Case Study 04: Designing 10 Conversations in One Room (Pixel Recess, Atlanta)
Hauswarm × Renew Venture Capital — Atlanta, March 3, 2026
I’ve always loved when handcrafted brands show how their products are made. Once I learn that a very specific design detail was intentional, it feels like noticing an Easter egg in a movie. And then suddenly I start picking up on all the other little decisions too.
My favorite example of this is Jenny Lei, founder of Freja NYC, a friend of Hauswarm, and founder mentor of mine. From conversations with Jenny, I’ve seen how much strategic care she puts into the smallest details. And the hundreds of thousands of people who encounter her handbags can see that care too, because she shows the process openly in their social media & on the company’s website [here]. A masterclass in storytelling, honestly.
I try to give Hauswarm’s work the same kind of attention. This case study is an attempt to do that for something that was created for a very large scale, by showing all of the teeny tiny decisions and adjustments that made the final experience possible.
This case study walks through the seven-month design process behind Renew Venture Capital’s Pixel Recess in Atlanta, hosted at Emory University on March 3rd. It documents what made this collaboration work, and what almost didn’t. Here’s what we will cover:
01 — The Brief
02 — The Format
03 — The Design Process
04 — The Run of Show
05 — The Room
06 — The Micro-Host Lens
07 — The Ecosystem in the Mirror
The format at the center of all of it is called agoras — a conversation design I've spent the last year developing. One thing I knew going in, and confirmed once we were running it live, is that agoras is not right for every gathering. It works best when a client knows what ideas or perspectives they want to shift internally for participants, when they’re open to meticulous design, and they are willing to take a few risks in how the room is structured. Renew Venture Capital came to this collaboration with all three of those boxes checked.
Part 01 — The Brief
By the time Kt McBratney and Mark Hubbard, GPs at Renew Venture Capital, reached out to me in August 2025, they already had a detailed plan. They shared an intention statement for this ecosystem gathering, KPIs for themselves and their partners, a strategy for who would be in the room, eight thematic discussion areas, and a full run of show.
While they knew the format was strong for this flagship event, it was also clear that it could easily end up feeling like every other ecosystem event.
So they came to Hauswarm looking for a very different kind of conversation. From their vantage point, the Atlanta startup ecosystem has plenty of panels and online chatter about coordination — but very few spaces whose purpose is to nurture the coordination itself.
As Kt put it in early meeting…
“Everyone knows lack of coordination is an issue. Many discuss it, but very few choose to do something about it.”
My role, as Hauswarm, was to take the core of their existing plan — guided discussions organized around themes — and replace it with something that looked very different from anything we had seen before in Atlanta.
Note: the event was originally called Big Swings. At some point Kt realized the name didn’t quite match the tone of the room we were trying to create. A month or so later, Pixel Recess — a name and brand already in Renew’s ecosystem — felt so right.
Part 02 — The Format
Most gatherings are designed to sustain or exchange — maintaining relationships, circulating information, keeping people connected. These are useful and necessary, but it’s very easy to assume that more than that is happening.
At Hauswarm we design gatherings where change is the primary goal, and sustaining and exchanging are what happen on the way, and as a result of that change. (I write about that distinction in more depth [here].) Within that, I’ve developed three formats depending on the scale and context — and agoras is the one built for rooms like this one: people with genuinely different roles, incentives, and constraints, who need to update how they actually understand each other and the system they share.
The word agora comes from ancient Greek — the central public space where people gathered to exchange goods, information, and ideas. Where the market and the civic square were the same place.
The best way to show what agoras asks of people is the letter every participant received when they arrived...
Each person found the letter alongside the day’s schedule, a small brown envelope of reflection prompts, a notebook, and a pen. Before sitting down with their table, they were asked to find a seat somewhere alone in The Hatchery (swings included) and read.
That last part mattered most: be specific today. I wanted people to arrive at their tables having already made a small internal shift — away from the version of themselves they usually perform at events like this, toward something closer to the actual one.
03 — The Design Process
November 2025 — The Proposal
Getting from Renew VC’s initial event outline to that letter took months of work.
The first conversation had happened in August; by November, we’d transitioned from aligning methodology to building prototypes of the artifact. I presented Kt and Mark with four possible approaches for structuring the core conversation, each designed to move participants from self-presentation to genuine calibration:
Resource Allocation Simulation — participants allocate hypothetical ecosystem funding (e.g. $500k), that would force trade-offs that could then reveal real differences in priorities between founders, investors, incubators, etc.
Pre-Event Survey Analysis — participants examine data showing the gaps between what stakeholder groups think others need and what those groups report actually needing.
Role-Reversal Scenarios — founders design an investment process; investors map what it would take to build a startup with no runway.
Live Case Scenario — participants would work through a realistic ecosystem coordination challenge together (e.g. the world cup).
