Join us in Sonoma: A two-day gathering for design leaders
A unique creative leadership event • September 28–29, 2026 • The Stavrand, Sonoma, CA
We’ve been to a lot of conferences over the years. You know the format: a speaker on a stage, a sea of seats, a hallway where the real conversations happen if you’re lucky enough to catch someone before they’re whisked away.
This isn’t that.
We’re partnering with our friends at September Works on the September Work(shop) Leadership Excursion, a two-day gathering of just forty design leaders in Sonoma this fall. The programming is intentionally conversation-first, which means the people you’ll hear from aren’t speakers who parachute in for a keynote and disappear—they’re part of the room. You’ll share meals with them, debate with them over a glass of Sonoma wine, and pick up threads from a morning session over dinner that night.
The theme: coalition building
Here’s the thing we keep hearing from design leaders: creating the design is often the easy part. Getting everyone behind it—your executive team, your cross-functional partners, the skeptics down the hall—that’s where it gets hard.
So we’re spending two days on coalition building, with voices from business, the arts, and politics who’ve done it in wildly different contexts:
Sheryl Cababa — Design strategist, founder of Optimistic Design, and author of Closing the Loop, on what a systems lens reveals about the art of bringing people together.
Bill Burnett — Executive Director of the Stanford Life Design Lab and author of Designing Your Life, on craft and meaning when the tools are changing this fast—and how to build something people want to be part of.
Molly Moon Neitzel — Founder of Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream, who built a business and then used it to help change a city’s minimum wage policy. She’ll share who she had to bring together, who surprised her, and what didn’t work.
Paul Dichter — Writer and producer on Stranger Things, on what a decade inside that writers’ room taught him about turning colliding ideas into something greater than any one person could make.
Andy Allen — Founder of Not Boring Software, on building with conviction and how the community around his work shapes what he builds (and vice versa).
Andrew Evans — A designer-turned-magician, on the real-time trust that forms between a performer and a room full of strangers who’ve agreed to believe.
Why keep it small?
Because forty people can actually talk to each other. Small-group sessions and built-in community time mean you’re not collecting business cards—you’re building the kind of relationships that outlast the event. The whole thing feels less like a conference and more like a working session with people you genuinely want to think alongside.
And the setting doesn’t hurt. We’ll be at The Stavrand in Sonoma, with good food, a wine tasting excursion, a sit-down three-course dinner, and a few surprises we’re keeping under wraps.
The details
When: September 28–29, 2026
Where: The Stavrand, Sonoma, CA
Who: Forty design and business leaders working to make design more impactful inside their organizations
Tickets: Two options—$3,300 includes lodging at The Stavrand, or $2,200 if you’d rather book your own accommodation nearby. Both include all programming, meals, dinners, and the wine tasting.
Spots are genuinely limited (forty means forty), so if this sounds like your kind of room, don’t wait. We’ve already booked many of the tickets, with folks from Fortune 100 companies and brands you know and love.
We’ve got two discounts available for Design Better listeners and members.
The first is $100 off the event for those who book their own accommodation. Use code DBFRIENDS at this link:
The second is $15% off (also offsite accommodation) for Design Better premium members. Link and code after the paywall below.
Need to make the case to your team? There’s a justification letter on the event page to help.
We miss seeing you in person. This is our excuse to fix that.
— Eli & Aarron