Bria Alexander

" You have to keep AI at arm’s length so you can critique it and not blindly trust it - Christopher. "

" Lauren Cantor is our house librarian and has made an outstanding contribution to the conference. "

" You should absolutely participate in Slack—if you're missing that, you're missing a key part of our conference. "

" The sponsor sessions are equal in quality and quantity as our main programming and completely free for anyone to attend. "

" Our behavior is implicit messaging; we need both explicit and implicit signals to support resilience on teams. "

" Co-creating operating models with our teams helps us remain resilient even when things get a little hairy and squirrely. "

" We need standardized role definitions, not everyone is a manager just because they manage initiatives - Peter Bosma. "

" Everyone's sitting on the aisle, your right, my left — you gotta scoot over like two seats. "

" Sponsors believe in advancing research, and we wouldn’t be here without them. "

" This is the same conference in so many good ways — good ways are that it’s resilient and there’s a certain steadiness. "

" Our sponsors offer sessions with no sales pitches, just incredibly high-quality content. "

" We are obligated to treat each other with kindness and respect, even though we’re a virtual community. "

" David Nicholson is the reason why you don’t have to write very fast. "

" It’s about us, the design ops practitioners, and what we need today to be better at our jobs. "

" Many of you might be the only design ops person in whatever room you’re in for as much as 362 days a year. "

" Cohorts are a super duper fun way to engage with more of our community. "

" Please respect our code of conduct to ensure a welcoming and safe space for all attendees. "

" Researchers have really taken it on the chin during this latest economic downturn. "

" If you have a question for a speaker, put it in the thread for their talk, not in the general chat. "

" If anything's going wrong on your end, please reach out to help-customer-desk-service in Slack for tech help. "

" Join our Slack channels—it’s really where the party is with gifts, jokes, and amazing conversations. "

" Just because empathy isn’t always visible at the top doesn’t mean you can’t be the change. "

" Cohorts are consistently one of the highest rated parts of the conference — they’re a fantastic way to learn together. "

" It seemed just like yesterday that I was talking with Dave Malouf. He dropped that term design ops on me. "

" The community of practitioners is the way we carry each other through difficult moments. "

" Junior engineers often resent having to create OKRs that feel disconnected from their day-to-day work. "

" We need to slow down decision-making processes so that ethics and systems thinking scale with project scope. "

" If you ever feel unsafe or threatened, please let us know in the #do-help channel. "

" I’m a power user of Airtable because it combines multiple tools into one accessible system for designers and teams. "

" You do not need to take any notes, we have dedicated note takers who provide session notes, resource lists, decks, and videos. "

" Our first day’s theme is around establishing and growing design operations. "

" Day three is about keeping people at the center of an expanding enterprise, which is tricky but so important. "

" If you want to take notes during this presentation, there’s really no need — we’ve got you covered. "

" The official conference time zone is Pacific Standard Time, but you can change it to your own time zone at designatskill.com. "