Program: Tuesday, Nov 4

We will open the conference track on three different, yet notable 2025 themes:

The modern web is powerful — but often heavy and over-engineered.

In this session, we’ll explore how Astro’s islands architecture and static-first approach allow teams to build faster, simpler, and more maintainable content sites — without tying their architecture to a CMS.

A journey through monoliths, headless systems, and the future of decoupled content.

Through real examples from global pharma, energy, fintech, and mining sectors, we’ll examine three pivotal leadership transitions: moving from designing individual user experiences to crafting ecosystem-wide strategies, evolving from sprint-based delivery to portfolio-level orchestration, and shifting from solving discrete problems to bridging organizational silos.

This talk explores the evolution of our ongoing One Design System (ODS) project at Stibo Systems through the lens of vision versus reality.

Shannon presents her original assumptions of how she expected the ODS project to unfold with the practical challenges she’s encountered.

Through candid reflections and project examples, this session highlights how pragmatic decisions helped accelerate stakeholder buy-in and project momentum without killing the original vision.

Join this one to gain insights into navigating large-scale digital initiatives with flexibility, humility, and strategic foresight.

As a citizen, what associations do I have when dealing with public authorities? Does it depend on the nature of the matter, or how I can get it done?

Does it make a difference which country I live in?

Let us discuss our different experiences and think together about how we can develop digital solutions that generate positive feelings.

The most successful culture of AI adoption is not created in the Strategy Boards, but emerges from collective enthusiasm, wins and failures shared by employees.

Join for a story on how the global digital innovation and transformation firm Valtech harvested internal grassroots AI movement and converted it into mature sustained innovation strategy.

It was not an easy journey, and the newborn AI enthusiast’s community almost fell victim to its own rapid and chaotic success.

This is not your usual polished case study and we will follow up with an open and honest discussion on your AI adoption strategies, lessons learned and biggest surprises.

Hiring is supposed to bring the right people together, but it is fair to say that today’s recruiting processes frustrate everyone: candidates, recruiters, and even the teams who desperately need new talent.

Add AI into the mix, and the experience becomes even more complex, confusing and unfriendly.

In this interactive session, Jessica will share the needs, pain points, and challenges she has uncovered through months of research and conversations with people on both sides of the hiring process.

From there, we’ll shift into a collaborative workshop: together we’ll explore the key players in the hiring process, uncover their needs and pain points, and co-create solutions that make the experience more transparent, fair, and human-centered.

By the end of the session, you’ll leave with new perspectives, tangible ideas, and actionable ways to improve the hiring experience. Whether you are looking to build out your team, designing the process or going through it yourself.

Headless CMS promised freedom, and delivered complexity.

This session explores how modern Server-Side Rendering (SSR) brings back the balance: fast, scalable, and SEO-friendly sites without sacrificing developer happiness.

Connecting multiple CMSs, APIs, and data silos shouldn’t feel like herding cats.

In this session, Fabio shows how they have used Netlify Connect to simplify complex data integrations in modern SSR setups, turning messy content architectures into one clean, composable layer.

We’ll discus headless experiences and how to truly make things better for 2026

Trust in government isn’t a given: as geopolitical tensions arise, the ruthless pace of technology can easily erode citizens’ confidence in their institutions, even in countries where that trust has been a political staple for decades.

In this talk we will reflect on some of the lessons learnt while designing for innovation for the UK government.

Because every real change starts with someone who dares to disagree

Have you ever experienced to get feature request where all decisions had already been made?

Then you are like most designers.

In this brief talk, Mirlo will share his experience on how to tackle this challenge in large organisations through 5 key activities, that have helped him going from being an afterthought to be the driver of the product process.

Jon knows what he’s talking about. For years, he made a career out of spotting macro trends, predicting where technology was heading, and helping media companies stay ahead of the curve. Confident, outspoken, and occasionally a bit too sure of himself, Jon always backed his instincts — and more often than not, he was right.

But that was 2023. The world has shifted again, and this time the map’s been thrown away.

