Workshops & Design Tours
Workshops offered a deeper dive and more intensive onsite learning experience at NeoCon. Design Tours featured designer led tours of the new Salesforce Tower in Chicago.
2023 Workshops
Workshop
The Power of YOU: Designing Your Personal Brand for Growth
Aaron Estabrook, Director, Digital Marketing, OFS
In today's digital age, networking, and online presence have become essential for personal and professional success. To stand out, it's crucial to develop a clear, credible, and powerful personal brand. In this interactive workshop, led by branding expert Aaron Estabrook, participants will learn how to apply branding principles to create a magnetic and visible personal brand. Through hands-on exercises and group discussions, participants will discover how to turn their personal brand into a mission that inspires and engages others. They will also learn how to effectively communicate their brand through social media and in-person interactions, with ready-to-use tactics that will set them up for success. By the end of the workshop, participants will have a clear understanding of how to present themselves as a powerful and impactful brand in the design industry and how to leverage their personal brand that is built for success to unlock new opportunities in their career and life.
Presenter: Aaron Estabrook, Director, Digital Marketing, OFS
Aaron Estabrook is a digital marketing professional, keynote speaker, and communications consultant with over 15 years of experience developing social media and online marketing solutions for such brands as OFS, The Academy Awards, Mayo Clinic, Bridgestone Tires, and Lockheed Martin.
Aaron began his career helping music executives and record labels leverage social media for globally known musicians and music festivals. He then transitioned to advertising agencies in New York and DC, where his expertise in digital media and branding took him to clients in the Middle-East, Europe, and across North America.
Today, Aaron is the Director of Digital Marketing for OFS, overseeing media and communications strategy, which includes Imagine a Place, an industry-leading podcast network, video series, and print magazine dedicated to inspiring, educating, and connecting the design community.
Aaron holds a bachelor of arts from Indiana University with a focus on Communication and Media Studies, and a master's of communication from Ball State University.
Workshop
Understanding ESG & How to Optimize Your Client's ESG Goals Using Product Intelligence
Susan Suhar, Interior Design Director, HDR | JoAnna Abrams, CEO, MindClick
Your clients’ needs are changing. They are facing mandatory ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) reporting requirements, and they need data that can help them track and measure progress on ESG related issues connected to your project, and the products you design and specify. Is your team prepared to support your clients with these requirements?
Design teams and firm leaders are invited to join MindClick and HDR to learn more about ESG and to understand how to design and specify in a way that helps clients achieve and report on their ESG goals such as net-zero carbon emissions, waste reduction, circularity, healthy materials, and their DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) story.
Through a practical, hands-on workshop, you will gain access to design decision tools to make informed, responsible product choices that support your clients’ ESG goals. You will also learn how to share with clients the measurable, performance impact story of your design and specification choices, demonstrating your firm’s expertise and leadership in environmental and social responsibility.
Workshop
Decolonizing the Design Process: A Community Workshop for a New Era of Creativity
Rhea Vaflor, IIDA, CIDQ, LEED AP, Director of Lifestyle/Trendcasting, Hickok Cole
An interactive workshop for design professionals who are interested in cultivating an intentional and joyful design process dedicated to equity, and inclusion. The workshop features an exploration of conventional design processes and how they no longer serve our societal or personal needs. Attendees will learn about a project in Tulsa, OK for the Greenwood neighborhood, participate in self-inquiry exercises to catalyze their own paths, and join small group breakouts for community building and share insights via Mentimeter. The workshop is for everyone regardless of where they are in their design journeys.
Presenter: Rhea (Ray-ah) Vaflor thrives on building meaningful relationships in all realms. Her design curiosity is grounded in how community, purpose and creativity interweave with each other. Professionally, she serves the dual roles of the Director of Hickok Cole Lifestyle, an award-winning boutique interior design studio and also as the firm’s Director of Trendcasting, a role that focuses on the analysis of cultural/economic movements and design trends. Her design work her work has been recognized by the IIDA MAC, Design Milk, Hospitality Snapshots, and Multi-Housing News, In her civic life, Rhea’s is an active member of the IIDA Equity Council , serves as the current Washington DC Chair of Urban Land Institute's Women’s Leadership Institute, and the Founder and Chief Co-Creator of Ligaya League, a design trust for joy-based creativity.
