Over the past months STBY has been invited to give keynote presentations at various seminars and conferences. These talks are usually a mix of current reflections on our fast changing field of work and illustrations from projects we recently worked on.
One of the questions we often get from event organisers when they invite us is to give their audience some pointers in getting their heads around the rather confusing terminology of Service Design, Service Innovation, Design Research, Design Thinking, User Experience Design and Product Service Systems. These are indeed terms that are strongly related, but they also pointing to different aspects of our work practices and backgrounds. It can definitely help to get an inside perspective on this all from people who have been part of this work area since the ealry beginning and are still costantly pioneering and collaborating with a wide network of international peers.
HKU Intense
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Hogeschool der Kunsten Utrecht (School of Art & Design Utrecht) a conference was organised that brought together all faculty for a day of reflection on contemporary themes in their work. The organisers invited Geke van Dijk to give a keynote in the opening programme. After the talk the participants engaged in themed discussions in a series of break out groups. Some of the issues that attracted a lot of attention were the position of R&D in the field of design, the position of strategic thinking, and the delicacies of interdisciplinary teamwork.
More info on the conference: HKU Intense, 12 December 2012, Utrecht
City Hospitality
The second annual conference on City Hospitality, organised by the Hogeschool Den Haag (International University for Hospitality Management in The Hague) focused on the ‘Journey to City Hospitality’. Geke was invited to give a keynote at the end of a day of workshops and themed presentations.
More info on the conference: City Hopsitality, 29 November 2012, Den Haag
Innovation Day
Taskforce Innovation Utrecht organised a large scale event on October 2012 for businesses, policy makers and eductional institutes, as an annual update on contemporary issues around innovation. Geke presented, together with Tim Schuurman from Design Thinkers, the most recent results of the innovation programme with Prorail and NS (the two Dutch national railway operators). In a collaboration between these 2 national service providers, 5 service design agencies and 2 universities in The Netherlands a series of showcase projects has been completed and are now in the process of being published. The extensive service innovation programme these case studies are part of is co-funded by the Dutch government, with the aim to introduce service design to service organisations who (still) seldom engage design in their innovation processes.
More info on the conference: Innovation Day, 31 October 2012, Utrecht.
You can see an edited film on You Tube for an impression of the Inovation Day conference.