Gardens, Not Platforms: Leveraging AI to Design a Better Future

AI is not just a new tool. It represents a new design surface, and the decisions we make today will shape how people live, work, and connect for years to come. But most of the conversation stops at optimization. How to be faster. How to automate. How to scale. This session asks a different question. Not how to keep up, but what to build now that you can.

Speaker: Megan Ducote, relational technologist and design leader building tools for advocacy, community organizing, and civic infrastructure.

In Gardens, Not Platforms, Megan shares what she's learned building with AI, both in her products and her own creative process, and introduces a design philosophy that challenges platform-centered thinking. Where platforms optimize for growth and extract value from interactions, gardens tend for health and create conditions where value renews itself. It's a different way of thinking about what technology is for and who it should serve.

What we'll walk through:
- The current landscape: how today's AI systems, design standards, and incentives are shaping outcomes
- Why the default future is fragile when optimization and scale become the primary design goals
- A futures thinking framework for making sense of where this is all headed
- Design principles for building toward better, more relational outcomes
- Real examples of applying AI with these principles to create gardens, not platforms

You'll enjoy this session if you:
- Design, build, or ship products and want to think more intentionally about what you're creating
- Facilitate groups and are looking for better ways to connect people
- Care about local community, civic infrastructure, or collective sensemaking
- Are curious about local AI and what it means to own your own tools
- Just feel like something is off about the way we use technology and want to talk about it

RSVP today and secure your spot!
Address:
Improving, 10111 Richmond Ave. # 100 · Houston, TX
If you are late or find the doors are locked, knock on the 1st or 2nd window to the left of the entrance or send us a message.
Join us and be part of a community passionate about learning, sharing, and growing together. See you there!
P.S.
When you come to Improving, do not forget to say a secret password: "Code4Y'all".