Overall this was one of the best IDSA district conferences that I have attended over the years. Certainly Vancouver is a beatiful city in which to spend a couple of days thinking about design. What made this conference distinctive is the focus and passion surrounding the topic, Enduring Design.

The Pacific Northwest loves "sustainability" (about as much as coffee and cheap sushi) and this conviction was evident in the list of presenters that it put to the podium. Usually at these things the speakers try and stick the conference theme somewhere in the title of their talk or work it in to their introduction. Rarely is it the backbone of their presentation.

At the IDSA-West this year we did not witness the tired parade of presenters who merely talk about their own or their studio's work. While these are occasionally interesting, or interesting in moderation, such "portfolio presentations" usually have the icky feel of a lightly veiled studio infomercial. The presenter often comes off as a design braggadocio with the an inflated sense of global importance (let's keep that you "revolutionized" the field of kitchen mops in perspective).

Conference organizer and Wesstern District VP, Dedre Toker was able to organize many leaders in the design sustainability field for this one-and-a-half-day gathering. Evidence of this was in the unusually high number of educators who spoke; yet, certainly the voice of enlightened practitioners was quite welcome. Indeed they have a more difficult task of meeting the seemingly irreconcilable demands of sustainability with corporate appetites, which nearly demand un-enduring design to produce enticing quarterly profits reports.

Thanks to the speakers, conference organizers, Emily Carr Institute, and passionate attendees for their efforts and attention to this topic. Let's hope that the spirit of the debate and the importance of the big picture endure.