BRXND NYC Speakers + Tickets
Announcing our first BRXND NYC speakers and opening up a bunch of tickets. Get in now.
We’re announcing speakers and sponsors for our NYC event on September 18, 2025. We’re also excited to let you know that we’re opening up 40 tickets to the waitlist later today, so if you’d like to get a ticket, join the waitlist (they will be first-come, first-served). Next week, we will open up what we have left to everyone else. And, of course, if you’re interested in sponsoring or speaking, please be in touch.
Noah here. I started this newsletter in 2022, a bit after I launched my “CollXbs” experiment, which allowed you to use AI (specifically Dall-E 2) to generate brand collabs. Fast Company covered that first experiment:
At first, Brier was just curious what the AI tools would come up with. But some of the visuals were amazing, he says, and a friend joked that the fabricated promo copy was “exactly generic enough that a real VP of marketing would approve the collaboration,” no matter how absurd (such as, sneakers blending “Warby Parker’s classic style with WD-40’s durable construction, perfect for any adventure.”)
Then, later, because I had the attention, I threw in that I was putting on a conference: “in fact, he’s already organizing a ‘Brands x AI’ conference in the spring [of 2023].” I kinda made that up, but I got it done, and fast forward to almost three years later, and we’ve done two conferences in New York, one in LA, and I’ve started a new company to help marketers actually build with AI. I can’t believe where all this stuff has gone and the fun I’ve had along the way.
If you’re new to BRXND events, here’s a refresher on the programming tenets I strive for:
Doers > Speculators: We want BRXND to be about doing and learning, not talking and speculating. We are too early in this journey, and the technology is too different from what we’ve seen before to get stuck speculating about its future impact.
Curiosity > Overconfidence: We embrace the unintuitive nature of AI and its future implications. We're all learners in this new era of technology.
Conversations > Panels: Whenever possible, it’s better to have just two people on stage talking to one another rather than a whole set of speakers competing for time and attention. Go deeper with fewer people so that the audience can learn from their thinking and experience more than just their opinions.
Show > Tell: It’s always better to show people something than to tell them about it. While other conferences try to urge people away from showing specific products, we think it’s most useful for people to see what’s real and possible.
Process > Perfection: Take your audience on a journey, even if it’s something that didn’t work out. This is an audience of doers and experimenters, and understanding the journey is often more important than just seeing the outcome.
I’m also incredibly excited to announce our first round of speakers for this year’s event. You can also find them all on our snazzy new site (which finally is not living on Webflow anymore and isn’t centered around those collabs from three years ago).
And, of course, a huge thanks to our sponsors and partners who have believed in this weird experiment since day one.
It's wild to think this all started with some experimental brand mashups and a promise to Fast Company that I'd figure out how to throw a conference. Three years and multiple events later, we've built something real—a community of marketers and technologists who are actually shipping AI products, not just talking about them.
As I mentioned up top, we're releasing 40 tickets from the waitlist today. We expect them to go fast—we’re almost sold out, and we still haven’t opened it up publicly. Join the waitlist here if you haven't already.
For those who can't make it to NYC, we'll be sharing recordings and key takeaways in future newsletters. But honestly, the magic happens in the room—in the conversations between sessions, the live demos that don't quite work as planned, and the "wait, you can do that?" moments that define these events.
See you on September 18th at NeueHouse Madison Square. Let's keep building.
Cheers,
Noah