All posts by Bryan Boyer
One week on and we've just about recovered from HDL Global. The scattered papers and other piles of random bits are cleaned out of our office, the team looks fresh again, and we're steadily chipping away at backlogged emails.
As a testament to our quick recovery, I offer this "Strategic Design 101" video which introduces our work and the opportunity space we operate within. After debuting it at the event we wanted to share this as soon as possible.
To date we've begun a journey with studios on Ageing, Education, and Sustainability; began a library of case studies (which we hope to grow before the year ends); and hosted 120 people for an event that brings together government and design.
The big question at HDL—one that many of our guests asked at the end of last week—is beautifully simple: what's next?
A beauty it may be, but this question has no easy answer. Our thoughts on this have not changed substantially since the last time we pondered the future. We're dreadfully allergic to hype so we will continue to under-promise and over-deliver.
Taking a cue from the Education Studio, at the moment we are practicing being comfortable with ambiguity. Now two years in gestation, HDL's role at Sitra is in a moment of transition during which time we're taking the opportunity to hunker down and think carefully about the many opportunities before us and which we want to pursue first.
To frame this with a small touch of specificity, our thoughts are swirling around three big questions:
- How can we help more teams benefit from strategic design in their own work?
- How can we accelerate the rate of strategic design success stories?
- How can we better serve our awesome network of collaborators, partners, and friends?
Once we have some answers, this will be the first place we'll share.
During the rest of September we're going to take a bit of a break from posting these weeknotes. Over the next three weeks a selection of videos and photos from HDL Global 2010 will trickle onto the blog. Hope you enjoy and see you in October!
Done. Is there more to be said? We're done with the big event, this team's first stab at hosting a gathering of 100+ people from all over the world. I'm very proud of our effort. Feedback from the participants thus far has been overwhelmingly positive. Go team!
This snapshot was taken a couple hours before HDL Global began, as Marco and I walked with the panel moderators to see the venue. It's an accurate description of the HDL team's mental acuity at the moment.
At 11am on a Monday morning the team is still looking a little tired. The previous week of hyperspeed organizing, preparing, futzing and fixing is now being paid back as all that expended energy echoes ahead of us while we ramp down, disintegrating focus at an equal but opposite rate as we applied it during the ramp up.
If you missed it before, I highly recommend you read Marco's welcome letter to the HDL Global 2010 guests.
We're also happy to have guest blog posts from four participants: Rory Hyde's summarization of the bus schedule vs. the building is a nice recap that explains strategic design, Helen Han gives us some thoughts on the importance of visualization, Ido Mor wonders what problem solving looks like when we work on problems with no reference, and Anna-Leena asks us to accept complexities.
In coming days we'll be posting follow ups from our four guest bloggers as well as more images and thoughts from the event. For now, our sincere thanks to: Emil+Stephanie for making the finest of event materials; XOXCO for their excellent help on the dossier and liveblog aspects of this site; Ivo Corda and Pekka Mustonen for fantastic photography; Sanna and her team at Management Events for their able handling of everything behind the scenes; the 100+ people who came from far and wide to be part of our event; and to you, dear reader, for following along at home. See you in Week 078!
Alejandro Aravena, a designer from Chile, and Jan Vapaavuori, Finnish Minister of Housing, in conversation with Tyler Brûlé at the opening dinner of HDL Global.
Who is this mystery performer doing a sound check?
Not the greatest weather for our guests, but it's the content that counts. We're one day away from HDL Global 2010.
To summarize week 076 it would be easier to make a list of the things that we did not do rather than those that we did, so here are a few items:
- We did not finish the memo to the photographers telling them when and where to be
- We did not have a slow, multi-course lunch while basking in the sun
- And we did not make a playlist for after dinner
Since it's technically Monday as I write this, our big event starts in two days. In light of that, let's pretend that these pictures are each worth a thousand words and this weeknote goes on for pages and pages.
Marco briefing the event staff
Bands
Badges
We've been invaded by table numbers
For the rest of the week this site will transition into a tumblog format, meaning that posts will be snippets rather than fully formed ideas. This is so that we can keep a steady stream of images and ideas flowing during the run up to, and during, HDL Global 2010. Hope you enjoy it!
CASE STUDY Rethinking household waste management in Bangalore through strategic design