Design Engaged 2005 Retrospect
Almost two months after Design Engaged (I know, I know), I thought I should take a moment to get down some quick thoughts on the conference. The conference took place in Berlin, was organized by Andrew Otwell and Mike Kuniavsky, and was hosted by Spreeblick.
Adam, Anne, Matt, Matt, Andrew have already posted thorough summaries, notes and commentary, so I’ll make just a few notes about my impressions and key takeaways.
The highlights for me were Adam Greenfield’s wonderfully told story about oil and what happens when you run out of it (hint: just about everything); Eric Rodenbeck and Mike Migurski’s (aka Stamen) discussion about turning data into awesome visualizations; John Poisson’s excellent four haiku based on the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism; and Timo Arnall’s fantastic study of a graphic language for touch.
As nearly everyone had the opportunity to present, the presentations were many and diverse, but with one or maybe two themes emerging. While I appreciated the idea that attendees could present whatever they wanted, it was great whenever things fell together and created a collective synergy of ideas. From my perspective this happened only once, and I was lucky enough to be part of the mix. So diversity is good but in the end an overriding theme seems more beneficial.
The venue, Spreeblick, was okay, with two rooms that felt built to accommodate discussion on one side of the room and food on the other. There weren’t many walls to hide behind, but there were a lot of laptops. There was only one time during the entire conference when I recall that everyone had them closed, and this was because Malcolm McCullough personally asked everyone to do so before he began his talk. A conference where everyone is engaged is a fine idea, but it’s not going to happen if there’s freely available wide distractions.
On the whole, Design Engaged was the greatest design conference I’ve attended, and it has the potential to be a fantastic yearly event if it’s treated delicately. And from what I hear, Europe won’t be the only place that it will be happening in 2006, so stay tuned to Andrew’s heyblog and the mothership for all the latest. Again, thanks to everyone who made the event so successful. We’ll see you again soon.
Slides and notes from my talk are all available in Projects.
