Discussion about the IDSA

Everyone loves music and free booze, right? It really shouldn’t be more complicated than that.

Yo: How was it funded? Just curious.

The entire night cost maybe 4g’s and core77/coroflot paid for it out of the money they get from the services they provide and advertising. Very simple.

Wow! I didn’t the cost was so low. Core: Want to sponsor something in Montreal? hehe

The entire night cost maybe 4g’s and core77/coroflot paid for it out of the money they get from the services they provide and advertising. Very simple.

Awesome.

IDSA has plenty of $4ks laying around with all the membership costs, conference costs, etc. I frankly don’t see where one penny could possibly be going in IDSA. Where is all the money going? My only educated guess is that the money is going to the director/president/board/whomever’s pockets- but it is not going where it should be.

Throw some FREE parties/events. Do something FOR the designers who support you. The work of many shouldn’t profit the IDSA and its board.

Nice work Core77, as usual. If there were a membership cost, I’d gladly pay it. I would expect more at that point, and I’m sure Core/Coro would deliver.

It was a good night: we had it at 6pm on a Wednesday… by 5:30 people were lined up around the block. The guys from UNKL ( http://www.unklbrand.com/ )gave a lecture on their process and they even made a little custom piece of art for EVERYONE that came. Also a bunch of stickers, and we raffled some product. Longtime friend, Mr Strack DJ’d for free. Chris from Someday Lounge donated the space (in exchange for open bar costs) http://www.somedaylounge.com/ AND their were even sketches and redlined blueprints, and photos of prototypes up on screen… 3 things you don’t see at many IDSA conference lectures.

pictures:

http://www.core77.com/gallery/photos_search.asp?album_id=34&context_id=1
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Hi everyone,

I am Claire from Pensa, & part of the volunteer team that is planning NED. I’d like to thank you all for your comments, & want you to know that our committee is putting a lot of time and effort into making it as ass-kicking as possible. Working through the logistics of managing such a large team of volunteers both in & out of IDSA is time-consuming & complicated, and the conference website is being updated by IDSA daily (the full speaker list is now up!). We’re working on finalizing the nitty-gritty details of the schedule, so that will be posted in the next couple of days as well.

In the meantime, please join our social networking pages to stay in the loop & become a part of the conversation. The planning committee, IDSA employees & members, & speakers/panel members will be periodically posting info & updates, & you can too! Find us on:

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=330830922369

Twitter:
http://twitter.com/CoCreate2010

LinkedIn:

Thank you!
Claire

You guys should take that on tour, solicit volunteers from the different destinations. One of the best things about last year’s IDSA Midwest conf was going over to Worrell for the after party.

Thanks Claire. I did look at the speaker list and it does look pretty decent. The location still seems a bit weird, but I think the line up might make me eat my words and go.

True, its not well known, but we were just there again today and its a truly beautiful campus. Gotta see it to believe it. Apparently, Kean University is endowed by the Kean family, who is the NJ royalty - former governor, etc. Like the Kennedys of NJ if you will. Its like an oasis really, with these buildings and campus that appears out of no where, and they are still building.
We are pschyed that the gala this year will be at Smart Design, who is known for great parties, and we are working on seeing if people will open their doors for studio tours on Friday.
Come one come all and be sure to join the dialog on FB, Linked & Twitter.

Marco

Marco, sorry this thread is just hijacked all to heck. Now that I apologized, I’m going to continue to throw it off track… sorry…

I’d just like to say, that I want the IDSA to understand that my comments come from a place where I advocate a strong, relevant, national (and global) design organization that is an evangelist for the professional practice of product design.

With all due respect to the good people that volunteer their time, their intellect, their hard work, and their money; I think you are rowing very hard in a boat that has been going in the wrong direction for a long time.

We don’t need a better conference (or conference location), we don’t need a redesigned website, we need a better designed organization. Everything needs to be rethought, including where the organization is based out of (Washington DC).

