Hasta La Ideas

Imagine a world where people eat to raise money for a cause they support. That’s what STEW is doing in Baltimore. Their inaugural dinner kicked off last weekend in a beautiful old church known as 2640. STEW was inspired by a national movement of grassroots fundraising solutions for community-supported projects. By most accounts, this trend was started by Chicago’s InCubate and spread to STOCK, in Portland, Oregon, and FEAST, in Brooklyn, before making its way to the mid-Atlantic.

The 70 people who attended the dinner each paid $10 for a four-course meal that was made with donated food from local farms and was served by volunteers. Presentations by local organizations filled the time between each course. Each described what they do and why they need money to run their operation. When the presentations ended, the diners voted on which group should receive the money. In this case, they voted that the three groups split the $700 that was raised.

Imagine the possibilities for designers.

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Tonight is the premiere of the second season of the A&E television show Hoarders at 10/9c. We’ve written a few times about the first season of the show, and even heard from people who have been featured on the program in our comments section. I continue to have mixed feelings about it — I love that it is bringing a human face to this mental health issue and raising awareness, but I wish that there was less shock and awe factor in what is broadcast.

We’ve heard from a number of people associated with the show that the second season is going to talk more about treatment options and look more closely at the psychological aspects of the disorder than was the case in season one. I truly hope this is accurate because I believe the hoarders on the show deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. I’m not saying that they weren’t in season one — I know from first-hand accounts that they were given excellent help behind the scenes during the filming of the episodes — but what translated onto the screen didn’t always reflect the entire process. I’m looking forward to tonight’s episode and seeing how the changes are implemented.

After the episode airs, feel welcome to jump onto our Unclutterer Forums and talk about it in our second season Hoarders thread. If you don’t get A&E, check out the official Hoarders website in a couple days where they will post the full episode online.

The official Design Observer report of the Aspen Design Summit group I was apart of is up, providing a great overview of the process and outcomes from the 3-day charrette. (Core77’s overall reflection piece by Doug Powell is [here](http://www.core77.com/blog/events/a_report_from_the_aspen_design_summit_by_doug_powell_15337.asp).) Huge shout-outs to my amazing team members Maggie Breslin, Jaan Elias, Tim Brown, Henry King, Carol McCall, Margeigh Novotny, Jay Parkinson, Barbara Spurrier, Gong Szeto, and Helen Walters. Here’s a little taste from the report:

Rather than being centered on the physician, the group envisioned that healthcare responsibilities would be distributed across a wider network. Austin.us would serve to refer individuals both toward the primary care team as well as from the primary-care team to other nodes of a community network.

Physician involvement in the network was deemed a crucial component of the association’s success. Currently, a physician’s time is frequently taken up with routine monitoring or reassurance of patients. These tasks could properly be accomplished at less costly nodes of the network, allowing the physician to practice “at the peak of their license.” Patients conventionally desired direct physician contact. Therefore, a physician’s reliance on the network should be explicit. For example, a physician could “prescribe” conversations with community health workers and/or volunteers as part of a given course of treatment, legitimizing the role of the community network. The physician’s new slogan might be, “The doctor will connect you now.”

In addition, the network would depend on paid community health workers who would monitor chronic conditions and act as patient advocates with physicians or help a given individual connect to other nodes of the network. While such an individual should have healthcare training, the group thought it was equally important that community health workers would have project management skills.

Besides the paid portions of the network, the design team imagined a network heavily dependent on volunteers from the community. Roles could include volunteer promoters (generalists, such as a pastor in Austin who routinely helped parishioners monitor heir blood pressure); volunteer promoters who are specialists (a grandmother, for example, who gives advice on parenting), or cancer survivors advising others on treatment; and supporters throughout the community.

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According to first reports from the ICSID Congress in Singapore, the city of Helsinki has been chosen as World Design Capital 2012 (see also this Finnish article).

Helsinki was competing with the city of Eindhoven in The Netherlands.

The official announcement of the World Design Capital 2012 designated city occurred today during the ICSID (International Council of Societies of Industrial Design) World Design Congress in Singapore.

The World Design Capital is a city promotion project celebrating the merits of design. Held biennially, it seeks to highlight the accomplishments of cities that are truly leveraging design as a tool to improve the social, cultural and economic life of cities, throughout a yearlong programme of design-related events.

Turin, Italy held the honor of hosting the zero edition of the event in 2008, while Seoul, Korea will be the first real World Design Capital in 2010.

>> Update: Here is an English article about the announcement

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