CPH127

FANTASTIC!

I’ll suggest Design Engaged as a model to consider leveraging
http://www.heyotwell.com/engaged2004/

You might consider whether the branding for this event is indeed cph127 or if you sponsor it. I think owning the brand of the event limits the emotional, intellectual and other investments that your participants will make. There’s a common thing we’re interested in, but we might not put the same label on it as you guys do.

I think you can be leaders without being owners, or shopkeepers or whatever - if you know what I mean.

I believe the community building aspect is as important as the content. I’ve been to too many events where you don’t get to find out the names of the people that attended - the whole list - ever, or not til after. Then you realize “oh I could have met this person who I know by name but not by sight” - that’s one example.

I think blogs and flickr pools are two tools that conferences are using to overcome that - and they are ideal for what I’m talking about - co-creation, where the attendees own and build the event as much as the sponsors.

I think going for global participation will be really exciting and unique.

This is just first thoughts and I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Great Idea! I’ve already heard the (virtual) rumours about something like this to be happening - the world is small.

Steve, great suggestions! In 2003 I’ve been the co-organiser of a design management symposium at the design faculty in Cologne/Germany called: Advanced Strategies for Tough Times. A first attempt to step out off the common known conference approach. You’ll find the site at:

http://kisd.de/dm_symposium.html (from 2003) and at http://kisd.de/discussion_dm.html (a symposium I’ve co-moderated in 2002)

Well, the photos are not flickr yet. However we’ve made MP3 recordings of the sessions. For additional information enter KISD in the serach box of my blog http://www.design-management.de

Hans, I’m happy to support you with content and context!

Talk to you soon, Ralf.

I second this and Steve’s comments. I too was going to recommend looking at Andrew Otwell’s model for DesignEngaged. He’s kept his a micro-conference, to keep the costs down and the discussions rich. He also tried to capture some of the characteristics of the Doors of Perceptions conferences. He could be a good person to email for things he’s learned about doing it this way.

Armin Vit from Speak Up, also has brought people together in small informal groups, to carry on topics from the site. Perhaps less what you were thinking - but again, an offline activity grown from an online community.

I think the chance to be able to listen, discuss and even disagree with people in person is always preferable and a richer experience.

I’d be very willing to volunteer help in any way.

I’d also suggest, for those that won’t be able to make it, that some form of informal proceedings would be a great thing to offer. Some way of capturing key things and distributing them physically is key and something people would be willing to pay for.

The only thing I would be fearful of is hearing exactly the same things we read and discuss here on a daily basis. It could be good to promote both the most forward-thinking and radical thinking along with exposure to smaller working-sessions-things where you can meet and try things out on a more practical level and with people.

Type (typographic) conferences are a good example of this, where you can sit with type masters and have a go yourself. And recently for the Type conference in NY, there was even a Type radio event to keep people connected.

I look forward to hearing more about this.

Wow, two people who suggested Design Engaged as a model, I’m very flattered. It was a lot of fun. I encourage you to do something small, and try to incorporate activities other than just lectures. DE2 is on the horizon, and I’d love to email with you guys about what you’re planning.

My notes about DE1 are here:
http://www.heyotwell.com/heyblog/archives/2004/11/design_engaged_3.html

And Adam Greenfield wrote a much more thoughtful thing about it:
http://v-2.org/displayArticle.php?article_cat=4

Respect to all of you and thank you very much for your great and quick response.

I agree with you Steve that CPH127 may be isn’t the brand we should promote – in fact I don’t care about the naming – I just thought it would be neat with some kind of recognition but let us not kill the idea before its born
I also agree with you that the summit should be born global, but how do we make sure that others – and not only the usual suspects – will attend? Any suggestions?

And yes – the community is important but we have to make sure that the summit fit’s the needs. I agree that blogging and Flickr are necessary tools – of course At the 15. of September we will make some testing with the Video Blogging format as well. Chris Conley will be in Copenhagen and we will try to make an interview – but hush hush – he don’t know yet
I’ve of course been to a lot of conferences and one thing that I think we SHOULDN’T aim for is a one-way-presenting-style and I think DesignEngaged is a very fine example on how it could be done.

I’m my self very inspired by http://www.reboot.dk - this years event was simply amazing, form, style and attitude…..

In a few days we’ll have the CPH127-wiki ready – one of the topics here could be the planning of the summit….

Ralf – you examples are good an it gives me good ideas on how we could present the conversation, findings and presentation afterwards.

