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2026 itinerary Los Angeles   Oct 16 to 18

Three days.
One useful arc.

Arrive with a hard question. Leave with clearer decisions, new working relationships, and enough energy to use what you learned.

Doors open
Friday at noon
Program ends
Sunday at 5:30 PM
Farewell breakfast
Monday at 8:30 AM
Daily rhythm
Sessions, work, meals

01Friday
October 16

Arrive and connect

A low pressure opening afternoon that gets everyone oriented before the first full day.

Arrival

Registration and lobby coffee

Badge pickup, hotel check in window, and an unhurried first hello.

Opening

Welcome to Hard Refresh

How the weekend works, who is in the room, and the questions worth carrying through it.

Conversation

The work behind the launch

An honest look at what happens between the polished announcement and the product people actually use.

Roundtables

What are you trying to solve?

Small guided conversations that surface shared problems, useful experience, and possible collaborators.

City time

Neighborhood walk and reset

A short optional walk before the evening table opens.

Shared meal

The welcome table

Dinner together with no presentation, pitch deck, or assigned networking.

02Saturday
October 17

Build together

The most technical day, built around practical decisions and work people can take home.

Breakfast

Coffee, breakfast, and open room

A quiet start with tables open for informal conversations.

Field notes

Five things worth carrying into the room

Short perspectives from builders working across engineering, product, trust, and operations.

Session

Systems that survive success

How architecture, teams, and operating habits change after the first version works.

Workshop

Designing the failure path

A hands on exercise for creating products that remain understandable when things go wrong.

Lunch

One room lunch

A shared meal with topic cards available for anyone who wants a starting point.

Working session

AI beyond the prototype

From promising demo to reliable system: data, evaluation, guardrails, cost, and human judgment.

Office hours

Bring the hard problem

Small group problem solving with peers who have built, repaired, shipped, or learned from something similar.

Debrief

What changed today?

A fast room wide synthesis before the evening break.

Shared meal

Saturday dinner

Dinner and conversation, followed by an optional informal gathering nearby.

03Sunday
October 18

Go deeper

A day for trust, product judgment, honest postmortems, and the human side of technical work.

Breakfast

Open room

Breakfast, coffee, and space to continue Saturday conversations.

Session

Trust is part of the product

Security, privacy, accessibility, and resilience as design work rather than a final checklist.

Postmortems

What broke and what changed

Short, practical accounts of decisions that failed, signals that were missed, and systems that improved afterward.

Lunch

Working lunch

Optional topic tables for product craft, independent work, leadership, and career change.

Studio

Make the complicated useful

A collaborative critique of workflows, interfaces, and explanations that ask too much from people.

Conversation

Building without burning out

A candid conversation about sustainable pace, ambition, responsibility, and the shape of good work.

Open agenda

The room chooses

Attendee proposed sessions selected during the weekend.

Closing

Conference close

Shared patterns, unresolved questions, and a clear end to the official conference program.

04Monday
October 19

Farewell breakfast

A quick optional breakfast for anyone still in Los Angeles before the trip home.

Breakfast

One last coffee

A short farewell breakfast with no sessions, presentations, or required programming.

Departure

Head home

Breakfast wraps and the rest of Monday stays open for travel.

A working itinerary

Specific enough to plan.
Flexible enough to improve.

Session order and exact timing may shift as the venue and program are finalized. Selected attendees will receive the confirmed venue, accessibility details, neighborhood guide, and calendar file before travel must be booked.

Enter the seat draw