I was contracted by Synapse, the leading entrepreneur support organization in Tampa Bay, as the Director of Design & Innovation Challenges for their 2018 Summit that hosted over 3000 attendees, 250 businesses, and 300 world-class speakers.

Hosted at Amalie Arena, the Tampa Bay Lightning’s hockey arena, the Summit presented the thrilling challenge of designing for the big screen (450 of them to be exact).

At the beginning of the contract, I presented Synapse with a handful of different design directions and ultimately they decided on the slick gradients and sharp angles that would go on to color everything from pre-event marketing to stadium LED ribbons to attendee name badges and printed signage.

The conference consumed the entire arena where businesses showcased their products and speakers gave workshops to the attendees. Here you can find the custom maps I designed that were used to navigate the venue.

Every “Hub” had a theme and needed to be easily identified via the various ribbons and screens around the arena.

Every attendee left with a bunch of goodies including these die-cut reflective stickers that I designed and sourced for maximum oomph.

On top of leading design for the conference, I organized and hosted five “Innovation Challenges” which consisted of investor pitches, a showcase of local startups, a social enterprise pitch competition, and two corporate-sponsored hackathons. Having run these for my own non-profit, I was ready to get my hands dirty meeting with our sponsors’ executive leadership teams, writing design briefs, marketing the events, jumping on stage, and ensuring fair play.

We awarded over $15,000 in cash prizes to new businesses and social enterprises that have gone on to launch successful ventures in our community.

Check out the summit recap video below to see how it all went down.