My bloggers block is over! The past three days I attended the Design Management Institute’s international conference on design leadership in Krasnapolsky in Amsterdam. And aside from the somewhat stuffy venue and some lectures that didn’t connect with me, It was a great and very inspiring experience. Being immersed in the field of Design Management like that for three days is very rewarding: no work, no e-mail, only inspiration, discussion and thought. The event has re-organised my thoughts, triggered new questions, and motivated me to take this track I’m on very seriously and enjoy it to the fullest.
What struck me most about the conference was how wonderful it was to be around so many like minded people. Many of those I knew before:
Edwin Rooseman of Nandooh who went his own way after finishing his design management dissertation and with whom i hope to do some work in the future.
Ralph Beuker of design-management.de who’s not only become an inspiring blog friend but also a great lecturer as it turned out on friday morning. Check out his post here and the slides of his lecture here (2,5 Mb).
Max van Lingen who is new media director of Mexx who also holds a master of design management and seemed to be very interested in the thought of brand driven innovation and taking brand identity into the realm of new product development and business process innovation.
Then Jo Geraedts, design manager of Océ was there. I just finished a large student project at Océ for which Jo was the sponsor, and it was good evaluating the results with him and hearing his articulated views on the conference.
Then there were very many people I met at the conference like Fennemiek Gommer of Spanners whom I’d heard of when she was still at scan, but was nice to meet in person. We will get together soon to talk about joint interests and projects.
I spent some great moments with Michael McLain, an american/swedish photographer who had great humour and enthusiasm.
Claudia Acklin of the Luzern School of Art and Design was very nice to meet and talk to. Claudia is working on a Swiss design management programme with much passion. I promised her I’m in for a guest lecture any time!
I had a good dinner with Jos van der Zwaal, Rik Riezebos of Eurib and Gert Kootstra of Census who just finished his book (in dutch, sorry) and was good to talk to in person.
Then I finally met Barry de Bruin of Ping Pong who is half famous for his contribution to Items, but made a real impression on me when I stumbled upon a booklet about their work a couple of weeks ago. He expressed a very sympathetic vision in the book, which, after having beers together at the Heineken experience, made even more sense. Barry and his colleague Maarten Juriaanse and I will get together soon to talk about how we can work together (and life in general I suppose).
then there was David Griffiths of the Alia group who co-graded my dissertation, Robin Peng of Design Engine, who offered to buy the hard copy dissertation I had with me (you can download it for free robin), Loe Limpens of Albert Heijn , who also holds a master in Design Management and manages Albert Heijn’s design and brand identity, and finally Jim Northover of the large british brand strategy firm Lloyd Northover whom I had a very inspiring lunch with.
It is these people that made the conference into a succes for me. I will do a separate post about my thoughts on design leadership later.

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