Most conferences start the same way: an emcee points to the bathrooms, the CEO thanks the sponsors and everyone claps politely before checking their email.
Day 1 of Unbound could have gone that way. It didn’t.
Instead, Bluebeam CEO Usman Shuja walked out and told more than 1,000 attendees that sticking to the old playbook is the surest way to lose. The industry, he said, is entering a “new season,” and the companies that survive won’t be the ones that play it safe; they’ll be the ones who prepare before the rules change.
That was the tone-setter: not another speech about “innovation” or “digital transformation,” but a call to become what he called “dual athletes”—builders fluent in both construction and AI.
And if that wasn’t enough to jolt the audience out of autopilot, the next keynote did the trick.
Former Disney exec Duncan Wardle had the crowd designing parachutes for elephants and brainstorming the Pet Olympics. Silly? Sure. But his point was serious: adults are professional idea-killers, and the future will belong to the teams that trade “no, because” for “yes, and.”
Season Change
Usman framed the moment in blunt terms: construction is entering a “new season.” Like Formula 1, you can’t win using last year’s playbook. He called on the industry to become “dual athletes”—people fluent in both construction craft and artificial intelligence.
And instead of talking in vague terms, he went concrete.
Turner Construction’s 100,000-square-foot cancer treatment center in Pasadena, California, wasn’t delivered by buzzwords but by superintendents rolling up their sleeves, ordering pizza and building their schedule inside Bluebeam so every contractor could stay aligned.
The project hit every milestone. More importantly, it hit the only milestone that mattered: first patient.
That’s the stakes of this “new season.” It’s not AI for AI’s sake. It’s AI that gives back 1,000 hours across a project—time that translates into fewer missed handoffs, fewer change orders, more lives saved.
The Disney Guy
If Usman’s challenge was about technology, Duncan Wardle’s was about mindset.
The former head of innovation at Disney walked on stage to Toy Story’s “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” and within five minutes had people out of their seats.
Wardle’s entire keynote was a reminder that adults are “professional idea killers.” We default to “No, because…” instead of “Yes, and…”—and in doing so, we shrink ideas before they have a chance to grow.
He had receipts:
- Pixar brainstorms that birthed Finding Nemo and Toy Story in a single lunch.
- A “what if” exercise in Mumbai that turned empty bottles into daylight lamps for a million homes without electricity.
- And the insight that Disney’s $1.7 billion-a-year MagicBand wasn’t born from asking “How do we make more money?” but from asking “What if there were no lines?”
His closer hit hardest:
“The opposite of bravery isn’t cowardice. It’s conformity.”
Why It Landed
It would’ve been easy for Day 1 to be another parade of AI hype and soft-focus innovation jargon. But the pairing of Usman and Wardle made the themes land:
- Season change is real. The industry can’t rely on yesterday’s playbook.
- Dual athletes will win. Construction mastery plus AI fluency isn’t optional; it’s the baseline.
- Mindset matters. Creativity dies in cultures that reward conformity.
- Playfulness is a tool. “Yes, and” cultures grow bigger ideas faster.
What’s Next
Day 1 wasn’t only about vision and mindset. It also delivered major product announcements, including the debut of Bluebeam Max. But those deserve their own deep dive, which we’ll cover in a dedicated post.
Because if Day 1 made anything clear, it’s this:
The future of construction won’t be won by the companies that conform. It’ll be won by the ones willing to rethink how work gets done—and who have the courage to act before the rules change.
