Inside C2: How its Creative Director Is Transforming the Conference Experience

Each May, C2 is unleashed on the city of Montreal. It attracts thousands of creative business leaders who are looking for inspiration and new ideas. Like many global events, the pandemic resulted in a multi-year detour for C2, though it also led to experimentation on new formats for the event. 

Skift Meetings spoke with C2’s Creative Director, Nicolas Fonseca, to get his take on what worked at this year’s event and dive deeper into his process for creating interactive experiences. Fonseca, also known as Mister Jaune, is a filmmaker and artist, whose endeavors have often focused on using layers of food, sensory design, technology, and play to create memorable experiences. 

This interview was edited for clarity and length.

Now that the dust has settled after the 2024 edition of C2 in Montreal, what did you think about this year’s event and how has it evolved?

It’s a full-circle moment for me being creative director. I was contracted back in 2012 to help create the experience for the first C2 and have worked on projects on and off for the event ever since. 

When C2 started, it was a different era for conferences. The whole cultural context of these events was about to change. It was still the ‘beautiful years’ of social media, which is strange to think about, when TED talks were popular on Facebook, and conferences like South by Southwest were just starting to explode. It was a completely different moment and many events were moving to a festival-like model. 

Then the pandemic happened, canceling C2 in 2020 and we had to create the 2022 edition in less than six months. So 2023 still felt like a Covid edition, with digital formats and partner hotel venues, and a trade off compared to the village experience we are known for. This year, though, C2 was at a new site by the Saint Lawrence River, full of natural light and creative spaces. There’s a newer audience at C2 post-pandemic. Many attendees don’t have reference points from before the pandemic. We had many who returned, but there is definitely a turnover, with new, younger attendees experiencing C2 for the first time.  

So C2 has not transitioned to a big box hotel event, as some may have thought? 

No, that was really a product of the pandemic. The new space this year really gave us leeway to be creative again, in that sense. We were able to rekindle that ethos of a village experience with installations, as well as singular experiences and spaces. 

As an example, the main stage was on the second floor of an exterior covered parking lot, half inside and half outside with the views of the river. We were really happy with what we delivered. It felt like we were able to establish a new cycle of C2 after the many experiments during the turning point of the past few years. And people really said to us, ‘C2 is back.’

C2 has billed itself as a business event at the intersection of creativity and commerce. There is this promise of presenting an array of different experiences, discussions, endless surprises, and delight. Is there anything major that changed for the experience in 2024? 

It is a really high bar and we had to break down our goals in what we could achieve in this three-year process of change. One of the things that we wanted to do was to go from a black box to a white box. C2 was always this dark, nightcluby event that moved away from what traditional conferences could be and took on more of a festival approach. There was a lot of projection and lighting associated with nighttime events versus a conference. 

But then everyone started doing it, and so one thing we wanted to renew was to go to something that feels more like daytime and connects to a sense of productivity and growth, without evaluating the social aspect of it. It’s strange, but everyone seemed calmer because of it. We really worked with the lighting to filter and enhance the natural sunlight, creating a different mood for mornings, noons, and evenings. I remember working with the lighting designers and saying, ‘I don’t want any red, blue, or purple lighting,’ which has become the base level of every event we go to. The absence of screens and projections also helped people’s disposition, which was a major revelation during the event. 

Does C2 still have evening events? I’ve seen videos of Snoop Dogg DJing C2’s closing party in years past. Is that still a big focus?

The big party aspect is less prevalent now, shifting more towards cocktails, dinners, and receptions. This change reflects broader trends in conferences, where large parties are not as common as they used to be. This year, we also did fewer dinners and we focused on pop-up restaurants instead, rethinking food and hospitality in a conference setting. We worked with a great restaurant group, creating dreamy pop-up concepts that allowed for natural networking, like power lunches within the conference environment.

What about the labs and small group interactions that C2 is also known for? Did this white box mindset also carry over into those more singular experiences?

It did. 2023 was probably the year when we experimented the most with lab formats and collaborations with many creative artists. We worked with nonprofit organizations, visual artists, designers, creative entrepreneurs, and technologists. It went in many directions. All by design as we were prototyping things and coming out of our shell. So in 2024, we committed to a few formats, types of interactions, and vibes that we felt paid off in 2023. These also came out when we did a survey of participants and partners in 2023 to confirm orientations that felt right for us. 

That led you to something called Neurodiverse Lasagna, right?

