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As announced earlier in this blog, Otto and myself joined the second annual conference by the Dutch Design Initieatief, this time held in Wijnfort, in Lent, near Nijmegen. When I read “fort” in the description, I initially thought about a decorative pseudo-medieval construction of some sort, but to my surprise it was really a former military building, later converted in a modern congress centrum. The atmosphere of the place was macabre and very homey at the same time, and played a big role in boosting the creativity of the participants, I believe.

The program was quite full for us, spreading from the morning with a masterclass for students, then presenting the same material for the participants, and also participating in a very intensive two-hour long interview by Cor Hospes. The morning session was opened by Rianne Valkenburg, Director of Research at the Design Initiatief:

There was a couple of very interesting presentations, by Mario Ramirez, from University of Breda, and then by Remko van der Lugt who told about ‘Service Design’. Otto was leading our part, with an interactive presentation of the key future developments of the Netherlands we explored last year.

The afternoon started with a short presentation by myself (which I obviously don’t have any pictures of), which was an attempt to fit the content of a sizable book into about 20 min of a talk . I traditionally ended with an image of Alice, with the message the key to success is a personal transformation.

I think I may have missed the timing just slightly, the new Alice blockbuster by Burton is to be released in Holland from March 10 only, but well. The rest of the day was in fact not a conference as usual, but rather a series of intensive workshops where about a hundred of the participants created solutions for a few most interesting domains: future of energy, future of food, future of knowledge and future of well-being and vitality.

In total, 16 teams developed and later presented their concepts, ranging from a new information system to search for local healthy food, to the swallable devices aimed at tracking and managing your health profile, to a new knowledge systems for kids, and many other futuristic, yet feasible ideas. The winner < drum >… didn’t take it all, but received a hefty 20,000 euro check from the Design Initiatief to further develop their concept and eventually covert it into a successful business.

For me the the conference was also a great opportunity to meet many old friends and colleagues, but also new interesting people. Closer to the evening, Marco Bevolo presented his art-slides on how the very idea of design should be seen, and finally Adjiedj Bakas, a prominent Dutch trendwatcher shared the latest watched trends (five in total).