a few years ago. For marketers, that changes the nature of the job. Much of the hands-on work that once consumed our time is becoming faster and easier, leaving us with more of the work that was always hardest: deciding what problem to solve, which ideas deserve investment, what to optimize, where humans need to stay involved, and how all the pieces fit together.
Drawing from the Advanced Marketing Strategy graduate course he teaches in the University of Washington's Communication Leadership program, Brian Marr explores why judgment has become the defining skill for the next generation of marketing leaders. As the possibilities multiply, strong marketers will be distinguished less by how much they can make and more by the quality of the decisions they make about what should be made, why, and what trade-offs are worth taking.
BRIAN MARR Work & Co, part of Accenture Song / Global Agentic Commerce Experience Lead
Brand Development
A Brand’s Holy Trinity: Mission, Values & Product
Introducing the Holy Trinity framework - Mission, Values, and Product, as the foundation every brand should build on before spending a dollar on ads. Developed through years of hands-on work across founder-led DTC and CPG brands, the session shows how to turn that foundation into a full brand ecosystem: content strategy, email flows, SEO and AIO, partnerships, giveaways, and a website that actually reflects who the brand is.
Includes a walkthrough of the "Spider Web Method" for translating a brand into content strategy, plus a 10-point audit founders/leaders can start using immediately.
ELI KERR Datum / Fractional CMO
Creative & Design
Untrainable: surviving in the age of enslopification
AI echoes the past, structurally bound by convention, and spirals towards mediocrity when left unchecked. Human creativity is what interrupts that spiral, through lived experience, cultural nuance, and intentional rule-breaking.
DARIA Naidenov Microsoft / Senior Art Director