Digital Lab

Published on: Oct 23, 2018

Digital lab is a conference that took place for the first time ever this year. It gathered people who tend to spend most of their days in a digital world – it’s an event for next-gen interface designers and developers. We had a chat with the person behind this event, Domagoj Ostović, about stepping out of the comfort zone and organizing the event.

How did you come up with the idea of Digital Lab conference?

Being in a digital business for 6 years, starting as a self-employed “one-man-band” entrepreneur and nowadays having a team of 12 young and devoted digital experts, I felt that the time had come for Lloyds Design to make a greater impact on the scene. The line of business we are in requires non-stop learning and constant expansion of the collaborator network. We have learned that conferences are perfect for achieving both, and besides that, I felt that Labin, our beautiful small city, deserved an event that would open it to the digital world a bit more.

One day, I came into the office and said to my team: “Ok, we’re going to have a conference and we’ll have Build in Amsterdam and Dogstudio as keynote speakers!” Since these companies are rock stars in web design, everyone was just like: “Oh, okay, more of Domagoj’s crazy ideas!” And I just said: “You’ll see!” With the plans already inside my head, I started contacting all the speakers and partner companies, and less than two months later we had the conference ready!

How did you plan and execute the event?

As a CEO, I was in charge of planning all the expenses and cash flow, while my team made the design, the web page for selling tickets – and, basically, did the million little things that needed to be done. And we made it! Some of the attendees said that it was the best conference they had ever attended. It was our first conference. It’s not our specialty and I think that they complemented us too highly. After the conference was over, we had a follow-up team meeting with our team and we wrote down 167 small things that we could have done better.

You were having an event for designers and developers who spend most of their day in the digital world. Was it a challenge to make a live event for them?

Not at all – in fact, quite the opposite. All the attendees were excited about the event. They wanted to meet each other in person, talk, learn and have a drink. That might have been a challenge – but it turned out to be an opportunity. Maybe the fact that these people spend most of their day online makes them so eager to go outside – outside the office and outside the digital world.

You used Catchbox at your event. Tell us a bit more about your Catchbox experience!

It was awesome, extraordinary superb. 99% of attendees saw Catchbox for the first time. Why did we want Catchbox for the event? Because it is important to have something that is something new, something exciting and something that they haven’t seen before.

It also has to be quality and innovative. Of course, a big part of quality is offering something that people don’t expect. Everybody expect chairs, lights, sounds, a big screen, excellent Wi-Fi, etc. These things can be good, better or the best. But nobody expects a throwable microphone.

We had some other things that surprised our guests – for instance, catering. It was quite unexpected to have chefs and waiters serving you food at a conference. But these little touches and details added up to make something that everyone will remember. At the conference, we were using Catchbox Mod – our sound guys linked it to their sound systems and the sound was just great – crystal clear and without signal losses. It was also extremely easy to set up.

You mentioned that most of the audience didn’t know Catchbox. How did they react?

Very positively – because Catchbox is fun. It’s something that you throw and catch and everybody wants to throw and catch things. People were surprised to see how light it was. They didn’t expect a mic to be that light. You can even throw it at someone’s face and they’ll be OK [laughs].

You work with design and you also had a Catchbox with your own design. Did that add something to the conference?

Of course! It was a big advantage to have our branding and colors on the stage and in people’s hands. Even after the event – you have all these images and Catchbox with our branding is in literally all of them. I’m very happy to have our branding on a throwable mic.

What are your plans for the future?

We won’t stop using Catchbox. We’ll have meet-ups in our office and we’ll use them when anyone has a question. And we have already booked dates for next year’s conference!