8:45 am to 12:30 pm
Plenary - Connecting People and Places

Design as Myth Buster!
Hans Rosling, Professor, Cofounder of Stockholm-based Gapminder
Using new software Hans Rosling converts global statistics into enjoyable animations that will increase the bandwidth of your optic nerves. In a few minutes the numbers in his laptop have become updated knowledge in your head that replace past concepts of western and third world with a more optimistic view of billions coming out of poverty in a world with a continuous variation of life conditions.

Space Tourism
Richard Seymour – Founder of Seymour Powell
Seymour Powell have been working on the design for the Virgin Galactic space tourism project, a service to be launched in 2008 for space flights at £200,000 per person, developed from the X-Prize winning suborbital rocket plane engineered and designed by Burt Rutan.

Sleek and Green
JB Straubel of Tesla Motors and Barney Hatt of Lotus Cars
The Tesla Roadster is 100% electric, fast and green, capable of zero to 60 mph in about four seconds, and the equivalent of 135 mpg. JB will explain the science and engineering behind the remarkable performance of the car. Barney will describe how the roadster's essential lines and proportions emerged, and explain how the car's dynamic and efficient nature influences it's visual appearance.

Imagining a future that works
Alex Steffen of WorldChanging.org
Great strides are being made in the fields of clean technology and green power, but if we're going to reduce the ecological impacts of our lives, communities and economies quickly enough to avoid catastrophe, we must do more. We must learn to think differently, utilizing breakthrough approaches to regulation, engineering and product design, certainly, but also leveraging new and dramatic possibilities for innovative and insightful approaches to systemic change. Come experience a guided tour across the new frontier of sustainable innovation with Worldchanging.com founder Alex Steffen.

Previews for parallel sessions
Bill Breen of Fast Company will be our host for the previews of the parallel sessions. Each session will be introduced by the Chair of the Selection Committee that chose it, along with some visuals, to give an idea of the content. This should help participants choose which of the parallel sessions they want to attend during the afternoons.

2:00 pm to 2:50 pm
Parallel - Connecting Places +

The Shape of Things to Come
Larry Speck
Norman Bel Geddes conceived new ways to think about everything from candy dishes to cities.  His visions for trains, cars, boats and trans-continental aircraft sent shock waves through the transportation industry.  His reinvented conception of the American home began with beds, stoves and refrigerators and extended to architecture and neighborhoods. His extraordinary vision for the future, depicted with great panache and finesse in the popular FUTURAMA pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, set a direction for post-war development—a world of freeways, automobile accessibility and lower density cities that we take for granted today.

From Me to You: Designer Connecting to User
Ayse Birsel and Bibi Seck
Although the designer and the user are at opposite ends of the design spectrum, they each have a strong, emotional sense of ownership over a product. The designer thinks the product is his, my baby; the user thinks the product is hers, my thing. The transfer of ownership that happens between the two is what sustains a design process. This is what we will explore with you during our CONNECTING’07 presentation.

3:15 pm to 4:00pm
Panel - Connecting Places +
Richard Seymour, JB Straubel, Barney Hatt, Larry Speck, Ayse Birsel and Bibi Seck discuss “Connecting Places” - moderated by Lorraine Justice.

4:30 pm to 5:20 pm
Parallel - Connecting People +

Connected People and Connecting Agents
Ezio Manzini
Connectivity is increasing worldwide and when combined with attempts to deal with a number of social and environmental problems, it is generating a growing wave of social innovation. This takes different forms. Some of these are promising socio-cultural trends:  cosmopolitan localism, active well-being, distributed economies and  collaborative networks. Together these are the building blocks in the emerging scenario of a multi-local society: a sustainable society based on unprecedented possibilities of connecting places and people.

Blurring the Boundaries between Anthropology and Design
Suzanne Gibbs Howard
Today is a good day to be an anthropologist. Anthropologists and other social scientists are in demand by design divisions, marketing firms, advertising agencies, and innovation consultancies. Thanks to the popularity of the “voice of the customer” and the dominance of Human Centered Design, many researchers with a passion for studying people are finding happy homes in the world of design. Suzanne will share stories from her experience working at IDEO to illustrate how anthropologists and other social scientists have been working alongside designers to inspire innovation.

5:45 pm to 6:30pm
Panel - Connecting People +
Hans Rosling, Alex Steffen, Ezio Manzini and Suzanne Gibbs Howard discuss “Connecting People” - moderated by Eunsook Kwon.

