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We did it! After nine months of planning, the conference went off splendidly. The team and I are pretty pleased with ourselves.

We succeeded in bringing in more money and more registrations than we had hoped, and were also successful in bringing together a diverse group of speakers and attendees. We got a lot of praise from attendees during the conference. And that was great.

Leading up to the conference, I started getting sick. That’s what lots of stress and bad eating habits will do. But adrenalin kept me going.

On Friday, it was good that we only had two workshops and about 50 participants, as we experienced a lot of registration difficulties and were nearly overwhelmed. By Saturday morning, however, we had much of the process sorted.

Saturday morning I gave a very short introduction, during which I forgot half of what I planned to say due to nervousness and my clogged head. But who cares when you’re followed by Martin Wattenberg!

I got to meet some great people, including Chris Downs, Mark Jones, Allan Chochinov, Robert Frabricant, Harold Hambrose, Jennifer Leonard, Daniela Sangiorgi…well, I guess all the speakers really. Mark, Allan, Jennifer and I stayed up pretty on Saturday and even did a little drinking and dialing. Shelley Evenson took it well.

I also got to see familiar faces, like Todd Wilkens, Alexa Andrzejewski, and Irene Chong, all of whom I worked with during the summer at Adaptive Path.

As far as the gist of the day, Saturday seemed to either confuse or engage everyone, so much so that the ensuing conversations at the Warhol party caused Chris Downs of live|work to redo his keynote presentation for Sunday morning.

Chris’ keynote really set the pace for Sunday, which turned out to be a very powerful and inspiring day. But it may not have seemed as such without the previous day’s presentations and conversations. The conference concluded with everyone together for Oliver King’s panel and Richard Buchanan’s keynote, both of which everyone seemed to enjoy.

I was happy to have been able to attend most of the presentations. I missed one set on Sunday morning, feeling like I needed a break. But with my mind on keeping the show going, I did not have too much time to process, and I took zero notes. Fortunately, others did.

After the conference, I promptly went home and planted myself on the couch. I tried to sleep but got up to write a thank you email to the other conference organizers: Ayça Akin, Matt Forrest, Joe Iloreta, and Kipum Lee.

The past two days I’ve been recuperated, quite literally, as my illness finally took over. On Monday I panicked about my thesis. But by Tuesday morning, I clambered up the rocky slope I was on, and could at least see the mountain range in front of me left to climb. This brought about some peace.

So Emergence is over…or is it? There’s still a lot of updates to make to the website, including uploading presentations and podcasts. And if we’re wise, we’ll start planning next year’s conference now.

I’ve been busting my balls on Emergence over the summer, and things have kicked into high gear with the conference less than two weeks away.

Overall, we’re in a good place. We’ve already matched last year’s attendance, and the lineup is one that I’m excited about and believe will appeal to a variety of designers.

While the framework has been service design, with trying to reach out to all design disciplines, service design feels more like one of the themes, rather than the focus. In that sense, it feels more like a conference around emerging design ideas.

I wrote a post on the Emergence website last week on why you shouldn’t miss the conference. Read it, if you haven’t. I hope to see you there.

Seminar Paper

I downloaded about 30 research papers that I thought might pertain to my Seminar paper topic for Jodi Forlizzi. Yes, I know that’s too much. But around every corner is another fascinating paper on some aspect of design. I suppose this insatiable appetite is why I’m in this program.

I also bought Donald Norman’s Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things tonight. My paper sort of argues that it’s not necessarily as love or hate proposition, but an intercourse of love and hate.

I also bought Everyware by Adam Greenfield because I was already spending money and it was there and I convinced myself it might be relevant. I will, of course, have no time to read it.

Emergence

I’m working with Joe Iloreta, Emergence creative director, on a new website design. We have more content to go up, but I’ve been waiting for the design. It may have to go up regardless.

Invitations to keynote speakers are starting to go out. Chris Downs from live|work accepted over the weekend.

We worked out a flexible schedule over the weekend to accommodate our ideas for change from last year. I hope to provide more information on the Emergence site soon.

Thesis Topic

I need a whiteboard and some stickies and markers and play-doh for this one. What am I interested in? You would think I would know.

Despite not having a clear topic, John Zimmerman and Shelley Evenson have agreed to by my project advisors. I’m still meeting with people for my paper advisor. But I’m aiming to have the paper and project relate to each other.

Work

This weekend I spent way too much time moving a client site to a new server. Nuf said.

We decided to build off the momentum from last year’s Emergence conference and tackle service design again. But “again” is really the wrong way to put it, because that’s not how we’re thinking about it.

The theme is Exploring the Boundaries of Service Design, and it will take place September 7–9. Our goal is to explore the boundaries and interrelatedness of design disciplines within the realm of service design, which wasn’t really done last year. Specifically, we want to address service design’s relevance to communication design, interaction design, and industrial design. And really we hope to make this year’s conference different.

So does this mean Emergence is the service design conference? We considered this seriously, and the answer is no. Going forward, Emergence will remain a conference that focuses on emerging design themes. But with this being only the second year, and having only scratched the surface of service design last year, we believe it makes sense to give it another whirl this year.