Your help will be much appreciated – from all of you of course!

Damien – I like your thought’s and would be pleased if you would/could be part of the future planning.

And Andrew – please share, I will very much brainstorm with you When will you plan DE2 – maybe we should consider a joint project. Maybe not – please share your thought’s….

One last thought – could we quickstart a planning/sharing/brainstorming –process by inviting to a skype-conferencecall?

What do you think?

All the best
Hans Henrik

How get it global? Maybe brainstorm a list of places to target the announcement to get that global representation: schools, companies, blogs, etc.

I’ve never been involved with the genesis of an event; only with an event that was already defined. So you have the definition to struggle with - for me - that would be the first step - to try to put words to the “mission” -

CPHSummit 05 - an opportunity for [types of people with skill sets or interests] to gather and [do activities / learn something / have certain resuls]

For me (and this is just ME - everyone works through this their own way) that would help guide the decisions about how to structure the interaction, the events, who to reach out to, etc.

Maybe I am just stating the obvious. Hopefully I’m doing it in a way that makes me sound Real Super Smart though

I was really interested in reading your post about “Open Space” because that same attitude was what we were going for with Design Engaged. I think I was very lucky to have something good come out of it. If you feel confident you will attract smart and friendly people, the best advice I can give is: keep it light and stay out of the way!

One of the best things I can point you to is Clay Shirky’s summary of the Blur 2002 conference:
http://www.nsu.newschool.edu/blur/blur02/user_shirky.html

I basically stole all those ideas for Design Engaged, but did it on a much smaller scale. I think what worked best was to plan for several different experiences, rather than just one. Usually, a conference means: one person talks, everyone listens, then another person talks, etc. And then everyone meets their friends in the hallways and goes to dinner with them. Which is ok, but how many times have you skipped out on part of the conference to hang out with people? Which part of the experience is obviously more meaningful to you? I can barely remember anything about the panels at South By Southwest as well as I can remember having drinks in the evenings afterwards with people.

So we tried inverting that: small group interactions (like an algorithmic walk around Amsterdam, or a half-day brainstorming activity) combined with presentations. I think it’s important to consider that each person will enjoy participating in different ways: some people really like speaking in front of a group, some people like to join in big group discussions, but some prefer to chat with two or three other people; some people like to participate by making sketches or photos or whatever. Find ways of making those kinds of contributions into the conference, and you can encourage everyone to be more engaged with it. This will be very hard the bigger the group is. If you have a hundred people, it’s hard to notice the one person doing amazing sketches of people:
http://flickr.com/photos/daviderwin/1440093/in/set-35285/

Any other dates than 24 March, Hans? It’s my 40th Birthday :)))

Hi all,

Great to see such a positive response
Niti - we will have to take another look at the date! We would love to see you at the summit!

It seems alot of us would like to see the summit as an opportunity to collaborate and share our views. I’m thinking about what the theme of the summit should be;
One way could be to focus on the design discipline (our tools, our methods, approaches and the challenges related to these). This could be done through a few key-notes and then workshops around some challenges to the discipline. The result of the summit would be suggestions of improvements and the road ahead for design.
Another way could be to focus on challenges to business or to the world and how design can approach these challenges. This could be done through a few key-notes and then workshops which are more solution driven. The aim would be to come up with solutions to the challenges through the use of the design process. As we work we will also (on a meta-level) share our thoughts and experiences on the process and different methods. The latter suggestion is very much what Index Views (www.index2005.dk) will look like.

Ofcourse there are even more focuses the summit could have. But overall it could focus on the design industry or on the world around it (through the eyes of design, so to speak) Do you have any prefered focuses or themes that you would be interested in?

Hi All

I’ll try to set up a skype-confrence-call to kickstart a wiki and a planning process.

Anyone who want to join?

Please leave you skypename.

All the best
Hans Henrik
CPH127-pilot

My skype id is: co-d.net

Let me know when.

d.

Wanted to point out a quick report from Adaptive Path’s use of wiki/etc. for their recent event (the comments seem to be irrelevant to the posting, btw)
http://www.veen.com/jeff/archives/000770.html

And some more stuff spotted on
http://www.johnniemoore.com/blog/archives/001073.php

“It’s becoming cheaper to host your own event than attend one” - good stuff on events and how they are shifting at http://www.zylstra.org/blog/archives/001757.html
and the source of the quote at http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2005/08/cheaper_to_host.html - and note a comment from http://citycita.net/ that is a service for organizing and managing events…