If design and technology conferences were cities, which cities would they be?
We might imagine South by Southwest Interactive to be a sprawling and disjointed metropolis that has developed organically, like Bangkok. The various CHI conferences or SIGGRAPH would be meticulously clean and orderly, perhaps akin to Singapore. And TED might be closer to a utopian ideal that appears temporarily before vanishing again, making you wonder if it was really there in the first place, like an Atlantis, a Shangri-La or a Camelot. Surrounding these major centres of activity are smaller conferences that spring up from time to time, that start as intimate gatherings of like minded individuals that might eventually grow to be as well-trafficked and dispersed as those more established conurbations.
On August 20th, San Francisco boutique product design company Kicker Studio held such an event: its inaugural Device Design Day (D3), at the San Francisco Children's Museum. This follows in the footsteps of design firms hosting their own conferences, which is something that tends to work well—it helps to articulate what a company does that is different from its competitors, as well as demonstrating a willingness to share knowledge and learnings with the wider community. It'd be nice if some of the more established design firms deigned to do something similar.
(more...)