What I ultimately proposed was a fifth direction: a physical resource-mapping exercise built around shared artifacts. This is a format Hauswarm has done before in smaller ways, but scaling it to this extent was a whole new challenge.
Participants would reflect individually on their resources and needs, build and label small “pixels” representing those resources, map them onto a shared table board, discuss patterns and gaps, attempt matches, compare results across tables through a gallery walk, and close with individual commitments.
Getting here was not straightforward! For instance, here’s an example of an earlier, much more complicated version of the format:
We initially suggested that the discussion be about explicit types of resources: capital, talent/expertise, and network/connections — and then differentiate between early-stage ventures, growth-stage ventures, and ecosystem infrastructure. But we learned that this was going to be too rigid of a format, and that the conversation would immediately get messy (and not in the way we like) because these aren’t clean categories.
December 2025 — Designing the Physical Artifact
Designing a five-player game where each player is coming from an entirely different context is… exhausting… and so much fun. What was nerve-wracking was not knowing it could work until I ran a demo session in December. The relief I felt when it clicked was… glorious.
Here are some photos from the trial run:
After months of sourcing different types of small containers, and adhesive labels, I was able to give Renew VC and their in-house designer (Paul - who is also a founding partner of Renew!), a list of printed materials to design in their branding, and then a shopping list of physical goods that they’d need to scale the prototype for the event itself.
Micro-Host Concept, Invitation, and Training
Rather than a single facilitator moving through the room, I had the idea of placing a trained micro-host at each table. Their role was to help participants slow down, notice dynamics, and ask sharper questions. This became more important as the complexity of agoras began to become unwieldy.
In December 2025, Hauswarm sent invitations to a selected group of individuals to serve as micro-hosts:
In January 2026, we held a couple of online prep session in which I introduced micro-hosts to each other, explained the problem we were helping Renew VC solve, and I broke down the design of the game.
In February, we hosted a couple of in-person run through sessions. Those were fun — and ended up being ad-hoc co-design sessions where the micro-hosts (most of whom are PhD students in design, HCI, or learning sciences) were helping me in real time work out some of the kinks of the format.
04 — The Run of Show
The event was originally scheduled for January 27, but an anticipated ice storm across Atlanta forced a reschedule to March 3, 2026 — same venue, same day of the week (Tuesday), and same design:
A few things worth noting here about how we ordered the event:
The individual reflection…
…came before anything else. Forty-five minutes of solo journaling meant that when people sat down at their tables, they had already been asked to situate themselves — to think about their position(s) in the ecosystem and any underlying tensions between their goals . Introductions followed the same logic: say your name and one or two sentences about what came up during reflection. We wanted to make it impossible to start with your elevator pitch (though, of course, a few guests managed to sneak theirs in).
The activity…
…progressed stage by stage. You had to name what you have before you could name what you need. This, again was meant to prevent the conversation from becoming either a pitch or a complaint about large-scale issues with the ecosystem.
The break…
…was a design element. It gave micro-hosts the chance to clear and tidy things. Conversation cards were selected and placed. The break was a transition — from the intensive mapping work of the first half to the more open, card-guided exploration of the second. Micro-hosts used this time to observe what had surfaced at their tables and to choose which conversation cards to bring forward.
The Gallery…
…was an agora-within-an-agora… an agora of agoras! Moving the boards into the Makerspace and inviting the full group to observe all eight tables’ maps simultaneously was the moment when the room became visible to itself. Eight different cross-sections of the same ecosystem, each having arrived at a different set of resources, needs, and connections. The redundancy across tables — the same tensions surfacing independently at Group 1 and Group 6, the same unarticulated needs appearing in multiple places — was itself information.
The large group discussion…
drew on what the room had already produced. By the time roughly 50 people came together for the final conversation, they weren’t starting from scratch. They had individual reflections, table maps, and 90 minutes of honest conversation sitting in the back of their minds.
05 — The Room
The roughly 50 participants were deliberately selected and assigned. The invite list included founders, funders, and ecosystem operators from across Atlanta’s startup landscape.
Table composition and micro-host placement were designed in two stages. First, Kt at Renew curated the composition of the tables themselves, selecting the founders, funders, and ecosystem partners who would sit together; the aim was for them to be a cross-section of the ecosystem. Some people knew each other, but most did not.
Once those groupings were finalized, Hauswarm mapped micro-hosts to each table. We considered a few things: shared context between the micro-host and the participants, the particular strengths each micro-host brings to a conversation, and in some cases the kinds of discussions or introductions we believed they themselves would benefit from.
06 — The Micro-Host Lens
I debriefed with all ten micro-hosts the day of and immediately after the event. Several patterns emerged that I want to document here:
Pattern 1: Conversations Deepened Quickly
Across tables, participants moved past introductions within minutes. Once the mapping began, the tone shifted from performance to presence.
