Day 2 Welcome
Summary
In this session, the co-curator welcomed attendees to Day Two of Design Ops Summit 2024, curated by Francis Ilana. The event spans three days, focusing on resilience, impact, and innovation, curated respectively by the host, Francis Ilana, and John Kuda. The host detailed practical guidance on accessing the program on Rosenfeld Media's website, explained the time zone settings, and introduced high-quality, no-sales-pitch sponsor sessions offered by companies like Fable, Great Question, and Vox Pop Me. Attendees were encouraged to engage actively in the Slack channels, particularly to post questions within specific talk threads to avoid them getting missed. The session also emphasized the role of David Nicholson, the house scribe, noting his unique background and contributions. The host strongly urged all participants to adhere to the conference's code of conduct, ensuring a respectful and inclusive community experience and highlighted available support channels for technical issues and concerns.
Key Insights
-
•
Design Ops Summit 2024 is a multi-day virtual event focusing on resilience, impact, and innovation.
-
•
Sponsor sessions are high-quality, optional, free, and offer alternate access to the conference content without sales pitches.
-
•
Active participation in topic-specific Slack threads is essential for effective interaction and to ensure questions are addressed.
-
•
David Nicholson serves as the house scribe, bringing a combined background of UX design and business analysis to the conference.
-
•
The conference program and sponsor sessions avoid schedule overlap, enabling attendees to attend all sessions if desired.
-
•
The conference prioritizes creating an inclusive, respectful virtual community and enforces a strict code of conduct.
-
•
Technical support and sponsor contacts are easily accessible through designated Slack channels.
-
•
Virtual swag bags provide attendees with digital offers and resources as an alternative to physical gifts.
-
•
Session recordings, notes, and resources will be available shortly after talks to help attendees stay in the moment during sessions.
-
•
The daily themes among co-curators help structure discussions and content: resilience by the host, impact by Francis Ilana, and innovation by John Kuda.
Notable Quotes
"We are going to have a very cherry day. You get it? Because I’m wearing cherry earrings."
"Sponsor sessions are optional but incredibly high quality content, not sales pitches."
"Please put your questions inside of the thread associated with the talk."
"David Nicholson is our house scribe, a senior UX designer with a passion for enterprise-scale products."
"Even though we are virtual, we are still a community and we are obligated to treat each other with dignity and respect."
"Sometimes resources are available as soon as an hour or 30 minutes after the talk, like the team is working miracles."
"If you ever need help, you can reach us at help-customer-service for technical issues and customer support."
"Our sponsors make this conference and programming possible, so thank you all so, so much."
"You should absolutely participate in Slack—if you're missing that, you're missing a key part of our conference."
"We want you to feel included and be able to take advantage of the awesome content and speaker efforts."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Testing with the tab key is important, but it has nothing to do with a screen reader user’s actual experience."
Sam ProulxEverything You Ever Wanted to Know About Screen Readers
June 11, 2021
"If you want to avoid time zone confusion, you can switch the conference schedule to your local time on the program page."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
November 17, 2022
"Your job is a tool to get what you want out of life. Don’t make it more than that."
Corey Nelson Amy SanteeLayoffs
November 15, 2022
"Shared language lets different roles venture out of their comfort zones and collaborate on changing the enterprise system."
Milan GuentherA Shared Language for Co-Creating Ambitious Endeavours
June 6, 2023
"It’s not a theme unless you can put your hand over every sticky note and the label explains the story."
Erin May Roberta Dombrowski Laura Oxenfeld Brooke HintonDistributed, Democratized, Decentralized: Finding a Research Model to Support Your Org
March 10, 2022
"If you falsely think you are having the same experience as a native user, you become afraid of accessibility and say it's impossible."
Sam ProulxUnderstanding Screen Readers on Mobile: How And Why to Learn from Native Users
June 6, 2023
"Adding a senior researcher, Izzy, in field meant we could have more, smaller research tracks and better support for research newbies."
Mujtaba HameedThe new horizon of ethnography: using AI to unlock the full potential of in-person research
March 11, 2026
"The internet as the self-regulating market is a failed experiment."
Ilana LipsettAnticipating Risk, Regulating Tech: A Playbook for Ethical Technology Governance
December 10, 2021
"When we design for the edges, we get the middle for free."
Samuel ProulxFrom Standards to Innovation: Why Inclusive Design Wins
September 10, 2025