I would love to be a part of the process, to assist in any way possible, and to champion this rebirth of relevance. Until then I will continue to speak at conferences when asked, but I won’t be a member, I won’t donate, and I won’t volunteer, and I won’t encourage others to either. You know how to contact me.

Someone might get smart and start their own design organization. The IDSA started as the result of the merging of several different design organizations. Maybe it’s time for a split? Maybe the best way to heal the bone is to re-break it?

In 1936, the American Furniture Mart in Chicago invited leading designers to form a new organization called the Designers’ Institute of the American Furniture Mart. Some members felt restricted by the sole patronage and sponsorship of the furniture industry, and in 1938 they founded a broader-based organization called the American Designers Institute (ADI), which allowed specialization in one of many design areas, including crafts, decorative arts, graphics, products, packaging, exhibit or automotive styling, to name a few. ADI’s first president was John Vassos (1898-1985).

In February 1944, fifteen prominent East Coast design practitioners established the Society of Industrial Designers (SID). Each of the founding members invited one additional designer to join the following year. Membership requirements were stringent, requiring the design of at least three mass-produced products in different industries. SID was formed in part to reinforce the legality of industrial design as a profession, and to restrict membership to experienced professionals. SID’s first president was Walter Dorwin Teague.

In 1951, ADI relocated its administrative center to New York City, absorbing the Chicago Society of Industrial Designers (CSID) in the process and changing its name to the Industrial Designers Institute (IDI). That year, IDI initiated annual national design awards, which continued through 1965. By 1962, IDI had about 350 members in 10 city chapters across the country.
In 1955, The Society of Industrial Designers (SID) changed its name to the American Society of Industrial Design (ASID). By 1962, ASID had about 100 members in four chapters nationally.
In 1957, The Industrial Design Education Association (IDEA) was founded because neither professional society (IDI or ASID) accepted educators as full members. Its first president was Joseph Carriero (1920-1978).
In 1965, after over ten years of careful negotiations, the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) was formed by the collaborative merger of IDI, ASID and IDEA. In doing so, the strengths, purposes and varied philosophies of its predecessors combined to become the single voice of industrial design in the US.
When IDSA was formed, it consisted of about 600 members in 10 chapters across the country. The first Chairman of its Board was John Vassos (1898-1985), the founder of ADI, and its first President was Henry Dreyfuss (1904-1972).

Written by Caroll Gantz for Wikipedia.

sad thing is that it seems Idsa still isn’t. Listening. There’s a whole discussion and audience here and the only response is to check “our facebook page”. Way to ignore the isuue and be even more irrelevant. How about actually getting a dialog going here on core? So far it seems there have been replies by at least 5 different idsa people, but none have stuck around longer than a few posts to actually follow-up or continue the dialog.

R

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/gro > … 0830922369

Twitter:
http://twitter.com/CoCreate2010

LinkedIn:
Sign Up | LinkedIn > … anet_ug_hm

Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin… some of most useless websites on the internet, and well easy to quickly create a profile page (2 minutes each, tops). This is less than a band aid. I know high school students that have more presence on the internet than The Industrial Design Society of America.

I fully agree, IDSA is a sinking ship. Cut the fat (the entire governing body of IDSA), rebuild and redesign it entirely from the rubble.

(The usual defense of the IDSA is “Why don’t you stop complaining and step up and do everything for us?” - heard it too many times before, JFK. IDSA is making cash hand over fist, this would be different if it were free to join.)

Question for IDSA: Is there a rule for term limits? It seems to always have a new president and officers every year.

Richard et al: The problem with IDSA is that it isn’t one organisation. It’s a bunch of little groups with management changing yearly (hence my question of term limits). It seems as if IDSA doesn’t have one response, but 100. That’s why it lacks clarity.

I’d love to see someone take the reigns of IDSA for five years, make a simple plan and follow it up.

Another point: you feel bad about IDSA. Tap “montreal industrial design” in google. Five years ago, my core contributor page was first in google. Now, it’s fallen tenth. The Quebec association is on the third page. Nice.

