By Janus Boye
Our annual collab meeting returned to Hamburg in late November, once again generously hosted by adesso. The atmosphere was exactly what makes this community special: curious, informal, quietly ambitious and rooted in shared practice.
People arrived from across industries and regions, filling the room with a mix that has become a hallmark of these meetings. Enterprise leaders from SAP and Adobe sat alongside public-sector teams from Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, product companies like Cognigy, CoreMedia, Staffbase, and StreamX, and a strong delegation from agency members including B13, Monday Consulting, and Sitegeist. The result felt less like an event and more like a working session with friends.
This year’s agenda reflected the shifts we are all navigating: AI’s growing influence on design and content, new expectations in public services, the ongoing grind of accessibility, the realities of governance and compliance, and the very human work of values, culture and craft. Below is a talk-by-talk reflection, each with a short takeaway.
You can jump directly to any session using the table of contents:
Agentic AI reality check
The UX value shift in the age of AI
The future of designers with Figma Make and other AI tools
Accessibility in the real world: tagging, tooling, and the next round of fixes
Values travel differently
Shaping a better experience for online services in Hamburg
How open source is modernising public administration in Schleswig-Holstein
The new kind of content: designed for humans and agents
A more trustworthy & agile alternative to moving fast & breaking things
The journey to a dotBrand
On high-performance coaching
The design of gingerbread things
Opening, welcome and reflections for 2026
Our host Klaas Klaasen opened with a reflection on the past year and what the community is gearing up for in 2026……
2. Agentic AI reality check
Marc offered one of the clearest explanations of agentic AI we have heard this year. Coming from Cognigy, he brings firsthand experience with organisations actively deploying agent-driven workflows rather than simply talking about them. His message was both pragmatic and hopeful: agentic AI is not magic, nor is it far-off theory. It is already working in specific, bounded use cases — but only when paired with disciplined processes and strong data foundations.
He showed how many AI initiatives fail not because the models are bad, but because the surrounding systems are messy. Enterprises often underestimate the orchestration required: governance, handover logic, fallback paths, testing frameworks and clear boundaries. Marc emphasised that hype cycles tend to obscure the truth that agentic systems behave unpredictably when poorly scoped.
Ultimately, he argued that success in 2026 will come from teams who approach AI not as something to “bolt on”, but as a capability that must be designed, constrained and supervised like any other operational system.
Key takeaway: Agentic AI works — but only when expectations, boundaries and underlying processes are mature.
3. The UX value shift in the age of AI
Vladimir, speaking from his vantage point at SAP, examined how UX as a discipline is being reshaped by AI. He highlighted that as interfaces become more dynamic and predictive, the designer’s craft increasingly shifts from screen-level design to system-level orchestration. Instead of controlling every detail, designers must now shape flows, feedback loops and behavioural patterns that evolve over time.
He explained that enterprise UX in particular is being transformed by AI-enhanced tooling and intelligent assistants embedded in core workflows. This changes what users expect: not just clarity, but guidance; not just consistency, but adaptation. The role of UX expands into trust-building, ethical guardrails and designing for edge cases where AI may misinterpret intent.
Vladimir reinforced that the future designer must be comfortable with ambiguity, data and continuous learning. The tools will become faster and more automated, but the responsibility for shaping meaningful, humane experiences grows heavier.
Key takeaway: AI elevates UX from designing screens to designing behaviours, trust and long-term system dynamics.
4. The future of designers with Figma Make and other AI tools
Stephanie brought an inside view of what happens when AI-driven design tools like Figma Make land in a real organisation. Fielmann’s design team is already experimenting with automated UI generation, exploration and prototyping. What struck many in the room was her candour: these tools make some parts of design radically faster, but they also introduce new coordination challenges.
She walked through how Figma Make can turn a text description into multiple design variations within seconds, reshaping the ideation process. Designers spend less time pushing pixels and more time interpreting, aligning and deciding. But as she noted, the democratisation of design — where product managers, engineers and others can generate prototypes independently — creates both opportunity and tension.
Stephanie explored emerging roles, such as “Experience Orchestrators”, who connect strategy, systems and team alignment. She also stressed the importance of curiosity and critical thinking: AI can generate patterns at speed, but only humans can recognise when something meaningful is missing.
