I’ve often said this event is the best value in our industry, and this year was no exception. And apparently it’s no secret anymore either – there were over 1,000 attendees.

From a personal point of view, I was delighted to give my updated talk “Digging Deep: Leadership Lessons from Eleanor Roosevelt“.  I think it went over really well, even though I forgot to bring the props I had (a giant copy of the Declaration of Human Rights and some postage stamps).  I am also really grateful to Adam Polansky who spent an hour reviewing the talk with me – and to the BigD team for setting up this kind of mentor session opportunity.  I really hope I get to continue with this topic and this talk next year!

Of course, as always, the entire program was a powerhouse of great topics and great speakers. We started the event with Ann Rockley talking about… wait for it… Intelligent Content!  She’s always engaging and entertaining. There was a terrific talk from Brian Sullivan – this year he presented Dante’s 7 deadly sins as a framework for leadership advice in his talk “Leadership Lessons from Design Hell“.  And Karen Bachmann talked about listening skills and awareness – something we can ALL work on.

But the big news from this event was international – they’re going to start up Big Design Latin America!  The first conference should be sometime in 2016 in Quito, Ecuador.  Keep an eye on the Big Design Latin America site for details.