Speakers

• tanyaaguiniga.com

  making now

  Tanya Aguiñiga is a Los Angeles based designer and artist who was raised in Tijuana, Mexico. She holds an MFA in furniture design from Rhode Island School of Design. She created various collaborative installations with the Border Arts Workshop, an artists' group that engages the languages of activism and community-based public art. She founded the group, Artists Helping Artisans, through which she helps spread knowledge of craft by collaborating with traditional artisans. Her work has been exhibited from Mexico City to Milan. She is a United States Artists Target Fellow in the field of Crafts and Traditional Arts, a GOOD 100 2013 Recipient and has been the subject of a cover article for American Craft Magazine and included in PBS's Craft in America.
• newdealdesign.com

  the future now

  Gadi Amit is a San Francisco based designer behind some of the most innovative and lasting technology devices created over the last decade. He is the creative leader and president of NewDealDesign, the 2013 National Design Award winner. Committed to crafting delightful and workable solutions for real people, Gadi works with technology from the inside out to disrupt markets for global brands and help turn start‐ups into success stories. He was named one of the ‘1000 Most Creative People’ by Fast Company Magazine in 2015, a ‘Master of Design’ in 2010 and with his team has been received well over 100 design awards. Gadi’s work includes the Fitbit line of wearable devices, the Google Ara Modular phone, the Lytro Light Field Camera, Sproutling and Whistle.
• futurepartners.is

  collaboration now

  John Bielenberg is a designer, entrepreneur, and imaginative advocate for creating a better world through the application of creativity and ingenuity. John co-founded Future Partners, a Silicon Valley Innovation firm, in 2012 to teach Rapid Ingenuity Practices to individuals, teams, and organizations around the world. In 2001, John co-founded C2 Group, a brand strategy firm, to help leaders from technology start ups, Fortune 500 companies, and the world’s top business management consulting firms develop, build and protect their brands. In his career, John has won more than 250 design awards, including the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) Gold Medal for lifetime achievement.
• dereconstruction.com

  making now

  Ayse Birsel has been designing award-winning products for over twenty years. She is the co-founder of Birsel + Seck, an innovative design studio in NYC that partners with leading brands and Fortune 500 companies, including Target, Herman Miller, Hewlett Packard, Johnson & Johnson and Toyota. She has also consulted GE, Hasbro, The Drucker Institute and Bridgestone Turkey, among others, on design thinking, strategy and innovation projects. Called affectionately by the press the “Queen of Toilets” and “Queen Bee” for her bathroom designs and office systems respectively, she brings new solutions to old problems by thinking differently, using her user-centered, humanistic design approach and her unique process, Deconstruction:Reconstruction.
• levistrauss.com

  collaboration now

  Paul Dillinger is the Vice President of Global Product Innovation at LS&Co. Following his passion for sustainability, Dillinger has been an integral partner with the company’s Social and Environmental Sustainability group to develop front-end methods for applied sustainability in the design process. Dillinger also led the design team that created the Dockers® Wellthread collection, a result of a fellowship with the Aspen Institute. He is the first fashion designer to earn a First Movers Fellowship with the renowned organization. Before joining LS&Co., Dillinger worked as a fashion designer and brand development specialist for 16 years at a variety of fashion houses in New York, including Calvin Klein and DKNY.
• njla.us

  business now

  Nicole Jacek is an award-winning graphic designer (Red Dot, D&AD, Art Directors Club, Type Directors Club New York & Tokyo, etc.) and founder of Venice Beach based design studio NJ(L.A.)TM, a small shop that opened up in May 2013. NJ(L.A.)’s clients include Adobe, Nike, Beats by Dre, GOOD Magazine, Sarah Staton and New York University, among others. NJ’s work has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers, and books around the world. She was winner of Print’s New Visual Artists, as well as an ADC Young Gun. She currently serves as the youngest Art Directors Club Board Member and teaches at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. NJ graduated from Merz Akademie— University of Art, Design and Media, Stuttgart in Germany.
• jpl.nasa.gov

  the future now

  Jessie Kawata loves to explore the space of science and the science of space. By day, Jessie is a designer and creative strategist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. She helped to pioneer the first in-house art and design studio at NASA, where they translate complex scientific ideas into meaningful and awe-inspiring *creativeprojects. Jessie is also creative lead on NASA JPL's early mission architecture team where she has initiated the integration of design-thinking, creative methodologies, and visual storytelling into the process of designing space mission concepts. When she is not staring into space, Jessie also illustrates, sails tall ships, and is also a part-time product design instructor at Art Center’s Saturday High Program.
• thehydro.us

