Beyond the canvas: Accelerating the creative engine
How do we move AI from prompting experiments to production-grade workflows and the cultural shifts required to scale a full-stack creative engine?
The architecture of craft is shifting. The traditional "hand-off" between design intent and engineering reality is being replaced by a direct, AI-native pipeline. We are moving away from static canvases toward "living" systems where vibe coding and autonomous agents turn ideas into production software in real-time.
Every high-performance team needs this infrastructure, but off-the-shelf solutions won't cut it. We must build the culture and the tooling ourselves.
We’re bringing together product and engineering leaders for an intimate evening at OVO Notting Hill.
Agenda:
18:00 - 18:30 Arrivals: Refreshments, Food & networking.
18:30 - 19:10 Scene Setting talks: 10min Flash talks from each speaker
19:10 - 19:40 The Synthesis: A moderated fireside chat on culture and craft.
19:40 - 20:00 Q&A: Open-source discussion.
20:00 Post-Session: Networking
Speakers:
Thom Rimmer - VP of Product Design - Intercom
Thom leads Product Design at Intercom, overseeing Web, Growth, and Design Infrastructure. A builder at heart with 20 years’ experience, he specialises in turning design into a strategic lever and embedding design maturity into a company’s DNA. Recently, Thom has been pivotal in transforming Intercom’s legacy SaaS environment into an AI-first platform, architecting the high-performing, "full-stack" teams required to deliver products in the agentic era.
Jim Drury - Head of Platform Innovation - VMO2
As Head of Frontend Technologies at Virgin Media O2, Jim drives developer platform strategies and pioneering team building. His work is instrumental in fostering collaborative engineering teams that push the boundaries of technological development.
Pip Rustage - Kick ass photographer!
Pip is a commercial photographer specializing in the intersection of physical craft and synthetic generation. Her work focuses on integrating AI-generative plates within Virtual Production (VP) volumes—bridging the gap between human-authored reality and software-driven environments. Working with global brands, Pip advocates for the ethics of craft and explores how brand values are preserved as the camera lens evolves into a generative engine.
Jacinto DeMatos & Rob Wright - Waitrose
Jacinto and Rob lead the end-to-end product design engine at Waitrose, bridging heritage brand values with AI-native workflows. Their work focuses on the systemic integration of AI into journey mapping and prototyping—moving beyond silos to create production-ready design logic. Together, they explore how high-trust brands maintain consistency and craft as the distance between design intent and implementation collapses.