I got the Emergence website up and running over the weekend. By up and running, I mean it’s dynamically driven and has an RSS feed, but it’s not in its final form. We outlined the content also this weekend, and will be finalizing the design and layout over the next few weeks.

The site will have regular updates on our progress and guest postings (we hope) to help build anticipation for those who plan to attend and create a dialogue with those who cannot. If you have any ideas for the site, let me know.

We are currently working on identifying keynote speakers, and will also get a call for papers out soon. Lots to do. Little time.

I finished my resume, but it’s not online. It was sent to companies that will be coming to the school of design’s job fair. Also, I have yet to update my online portfolio. I hope to find time to do that soon. But I don’t know when I’ll find time.

The Emergence team got some time at the school’s faculty meeting this morning. We introduced ourselves as a gesture to facilitate better awareness of and involvement with the conference. We’ve made some headway on a theme, but haven’t nailed it yet. We hope to figure it out by the end of this week. We’re also working on an identity system.

I met with one of my clients tonight (ITNS) to go over my availability for work in the future. Basically, I said I could not do any large projects. I’m still going to do some consulting and maintenance. I’m probably an idiot for doing that.

My neighbors decided to not turn on their heat, even though it’s 8 degrees out. Their pipes froze. Now my pipes are frozen. Try living without water for a day.

For my assistanceship this semester, I have been placed on the Emergence team. What is Emergence? It’s a student-run conference put on by the CMU School of Design. Last September was the first one, and it was quite a success.

My specific responsibility is the website. Though I am also the team lead. I am both excited and scared about this responsibility, as putting together a conference is no light matter. With my already time-consuming school schedule, I see any imagined free time disappearing quickly. Or maybe it’s imagined sleep that’s disappearing.

In any case, I am really excited about the opportunity. My goal is for our team to exceed expectations , build off of last year’s work, and help Emergence grow.

Our first task is to determine what the conference will be about. Service design is the prime contender as the major theme. However, we would like to make the conference more diverse, and are considering subthemes.

If you have any ideas for emerging design topics that deserve exploration and debate, I would love to hear them.

I read the following quote in the appendix of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, which a friend laid in my lap while I was drinking beer and searching for new clothes online at 1 a.m.

I wished to show that space-time is not necessarily something to which one can ascribe a separate existence, independently of the actual objects of physical reality. Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spacially extended. In this way the concept of “empty space” loses its meaning.
–Albert Einstein

It reminded me of the talk Stefan Holmlid gave at the Emergence conference, titled “Introducing White Space in Service Design: This Space Intentionally Left Blank.”

Here’s an excerpt of my notes from the talk:

White space in service design modeling: the space in time between two actions; instead of focusing on what happens between, we look at the actions. We look at this as something the service doesn’t depend on, but it does, in order for other things to take place.

I wonder what kind of conversation Stefan and Einstein might have.

Stephan concluded his talk with ee cummings, who is one of the first poets that I took an interest in. It made me feel nostalgic.

“nothing” the unjust man complained
“is just” (”or un-” the just rejoined
34 in 73 poems by from ee cummings

I posted the photos from Emergence to Flickr.

There is also an Emergence Flickr group.

Time is increasingly becoming scarce. Or perhaps I should say that my time is increasingly becoming consumed so that there is no time.

I had a coffee around midnight, so I’m up. This is good because I have a couple readings for my 10 a.m. class still to do.

Mostly, I have been keeping up. Though it’s a very tight schedule. Typically, everything else gets pushed aside for school. Things like laundry, grocery shopping, and cleaning have all been neglected.

And blogging. That has been somewhat neglected as well. Tomorrow. That’s what I keep telling myself about that things I didn’t finish today.

Today I attended Emergence, a conference put together by Carnegie Mellon School of Design graduate students. The focus on the inaugural event is service design, which the students identified as an emerging field in design. This conference is the first international service design conference.

I didn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t really know much about service design before the conference. But after listening to a handful of talks given by leaders in the industry from around the world, it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s much more clear.

Imagine services that provide what you want and make your life better. That decrease the amount of time you spend in the emergency room. Or eliminate the emergency room in lieu of a private waiting room. That help you make good decisions about the products you need. That don’t overwhelm you.

Sounds good doesn’t it? That’s what these people do: redesign hospital services, retail store experiences, customer service experiences.

And with 80 percent of US GDP related to service, there’s a huge market that seems to have very few players.

The two companies that really stood out for me today were live|work and Engine, though they’re both based in the United Kingdom.

Speaking of which, I was impressed to see such an international crowd, including speakers and attendees from the UK, South Korea, and Australia.

I took a bunch of notes, which I will post later, so I won?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t get into the details of what was covered. But I will say that listening to the speakers today has given me yet another appreciation of what design can do to improve peoples?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ lives, and has continued my education of design as something much broader and applicable than I had previously imagined.

The more I think about my role in design, the more enticed I am with the idea that, through design, I can make the world a better place. And I was inspired that the folks involved in service design have this vision to improve our lives.