What Happens in New Orleans, Doesn't Stay in New Orleans
Because the conversations at SoDA: Society of Digital Agencies ripple into the way we build.
For the sixth consecutive year, the kite lifted off for SoDA's Global Member Meeting, hosted this time in New Orleans, where Agustin Linenberg and Roberto Gonzalez (Co-Founders), Cecilia Giraudo (COO) and Nicolás Andronowicz (Director of Partnerships) spent four days immersed in AI, creativity, partnerships and the behind-the-scenes realities of running a digital agency.
The city set the tone. New Orleans is a collision of cultures, rhythms, and flavors that somehow finds its balance. The GMM felt the same: layered, unexpected, and best understood in motion. The highlights came in the off-script moments, when the calendar slows and you sit across from people who've walked similar roads. SoDA is about proximity. Founders, CEOs, and leaders from every corner of the world comparing notes, trading scars, and testing ideas against each other's realities.
This year, the gravitational pull was obvious: AI. Not the hype, but the impact. How it's finding its way into every part of the business, from how we organize teams to how clients measure value. In the peer discussions, it stopped being theory. It was about roles, choices, and the comfortable and uncomfortable ways work is already being reshaped. Opinions flew fast: over coffee, late dinners, quick breaks. Each one sharp in its own way, adding perspective by contrast.
But AI wasn't the only theme. Conversations circled around creative tools, subscription models making a comeback, and above all, trust, how products earn it, how easily they lose it, and why, in the end, trust is most of the time the product.
Beyond tools or trends, a statement that stuck was that “you can't normalize the magic”. As agencies grow, there's a risk of becoming prisoners of process. The challenge is knowing what to break in the name of operational excellence, without breaking what makes you creative. Seeing the agency as a whole, is the only way to strike that balance.
Among insightful keynotes and sessions, New Orleans stood out for something harder to schedule: perspective. Hearing how others read the same signals, sometimes with optimism, sometimes with caution, is what gave the week its weight. It was a reminder that while our contexts differ, comparing maps face to face makes the route clearer.
For Aerolab, these takeaways aren't souvenirs. They ripple into how we lead, how we partner, how we build. They remind us that shaping products is never just technical. It's cultural. It's structural. And it's collective.
That's why what happens in New Orleans echoes far beyond it, stitched into our everyday.
