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Two installations, two summits, two years — one wired to AI, one built on ideas.
Across the Autodesk Design & Make Summit in 2025 and 2026, both at Telstra's Customer Insight Centre in Sydney, we built two distinct interactive pieces around the venue's curved LED Insight Ring — one a nostalgia-driven AI diagnostic, one a collective ideas board. Different mechanics, same goal: turn a conference floor into somewhere people actually engage instead of scroll past.For the Autodesk Design & Make Summit 2026 in Sydney, we built two distinct interactive pieces around the venue's curved LED Insight Ring — one a nostalgia-driven AI diagnostic, one a collective ideas board. Different mechanics, same goal: turn a conference floor into somewhere people actually engage instead of scroll past.
AI Readiness Hotline
What we did
We gutted three vintage analogue telephones, rebuilt them with modern microphones and hidden hook-switch sensors, and wired each one into a live AI voice engine. Pick up the handset and you're straight into a natural conversation that profiles your organisation's AI maturity — Experimenting, Implementing, Integrating or Orchestrating — with the result printed on the spot from an in-plinth thermal printer. Three matching LED walls ran idle and live-call states in Autodesk's "Hello Yellow", so the whole partnership hub knew the second a line went live.
Why it worked
49 people picked up the phone, 23 stuck around for a full diagnostic — a 47% completion rate for something offering zero incentive beyond curiosity. Nearly four in five results landed in the earliest two AI-maturity stages, real data Autodesk can now use in every sales conversation that follows. Attendees came from Arcadis, GHD, Cox Architecture, Mott MacDonald, Worley and more of Autodesk's own AEC client base — proof this wasn't a gimmick, it was a working diagnostic tool wearing a nostalgia costume. It's since been expanded into a three-city activation for September 2026.
Digital Campfire
What we did
At the centre of Telstra's Customer Insight Centre — inside its curved Insight Ring — we built a holographic campfire from real logs and a custom flame-hologram rig. Attendees typed an idea on their phone and hit send; a webhook triggered a hidden fan that kicked the flames higher in real time, while the surrounding ring of screens sparked in response. Every submission became part of a shared, evolving spectacle.
Why it worked
Every idea submitted was captured and compiled live, then fed straight into the CEO's closing keynote — real, audience-sourced input on what people wanted to see improved at Autodesk, delivered back to the room within hours of being typed on a phone. 92 customers and prospects took part with zero incentive beyond curiosity. It gave a busy summit floor a genuine calm, reflective moment, became the natural photo backdrop for press and social coverage, and reinforced Autodesk's own themes of creativity and collaboration without a single mention of software features.
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