Bo's Update

The other day I attended a one day conference at the Danish Design Center, which covered the (potential) role of design in a society, facing many challenges. I think it’s save to say that it’s the best event I have been to at the DDC*.

With a interesting and relevant topic and speakers including Chris Luebkeman, Global Foresight + Innovation, Arup, Chris Hacker, designchef, Johnson & Johnson, Josephine Green as well as Danish contributions from Christian Bason, MindLab and Mikkel B. Rasmussen, ReD Associates the event was looking great before it even started. Chris Luebkeman was very enjoyable in the role of the day’s guide, and in his capable hands it also turned out to be a very well executed event full of thought provoking and inspiring presentations.

The day included loads of good points, thoughts and insights that are still buzzing around in my head, so I think I will save those for a possible later post and encourage you to check the presentations available at the DDC site, or check the speakers any change you might get.

It’s been a little while since I had been at a conference, so I might have been extra responsive (which is not so often the case) especially since I had seen and heard most of the speakers before (which also tends to be the case). Hacker didn’t bring much new to the table since he impressed with Johnson & Johnson business/design/sustainability approach back at Connecting ‘07, but otherwise all the speakers gave valuable input and ideas for me to go home with.

Afterwards was the opening of the Challenge Society exhibit, which will be the main exhibit at DDC for the rest of the season. I didn’t have the time or energy to go in detail with it, after a full days program, but it looked pretty good (partial thanks to the graphic work done by my friend Lene, Propel). Watch a few more photos of the exhibition.

Only thing you might point out is that it extensively focused on ‘Design Thinking’, which Bruce Nussbaum pretty much killed last week, along with Tim Brown from IDEO and Robert Fabricant at Frog.

*I am not a huge user of the DDC as it’s role and focus the past many years primarily have been to promote design to the Danish business world, and secondary to the main public ie. not very many activities for the design world. So saying that this was the best DDC event I have experienced, might not say too much. But I’d like to give credit were credit is due, and it was a day well spend at the DDC.

One afterthought. I think Chris Hacker was the only one of the speakers trained as a designer.