  collaboration now

  Sly Lee is a marine scientist, science communicator, and Founder and President of The Hydrous, whose work has been featured in TEDx talks, WIRED Magazine, and REAL 2015. He has led projects around the world including Bahamas, Palau, Hawaii, Guam, Maldives, Solomon Islands, and Easter Island. Lee combined his passion for photography and experience from the groundbreaking USS Arizona 3D mapping project to pioneer new methods of coral reef imaging utilizing photogrammetry and Autodesk's latest 3D software to create ultra-high resolution, interactive 3D computer models of corals for revolutionary scientific and educational tools. Lee is passionate about interdisciplinary collaborations, and is forming an eclectic team for an ambitious quest to capture all of the world’s coral reefs in interactive 3D for open access science and educational experiences. Near future projects include Singularity University Start up Project, X-Prize Happiness, and XPrize Ocean Mapping competitions.
• verynice.co

  business now

  Matthew Manos is an artist, strategist, and author interested in experimental economies and conditional systems for creative inquiry. He is the Founder and Global Strategy Lead at verynice, a design, strategy, and foresight consultancy that gives half of its work away for free to non-profit organizations. As of 2015, verynice has been able to gift over $3,000,000 worth of pro-bono design and consulting services across 45 countries to benefit hundreds of organizations thanks largely to a volunteer staff of 400+ practitioners. Matthew is also the author of How to Give Half of Your Work Away for Free, creator of the Models of Impact project, and Adjunct Professor at both the Art Center College of Design and California College of the Arts' Design MBA. He holds a BA in Design Media Arts from UCLA, and an MFA in Media Design Practices from Art Center College of Design.
• maya.com

  the future now

  Mickey McManus is a pioneer in the field of collaborative innovation, pervasive computing, human-centered design and education. He is visiting research fellow in the office of the CTO at Autodesk, a principal and chairman of the board of MAYA Design in Pittsburgh. He holds nine patents in the area of connected products, vehicles, and services.
• google.com/atap/project-jacquard/

  collaboration now

  Dr. Ivan Poupyrev is an award-winning scientist, inventor and designer working at the cutting edge of interaction design and technologies blending the digital and physical realities. Prior to Google, he was Principal Research Scientist at the Walt Disney Imagineering research division and at Sony Corporate Research laboratories in Tokyo. He also did stints at the University of Washington as a visiting scientist, and at Princeton University School of Architecture as a Visiting Lecturer. Ivan currently leads a team of technologists and designers that focuses on inventing new interaction technologies and design paradigms to seamlessly blend digital and physical interactivity in devices, everyday objects, and living environments on a large scale.
• brendanravenhill.com

  making now

  Brendan Ravenhill runs a studio specializing in furniture, lighting, and product design. The studio's work is devoid of excess and ornament, striving for a logical celebration of physics, material and craft. During childhood years in Cote d’Ivoire and summers in coastal Maine, Brendan fell in love with the functional beauty of working tools and wooden boats. His father curated a show called the Art of the Personal Object at the Smithsonian when he was a kid. Brendan received a Sculpture degree from Oberlin College in 2001 and a Masters in Industrial Design from RISD in 2009.
• okfoc.us

  business now

  Ryder Ripps is an artist and creative director who, for the past 8 years, has been #breakingtheinternet. Called a “consummate Internet cool kid” by the New York Times, Ripps has a unique practice that has earned him the attention of museums and rappers alike. In 2009 he created Internet Archaeology – archiving and acknowledging artifacts of the consumer internet from when he began making things in 1998. In 2010 he founded dump.fm, a social network for realtime communication with images – credited as being integral in fostering the current wave of net art. In 2011 he worked with V Magazine and was the force behind VFILES – a vibrant fashion platform. In 2011 he founded creative agency OKFocus with Jules LaPlace, effectuating forward thinking work for clients such as Nike, MOCA, Kenzo, Soylent, Mike Will Made It, Red Bull, Phillips, Atlantic Records, Instagram, Been Trill and other famous brands and people.
• rksdesign.com/

  business now

  Ravi Sawhney, an entrepreneur, author, lecturer and designer, leads RKS in Southern California, a firm he founded in 1980. Today, his team works across the globe for major players and start-ups in all aspects of design, from environments to technology and interaction. Having won well over 150 major design awards, his work he asserts is simply built on his interpretations of Abraham Maslow and Joseph Campbell. Through a systematic and pragmatic insight analysis framework, his team sets the stage for creation of aspirational experiences that motivate and reward audiences time and time again.
• wetdesign.com