Key takeaway: AI accelerates design work but increases the need for alignment, interpretation and system-level thinking.
5. Accessibility in the real world
Florian’s talk was grounded, honest and refreshingly practical. Speaking from B13’s experience supporting TYPO3 clients, he described a landscape where everyone has known the accessibility issues for years — but momentum only emerged as regulatory deadlines approached. He shared stories of organisations that treated accessibility as a last-minute add-on instead of a fundamental design principle.
He walked through examples from their audits: inconsistent tagging, inaccessible colour contrast, missing alt texts, and modules that behaved unpredictably with assistive technologies. Automation, he noted, can help but is never the full solution. Manual testing and real user insight remain central, and tools often introduce new problems when used without expertise.
Florian also highlighted that accessibility is not purely technical. It requires better conceptual thinking, clearer structures, and more empathy. Improvements made for accessibility often make the experience better for everyone — faster navigation, clearer content, fewer cognitive hurdles.
Key takeaway: Accessibility succeeds not through tools but through consistent habits, expertise and intentional design.
6. Values travel differently
Rieke shared a personal reflection on her first eight months at Umbraco, focusing on the company’s core values — trust, respect, openness, hunger and friendliness — and how they manifest differently across cultures. She explained that while values themselves remain constant, their expression shifts subtly across regions, teams and histories. Partner management, as she framed it, is the work of understanding these shifts and translating values so they feel authentic everywhere.
She described scenarios where well-intended behaviours were interpreted differently depending on cultural context: directness mistaken for criticism, enthusiasm mistaken for lack of seriousness, or openness misread as indecision. Her insight was that values cannot simply be communicated; they must be enacted in ways that resonate locally.
Rieke offered a compelling argument for humility and listening. Values travel through people, not documents, and leaders must adapt how they carry them without diluting their essence. In a globally distributed ecosystem like Umbraco’s, this work is central to building long-term relationships.
In brief: Values are universal in principle but local in practice; bridging that gap is active, ongoing work.
7. Shaping a better experience for online services in Hamburg – Svenja
Svenja presented the City of Hamburg’s efforts to improve digital public services, an area that touches millions of citizens. She described the complexity of modernising services built over decades and involving multiple agencies. Even small improvements often require navigating policy constraints, legacy systems and fragmented responsibilities.
Yet her talk was far from pessimistic. Svenja showcased how user experience methods are increasingly finding their way into public administration: user research, journey mapping and iterative design. She highlighted emerging opportunities where service patterns can be unified, and where newly digitised processes can be made significantly more intuitive.
Her most resonant point was that citizen expectations are shaped by the commercial tools they use daily. Public digital services do not compete with each other — they compete with the best experience people have anywhere.
Key takeaway: Public-sector UX succeeds when small, structured improvements accumulate into meaningful change for citizens.
8. How open source is modernising public administration in Schleswig-Holstein – Anja
Anja offered a rare look into how open-source approaches are transforming public digital infrastructure. Dataport has been working to modernise systems across Schleswig-Holstein, demonstrating that open-source governance is not only feasible but strategically beneficial. Anja explained how public-sector needs — transparency, longevity, interoperability — align naturally with open-source principles.
She highlighted that open source reduces dependency on proprietary vendors, supports security through transparency and enables public money to fund publicly reusable solutions. Yet she also noted the challenges: procurement models still favour closed solutions, and cultural change in public administration takes time.
Anja illustrated how Schleswig-Holstein is now leveraging open source to improve everything from citizen services to internal systems. The shift requires investment, education and political support, but the long-term advantages are substantial.
Key takeaway: Open source gives public institutions control, transparency and resilience — benefits too important to ignore.
9. The new kind of content: designed for humans and agents – Kevin
Kevin’s talk from Staffbase was one of the most forward-looking sessions of the day. He argued that most intranet content in the near future will be consumed by AI agents before it is ever read by people. As a result, organisations must prepare for dual consumption: humans and machines.
He explained that AI is becoming an intermediary — a gatekeeper — between organisations and their audiences. Whether someone is asking a chatbot about policies, benefits or processes, the quality of the answer depends entirely on the structure, metadata and freshness of the underlying content. Kevin highlighted the importance of facts-first headers, consistent templates and clear ownership.
