In the light of the social and economical situation, we are building an even more exiting programme for this year.

The first day of the conference will focus on the concrete support to integrating design in SMEs. We won’t discuss the programmes, but the day to day delivery and management of design advise to businesses. How is it done, monitored, evaluated ? We aim at gathering both advisors and some businesses to discuss openly the methodologies.

As usual, the second day opens up to a bigger picture. A lot has happened recently: Fukushima, the endless meltdown of the greek economy, the Arab revolutions etc. in addition to the stronger confirmation that the global warming is not a hypothesis, but  an issue.

What all these things have in common is that they have systemic consequences: on energy management, the economy, our housing and food. There has been a time where the design profession was claiming that these systems should be looked as designed: organisation and ethics (their purpose, their governance) had to be mixed. Does the design profession has something big to claim again ? After all, isn’t design becoming a “buzzword”, used by more and more people who neither practice nor prescribe it ? But can the design discipline learn from some projects that are effective at addressing societal issues, as if they had been designed tacitly ? We will bring on the stage surprising speakers, with effective experience too share with us.