I attended the Cumulus conference in London last week. The Cumulus association is a global network of leading design schools and institutions. The main themes of the conference related to new contexts for business, meaningful collaboration, interdisciplinary design, participation, co-creation and the new creative economies. Although it was mainly design educators there were interesting key-notes and panel discussion from the likes of Sir Ken Robinson, Bill Sermon (Vice President – Design, Nokia Multimedia), Clive Grinyer (Director of Customer Experience in Europe, Cisco), Mariana Amatullo (Designmatters) and Prof. Peter Higgins (Land Design).

some interesting things I wrote down to reflect on for the  ECONetwork..

• pop-up design studios
  students designing their own curriculum
  accidental leadership
  business model innovation to reflect the NOW
  socio-enterprise training for design professionals
  creating real experiences
  convergence (communication/time)
  “the future is unknowable but not unthinkable”
  role of interaction design
  strategic capacities for new designers (identified by Nokia etc) – empathy, humility, curiosity, responsibility
  attitude of design
  undoing pre-conceptions
  new design for new economies
  napkin manifesto of D-School
  mobile pop-up classrooms
  radicalisation of education (away from modernist mindset)
  T-shaped skills profiles but with broad knowledge and deep moral values instead of technical specialism

“try to relax and enjoy the crisis”