So I thought I would throw my two cents in here. In spirit of transparency (mentioned by Warren) most of you know me, but those that don’t, I am Justin Coble Industrial Design Manager at Mars Chocolate. For the most part I thought this was a very sucessful conference. There were some great speakers, a great venue, and I met a ton of people both students and and professionals. Great job Marco and the rest of your team!!
Like mentioned before the Maeda thing was not that great. It almost came off a bit arrogant and I too felt that it was a bit of a waste of time. I did not really understand what he was trying to do and trying to watch him along with listening to the student was majorly distracting. The one great thing that did come out of that was that he gave a group of students the opportunity to talk and give there point of view to a mixed audiance. Although I may have not agreed with some of them, and some may have needed coaching on public speaking, it really allowed a great group of fresh talent shine. What I had wished I had seen was that he had lead the discussion and bring it together to be a cohesive message. This was a bit of a disappointment.
The themes were great. I got a lot out of all of the Design4 topics. My favorites were Design4 Humans and Design4 Business. Design process, experiences and creating products that make peoples live better is the future of ID and it was really great to see the conference focus on topics like this. These are normally topics we see at the national and it was great to bring them to a smaller stage at the district. The Smart, and Ximedica talk both brought this. I will agree that the Method one was a bit all over the place.
All of the Design4 business talk were great. I think my favorite was the Continuum talk by Anthony Pannozzo “Design has won! So why aren’t designers happy?”. This is one that is very hot right now and is one that all students need to see. The ironic thing about them giving this talk is that there is a running debate here on Core77 about the role of Design Thinking. Also ironically I was replying to this topic giving my strong opinion when Anthony came up on stage.
The Mr Potato Head guy I thought was good on the the fact that he talked about the role of an icon and what that means and how you have to respect it. But on the other hand I really just felt like I was watching a guy that was just trying to say “look at the cool sketches and sh!t that I designed”. I really did not get the meat of business out of his talk. I can relate to working with major icon. I work with M&M’s and M&M’s characters everyday. There is much more than “we just played around with it” involved. I would have loved to hear more about his challenges and what that icon meant to other people.
As for the RISD attendance…I to agree that it seemed a bit weird that they were not showing their presence. I only personally met 2. Being that we were in their backyard I was expecting them to everywhere. I really wanted to see some school pride from them.
To address some of the point from previous posters:
Marco, I went to that Branding yourself workshop, it was definitely a good way to start the conference as an icebreaker. Wish it was longer, I was only able to talk to about 2 people long enough to get them to stick. It would be really awesome if she could talk about building yourself along with your portfolio that reflects you as a person and your work in a professional way. My biggest struggle is placing my work in a manner that not only looks good, but reflects my personality.
The thing about schools helping students put together their portfolios is that (in the case of massart anyway), we have two professors that have different opinions on how portfolios should look. The only way I have been able to build mine in a way that makes sense is to ask everyone and their mother about what should be included, and use the common aspects as such. The story is really never told, though. It’s hard to condense a project into 3 slides that you spent 8 weeks researching and iterating to send to someone. If there was a seminar on how to tell a good “condensed” story, I think it would be really helpful to a lot of students. Does that make sense?
Post your work on the Core77 forums. There are other ways to get feedback. Face to face is best, but we will give you honest feedback here on core 77 and we can help you get ready for the next IDSA conference. I will also add that these conferences are what you make of them. This is the perfect opportunity for you to meet professionals that can give you advice or better yet give you a job. I know myself hung out with a group of students until 3am on saturday night giving them advice on how to find a job, what employers are looking for and gave all of them my card for networking. It is up to you to make those connections.
Sorry for such a long post, but to conclude I think over all it was a great conference. I hope next year is as good if not better.
J