Yes, this is a lab that we did in collaboration with a group of young coaches. They have a company called Nüense and often work with super creative chefs for their workshops. I had been obsessed with lasagna and how its many layers were essentially an allegory for group dynamics. So the lasagna in this lab was a metaphor to talk about people’s understanding of neurodiversity in the workplace. It challenges their understanding of how it shows up in relationships. Essentially not every tray of lasagna needs to be baked in the same mold. Attendees would cut different shapes and colors of pasta that were then laminated as huge pasta sheets. The resulting colorful pasta sheets were beautiful, almost like quilts, and we would make lasagna out of them. We then baked all of the lasagna trays at the end of the day and served them at a cocktail event for attendees. 

For many events, producing these kinds of experiences would require a sponsor. You might have “the Neurodiverse Lasagna Lab, Presented by Barilla Pasta,” as an example. Is that the case at C2, where you seek brands to help underwrite and power these experiences? 

We do, but it is intentional. Sometimes we partner with companies for certain aspects of the content. It’s not that we’re opposed to it. It’s that we don’t put ourselves in a position where we need to do it for each and every piece of the conference. There’s a balance between maintaining the integrity of the experience and working with partners.

You have the audience’s permission to put them in these wacky experiences. How do you develop new formats and decide what works? 

It’s a push and pull. I’ll give you an example around coaching, which is a new offer that we’ve been developing pictures for three years. It actually started as a sponsored activity where we had five minute coaching sessions in a car. The response was good: people were into it and they wanted more. So then we asked ourselves, what is this thing that’s called coaching within the context of a conference? What can we do with that? That led us to really expand this format and play around with different formats and theories of coaching. We could look towards California coaches that have this super holistic approach, and then there is a more formal, performance coaching style. So we are continuing to experiment with new formats anchored in these different theories. 

How does the C2 team manage the production of all of these experiences? 

It’s a huge team endeavor, for sure. There is the scenography and the environment design, and then there is content and programming, and all of the experience, as well. So it’s a pretty big team, but not everyone is solely creative. We’ve adopted a horizontal collaboration model internally, maximizing creativity and efficiency. Our creative team includes resources shared with marketing, allowing us to work closely, maximize collaboration, and bring everything together.

What’s your approach to networking? Do you plan for receptions as most events do and come up with approaches that move past the traditional constructs of networking? 

We all want networking as a personal outcome and for events to be worth our while. It’s important to find people who you want to work with in the future, whether it be a project or partnership. There’s a sense of growth there. We R&D it by creating these unique opportunities for planned and serendipitous interactions. We also design spaces for both intimate and professional conversations. Again, the power lunch idea at our pop-up restaurants is an example to connect with the people you often only see at conferences. But I don’t feel anyone is attracted to something called a networking event. 

Everything is now about AI. Was there anything at C2 that was AI-driven or implemented for attendees? 

I think the app had a lot more embedded AI in it, which is something we are getting more used to in our lives. We’re still experimenting with AI at the event overall. In terms of content, one thing that we did do this year was to have three dedicated days in terms of content and programming. The first day was more immersive and experiential, day two was dedicated to sustainability and innovation, and day three was AI and commerce. We did a game show around AI called Relevant or Obsolete, which was like a cross between The Price is Right and Jeopardy. That was one of the labs and it was a collaboration with a creative technologist. And so it was AI, it was humor and focused on the more existential aspect of AI. It was a lot of fun.

How do you stay ahead creatively without feeling pressured to constantly innovate?

I feel that pressure less now, and some people want the return of something they know each year. It also creates marketing and communication pressure if you are changing your event all of the time. Not everything needs to change every year to stay innovative. I think it makes sense to have a layer of your event that can change every year. Another layer that changes every three-to-four years, and then some things that change every 10 years. In that sense, not everything has to change at the same frequency.

What events inspire you?

Overall, I like great environments. An interesting mix of people is always my thing. Being able to be in a defined point of view or perspective, like you landed somewhere. I miss the total magazine experience. When we used to spend money on magazines every month, you could step into this curated universe with a clear point of view. Creating spaces that feel like stepping into a complete universe that’s about people and references and knowledge and things. At its best, with any live experience or event, you are in contact with something communicative. Without it, they don’t make us feel anything specific.

Do you often have to explain your experiences or approach at events to others?

I try to explain as little as possible. After having gone through years of participatory events and interactivity, I know some people are keener and want to touch everything and try everything. Those people are really comfortable that they are writing part of the story. Others are really happy to know about the story, and just want to read it. And some just want to mind their own business, but just want to feel good in the environment. For me, all ways of reading an event are valid, and if people feel good, my job is done.