In Stranger in a Strange Land, Jon reflects — hopefully with humour and humility — on what happens when the future refuses to behave, and an old man, an old company, and an old industry have to find new ways to change in a very new world.

Join Daniel for an engaging session exploring how Vend is evolving its multi-brand design system to empower over 80 designers across the Nordics.

Discover how design tokens, components, icons, and patterns in Figma come together to streamline collaboration and accelerate innovation across some of the region’s largest marketplaces – spanning real estate, jobs, classifieds, and automotive.

Learn how a unified yet flexible system enables product teams to work smarter and faster, and how a global remote team builds consistency while fostering creativity across diverse brands.

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) will set new standards for businesses operating across the EU. Is your company ready?

Let’s explore how businesses can adapt to the EAA, what digital accessibility really means, and why it’s not just a legal obligation but a competitive advantage.

And learn how you can make your digital platforms more inclusive and compliant with the latest regulations.

As the day closes, we’ll take a step back from the buzzwords and look ahead.

AI, sovereignty, trust, sustainability — the conversations today show how far we’ve come, but also how much remains uncertain.

In this closing dialogue, we’ll explore what’s still missing from our collective digital agenda. What do we not yet understand about how technology should serve people, and where should governments lead — or hold back?

Together, we’ll surface the questions, ideas, and ambitions that can guide the next chapter of public digital work. This is not a wrap-up; it’s a look forward — a chance to connect the dots, challenge assumptions, and imagine what “good digital government” might mean in 2026 and beyond.

AI promises to make digital leaders and their teams more productive—faster analysis, instant summaries, automated content generation. The efficiency gains are real. But there’s a question we’re not asking enough: What happens to our judgment when we stop doing the hard thinking ourselves?

As an early adopter who pushed the boundaries of AI in my work, I discovered something surprising: You can be highly productive while losing touch with what actually matters. The work gets done faster, but the deep understanding that drives good decisions starts to fade. This isn’t anti-AI—it’s about intentional AI use.

In this session, I’ll share what I’ve learned about finding the balance, then open it up for discussion. Whether you’re leading content strategy, digital transformation, product development, or organizational change, we’ll explore together:
* How to recognize when AI is helping versus replacing your thinking
* Practical ways to maintain strategic depth while leveraging AI’s speed
* When to deliberately choose the slower, harder path
* How to guide teams through this transition

Let’s figure out how to stay sharp in the age of instant answers.

AI content assistants are smart — but until now, they’ve been terrible team players. Enter the Model Context Protocol (MCP): the missing link that finally lets your CMS and your AI tools speak the same language.

In this practical session, Bastian Sirved from Sutsche shows how MCP turns messy, one-off integrations into plug-and-play workflows that actually work. You’ll see what it looks like when AI doesn’t just generate text, but understands your content structures, metadata, and brand voice — right inside your CMS.

Expect a live look at what’s possible today, what’s coming next, and why MCP might be the biggest shift in content tech since the WYSIWYG editor.

Remember when we believed good design would make the world a better place? That if we just worked hard enough, companies would see its value and put people first? Yeah… about that.

At the moment, user-centered design can feel more like a nice-to-have. Shareholder value trumps building products people actually want, AI gimmicks flood the backlogs, restructurings hit mid-project, and layoffs abound. It’s enough to make even the most optimistic designer question their job choice.

But before you go full nihilist, hear me out: pessimism might actually be our best tool to get through this. The hopeful kind—one that sharpens our strategies, helps us play the long game, and makes designers harder to sideline. Let’s talk about why pessimism makes us stronger
strategists.

Meet at the registration desk for a small guided tour of Aarhus
Highlights include Hesitation of Light, former Gestapo HQ, Latin Quarter, Endless Connections, Magic Mushrooms, and the famous Rainbow Panorama.

On the evening of Conference Day #1, everybody who has arrived in Aarhus is welcome to join us for an informal evening dinner in a nice setting.

Our friends at Manyone at hosting us on Åboulevarden 31 and the pizzas will be from Il Locale