From a Ridiculous Idea to an AI Trading Card Booth: How Freedom Turned Curiosity into Creation 

“What if we turned people into trading cards?” 

That’s how it started, half a joke, tossed into the air during a meeting. 
A sentence that should have been laughed off. Instead, it changed everything. 

While most companies were planning basketball hoops, ping-pong tables, and branded giveaways for Techorama’s “All Star Sports” theme, we found ourselves heading in a completely different direction. 

We didn’t want a booth. We wanted an experience. 

The Spark

Every year, Techorama announces a theme. And every year, we ask the same question: 
“How can we make it… us?” 

This time, the theme was sports. 
“I’m not the guy who talks about Formula 1 over coffee,” someone said. 
“Same,” another replied. “So, what do we even do with sports?” 

Then came the first spark. Rutger, one of our colleagues, was at another event and sent a message: “People here are doing ridiculous challenges just to win a plush toy. It’s chaotic. It’s amazing. We should do something like that.” 

That got us thinking. People love to play, to collect, to win something that feels personal. 

A few days later, another spark hit. At a conference in Vilnius, someone watched a live AI demo where volunteers were transformed on screen, into pirates, statues, and superheroes, in real-time. 

That was it. The idea clicked instantly: Collectibles + AI transformation.  

“What if we turned people into trading cards?”.... Silence. Then laughter. 
Then ...wait a second ...maybe that’s not so crazy after all. 

From Idea to Experiment 

We knew one thing: we didn’t want to simply swap faces or genders. That can go wrong in a hundred ways. Instead, we leaned into something everyone on the team loved... fantasy. 

Dwarves, goblins, elves, werewolves. No boundaries, no awkwardness, just imagination. We had the seed of an idea. Now we needed a place to make it grow. 

Enter our favorite tradition: Innovation Day. Four times a year, we stop everything and experiment. No rules. No deliverables. Just: “Let’s see what happens.” 

We pitched the idea: “We want to turn people into AI-generated fantasy trading cards.” 
Within minutes, eight people volunteered. Developers, designers, AI enthusiasts, all in one tiny room. 

Someone opened a laptop. Someone else pulled up AI models. Someone started sketching card designs. Within an hour, chaos had turned into collaboration. “Wait, that actually worked! Okay, now how do we make it safe for a live event?” 
“What if we add stats and rarity levels?” 

By the end of the day, we had a rough prototype: glitchy, weird, and full of potential. 
It wasn’t ready, but it was alive. 

Enter the Chief of Awesomeness 

Every great story has a turning point. Ours walked in with a magic. Olaf, our Creative Director, or as we like to call him, Chief of Awesomeness, saw the prototype and immediately said: “That’s awesome. Let’s make it even crazier.” 

Within hours, he had drawn the first concept: a fantasy-themed booth with glowing screens, trading cards, and a storyline. You wouldn’t just visit our booth. You’d step into another world. “I see it,” Olaf said. “We’ll build a fantasy tavern. They’ll come as themselves… and leave as heroes.” 

We built everything ourselves, using AI, home setups, and way too many late-night Slack messages. Someone even used their toes to hit the spacebar while posing for AI training shots. It wasn’t just a project anymore. It was a creative snowball. 

The Build 

Once the designs were in place, reality hit: we needed this to actually work. 

The system had to: 

Oh, and it had to look flawless. A colleague said: “If we’re going to build it, let’s do it properly, let’s use Orleans.” 

For context: Orleans is a distributed actor framework: powerful, elegant, and not something you usually pick for a live event booth. 

But that’s who we are. We try new tech not because we have to, but because we want to learn. We built the backend. The web interface. The AI pipeline. We tested, failed, retried. We learned how to control the model, avoid unsafe outputs, and optimize speed. Sometimes we broke everything. Then we fixed it. 

“It’s 1 a.m. Who’s still online?” “We all are.” 

Nobody was told to stay up late. Nobody was assigned overtime. We just cared too much to stop. 

The Payoff 

By the time Techorama Belgium rolled around, the booth was ready. And honestly, we were nervous. 

Then the first visitor stepped in. Camera flash. AI magic. A new trading card appeared. 
Someone gasped. Then laughed. Then they brought their friends. Soon there was a line. 
People collecting, trading, and comparing cards. Developers geeking out about the tech. 
Attendees returning later just to see what they’d become next. It worked. 

Not because it was perfect, but because it was alive, creative, technical, human. And in that moment, the booth stopped being “a project.” It became a mirror of our culture. 

Culture in Action 

This is what we believe in, not as slogans, but as lived reality. 

“No one told us to build it, and no one stopped us.” 
“We trust each other enough to take risks.” 
“We don’t just talk about innovation, we schedule it.” 
“When someone has a crazy idea, the answer is never no. It’s ‘how?’” 

That’s our culture in one sentence: Freedom + Passion + Collaboration = Creation. 

No ego. No micromanagement. Just people doing what they love, together. 

Next Stop: Techorama Utrecht 

Antwerp proved that this crazy idea worked. Now, we’re bringing it to Techorama Netherlands. We’ve improved the tech, refined the experience, and added new surprises. It’s faster, smarter, and even more fun. 

And while others bring giveaways, we’re bringing something you’ll actually want to play with. “We’re not here to tell people who we are,” one teammate said. “We’re here to let them experience it.” 

Come See for Yourself 

If you’re heading to Techorama Utrecht, come find us. 

You’ll recognize the booth. It’ll be the one with laughter, glowing screens, and a queue of people waiting to see what they become. 

Get your AI-generated fantasy card. Trade it. Show it off. Talk tech with us. We’d love to meet you. 

Because the best way to understand our culture isn’t to read about it. It’s to feel it. “We don’t tell people we’re innovative. We show them.”