What are tips for a mindful conference?

These are a few of tiny things we've implemented in the Swiss Service Design Day 2026 to make it a more calm, mindful and human experience:

Intention at the start

After the introduction in the day, we asked each participant to reflect and write down what was their intention for the day. This is a thing I stole from Yoga and Mindful sessions. I feel it's a nice way for people to arrive to the conference and have clarity on what is truely important for them.

By having it written down, and visible throughout the day, it can help people come back to this intention and adapt what they do so that they get there. For this we created a tiny "Reflection Canvas" where people could write their intentions and notes.

Embodiement and mindfulness exercises

Twice in the day, and this is something we could have done more often, we had someone leading an exercise of embodiement and mindfulness. We are lucky that we Nils Solanki in our community who is both a great Service Design nerd and breath work specialist who mixes both approaches.

Time for reflections

Instead of running a classical networking exercise, at the end of the day we gave three reflection questions (also placed on the reflection canvas). People were invited to pair with someone they didn't yet interact with and do this exercise with them for 20 minutes.

The three questions were prepared by Nils Solanki:

1. What’s one thing you’re taking away from today on a personal level?
2. What has been your greatest source of joy recently?
3. What do you wish more people asked you about?

Less input more conversations

Between each talk we put at least 20 minutes of break to give a lot of time for people to: digest what they was shared with them, speak with others, or just have a break. We often hear people say that the most important part of conferences is what happens in between, so we made sure there were big in between moments.