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Back in April, I wrote about what happens to volume when content gets cheap. But lately, I've been reflecting on a bigger question: What is content actually for? For years, content was the last step in the production line. Shoot the product, publish the assets, move on. But AI is changing that. As content gets faster and cheaper to make, and more closely tied to product and customer data, it stops being the end of production and starts becoming part of how the business sells and responds to customers. So, for every team building new systems right now, the real choice is this: Are you building for content that gets delivered, or content that keeps working? That's the question Tejs Rasmussen, my co-founder, and I will take on at the opening of the Creative Summit. I'll cover where I see the industry heading, and Tejs will share how we're building Creative Force and Dreem to get us there. We won't walk in with all the answers, but I think it's the right question to spend three days on. If you want to be in that room, the application link is in the comments.

Most teams are still working out AI in content production on their own, comparing notes with no one. We just published the first names coming to the Creative Summit, and every one of them runs this problem at scale, in-house: • Matthias Haase, who leads content solutions at Zalando. • Charisse Kennedy, studio operations, and Nastasya Clark, marketing operations, both at SanMar. • Guido Goffeau, AI creative technologies at Colruyt. • Jason Wheeler, program management at Columbia Sportswear. • Maxine Fertig-Cohen, creative operations and imagery at Nuuly. • Clair Carter-Ginn at Forecast. • Shawna McKenzie, corporate photography at Costco. And that's the first look; we’re confirming more every week between now and November. The Creative Summit is an application-only gathering in Spain this November, where creative and production leaders work through the hard questions of AI off the record. We ran it in Amsterdam and Austin, and both times the useful part was the same: the conversation between people who recognized each other's problems at a glance. This is the room those names are walking into. If yours should be in it too, the list is worth a look.

Later today, Columbia Sportswear opens a studio almost no one outside the building gets to see: A thirty-five-minute webinar inside a team that shoots 20,000 products a year, then Jason Wheeler and Jean-François Ortiz will take questions live. It’s worth watching on its own, but it's also a first look at the kind of room our upcoming Creative Summit gathers. In November, Jason will take the stage again, this time at the Summit, alongside others running content production at Zalando, Costco, SanMar, Nuuly, and Colruyt, in the roles that own the work day-to-day. Around 30 more speakers will join him across three tracks, and together they're starting to say clearly where the work is heading. If it leaves you wanting more of that conversation, that’s what November is for (and with the early-bird rate closing today, September 10th, now is the time to lock it in).

The early-bird rate for the Creative Summit closes next week, on September 10. If you've been meaning to sort a ticket, this is your reminder. I've written a fair bit lately about why this year's Summit is worth the few days, so I won't rehash it all here. But I also know how these things go. It sounds good, you mean to look into it, and then a busy few weeks swallow the decision whole. So, here's the practical version: Until September 10, every ticket is 35% off. That’s €975 instead of €1,500, and the less per person, the more of your team you bring. After that, it's the standard rate. And if the only thing in your way is internal sign-off, you don't need it settled by the 10th. Lock the early-bird rate now, and it holds while you get the yes, by September 24 at the latest. That way, you're not committing blind but instead holding your place and price while the approval catches up. It's application-only, in Spain this November. If it's been on your mind, now is genuinely the time to move. Link in the comments.

The hardest part of explaining the Creative Summit to your manager is why it's on a beach. On paper, three days on the Costa del Sol reads less like a work trip and more like a reward, so I understand why that's a hard one to get signed off on. But the location is the most deliberate decision we make. We could run this in a hotel conference room near an airport. It would be easier to justify, but it would quietly fail at the one thing the event is for. Take people out of the studio, away from the room where everyone knows their title, and something shifts. The guard comes down. People stop managing how they look and start saying what's actually working and what isn't. We've done this twice before, in Amsterdam and Austin, and both times the setting mattered more than the lineup. The most honest conversations happened away from the stage, between people who recognized their own situation in someone else's. The theme this year is building the future together, and that last word is the one that matters. Nobody works out AI in production on their own. The teams that get through it are the ones who had somewhere to be honest about it, next to people carrying the same weight. That is what the few days in Spain are really for. Applications for this year's edition are open at the link below.

The hard part of AI in production was never going to be the technology. It's getting an entire team to change how they work at the same time. The tools are good enough now. What decides whether it lands is the team, where no two people start from the same place. Some have been experimenting for months. Some are quietly hoping it passes, while others are being asked to build the very thing they suspect will automate their role, without ever saying it out loud. Someone has to hold all of that together while the work keeps shipping. It sounds soft next to the technology, so it rarely gets talked about. But that's where adoption actually stalls. That's why we built the Creative Summit, a small room where creative and production leaders work through this off the record. And why we've decided to open it to whole creative ops teams this year. Changing how a team works is easier when more than one person has seen what good looks like. If that's the problem you're sitting with, you can learn more at the link below.