Nico mailed me about what sounds like an excellent gathering in October: Intersections 07

“The conference chair is Jeremy Myerson, and sessions that have caught my attention include:

— ‘The challenges of design thinking’ with Tim Brown
— ‘Mission creep – The limits of design’ with James Woudhuysen
— ‘What is the new know-how in service design?’
— ‘From job to jobs: the rise of the polymath’ with Richard Seymour
— ‘The design toolbox for life experiences’ with Clive Grinyer
— ‘The social anthropology of design’ chaired by Deyan Sudjic with Richard Seymour, Peter Saville and John Thackara”

Nico himself is chairing a thread which sounds up-the-collective-streets of a lot of people I know:

The seminar sessions in my thread are ‘Designing interactions, media or experiences?’ with Daljit Singh of Digit London, Durrell Bishop of Lucky Bite, and Andy Altmann of Why Not Associates, and we will be asking ‘What do designers from different backgrounds and who are designing interactions to different ends, consider to be their core skills?’; and ‘Can good design be ‘co-created’?’ with Future Cities Project director Austin Williams and Joe Heapy of Engine, and we will be asking ‘What has design got to learn from the open-source software movement and ‘wiki-nomics’? and ‘While everyone is a designer, isn’t it the job of professional designers to champion good design?’.

I mailed Nico back (somewhat hastily) about the event, saying that it that occured to me is that it’s quite an “old school” event in some ways, compared to the emerging ‘unconference’ status quo in the tech world – i.e. It’s going to be established, well-known, vocal clever people on stage talking to (probably, mostly less-established) clever
people in the audience.

I wondered whether there might be opportunity for a fringe of ‘pecha-kucha’/’ignite‘-style open mic stuff?

Or some space and time for people to get together and make stuff, a little like the Hardcore-Hardware-Hacking weekend recently, or the interactionaries that have happened at various CHI events, or the design games that Jess McMullin writes about here.

I wonder if it might be possible to find a friendly bar in Newcastle/Gateshead to do a design barcamp? Perhaps along the lines of the “This Happened” night that was in London a little while ago?

Although – creating a Foo/BarCamp for designers might be a thankless task!

Mike Migurski has written a thoughful piece on just this quandry.

On second thoughts perhaps it would be nice to just sit, laptops shut, minds-open and listen to clever people in the nice surroundings of the Baltic Mills.

The “early-bird” rate is ending on the 31st July, so better make it snappy…

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P.S.: Upcoming.org entry for the event is here