He also discussed why employees often miss critical information: they do not know what they do not know. AI may help close this gap with proactive delivery, but only when the content is structured and trustworthy. His message was that content strategy is entering a new era where governance, metadata and stewardship are strategic capabilities.
Key takeaway: To be ready for AI, content must be structured, governed and written for machines as well as humans.
10. A more trustworthy & agile alternative to moving fast & breaking things – Tobi
Tobi brought two decades of enterprise software experience to his talk on agility under heavy regulation. He challenged the myth that compliance and agility are opposites. In fact, he showed that modern engineering practices — code reviews, automated traceability, continuous testing — can satisfy regulatory requirements more rigorously than traditional processes ever did.
He illustrated how many teams misinterpret standards, creating unnecessary bureaucracy that slows them down. Instead, he encouraged teams to focus on principles: independence in review, traceability of decisions, clarity of purpose and evidence of quality. Pull request workflows, he argued, meet or exceed what regulators actually require.
Tobi also pointed out that good tooling reduces bottlenecks without sacrificing control. Automated checks, real-time metrics and risk-based thresholds allow teams to move quickly where appropriate and carefully where necessary.
Key takeaway: Agility and compliance are not in conflict — when understood properly, they reinforce one another.
11. The journey to a dotBrand – LEMARIT
This impromptu session explored a topic many had heard of but few fully understood: the dotBrand. LEMARIT explained that a dotBrand is a top-level domain owned and operated by a single organisation — for example, .brand — giving the company complete control over its own namespace on the internet.
They outlined the benefits across legal, marketing and technical domains. From a branding perspective, a dotBrand provides trust, authenticity and endless creative naming possibilities. From a security perspective, it dramatically reduces attack surfaces, simplifies DNS, improves phishing protection and allows full enforcement of HTTPS and DNSSEC. And from an operational point of view, it consolidates domain strategy and reduces long-term costs.
The timing matters: ICANN’s next application window opens April 2026, and it is not certain when or whether another will follow. Companies interested in controlling their digital real estate must begin preparing now — aligning legal, IT security, marketing and leadership around the value and implications.
Key takeaway: A dotBrand gives organisations unprecedented control over trust, security and digital identity — but preparation for the 2026 window must start now.
12. On high-performance coaching – Adi
Adi closed the day with a talk that bridged competitive sport and organisational life. Drawing on his coaching experience across Swiss, Indian, German and US field hockey systems, he highlighted how culture, energy and behaviour shape collective performance. His message was rooted in deep personal values: hard work, adaptability and belonging.
He introduced Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle — the idea that great teams start with why — and illustrated how purpose anchors behaviour under pressure. Adi also spoke about “buy-in” as a combination of energy and behaviour: what you choose to do, and what you choose not to do. Culture, he reminded us, is a choice, not an accident.
He contrasted teams that merely coexist with those that truly belong to each other, sharing a powerful quote: “We are because you are, and since you are, definitely I am.” For digital teams navigating complexity, volatility and constant change, the parallels with elite sport were unmistakable.
Key takeaway: High performance is built on shared purpose, intentional culture and the behaviours teams choose together.
13. The design of gingerbread things – Hertje
Hertje ended the afternoon with a delightfully creative talk on the “design of gingerbread things”. In contrast to the technical and strategic sessions before it, this talk brought us back to the joy of making. Gingerbread design, as she framed it, is a reminder that craft, constraints and playfulness are universal components of good design.
Her message was that the materials we work with — whether dough, pixels or governance structures — always impose constraints. Mastery comes from embracing these constraints rather than resisting them. In gingerbread design, as in digital work, iteration, testing and a willingness to get messy matter far more than perfection.
The session left the room smiling, grounding us in a shared sense of creativity and craftsmanship.
Key takeaway: Creativity thrives when we embrace constraints, stay curious and allow room for play.
What’s on for 2026
The 2026 calendar is already in motion, with gatherings planned for Düsseldorf and Hamburg early in the year. The conversation naturally continues in our peer groups at conferences in Europe and North America. Why not join us and be a part of it?
If 2025 taught us anything once again, it is that learning happens in community, not isolation — and that the work ahead is made lighter, sharper and more ambitious when we do it together.
This annual Hamburg tradition has been going for a while and you can read the summaries from past years:
What might 2024 bring? (the 2023 end of year meeting)