AI: We've Got It All Wrong

Join Blueprints & The Microsoft Garage in SoHo, NYC for AI: We’ve Got It All Wrong.

Never in human history has technology felt like such a necessity and such a novelty at the same time.

We invite you to participate in a spirited conversation about the technical, creative, and commercial models driving change, as we examine what it will take to produce work that survives beyond the moment.

Led By:
Christina Lessa
Founder, Curator, and Host, Blueprints &

Mike Pell
Envisioneer, Inventor of the PDF, and Director of The Microsoft Garage

Steve Caputo
Curator and Co-Host, Blueprints &

With Special Guest Speakers:

Aaron Trowbridge
Co-Founder and CEO, Harmoniqs; Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

Agnieszka Kurant
Global Museum Artist (Guggenheim, MoMA, Venice Biennale)

Dr. Deborah Berebichez
Partner at EY, Enterprise AI, Stanford Physicist

Dustin Yellin
Artist, Founder, and Director, Pioneer Works

Gia Taylor
NYU Gallatin Masters Student, Thesis: Children's Aesthetics in a Virtual World

Haris Fazlani
Co-Founder and Creative Director, WØRKS 

Dr. Ifeoma Ajunwa, J.D.
Associate Dean, Emory School of Law

Jake Neske
Founder and Managing Partner, Hustle

Liam Stoker
Head of Market Insights, Reuters

Melissa Jackson Persey
Global Chief Strategy Officer, R/GA 

Nick St. Pierre
Founder, ArtOfficial; Creative Director and Educator

Tega Brain
Artist and Environmental Engineer (Smithsonian, Whitney)

Victor Newman
Vice President of Brand Creative, Sesame Workshop

RSVP and join us Tuesday, April 28.
About Blueprints &

Blueprints & is led by cultural strategist and civic entrepreneur Christina Lessa—acclaimed author, photographer, and founder of FLATT Magazine, hailed as “the art world insider bible.” A Cooper Union and NYU graduate, Christina has spent two decades connecting artists, entrepreneurs, and institutions across culture, technology, and civic life. Her work as a senior arts strategist advising governments internationally has positioned her at the intersection of aesthetic policy and civic transformation, bringing to Blueprints a rare fluency in the language of both institutions and imagination.
Blueprints salons have convened academics, artists, and cultural leaders at venues including Harvard University and The Microsoft Garage. Participants have included a Nobel Laureate in Economics, the former Dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School, the CEO of the XR Association, the former NYC Commissioner of Culture, and mayors, artists, and technologists from across the globe. Christina and her team know how to bridge conversational connection across academic and cultural worlds, having worked with iconoclasts from Harvard to Hollywood, Billie Eilish to Betsey Johnson, Cher to Ghostface, Debbie Harry to De Niro, and the new wave of emerging voices in tech and creativity today.
“Blueprints always organizes historic-feeling forums of leading experts, who engage in such compelling conversations that leave you wanting to take action.”

• Mike Pell 

About The Microsoft Garage

The Microsoft Garage is the company's worldwide innovation program, designed to drive collaboration, creativity, and experimentation for employees and our customers. There are 15 physical Garage locations around the world, with the one in SoHo NYC being a prototype itself—an experiment in showcasing what we’ve learned about quickly turning ideas into impact. Guests always leave inspired and with a new perspective on Microsoft as a great innovation partner.
Invitation design and motion by Noah Wilde.