As artificial intelligence reshapes the nature of work, LinkedIn’s Workplace team is advancing its flexible workplace strategy by reimagining how physical space supports emerging forms of collaboration. This session will present insights from recent research, including 40 leadership interviews, and findings from an 11-week experiment designed to test dedicated, AI-embedded environments for small, autonomous, cross-functional teams ("pods").
The “Pod Work Area” pilot at LinkedIn’s headquarters assigned two pods (9 and 13 members) to dedicated zones with sit-stand desks, collaborative spaces, and Agile Project Rooms equipped with agentic technology. Using surveys, interviews, observations, and simulations, the pilot explored how proximity, space design, and embedded AI help close the gap between decision-making and execution while fostering performance and psychological safety.
This talk offers a glimpse into how LinkedIn—operating in 35+ global offices with 25,000+ employees—is preparing for a future where collaboration is faster, smarter, and more human.

As AI changes the nature of work, the office has a new performance brief: to support the human interactions that drive trust, creativity, learning, and culture. This panel explores how organisations are reimagining the workplace as purposeful social infrastructure — designing spaces, experiences and behaviours that make collaboration more intentional, connection more meaningful, and time together more valuable.

Hybrid work is no longer an experiment, but many teams are still being managed with habits designed for office-based work. Drawing on current research into high-performing, healthy and sustainable hybrid teams, this session offers practical guidance for managers and workplace leaders navigating the post-hybrid reality. Lynette Caruso will explore what needs to change in communication, collaboration, team cohesion and technology use — and what organisations can do to create the culture, tools and workplace settings that help hybrid teams perform.

Organisations are collecting more workplace data than ever before - from building management systems and environmental sensors to utilisation platforms and employee experience tools. Yet many are still grappling with how effectively this information is shaping workplace decisions. This panel will explore how organisations are beginning to connect these previously separate data streams, linking operational building data with workplace insights to better understand how environments perform. The discussion will examine where evidence is genuinely informing strategy, where decisions are still driven by narrative or instinct, and how organisations can bridge the gap between data, organisational storytelling, and the lived experience of employees in the workplace.

Do workplaces increasingly look alike? If so, what does this mean for how design firms compete with one another, and how can innovation thrive in such a context? Drawing on analysis of competitive networks and industry interviews, this session examines the systemic drivers of normative and mimetic pressures shaping workplace design, within tendering processes and design awards. Rather than offering a critique of aesthetics, Sameness by Design reframes similarity as a structural market outcome with advantages and risks. Attendees will learn to recognise competitive convergence and respond strategically by differentiating, innovating, or deliberately leveraging sameness.

This futuring workshop uses design-led thinking and prospection to imagine how emerging possibilities may shape tomorrow’s workplace—and how choices made now can influence what unfolds next. Through speculative design and core foresight methods, participants will explore how robotics could become embedded in everyday office environments, not as novelty but as normal practice. The session invites reflection on how this shift may redefine work patterns, human–machine collaboration, and the lived experience of the workplace, supporting more intentional and future-responsive design decisions.

Many organisations have given teams access to AI tools, but far fewer have turned that access into meaningful adoption, productivity or better decision-making. This practical, demo-led session shows workplace, property and people leaders what effective AI use looks like in real workflows — from analysing space and facilities data to improving communication, risk review and planning. Tam Galahena will share a simple framework for identifying where AI can create value, and what to prioritise first.

Your mindset doesn’t exist in a vacuum, your environment shapes it. In this session, Marcus Rose, CEO of Valeo Technology, reveals how Moodsonic adaptive sound scaping and other sensory technology is transforming how workplaces feel, function, and perform. Drawing on award-winning projects across APAC, Marcus explores the neuroscience of sound, how intelligent sensory systems respond in real time to support focus, collaboration, and wellbeing, and why sound is the most overlooked and most powerful dimension of workplace design.

This session presents applied geospatial intelligence workflows through real projects, including the 3d model of digital twin, plant intelligence portals, and large-scale suitability and scenario modelling. It demonstrates how GeoAI, GIS, and digital twins move beyond visualisation into decision-support systems, enabling site selection, climate-responsive planning, and evidence-based design. The session will unpack how spatial data is structured, analysed, and translated into actionable insights, supporting planners, designers, and asset owners in making faster, more informed, and future-ready decisions

White Fox Boutique – Australia’s globally ascending Gen Z fashion brand – has just moved into a purpose-built 13,000sqm workplace precinct in Sydney. This session offers a rare inside look at how a youth-driven, multi-million social media brand translates its identity, culture, and ambition into a physical workplace ecosystem. Kate Gibson (PMG Group, workplace strategy lead) and Anika Meza (White Fox, Head of People & Culture) reveal the unexpected lessons, the bold people and brand-led design decisions, and the early results for talent attraction and retention.