Creative Mornings Nashville with Parker Gates

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On a recent and wonderful Creative Morning, I had the pleasure of scribing for my good buddy, Parker Gates in the stoke.d studio.

In front of 100+ members of Nashville's creative community gathered at The Skillery, Parker presented on design thinking—that amorphous, misunderstood, and mystical process of exploring and understanding people and problems in order to create effective solutions.

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Creative Mornings Nashville

www.creativemornings.com/cities/nsh

Parker Gates is a co-founder of stoke.d, a human-centered design practice.

Stoke.d focuses on education, and regularly partners with global organizations in ongoing projects. He also teaches Design Thinking at the d.school at Stanford University.

Parker lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he helps run an experiment in collaborative space, called stoke.d studio.

more at: stokedproject.com | @stokedproject

AgeLab and Disruptive Demographics

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Aging is a disruptive force in many countries and economies. However, global aging is not simply a story of ‘more.’ The new disruptive demographics of aging is not your grandfather's old age.

In 1900, life expectancy for much of the industrialized world was under 50. Today, living well into one's 70s, 80s and beyond can be expected. How will we spend and make the most of our 30-year longevity bonus?

These new demographics require a radical new view of the changing definition of "old age" and the impact upon society, business strategy and innovation.

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TEDx Nashvile: A Sense of Wonder

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Futureman

On Saturday, April 9, 2011 at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center,  TEDxNashville hosted its second annual event titled "Wonder".

Distinguished leaders in technology, entertainment, design, science, art, education, government, public policy, healthcare and other areas will share their remarkable thoughts and ideas focused on creating positive changes in our society.
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Everyday Counter Terrorism Heros

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According to UK's National Counter Terrorism Security Office, there are everyday objects on the street in front of buildings, like bus stops, lampposts, and bins etc. These could have not just an apparent function, but could have a hidden purpose – To prevent terrorist vehicle attacks. A project by Toby Ng, a designer in London, is entitled "Hidden Superhero" and so he designed a set of unassuming CT Heroes.
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Design and the Elastic Mind

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Photovoltaic cells grown like ivy, electricity cultivated from your corpse, computer-aided oragami, a pheronome dating agency apparatus,... these are some of the beautiful and bizarre designer objects on display at MOMA.

In the words of the senior curator, Paola Antonelli: "Designers they know that their role is to enable revolution. They are constructive by definition."

clipped from www.coolhunting.com

To document MoMA's wonderful, monumental exhibit spanning design, science and technology, "Design and the Elastic Mind," we enlisted the help of the show's esteemed curator, Paola Antonelli. Paola speaks in detail about several of the exhibits, including "The Afterlife," a system for turning corpses into batteries, robots that act as personal climatizers and DNA origami. She also weighs in on her curatorial approach, addressing the role of the designer, her mission to shift public perception of design and how design revolutionizes our lives.

As always, but especially in this case, we hope CH inspires you to experience this show firsthand. It's up through May 2008, see details below.

If you absolutely can't make it in person, the website, designed by the renowned
Yugo Nakamura, is full of information organized into an extremely pleasing UI and the book (available online from the MoMA store) is a must-have resource for designers, educators and the curious.


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The Wisdom of Designing Cradle to Cradle

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Gavin Blake in Australia, suggests viewing this video from TED 2005. William McDough quotes Kevin Kelly, "There is no end game, there is only The Infinite Game."


Architect and designer William McDonough asks what our buildings and products would look like if designers took into account "All children, all species, for all time." A tireless proponent of absolute sustainability (with a deadpan sense of humor), he explains his philosophy of "cradle to cradle" design, which bridge the needs of ecology and economics. He also shares some of his most inspiring work, including the world's largest green roof (at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan), and the entire sustainable cities he's designing in China.