Canva Create Conference 2024

 

My director at work is always encouraging me to invest in my professional development, so I’ve been looking for courses or conferences I might be able to attend this summer.

I stumbled upon Canva Creates, a conference dedicated to everything Canva featuring new product launches and keynote speakers with topics on branding, other workshops to see their tools in action and more. I’d thought about just watching the keynotes online, but after mentioning to my best friend/coworker about this opportunity, it seemed like the kind of event we should attend in person. We invited a couple other coworkers/friends from our Events team to join, and we were ready to go.

We drove down to LA the afternoon before, which took us about three hours to get there, because we were stuck in crazy traffic - the usual. It was fun catching up with the gals and laughing about ridiculous things that can only come from a road trip such as this one, HA!

 

 

We all got settled into our rooms and freshened up a bit. Then, we met our friends down at the hotel restaurant for dinner. Merry had stayed and eaten at the hotel before, but apparently it was on the roof (which was closed for a private Canva event that we were not invited to). The food was not so great. I decided to order a Greek salad, which is usually a standard thing I order at a lot of restaurants. But, always listen to the Greek at the table who advises against it…Because it was terrible. There was nothing on it that would identify it as a Greek salad (no feta, olives…Nothing). I’m not even sure exactly what dressing it was, it had some kind of mustard aftertaste. BLECH! Just did not do the trick, you know? Merry was sweet and shared some of her food with me.

After dinner, we just decided to call it a night and return to our respective rooms. Athena and I went back to ours, got ready for bed, then just talked and read our books for awhile. We were in bed by 8 or so. Probably the earliest I’ve ever gone to bed. But, we knew the next day was going to be long and we’d have to get up early.

We’d planned to get up early so we had enough time to grab breakfast and coffee before getting to the YouTube Theater/SoFi Stadium area where the conference was held. I didn’t sleep all that well, since I’d had a migraine coming on all afternoon, and woke up at 4:30 or so, without being able to fall back to sleep. So we got up and around, packed our suitcases and were ready to go by 7. We were still waiting for the others, so we went to the same restaurant as the previous night, to see what they had for breakfast. It was a buffet, so we decided to just take our chances and do that. It was decent…I kept it simple with a croissant, quiche bites, yogurt, orange juice and coffee.

We went back to the room after to wait a few minutes and grab our things, then met the others in the lobby. Then, we stopped at Target and Starbucks before the conference, then made our way over to the stadium. We had to wait for a bit to check in, but it went quickly enough.

As soon as we walked through the gate, there were several stations set up with fun photo opportunities, a rainbow colored arch, a DIY bag station and more. It was sensory overload as we walked into the theater, but made a note of what was out there and what we’d want to do. We got settled into the theater, each one with a hat and light up bracelet. Each hat had a different saying, which was so fun!

The opening session was complete with trivia, information on the new roll outs for each department from creatives to the analysts, which had me very excited to put some of those things into practice when we returned to the office. There were even dancers and skits…It was quite the opening show.

Next up, we heard from Bob Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company about building an iconic brand. It was neat to see someone like him in the flesh and hear about Disney’s storytelling, the projects they have coming up, like Inside Out 2, but I wish the talk would have focused more on the actual title of the talk with bullet points or lessons around that. Something we would be able to apply.

After that, it was time for lunch, so we went to the concession stand to order. I decided to skip lunch and figured I’d just get a snack later (big mistake). We weren’t able to bring in outside food or drinks, so that was another bummer.

Once we’d eaten, we walked around the booths to see what we could do next. Everything was very packed. Sessions were already full, so we took a breather inside where it was cooler and tried to decide our next step. I had a migraine, so I was trying to rest it off a little before the next phase and took more medicine/drank water. After a few minutes, Athena and I decided to go check things out. For the rest of the time, we did our own thing and Jane and Merry went to other sessions.

 

• We DIY’d our bags at the Canva station with patches and the phrase we wanted;
• Went to a session entitled: “Keeping It Creative: Empowering Filmmakers to Bring Their Vision to Life with ColorCreative” (founded by Issa Rae in 2014);
• We took photos at the photo stations with desk setups and the other fun setups they had;We waited in line to get our headshot taken, but it wasn’t moving very quickly and we weren’t feeling totally camera ready, so we moved on; and
• We went into one of the demonstrations of the new tools being used in Canva, like the Magic Write and so on.

 

 

 

Then, we went inside to find a snack, but decided to skip it and just went in to get seats for the final keynote of the day with Mindy Kaling. Mindy has been one of my biggest writing inspirations, so I was excited to hear whatever she had to say. Again, this talk was entitled, “Building and Growing Your Personal Brand,” but it didn’t go with that topic at all. It was the editor-in-chief from The Hollywood Reporter, so I was expecting it to be great. Overall, the questions felt a little awkward and strangely phrased, which I was surprised about. I enjoyed hearing about Mindy’s projects and what it’s like for her to juggle everything, but it wasn't necessarily anything that I could apply to my work.

We reunited with Merry and Jane, hopped in the car and headed back home.

Sidenote: All day, we were able to see the planes flying overhead from LAX. My dad is a sucker for that, so occasionally I sent him pictures. It's so cool to be at this huge stadium and see the planes up above.

 The car ride is always one of my most favorite parts of a trip - You can learn so much about a person. And we had about three hours with each other again. We told random stories, laughed hysterically and debriefed the conference. We did stop about halfway for a McDonald’s fix for dinner, then made it back to work to pick up our cars and make the trek home. 

We were all exhausted, but thankfully we have tomorrow off to recuperate, which I absolutely need before Disneyland on Saturday. 

Can't wait to tell you all about it! 

--Shelby