The Business of Being Seen: Inside the Design Influencers Conference’s New Direction

The Design Influencers Conference is entering a new era with a renewed focus on media, public relations, and relationship-building for interior designers and architects.

Since acquiring the conference together in late 2025, industry veterans Nicole Heymer, founder and creative director of digital marketing agency Glory & Brand, and co-founder of Thrice Media, and Kate O’Hara, former CEO at O’Hara Interiors, co-founder of rug company Fay + Belle and co-founder of Thrice Media, have refined its mission with a renewed emphasis on media, public relations and professional visibility.

According to O’Hara, the conference isn’t just changing its audience and focus. It’s also introducing a new format and venue.

The next conference will be held March 1-3, 2027 at the Marriott Marquis in downtown Atlanta. The team chose that location for its ease of use, and O’Hara noted, “The hotel’s a little bit different from probably what the conference has historically been. It’s a conference hotel. And it’s beautiful.”

The Marriott Marquis is uniquely situated for easy connection from the airport to MARTA to the hotel’s front door and was selected for its conference infrastructure, central location and the convenience of on-site amenities that support networking throughout the event. “It has a lot of amenities right on site, and we chose it because we really wanted to work with a partner that had all of the spaces that we needed,” O’Hara added.

This marks a substantial change for the conference, O’Hara noted, as it has been through several iterations. First as a bloggers’ conference, later as social media focused, and in its most recent rendition in February 2025, when influencer marketing, brand collaborations, and business operations were the focus, and each reflecting the industry’s changing priorities.

The duo developed a clear vision of what they wanted to deliver, “what we want [to do is] create education… we want to give people the tools and skills to really be able to pitch and position themselves well…not just how they think it goes, but how it actually goes.”

To achieve that, the women are incorporating access points so that attendees can connect directly with editors, journalists, publicists, publishers, and other decision makers. O’Hara explained, “we really want to focus on creating a lot of access between our attendees and the decision makers in media and PR.” She continued, “The idea is to create access points so that there’s a lot of networking and relationship building. … we want to give people the tools and skills to really be able to pitch and position themselves well.”

To achieve their programming goals, Heymer and O’Hara are structuring the conference with main stage events strictly focused on media and PR, which all attendees will be a part of, and workshops and skills studio formats that will be scheduled during meal periods. The duo are currently finalizing keynotes and also seeking speaking and workshop proposals that address key areas for designers in more specific areas within media and PR.

Workshops and studios will move beyond theory into practical skills such as pitching media, preparing for interviews and positioning oneself as an industry expert.  O’Hara put it this way, “If the main stage is the what and the why of media and PR, the skill studios and workshops will be the how.”

In an industry where relationships matter as much as remarkable work, the conference is positioning itself as a place where designers and architects can better understand not only how to tell their stories, but who they need to tell them to.

Note: To submit a proposal for a workshop or speaking engagement, interested parties may apply here.