Ben Kessler (bio)

Pity Terry T. Schwartz, senior director of brand design for ConAgra Foods. After a far-out morning talk by University of Hawaii professor and "futurist" Jim Dator, who urged the crowd at this week's FUSE conference to become "tsunami surfers" in order to build a "dream society," Schwartz had the hard task of bringing the proceedings back to budgets and quarterly reports. By way of a segue, he offered, "I'm not here to talk about the end of the world; this is about how to sell more Poppycock and Fiddle-Faddle." His awkward transition summed up the entire conference, which attempted--sometimes excitingly, sometimes uncomfortably--to straddle the line between "design culture" and corporate culture.