O’Reilly Design Conference Call for Proposals

O’Reilly Design Conference

O’Reilly Media is holding its first ever O’Reilly Design Conference next January in San Francisco. The team organizing it is committed to delivering “the nuts-and-bolts foundations for sharpening your skills—the latest tools, techniques, and technologies you need to create innovative products and service—alongside forward-looking insights and inspiration.” (Full disclosure: I’m a member of the program committee.)

As of today, the conference’s call for proposals is officially open. Solicitations are being encouraged in three broad areas of interest that program chair Mary Treseler describes in this blog post as forming the basis of the conference’s tracks:

  • Designing for [the Internet of Things] represents a more dramatic change for designers than iterations from print to Web and Web to mobile. It also renews the importance of fundamental skills, such as user research and information architecture.
  • Design is a core business asset. It’s no surprise that design can provide a competitive edge, but shifting a business into a design-embedded organization is not simple nor easy.
  • Design for a Greater Good: design’s social impact is stronger than ever. Good design has the ability to improve our lives and our world.

Details on submitting ideas for talks and panels can be found here—proposals will be accepted through 20 July 2015. It promises to be a fascinating event, so if you’re working on something you think the design world needs to hear about, I hope you’ll share it with us.

You can find more information on the conference at this site. Oh, and apparently this particular O’Reilly production has been assigned the Tufted Coquette, a kind of South American hummingbird, as its animal kingdom embodiment. That’s what you see at the top of this post!

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