Next up, we'll hear how to stop gatekeeping and managing systems and how to start nurturing culture instead. Please welcome Lauren to the stage.

>> What's up, Config? >> [applause] >> I love this Britney Spears mic, but I kind of wish that I had like a handheld mic with a cable so I could like do some mic twirls while I talk, but this will have to do.

I'm feeling very Britney right now anyway.

Um I don't know about all of you, but I didn't go to art school to become a cop.

Actually, quite the opposite. During those times in my life, uh you could find me in basements and garages and warehouses listening to bands playing on an old rug instead of a stage through shitty PAs.

That's the DIY music scene and I never played in a band.

I preferred to be behind the scene. Designing and posting flyers on MySpace or running a merch table.

And then post art school, I ran a record label with my husband. We released records and tapes, organized shows, and helped support bands with everything needed to get their music in front of listeners.

Throughout my career, I tend to gravitate towards building the foundation that makes great work possible.

And what that's looked like corporately speaking is building design systems for the last 10 years at Expedia, Dropbox, and Cash App.

And then last month, I joined Mercury as head of design foundations, and >> [laughter] >> we're hiring.

My team is focused on visual language systems and tools that help anyone build. And no matter where I work, my goal really stays the same. Create space for others to shine and not take the spotlight myself.

But over time, my role in leading design systems started to feel more like being a bouncer at the door.

People began to see my team as gatekeepers or the ones that slowed things down or had to give permission.

And design systems, we always promise organizations speed, consistency at scale, rapid evolution, and then we spend years telling people what they can't do.

Stagnant systems, no deviations, permission required. I kind of think we lost the plot. People's perception were at odds with our intention.

We stopped being a resource and became a checkpoint. And that, honestly, hits differently when I think about where I came from because anti-authority's not like an aesthetic for me.

It's like part of my core values. And here I was, the authority.

And I've really had to reckon with that. The industry is reckoning with something, too. AI is changing how we build, and layoffs have gutted teams.

The instinct, understandably, is to tighten the grip. More control, more oversight, more constraint.

To measure output in PRs instead of real craft. And I get it. We're walking into unknown territory. But a punk mentality looks different. It relinquishes control.

It enables experimentation. It lets things evolve even when you can't see where they're going.

And every generation finds its own version of it. The moment when everything feels uncertain and nobody has answers and someone just decides to stop waiting and build something.

And that's the mindset I want to impart on all of you today. Because from my perspective, both punk and design systems are often misunderstood.

Punk gets reduced to safety pins and mohawks and design systems get reduced to documentation and the UI kit.

And both have their posers. The kid whose aesthetic is off-the-shelf from Hot Topic or the guy on Twitter who thinks that a handful of components are a design system.

But, punk resists definition. The sound evolves, but the values stay the same.

And so do the best design systems. The punk ethos is about DIY, mutual aid, anti-conformity, anarchy, not chaos, but refusing to let others control you.

And around this, a scene grew. Record labels, venues, zines, photographers, journalists.

The Xerox machine made it all possible. Anyone could make a flyer or publish something. Production no longer needed permission. The original vibe coder was just a punk kid with a Sharpie and access to a copier.

And when everyone has access to the means of production, then the scene grows.

Does that sound familiar to anyone? This is where design teams are today. AI is our Xerox machine.

And whether that's a human or an agent, anyone can build. And the real question becomes what we'll do with it.

We can add more constraint, or we can keep embracing change and build a scene worth showing up to. Every scene needs a venue.

Your system is the venue. Someone builds a stage, someone makes a flyer, someone runs a soundboard. Someone makes sure that the doors are open on time.

Nobody tells the band what to play. Everyone just makes sure that they sound as good as possible. Product teams are the bands.

Your job is to give them the tools to do their best work and to make sure that their audience has a good experience.

So, with this metaphor in mind, I want to walk through three influential music venues. Each one has taught me something about how I think about leading great systems.

Three different ways to bring a punk mentality, to build a platform that enables creative chaos rather than containing it.

The first one up, across the bay, 924 Gilman. Has anyone been there before? >> Yeah!

>> Sick. It's a volunteer run, all ages punk venue in Berkeley, California. No alcohol, no major labels, strict rules about conduct, completely open rules about sound.

Their values are explicit right when you walk in. A stencil list on the wall.

There's no ambiguity about what this place stands for. And because everyone sees the rules right when they walk in, the culture runs itself. And that's the foundation that everything is built on top of.

Gilman is about giving access to the people who care. The barrier for contribution is low on purpose.

You don't need credentials to get on stage or help run the place. You just need to care. And that's a different bar.

It sorts by intent. And when you build it that way, you get a dedicated group of people invested in making it work.

Billie Joe Armstrong was 15 when he walked in that door. He could play guitar, but that was about it.

He wasn't vetted. Nobody approved his setlist, but the scene around him, including the other bands, volunteers, and regulars who kept showing up, they helped build Green Day into what it became.

Because it's a community with shared values and enough trust to let someone figure it out in public.

Because good principles get out of the way. Design systems teams, we talk a lot about rules.

We write them down. We put them in slides. We present them to leadership. Gilman's principles worked because they were structural.

