Hasta La Ideas

With the 2011 IDSA International Conference coming up in September, Core77’s Allan Chochinov sat down with Clive Roux, CEO of IDSA, and Tad Toulis, Conference Chair, to discuss the meeting, the mission, the members and the mandates of this year’s get-together. Stay tuned to Core77 to find out more about this year’s international gathering in New Orleans under the banner of Community.

Allan Chochinov, Core77: Let’s start with the theme of this year’s conference, Community. This seems a good match for its location—New Orleans—but can you describe some of the ways you’re planning on dovetailing design with community?

Clive Roux, IDSA: Our goal with the IDSA International Conferences moving forward is to ensure that they reach the level of inspiration the profession (and those interested in design) really need. Last year IDSA ran the theme DIY, chaired by Sohrab Vossoughi of Ziba. DIY was an interesting and important theme that we all saw having an impact on the design profession. The feedback was positive; attendees said they found it inspiring and informative, corporate and consultant designer alike. But DIY represents just one possible direction for the future. In developing the theme for this year we aspired to develop a broader, more encompassing theme. We think that the broad context of Community and how that is enabling changes in the design profession meets the requirements for inspiration as well as relevance for a broader cross section of the design profession.

Tad Toulis, Conference Chair: When Clive approached me about the possibility of chairing this year’s conference the thing that intrigued me most was the location; New Orleans is a genuine original. When it came to choosing a theme, I was really looking for a way to draw the locale and the proceedings together. Because let’s face it—the conference usually has little, if anything at all, to do with the location.

Design is going through an interesting phase, one where concepts like social entrepreneurship, open systems, micro production and user participation are driving more of the conversation; or at least the evolving edge of the dialog. I wanted to underscore this in the content of the conference because A) it’s relevant to the landscape that we’re being asked to provide solutions for and B) it’s relevant to the locale. To this end, we’ll definitely have local groups from New Orleans presenting content. We’re also incorporating the locale through workshops—always a challenge to pull off in any significant way at the conference. Teams need to be small, the scope needs to be achievable and frankly, those teams need to do a little prep beforehand. This process is still taking shape but I am hopeful that we’ll get there. The final ‘final’ list is still coming together, but suffice it to say there are a lot of community-initiated programs happening across that city, and not just in the Lower Ninth Ward.

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