8:45 am to 12:30 pm
Plenary - Connecting Virtual and Visceral

Design after the Information Revolution
Paul Saffo
The internet bubble marked the end of the information revolution -- and the beginning of something much bigger, an age of personal media.  It is a revolution we have been anticipating ever since McLuhan turned Media into a household word in the 1960s, but as typically happens, even this most anticipated of revolutions is arriving late, and in utterly unexpected ways. 

Design for Fragile Personalities in Anxious Times
Dunne and Raby
Designers are usually expected to make technology sexy, consumable, and easy to use; our job is to ensure its entry into everyday life goes as smoothly as possible. But as it becomes more complex, we need to slow down and debate the impact of different technological futures before they happen. We need to collectively decide on which futures are the most desirable, and the least harmful.

A Conscious Emulation: Connecting and Solving Worthy Challenges with Biomimicry
Janine Benyus
Biomimicry—the conscious emulation of nature’s elegant, energy-sipping, non-toxic designs—is finding a home in design centers and commercial innovation labs throughout the world.  Biomimicry author Janine Benyus will update us on how designers, engineers, architects, and business leaders are connecting to the sustainability solutions and inspiration found in the natural world. Our ability to borrow life’s blueprints and chemical recipes is increasing, says Benyus, and so is our appreciation for life’s genius.   

Core of Awareness
Naoto Fukasawa
Everything contains central elements that we all recognize or share in common. Such cores have very much to do with design in deep layers.  For example, if we interpret it this notion in terms of visual languages, the cores can be recognized as icons that we all share. These form the centre of design itself and also the core of our understanding in communications where we make us understand each other.

Shaping Things
Bruce Sterling
During 2005, Bruce was Visionary in Residence at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. This experience gave rise to "Shaping Things", a highly speculative book about the future of industrial design, production, sustainability and an Internet of Things.  Bruce is now a columnist for MAKE magazine and the guest curator for the SHARE Festival in Torino, Italy, a town chosen by ICSID as world capital of design for 2008.  At CONNECTING07 he will be ruminating about the aspects of his once-farfetched speculations that have already become fact.

2:00 pm to 2:50 pm
Parallel – Virtual Connections +

Tangible Bits: Beyond Pixels
Hiroshi Ishii
Where the sea meets the land, life has blossomed into a myriad of unique forms in the turbulence of water, sand, and wind.  At another seashore between the land of atoms and the sea of bits, we are now facing the challenge of reconciling our dual citizenships in the physical and digital worlds.  Windows to the digital world are 
confined to flat square ubiquitous screens filled with pixels, or "painted bits." Unfortunately, one can not feel and confirm the virtual existence of this digital information through one's body.

A Better Experience
Sam Lucente
Sam leads HP’s design practice in creating world-class designs across all customer touch points to build an iconic brand. His work entails building a community of design professionals that use design as a strategic business tool and infuse the company’s products and services with a unique HP look and feel. This drives efficiency, makes offerings more competitive, and creates a better experience for HP’s customers.

3:15 pm to 4:00pm
Panel – Virtual Connections +
Paul Saffo, Janine Benyus, Fiona Raby, Tony Dunne, Hiroshi Ishii and Sam Lucente discuss “Virtual Connections” - moderated by Brenda Laurel.

4:30 pm to 5:20 pm
Parallel – Visceral Connections +

Form Follows Emotion
Hartmut Esslinger
All creative processes are based upon knowledge, information and myths, and therefore, we have to live with the conflict between our biological, intellectual and spiritual realities. On the other side, we have a cognitive system, which evolved over millions of years, and acts and re-acts within nanoseconds. The result is that important human decisions – physical and mental - are factually made within seconds. As this is working well for our physical survival in a savage environment, it can turn into a big liability when it comes to intellectual decisions based upon complex information – such as in design, business or investing. I prefer to learn and think long and to then to decide fast.

Cat Chow: Unzipped
Cat Chow
Cat will discuss the connections between design and art, using examples of her own work as well as other influential designers and artists.

5:45 pm to 6:30pm
Panel – Visceral Connections +
Naoto Fukasawa, Bruce Sterling, Hartmut Esslinger and Cat Chow discuss “Visceral Connections” - moderated by Sarah Thielman.

