Creative Life – Finding Balance and Success in a Creative Career
Join us for a Book Launch and Lecture with Derrick Connell and Thomas Werner, highlighting the pending release of Twenty One Summers.
LECTURE: Creative Life – Finding Balance and Success in a Creative Career
Meet Derrick Connell, one of world’s foremost experts in the areas of AI and Search, and one of the leading advisors to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on AI, and Thomas Werner, former NY Gallery owner, exhibiting artist, and author of the books The Business of Fine Art Photography and The Fashion Image, as they discuss their new book Twenty One Summers and the challenges we face as creatives.
Living a creative life can be challenging. Our careers, industries, and personal lives are transforming rapidly, particularly as AI begins to influence nearly every aspect of how we work and live. Time slips away from us. Sometimes in large chunks and other times in small pieces. One moment it seems like we have forever and then all of a sudden ten summers have passed and we wonder what happened. We find ourselves feeling stuck, or asking when we will have the chance to do the things we love
Join the authors of Twenty One Summers as they address the challenges we face as we work to define and achieve our goals, and offer practical strategies to navigate them successfully. They will draw from their careers in art and technology introducing processes and solutions from both fields.
Derrick and Thomas will cover the following:
- The challenge of consistently creating new work
- Blind Spots that may be limiting your growth
- Managing the business and creative sides of your career
- Work/Life Balance
- Time Management
- The role of success and failure
- AI in the arts and business
Book Sales + Signing
Copies of Twenty One Summers will be available for sale.
Light refreshments will be served.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
DERRICK CONNELL is one of the world’s leading software executives in the fields of Search and AI. While at Microsoft, he worked directly with Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Satya Nadella.
He has co-created and delivered global products with partners such as Apple, Amazon, Meta, Twitter, and Yahoo, and on Microsoft products like Bing, Windows, Office Suite, Azure, xBox, and AI.
With seven US Patents approved and nine US Patents pending. Derrick has led global product teams of over 4,000 of the world’s best product managers, machine learning scientists, and designers, as he has created products that have changed our lives.
He is currently an advisor to tech companies around the world, advising them on their technology investments in robotics and helping them deliver on their vision of the Metaverse and AI.
THOMAS WERNER is the author of The Business of Fine Art Photography, Routledge, The Fashion Image, Bloomsbury Publishing, and Twenty One Summers to be released April 19th, 2026.
He is an Editor at Large for IRKmagazine: Paris, Board Member for the Santa Fe CENTER for Photographic Art, Co-founder of Chasing Beauty Publishing, and the former owner of Thomas Werner Gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea Art District.
Thomas is a past Photography Program Director at Parsons School of Design in NY, former National Board member for the American Society of Media Photographers, contributor to Adobe’s Lightroom Academy, and photography consultant for COACH, among others.
As an exhibiting artist Thomas was represented by galleries in New York and Los Angeles, and his work reviewed in The New Yorker Magazine.
He is currently a creative consultant, Thomas works one on one with creatives, businesses, cultural institutions, and not for profits.