Yo: Where’d you learn about even organization?

I have to agree with the above. I would love to see IDSA totally revamp their organization. It kind of reminds me of a corporate company that is being run by the old timers and has not kept up with times still determined to do things the way they did them in the “old days”.

ID is changing. We have gone from a field that only worried about the aesthetics of a product to now a field that involves many different aspect of design. This meaning that we bridge over into Graphic Design with packaging, interior design with environmental and retail design, experience design, strategic design, and so on. I do not feel that IDSA has kept up with this fast growing and expanding part of ID. I know myself that I feel IDSA has mostly focused on product design and has greatly ignored Packaging and POP but this area employees a large part of the new grad from ID school. Why is this?

I too would love to help IDSA rise from the ashes and would greatly volunteer to help make that happen, but like mentioned the structure needs to be broken down and start over. When a corporate company’s organization is broken they cut the fat and reorganize. Why don’t we do this here? We have been complaining about this for at least 7 years (as long as I have been a Pro).

What I can tell you is that in my career, the majority of job opportunities I’ve had are a direct result of my IDSA membership, not my participation on a Core77 board or as a moderator. Yes, Core77 does generate and aggregate a lot of content (as do some of the other social networking sites), but I have found that these online tools only take you so far.

I also would suggest that the IDSA become more active on the Core77 blogs. I know you do not want to admit it, but the largest ID community is right here. That being said I have to say that I disagree with the quote above. I personally think that your conferences are a place for us Core77 members to meet. I have met more Industrial Designers and have picked up more freelance work through Core77 and being a Mod than IDSA has ever provided me. I go to IDSA see Mike D sketch, meet new designers like David Whetstone, and Matthew Marston all of which I new from core first and they new me, not IDSA. Why didn’t we not meet through IDSA?

I guess what I am trying to say is that you have become a secondary organization apposed to a primary organization. If organization changes are not made I fear that there will not be an IDSA soon.

That is actually not true. While there are a multitude of “Chapters” that report into a “Regional” structure, those chapters have little to no say (I was a chapter chair at one point), and they get little to no funding from the national organization. The national org has offices and a staff out of DC. In addition to the elected national officials, there are other director level officials that are full time employees that are not voted out. This is what Frank Tyneski was.

Who said that? I’ve never gotten a single job from IDSA, I’ve gotten tons of freelance and full time opportunities from being on the boards though… and c77 is not a competitor to IDSA. It is not an organization. IDSA should be owning the conversation on what design is, but they are far from it.

I’d like to hear more from the IDSA types… they are reading.

That was written by Warrenginn earlier in the discussion. Sorry should have made that more clear.

I want the IDSA folks to know that we are not down playing the talented and well respect designers that volunteer their time for the organization. I actually commend you for that, but like mention numerous times in numerous threads, this is bigger than the volunteers. It is an organization issue and the first step in fixing it is listening to not only your members, but to the ones that are no longer members. We need to have that open dialog and given that you website has been poor for as long as I can remember, I is probably not going to happen there.

A great example of this is that here on Core77 the Mods started to notice that the boards were getting a bit stale and that our new member numbers were not climbing as high as they should. We discussed this with amongst ourselves in the Mod forum and came up with our own conclusion, but we put a post up to the users and we were flooded with responses. The users were not affraid to tell us what they thought and we even had new users jump in the conversation and explained why they were readers and not posters.

Why doesn’t IDSA do the same? The great part about an online forum like this is that people can post their thoughts and have the ability to remain anonymous(Most of us know each other, but it is still possible). Start a thread here and ask us the members and non-members what they want. What are our needs? What do we want out of an organization that is supposed to repersent the ID community? A lot of these questions have been answered in previous threads, but by reaching out to us and engaging us in the conversation you are at least showing inititive. I just don’t get why you always come back to us and tell us that the organization is whatever we make it when there is no real forum to voice your opinions.

Now I’m more confused and bitter than ever. Ba humbug.

What do you want from an organization that represents Industrial Design? What are your needs?