8:45 am to 12:30 pm
Plenary - Connecting Beauty and Bounty

Finding your Sculpture
Stefano Marzano
It seems that beauty and bounty have always been in conflict, with different perspectives and different priorities. On the one hand beauty strives to achieve intangible ideals; searching for perfection and inspiration. On the other hand, bounty is primarily concerned with wealth; generating it, accumulating it, spending it, focused on a very tangible commercial advantage. We will explore the journey that Philips has taken in creating a common language and common purpose to bridge the gap between the 'beauty' and the 'bounty' and the role that design has played in stimulating an affinity between the two cultures.

Why and How
Yves Behar
A belief in two seemingly contrary ideas, civic design and business building partnerships, is the future of design as we see it at fuseproject.  WHY we are creating deeper and more authentic relationships with clients and people, and HOW we are realigning the business model for greater value--based on values.

Beyond the Creatives: Managing All Your Talent
Sir Ken Robinson
Many organizations are divided into two groups: the “creatives” and the “suits.” The assumption that only the “creatives” can think creatively can waste huge sources of hidden talent and innovation across the whole organization. Drawing on his extensive work with creative organizations and people across the world, Sir Ken describes the real nature of creative intelligence and the many forms that creative ability can take.

From Design to Design Thinking
Tim Brown
Tim will discuss the personal journey that took him from industrial designer to design thinker, and the challenges that face designers as they seek to have more impact in the world. He will survey the landscape of design thinking and talk about his personal view of the implications for design, including new developments in design process and the skill sets required of design thinkers.

Design Thinking: The Next Competitive Advantage
Roger Martin
Two fundamental kinds of thinking co-exist and often collide in business organizations: analytical thinking and design thinking. Both have their places, but as organizations grow, analytical thinking – which focuses on exploitation and refinement of the current state of knowledge – often crowds out design thinking – which pushes knowledge forward and creates new possibilities. To benefit from design thinking, a business needs to understand how analytical thinking and design thinking differ, why and how they come into conflict, and how to create an environment which encourages design thinking to flourish.

2:00 pm to 2:50 pm
Parallel – Beautiful Connections +

Activities of Panasonic Design
Toyoyuki Uematsu
To establish Panasonic’s design identity, we have set a brand or design language and established development criteria to realize these specific designs, to contribute to the realization of a ubiquitous networking society, and for coexistence with the global environment. This session will also look into our activities with International Association for Universal Design and how UD activities are a new value fields that can realize a win-win factor for everyone in the world.

NONOBJECT, the Space Between You and the Object.
branko Lukic
Everything I ever designed, product, architectural or digital experience, was actually intended to live in the space outside of the object - it was designed for people's relation to the object - it was in their mind. This led to a greater understanding that everything I did ultimately resided in the non-material world - the mind of the user - the people for whom I designed the object for in the first place. Their minds were the space where objects continued to live. Therefore it is the space between you and the object in which the NONOBJECT idea was born.

3:15 pm to 4:05pm
Parallel – Bountiful Connections +

Method in the Madness
Patrick Whitney
The "creative soup", as Bill Moggridge sometimes calls design, has unusual chefs dressed in black using language only they understand.  Somehow, they frequently turn the ingredients of the banality of everyday life and the confusion of new technology into gourmet meals of user experience and economic growth.  Executives think the process is mad, but are increasingly liking the soup. They want it more often, in larger servings, and in much less time.  Luckily, hidden in the traditional processes of design, there are processes that, when isolated and refined,  become methods that reliably create delicious objects, environments, messages and services.

Connecting the World to your Brand 
Mark Dziersk and Richard Seymour
Contained within the promise of a Brand are hopes, dreams and ambitions. In order to be truly powerful a Brand must deliver on these intangibles. To be Global it must do so in ways that are non verbal and universal.   The trick is to manifest a brand in every way and touchpoint in a way that satisfies the expectation of the Brand's promise no matter what the promise, or how tiny the touch point. Richard Seymour and Mark Dziersk will come together in this session to share experiences in using Design thinking methods and protocols for delivering on  the emotional underpinning of Brand promises. A  necessary for creating powerful Global Brands.

4:30 pm to 5:15 pm
Panel – Beautiful Connections + (Fairmont Gold)
Stefano Marzano, Yves Behar, Toyoyuki Uematsu and Branko Lukic discuss “Beautiful Connections” - moderated by Tucker Veimeister.

4:30 pm to 5:15 pm
Panel – Bountiful Connections + (Fairmont Venetian)
Roger Martin, Mark Dziersk, Richard Seymour and Patrick Whitney discuss “Bountiful Connections” - moderated by Beth Viner.