Workday
DevCon 2026
DevCon 2026 was hosted at Resorts World Las Vegas, and the energy onsite was unmatched:
+ Event Pipeline: Supported a massive $950M+ in-room pipeline, driving a remarkable 187% YoY growth.
+ Total Attendance: Sold out in person with 11,490 total registrations (including digital), representing a 112% YoY growth.
+ Global Reach: Brought together a diverse, international community with 27 countries represented.
+ Keynote Reach: 30,000+ viewers globally.
+ Hackathon Participation: 360+ active builders.
+ Developer Engagement: Saw incredible onsite adoption, with 1,894 attendees actively using the Developer Agent within a 72-hour window.
This year was extra special, because we launched a brand new design system built just for this community. We wanted to give developers a world that is entirely their own: a look and feel that celebrates how these builders conceptualize, collaborate, and create. It was about finding the right balance between a unique, developer-centric layer, and the strength of the core Workday brand.
Mara brought her trademark creative genius to DevCon as Art Director, delivering immersive, high-impact designs while masterfully maximizing tight budgets! Her collaboration on the Workday Store and "cheap and cheerful" La-Z-Boy den resulted in a wildly successful, highly engaging experience for attendees. Mara’s infectious enthusiasm, financial mindfulness, and relentless drive for Innovation moved the needle for our team. She truly makes every project a better work day, and I am so grateful for her inspiring partnership!
Onsite Digital
Capitalizing on the massive digital screens at Resorts World, we transformed the venue into a fully immersive brand experience. Recognizing the scale of the opportunity, I established a net-new "onsite digital" workstream to ensure absolute strategic alignment across programming, messaging, and creative execution.
We programmed 10+ screens over four days, phasing the content to mirror the attendee journey: starting with high-level brand messaging, transitioning into specific event programming, and concluding with the Hackathon.
Partnering closely with motion graphics expert Adrian Thompson, we brainstormed, planned, and executed every element of this evolving visual narrative.
Thanks for always responding to our crazy ideas with a "Yes, and" approach - and for coming up with so many ways to push the event forward! DevCon '26 owes a lot of its success to you.
Excited to work together again!"
DevCon Development Kit (DDK)
Partnering with our vendor, we activated interactive digital badges that allowed attendees to engage with sessions through programming and real-time reactions. We also introduced a layer of gamification where attendees could complete a series of onsite stops to win a D20 die and a chance to attend Workday Rising. Engagement was incredibly high, and our community was so creative that one attendee actually hacked the badge to win the game. After the event, attendees took their devices home to continue tinkering. Since then, users have programmed their badges to track household weather, monitor insulin levels, and roll various-sided dice.
From a creative perspective, the badge featured a nostalgic, grayscale pixel aesthetic. I art directed the icons and motion displayed on the device, collaborating closely with our agency partners on the programming. The design challenge was bridging the gap between this hyper-specific retro look and our future-forward event branding. To solve this, I developed a subset of illustrations in our core developer style that mirrored the badge's icons. This allowed us to speak the same visual language across all assets, seamlessly promoting the badge activation on our massive digital screens without making it feel disconnected from the overall brand world.
Thank you for all your guidance with DevCon assets this year. Not only did you knock it out of the park by whipping up an entirely new look and feel, you always made yourself available to help provide art direction and encouragement to all of us designers. You also made the process so much fun with your infectious humor and scrappy start-up mindset.
You truly are a creative genius! I always have a blast working with you and look forward to collaborating on future projects.
Social Media
With 1.2K posts from our community during DevCon, social played a huge role in amplifying the event. Knowing developers aren't usually the biggest "posters," we had to give them moments and experiences they were authentically excited to share. We leaned into gamification and incorporated attendees right into the event creative, which led to genuine excitement from the community:
"Seeing myself as a featured developer on every corner of DevCon was surreal. An honor to be given that kind of spotlight."
Mara is a stellar long-term partner who consistently brings a fresh creative perspective to DevCon while staying perfectly true to our brand personality. She is a joy to collaborate with—responsive, positive, and incredibly creative—especially when we need to troubleshoot or find quick, cost-effective solutions under pressure. I always look forward to our calls, knowing that Mara will bring both a brilliant creative lens and a 'can-do' spirit to the table.
Swag
If there’s one thing we know Developers love, it’s good, niche, swag.
If there’s one thing we know developers love, it’s niche swag. The overall demand was so massive that we had to run three reorders for our store just to keep items in stock. One of the standout pieces I designed featured custom ASCII art—tapping directly into the exact technical nostalgia this community craves. The shirt became an immediate conversation starter, generating genuine organic excitement across the community:
"At our Friday Boulder standup, just noticed 4 Workmates eyeing my shirt. I said hello, and they immediately each said the shirt was awesome...and each shared a story about ASCII art and how it fit into their past as a developer."
To elevate the physical experience, we partnered with Google Cloud to sponsor an onsite live patch press station. This gave attendees a hands-on opportunity to customize their new gear using a massive collection of over 10K custom patches, buttons, and stickers—resulting in 243 completely customized patch presses during the event.
