Creative Concept Case · 2024

Opening Show for a Global Developer Kick-Off Event

A five-minute opening show that frames artificial intelligence not as a threat, but as a superpower waiting to be claimed.

Role Junior Concept Creative
Timeline October 2023-January 2024
Client International B2B Technology Company
Dundu, a three-meter illuminated puppet figure, with outstretched arms behind a dancer in the foreground and a large LED screen displaying digital content.
Team & Role

Concept and dramaturgy,
in close collaboration.

My Role

Junior Concept Creative at MCI Deutschland GmbH, working in close collaboration with Creative Director Marc Kuhlmann. My contribution centered on conceptual development throughout the process: the core thesis, the emotional arc, and the rough narrative structure that the show’s dramaturgy was later built on. Refinement and final scripting followed in later production stages.

Project Team
Concept: Benedikt Faber & Marc Kuhlmann (MCI).
Project Management & Production Coordination: MCI Deutschland GmbH.
Show Production: Frederick Thoele.
Video & Content: Client-side production team.
The Brief

An emotional prologue,
before a single slide.

An international B2B technology company brings its global developer community together each year on a yearlong event platform: a series of virtual, hybrid, and in-person events centered on learning and professional development. Each year follows a defining theme and a leitmotif built around it.

A kickoff that sets the tone for the year.

The platform kicks off annually with a hybrid event in which board members set the direction for the year ahead: priorities, goals, and development opportunities for the community. In 2024, artificial intelligence was the defining focus — the lens through which the year’s agenda was framed.

The brief: open the keynote with a show that serves not just as a spectacular entry point, but as an emotional prologue to the year, setting the tone before a single slide appears.

LED-suit performer on stage in front of a large LED screen showing abstract blue digital content, with camera crew filming from the side — illustrating the hybrid production setup for onsite and virtual audiences.
The Design Problem

Bringing 10,000 developers
to the same starting point.

AI in early 2024 was a loaded topic for a developer audience. Not unfamiliar, but contested. Exciting to some, unsettling to others. A show that simply celebrated AI would have felt tone-deaf. One that leaned into anxiety would have set the wrong tone for a keynote meant to inspire action.

The real problem wasn’t spectacle. It was emotional positioning: how do you bring a room of 10,000 people, with different relationships to a technology that is rewriting their profession, to the same starting point?

The Core Thesis

A superpower, not a verdict.

The show needed to do what a keynote slide cannot: let the audience feel the question before they’re given the answer.

The narrative doesn’t explain AI. It positions it as a superpower that brings real challenges, but also possibilities that simply didn’t exist before. The emotional arc follows a developer’s inner journey: uncertainty, curiosity, confrontation, and finally agency — not by resolving the tension, but by making the potential feel tangible enough to reach for.

The opening narration closes with three questions: “What if this superpower was under your command? How would you use it? Would you even dare to use it?” The show never answers them directly. Instead, it shows what becomes possible when the answer is yes. The show ends where the narration left off: the superpower is handed over to the audience. It now belongs to the community, for them to use it.

Two dancers performing in front of a large LED screen showing fiery digital content, embodying the emotional arc of the show.
The Key Decision

Dundu — AI as a presence,
not a threat.

The central concept question was: how do you give AI a physical presence on stage without making it feel robotic, threatening, or reductive?

The answer was Dundu, a three-meter illuminated puppet figure — human in shape but clearly not human in nature. Abstract enough to avoid anthropomorphism. Large enough to command presence. Soft enough in form and light to avoid threat. Dundu doesn’t represent AI as a machine. It represents AI as a force: present, curious, and responsive to the humans around it.

The second layer was the interplay between physical stage and LED screen content. Dancers move in and out of digital worlds projected behind them, the boundary between real and virtual deliberately blurred and repeatedly crossed. For an audience that lives at exactly that boundary in their daily work, this wasn’t just aesthetic. It was a mirror.

Dundu, a three-meter illuminated puppet figure, facing an LED-suit dancer on stage — two representations of AI in dialogue.
Tech crew at lighting and production control desks during the show rehearsal.
Outcome

A prologue that landed
in both rooms.

Dual-audience framing. Emotional framing of a complex, contested topic for 130 on-site and approximately 10,000 virtual participants.
Seamless transition into keynote. Show flowed directly into the keynote with no break in attention or atmosphere.
Positive community reception. Strongly positive feedback from the developer community following the event.