Although Public Workshop may not make it to all of the following conferences, these are certainly events we’re keeping our eye on and think you should too:
TED February 9th-13th, Long Beach (here)
TED is always a good show but man it would be great to be at this one. Four presenters in particular are worth watching once the videos become available: Philip K. Howard, Jane McGonnigal, Ken Robinson and David Rockwell. Philip K. Howard’s project, Common Good (here) is attempting to turn back a culture of fear and litigation that is strangling such things as our schools, playground and healthcare. Jane McGonnigal is a game designer who has done amazing work creating massive online alternate reality games, crowd-sourcing children and communities to imagine, and solve future problems. Sir Ken? He’s a great advocate of change in the way we educate children and make our cities. And lastly, David Rockwell? By far the coolest thing he’s done is the design the Playground-In-A-Box. Make sure you check them all out.
Social Biomimicry: Insect Societies And Human Design February 18th-20th, Tempe (here)
How does this NOT sound interesting? Thanks to Core 77 for this one (here).
Harvard Social Enterprise Conference February 27th-28th (here)
Quite frankly you’re probably blind if you haven’t noticed that social enterprise, social venture capital, etc. is pretty hot right now. We are disappointed that we’re not going to be able to make this one because a lot of our work is intimately related to the topic at hand but we hope one of you will make it and share an update or two. Thanks Roxann for sharing this one.
Structures For Inclusion March 27th-28th, Washington: (here)
Interested in good cheerleading session? Finding out a bit more about architects doing work in the service of community? You’re already doing it but are looking for like-minded soles? This is your conference. Also this year Bryan Bell and crew will be rolling out the SEED Network’s new evaluative rubric for more seriously assessing the impact of community based design work. This is a great step forward- looking forward to seeing what they’ve come up with over the past couple of months.
Games For Change May 24th-27th: (here)
There are some good people signed up to talk although we generally like the ‘doing-centric’ nature of Come Out And Play a bit more.
EDRA 41 June 2nd-6th, Washington (here)
A conference focused on understanding the relationship between people and the built environment. This year’s conference seems to be focused on how policy plays into this equation and it will be interesting to see if, and how all of the new techie toys for participation, such as SeeClickFix (here) make it into the conversation.
Come Out And Play June 4th-6th, New York: (here)
Say it with me out loud, ‘Game Designers Are The Avant Garde Of Urban Planning’. Really? Yep. I’ve been saying it for years. Don’t believe me? Head go to the conference and see for yourself- it’s a hoot and is all about ‘doing’ rather than sitting around jabbering on for hours on end.
Association Of Community Design Annual Conference: Towards A Just Metropolis June 16th-18th, San Francisco (here)
The annual ACD Conference is a reliable friend in that it often brings together a pretty broad cross-section of disciplines……people doing really interesting work in planning, policy, design-build, etc..
Design Inquiry: Joy June 20-25th, Vinalhalven, Maine (here)
Peter Hall and crew organize intimate, remote gatherings of smart people doing great things to wrestle with a particular topic or idea.
Copenhagen International Wood Festival August 9th-14th, Copenhagen (here)
Artists, designers and architects building different things out of a kilometer of wood? We can think of few ways we’d rather spend a week in August.
7th Annual Conference On Design & Emotion October 4th-7th, Chicago: (here)
No, we’re not going soft but we do think that further our understanding of the role that buildings, places and design have on our psyche is super important- in fact it is central to how Public Workshop innovates, teaches and works in communities. It will be interesting if this conference passes muster…..our fingers are crossed.
Reclaiming Vacant Properties: The Intersection of Sustainability, Revitalization and Policy Reform October 13th-15th, Cleveland: (here)
In case you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of interesting things going on in Cleveland at the moment. As a matter of fact, it is our distinct opinion that the Cleveland Community Design Center is doing some of the most interesting work in our great land at the moment and we’re tempted to head to this conference just to get a better sense of what they’re up to at the moment.
International Making Cities Liveable Conference October 17th-20th, Charleston (here)
We’re a little skeptical about some aspects of this conference but we do like that much of it is dedicated towards Making Cities Liveable For Children, which if you haven’t noticed, is one of Public Workshop’s biggest soapboxes.
Designing For Play November 11th-13th, Atlanta (here)
There’s not a lot of info on this one yet but we think it has potential because they are launching an interesting design competition with the conference AND they also have some top notch people on their advisory board, such as Roger Hart.
Architecture And Design Education Network November, Chicago (here)
Interested in teaching architecture or design to K-12 students? This is your conference.
Do you know of a good one that we’ve missed but you think we will enjoy? Let us know, we’d love to hear about it.
Posted on February 10th, 2010 at 4:39 pm by publicworkshop in Things We Like