One micro-host described the moment this happened:
“Within the first five minutes it had already gotten super free-flowing. There was a point where we didn’t need the cards anymore — which was exactly the point.”
At another table, when the micro-host suggested a break, no one moved.
“Nobody responded to me, because they were so engaged in their conversation. It was like I wasn’t even there.”
Several participants were people used to managing rooms. Pixel Recess felt strangely different. One remarked to a micro-host as the event was wrapping up:
“It’s really nice to not be in control.”
Pattern 2: The first voice sets the tone
Micro-hosts also noticed how strongly the opening moment shaped the conversation that followed. At one table, a participant began by sharing not just his name and role, but how he came to his work: the personal history behind why he’s doing what he’s doing and not pursuing other paths. Others followed the cue, explaining their motivations alongside their work.
At another table, a participant spoke longer than expected about her personal background. The micro-host considered interrupting but chose to let the moment run.
“What she was saying had a lot of vulnerability baked in. Starting that way made it easier for everyone else to be honest too.”
In both cases, the result was the same: once someone modeled a deeper register of conversation, the rest of the table followed.
This reinforced an important design principle for future agoras. In the future, we’ll prepare micro-hosts to open with their own stories, not just their roles.
Pattern 3: Power still directs how conversation flows
The deeper reason people don’t share resources across the Atlanta ecosystem isn’t lack of generosity — it’s that sharing has costs, and those costs are invisible in the format.
Every table had at least one moment where power dynamics were clearly governing what was or wasn’t being articulated, and by whom.
At one table, a founder realized the investor across from him funded companies in his exact sector and began pitching mid-session. The enthusiasm was genuine, but it crowded out other voices. The micro-host redirected by directing follow-up questions toward quieter participants.
At another, a venture capitalist — engaged and supportive throughout — never found the moment to reveal her own constraints or needs. By the end of the session, the founders at the table had surfaced several requests and insights. Her side of the ecosystem remained less visible.
These moments surfaced a limit of the format. agoras is excellent at helping participants name what they have and what they need… but it’s not as immediately effective at surfacing why someone might hesitate to give what they have. The deeper reason people don’t share resources across the Atlanta ecosystem isn’t lack of generosity — it’s that sharing has costs, and those costs are invisible in the format.
The conversation that unlocks coordination isn’t “what do you have and what do you need?” It’s closer to “what would make you hesitant to give what you have — and what would change that?”
Pattern 4: Wanted and Unwanted Friction
The physical materials we designed helped participants who might otherwise have deflected into abstraction stay grounded in the specific. But they also generated friction. At more than one table, some participants had pre-signed materials and others didn’t — a logistics gap that created confusion at exactly the moment when attention was most needed.
The resource category labels created a different problem: without a visible reference at each table, participants had to hold the taxonomy in their heads while also managing the activity.
“I had to keep repeating the categories. There was guesswork that reduced some of the communication that could have been obtained.”
Next time, we’ll probably print category names directly on the stickers.
The Ecosystem in the Mirror
Some of the most significant moments at Pixel Recess happened in the large group discussion afterward.
In that group session, someone articulated a point many people in the room had been circling around but not quite naming for what it is: Atlanta doesn’t have a money problem. It has a culture problem. Chris Davis, who has played many roles in the ecosystem, and for a very long time, said it directly: Atlanta has money. The money just isn’t positioned toward startups. It’s not risk appetite — it’s risk culture. In Silicon Valley, the logic that if you keep investing in startups, eventually one will pay off is in the water. Here, it isn’t. People around him had assumed the constraint was capital. What was really the case was that the constraint was a shared story about what capital was for.
Versions of this showed up at multiple tables. The ecosystem’s incubators and co-working spaces — Atlanta Tech Village, various accelerators, university programs, for example — share nearly identical missions. They are all trying to support entrepreneurship in Atlanta. However, they are also all competing for the same people and the same funding, which means the coordination problem they’re trying to solve for founders is, structurally, the same problem they embody.
One participant put this really well:
“We all want the same thing, but we’re competing and not really sharing resources. There’s very little incentive for resource sharing between the silos.”
Hauswarm built this format on a specific belief: that the information needed to improve a system is already inside the system. Pixel Recess was less about generating new insights than about creating conditions for existing ones to become shared.
What we don’t know yet is whether this will be enough to change behavior. Trust built in an afternoon will obviously not automatically survive the return to normal incentive structures. Making follow-through more likely — building on what the room produced rather than letting it dissipate — is the design work that starts now and where Renew VC’s work picks back up in their online community: activating and building relationships across levels of power and capital.
If you’re interested in bringing agoras to your organization, community, or ecosystem, the right starting point is a brief conversation about the question you’re trying to create room for.
Get in touch by reaching me, Hauswarm’s co-Founder and CEO —
Kayla Uleah Evans — kayla@hauswarm.com