This project was the result of a two-month internship at Media Evolution during "The Pause”, a moment of reflection and reorientation for The Conference, the organization's signature event. The core objective was to move beyond treating the event’s history as a static archive and instead transform it into "living knowledge" to inform future strategic directions.
Through a blend of quantitative, qualitative, and participatory research, we mapped 12 editions of evolution to position the event as a continuous foresight engine for the creative community in Malmö. The result is published on The Conference's history page
Data Visualization
Strategic Foresight
Qualitative Research
Impact Evaluation
Editorial Design
Figma
Data Storytelling
Participatory Design
Future Workshop
Letizia
Strategic Analysis & Research
Established the project's intellectual framework through archival analysis, qualitative insights, and participatory research
Tom
Data Visualization & Design
Visually synthesized the research, using design as a method of exploration, discovery and storytelling, while matching visual choices to organizational legacy
As part of our research during "The Pause," we facilitated a participatory workshop to bridge the event’s past with its possible futures. By blending the Future Workshop method with Collaborative Foresight, we transformed internal team insights into strategic pillars. Key phases included:
Critique Phase: Identifying structural tensions such as "format fatigue" and organizational sustainability.
Fantasy Phase: Imagining the event in 2035 as an intimate, year-round ecosystem or a "Futures Hotel".
Futures Phase: Evaluating ideas through a foresight lens to identify desirable and possible strategic directions.
Emerging Themes: Surfacing a shared commitment to human-centered values, local relevance in Malmö, and "itchy-quirky-bold" experiences.
This workshop acted as the qualitative engine for our final deliverables, ensuring that the Future Scenarios presented in the magazine were rooted in the team’s collective values and aspirations.
• Strategic Reorientation: Through analysis and visualizations, the event archive is repositioned from a static record to a strategic dataset for long-term planning.
• Actionable Recommendations: Provided a roadmap for active representation, transitioning to a distributed, city-wide event, transforming the organization into a "vertical hub".
• Framework for Measurement: Applied the Five Value Lenses (Legacy, Utility, Community, Existence, and Learning) to help the organization evaluate the cultural and social value they generate beyond the event dates
The final output of the project was an Internship Magazine, designed to serve as a strategic toolkit for Media Evolution. Key deliverables include:
• Legacy in Bloom: A Ginkgo-inspired circular dendrogram mapping 400+ speakers. The color palette tracks a narrative shift from techno-optimism to human-centered reflection.
• The Herbarium: A symbolic visual archive reimagining 12 past editions to preserve the "essence" of the event. (Seen at the cover)
• Impact Snapshot: A data-summary highlighting the numbers of The Conference.
• Future Scenarios: Three strategic roadmaps (Our Malmö, Brainwaves, and The Gift), reimagining the event through a decentralized, participatory approach.
Click on the images below to explore high-resolution details.
The internship culminated in an internship magazine, a toolkit that transforms a decade of event history into "living knowledge." Beyond the visual archives of The Herbarium and Legacy in Bloom, the magazine presents three Future Scenarios, Our Malmö, Brainwaves, and The Gift. These strategic roadmaps offer a participatory, decentralized vision for the event’s evolution, positioning the project as a continuous foresight engine for Media Evolution’s future.
If you would like to explore these strategic roadmaps and data visualizations in detail, you can download the full magazine here.