They determined how the scene around it operated. So, set your principles clearly from the start and then get out of the way.

Enough to orient, not suffocate, and then trust people to operate by them. At Dropbox, we wrote principles for how our team showed up, and two of them still stick with me long after I've left.

The first, own the product, not the system.

Our job is to build the tools, the patterns, and the documentation. What consuming teams built with them were theirs. We weren't co-authors of their product decisions.

We were the venue, and they were the band. The second, trust our partners to use these tools in ways we can't foresee, and encourage opportunities to evolve and improve the system.

That second one is the Billie Joe Armstrong principle.

We don't know who's going to walk through that door, and we don't know what they're going to build. But, if the system only reflects what we've already thought of, then it's kind of a history book.

Our principles changed who came to us and how.

Collaborators instead of asking for permission. Gilman's rules weren't about control. They made the scene safe enough to participate in.

Because trust sets the floor. It brings people in. And Gilman lowered the floor. Show up. Be willing.

That was the bar. The most influential scenes, they have a point of view. And that point of view becomes its own gravitational pull.

It attracts people who want to be around it. It raises what everyone thinks is possible. When it comes to the work we do, lowering the floor and raising the ceiling are part of the same job.

Trust brings people in, and craft shows them what to aim for.

Um Okay, sorry. Um okay, you know how I said that like punk wasn't just about the music, it's like the whole scene around it, like the venues, the labels, the zines.

All of that like built the scene. And so, I actually can't talk about the Haçienda without talking about Factory Records first because they're kind of the same thing.

Factory Records is an independent label born out of Manchester, obsessive about craft in the way most labels thought was insane.

And I'd argue that Factory wasn't just a label, it's like a whole anarcho-design system.

Perhaps the most obsessive one ever built. Factory came out of post-punk with bands like Joy Division and New Order. It was a different moment with different stakes.

If early punk was about stripping everything down, then Factory was about what you could build if you took that raw punk energy and applied real craft to it.

Every release had a catalog number. Factory 1 was a poster. Factory 7 was their letterhead.

Factory 23 was Joy Division's Level Terrace apart. Their lawsuit with management was Factory 61. Everything was named, numbered, and treated with the same conviction.

Even Tony Wilson's headstone was Factory 501. Which brings me back to Factory 51.

The Hacienda. Ben Kelly designed the Hacienda's interior. A former textile factory turned nightclub opened in 1982.

Yellow and black industrial chevrons. It looked like a parking lot and a cathedral had a kid. Nothing else looked like it.

Factory knew that the details mattered, and the Hacienda was proof. It's a space where people felt like they were somewhere real.

Peter Saville was Factory's first designer. He was late. He was expensive, but Tony Wilson kept hiring him anyway.

He contributed over 80 records and designs to the Factory Records catalog, and every sleeve he touched was like a considered object.

Power, Corruption, and Lies has no band name on the cover, no track listing, just a 19th-century painting and a color strip along the edge.

You either know how to read it, or you don't. Blue Monday's die-cut sleeve cost more to make than it sold for.

Every copy factory pressed lost them money. They kept pressing it. For them, this is what it looks like when craft is non-negotiable.

To me, this is high craft collaboration. Brilliant minds with two different areas of expertise collaborating to build something they couldn't do alone.

Unknown Pleasures took it further. That image has been on t-shirts and tattoos and memes worn by people who have never heard of Joy Division.

It stopped belonging to the record a long time ago.

This is like the definition of craft influence. Factory Records and the Hacienda knew that the perf were the perfect lesson in show, don't tell.

And every artifact that you release shows your position on craft. So, if your documentation is considered and cohesive and clearly made by people who give a damn, then that's what people believe.

The artifact makes the argument. Tony Wilson, Ben Kelly, Peter Saville's whole communication strategy was to build something that was undeniably obviously good.

So, be the beacon of craft in your org. Your documentation, your communications, it's all an argument for quality.

Show people what good looks like. Coherence is evidence that someone cared. The people in your org who care most about craft, who are probably already frustrated that their their standards aren't being met, they recognize it and they come towards it and they want to be part of it.

Because taste making attracts taste makers. You find your best collaborators by making work good enough that they want to work with you.

The system is the ceiling that everyone can reach towards. Keep raising it. Punk didn't know what it was going to become, and neither does your system, but it started somewhere.

Before the Gilman and before the Hacienda, there was a bar on the Bowery that didn't know what it was doing, either.

New York City, 1970s. The city's broke, services are gutted, rents are cheap.

Creativity fills the vacuum in rundown vacant spaces. Punk was born.

In 1973, Hilly Kristal opens CBGB on the Bowery. The name stands for country, bluegrass, and blues.

And that was his intention, but he got something else entirely. The bands that showed up were nothing like country or blues.

Television, Patti Smith, the Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie. Different sounds, different tempos, different everything.

Hilly later described what he was going for as come as you are and do your own thing rock and roll. And that was always the spirit of the room.

He had two rules. Carry your own equipment and play original music. No cover songs. And that was the single line he held.

Design systems anarchy ft. Lauren LoPrete (Mercury) | Config 2026

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