Workshop
BRAND New You: A Personal Branding Workshop for Emerging Professionals
Aaron Estabrook, Director, Digital Marketing, OFS
"Brand New You" is a personal branding workshop designed specifically for emerging professionals who want to establish a strong and memorable personal brand. In today's competitive job market, it's more important than ever to stand out and make a lasting impression on potential employers and clients. Through interactive exercises and group discussions, this workshop will guide participants through the process of identifying their unique strengths, values, and goals, and help them create a personal brand that authentically reflects who they are and what they want to achieve in their careers. Participants will learn how to communicate their personal brand effectively through social media, in-person, and networking opportunities. By the end of the workshop, participants will have the tools and confidence they need to present themselves as a "brand new" and highly visible candidate in the design industry.
Presenter: Aaron Estabrook, Director, Digital Marketing, OFS
Aaron Estabrook is a digital marketing professional, keynote speaker, and communications consultant with over 15 years of experience developing social media and online marketing solutions for such brands as OFS, The Academy Awards, Mayo Clinic, Bridgestone Tires, and Lockheed Martin.
Aaron began his career helping music executives and record labels leverage social media for globally known musicians and music festivals. He then transitioned to advertising agencies in New York and DC, where his expertise in digital media and branding took him to clients in the Middle-East, Europe, and across North America.
Today, Aaron is the Director of Digital Marketing for OFS, overseeing media and communications strategy, which includes Imagine a Place, an industry-leading podcast network, video series, and print magazine dedicated to inspiring, educating, and connecting the design community.
Aaron holds a bachelor of arts from Indiana University with a focus on Communication and Media Studies, and a master's of communication from Ball State University.
2023 Design Tours
Tour
Design Tour of Salesforce’s Reimagined Workplace - Tour 1 and 2
Pietro Silva, Principal, Design Director, IA Interior Architects
Melanie Lowe, Director, Global Workplace Design, Salesforce
Kick off NeoCon week with a special tour of Salesforce Tower Chicago, Pelli Clarke Pelli’s latest project at the edge of the Chicago River, just steps away from THE MART.
Take a guided tour inside the first phase of Salesforce’s next-generation workplace, known as Design 2.0, hosted by Salesforce and their design partner, IA Interior Architects. The pandemic provided an opportunity to build on a rich foundation of global design standards, a unique culture and years of pandemic-accelerated discoveries. See how Salesforce has adapted their spaces to meet the needs of employees today through a number of targeted design strategies. Hear more about the unique challenges and solutions the team embraced (on an in-flight project no less) in this new world of work to prioritize flexibility and choice as primary motivators while maximizing collaboration, the opportunities for connection and even ‘focus’ as a destination.
Presenters:
Pietro Silva is Principal and Design Director for IA Interior Architects. Pietro, who has focused on the balanced integration of architecture and interiors for more than 30 years, was educated in Italy at the “Politecnico di Milano” where he received his Master of Architecture and brings an international design perspective to his work. Pietro’s conceptual abilities and attention to detail have led to his involvement in a vast array of projects, including global headquarters and corporate offices interiors, financial institutions, hospitality projects, retail and restaurant design. His dynamic approach and his collaborative nature to bring teams together is evident in the success of projects for global companies such Salesforce, Google, Amazon, HPE, Mercedes-Benz and many others.
Melanie Lowe is Director of Global Workplace Design for Salesforce's Real Estate and Workplace Services team and is tasked with bringing the company’s culture and values to life through its workspaces. Through an extensive portfolio of office and hospitality projects, Melanie is responsible for shaping the company's global design standards, which promote a consistent employee experience in the built environment at scale. These last few years, she has been focused on adapting a pre-pandemic design strategy into impactful solutions to meet the changing needs of Salesforce employees. Following many successful decades in marketing and technology, Melanie pivoted to a career in design as her lifelong passion. She is a native of Canada and currently resides in San Francisco after over a decade of living in Europe and Asia.