Pep Salazar, director of OFFF — the design and creativity festival he's shaped since 2007 — joins Radim to unpack what it really takes to build a "city for three days." ~ 

Pep traces his own unlikely path, from a teenager who dreamed of being an actor in a small town near Barcelona, through his formative years building Sónar, to the moment he realised passion alone can blur your vision and every idea needs a manager to make it real. 

They talk about why OFFF shows unfinished work instead of polished portfolios, how a team of seven becomes thirty-five once the doors open, and why Pep would rather rebrand the festival every five years than let it stand still. This is a conversation about risk, honesty, and the invisible, exhausting, joyful work of building a community that actually means it.

Takeaways

• Passion can blur your vision — every big idea eventually needs a manager to protect it and make it real
• A festival isn't a finished portfolio piece; showing the process and the unfinished idea is what builds real trust with a community
• Location does double duty — the city gives you context, but the venue has to speak the same language as the event itself
• Curating without a fixed theme keeps a lineup honest and lets creativity stay wide instead of narrow
• Saying no to most people who want the stage is one of the hardest, least visible parts of the job
• Deliberately rebranding every few years keeps a design festival credible — you can't ask others to embrace change if you won't
• Growth doesn't have to mean franchising — co-producing with local partners builds real community instead of a copy-paste event
• The job is made of a thousand three-minute conversations, and learning to actually enjoy them is its own skill

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

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