  making now

  Nadine leads all aspects of design at WET. She sets creative direction and cultivates innovation in design at every stage. With the wave of a magic wand, Nadine and her multidisciplinary team unleash the spirit of the elements. Conceptual designers, illustrators, animators, graphic designers, motion and interaction designers, cinematographers and photographers, transform spaces into experiences. Magic permeates through the design studio in the form of inspiration. Water, fire, and ice are reimagined with unbounded possibility. Designers ally with engineers to create never-before-seen water expressions, developing new ways of experiencing water and implementing them in projects across the globe.
• piptompkin.com

  business now

  Pip Tompkin was born in Nottingham, England. He graduated top of his year with 1st class honors majoring in Industrial Design from Northumbria University in Newcastle. He then attended the prestigious The Royal College of Art in London and gained a Masters of Industrial Design with a special examiners distinction. After graduating, he worked with both architecture and design companies in England, Norway, Sweden, Finland, China, Korea and The Netherlands, before moving to the United States in 2001. Pip Tompkin’s philosophy, Assume Nothing together with his Big Think Big idea methodology, has helped develop award winning products and brands for numerous businesses. He actively promotes design education and his work has appeared in many publications.
• sonos.com

  collaboration now

  Tad Toulis is VP of Design for Sonos – a smart speaker system that uses your WiFi to stream the music you love throughout your home. In his role, Tad oversees both the hardware industrial design and user interface design that provides a clean and seamless experience for music listeners in the home. Before joining Sonos, Toulis was Creative Director of TEAGUE’s Seattle‐ based Design Studio from 2007‐2012 where he architected a restructuring of the agencies’ product studio offering. A frequent speaker and lecturer at universities, conferences and design symposiums, his work has received numerous awards of distinction and has appeared in publications across the globe. In addition, Toulis was a founding member of designRAW, a San Francisco‐based design collective.
• teslamotors.com

  the future now

  Mexico City-born Javier Verdura graduated from Art Center College of Design with a degree in Product Design in 1991.  His first position as a Product Designer was at Group Four Design, an award winning New England firm; later he joined inno as Design Manager, while in Atlanta he also became a part-time professor of Industrial Design at Georgia Tech's School of Design and Architecture.  In 1998 he joined then start-up firm Product Ventures, he remained there for 15 years as the Vice President of Design and Development, during his tenure he helped grow the company from 6 employees to almost 50. His most recent position has brought Javier back to Los Angeles where he is currently the Director of Product Design at Tesla Motors.

• Tanya Aguiñiga
  Tanya Aguiñiga Studio
  

  Tanya Aguiñiga is a Los Angeles based designer and artist who was raised in Tijuana, Mexico. She holds an MFA in furniture design from Rhode Island School of Design. She created various collaborative installations with the Border Arts Workshop, an artists' group that engages the languages of activism and community-based public art. She founded the group, Artists Helping Artisans, through which she helps spread knowledge of craft by collaborating with traditional artisans. Her work has been exhibited from Mexico City to Milan. She is a United States Artists Target Fellow in the field of Crafts and Traditional Arts, a GOOD 100 2013 Recipient and has been the subject of a cover article for American Craft Magazine and included in PBS's Craft in America.

  tanyaaguiniga.com

  making now
• Gadi Amit
  NewDeal Design
  

  Gadi Amit is a San Francisco based designer behind some of the most innovative and lasting technology devices created over the last decade. He is the creative leader and president of NewDealDesign, the 2013 National Design Award winner. Committed to crafting delightful and workable solutions for real people, Gadi works with technology from the inside out to disrupt markets for global brands and help turn start‐ups into success stories. He was named one of the ‘1000 Most Creative People’ by Fast Company Magazine in 2015, a ‘Master of Design’ in 2010 and with his team has been received well over 100 design awards. Gadi’s work includes the Fitbit line of wearable devices, the Google Ara Modular phone, the Lytro Light Field Camera, Sproutling and Whistle.

  newdealdesign.com

  the future now
• John Bielenberg
  Future Partners
  

  John Bielenberg is a designer, entrepreneur, and imaginative advocate for creating a better world through the application of creativity and ingenuity. John co-founded Future Partners, a Silicon Valley Innovation firm, in 2012 to teach Rapid Ingenuity Practices to individuals, teams, and organizations around the world. In 2001, John co-founded C2 Group, a brand strategy firm, to help leaders from technology start ups, Fortune 500 companies, and the world’s top business management consulting firms develop, build and protect their brands. In his career, John has won more than 250 design awards, including the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) Gold Medal for lifetime achievement.

  futurepartners.is

  collaboration now
• Ayse Birsel
  Birsel + Seck
  

  Ayse Birsel has been designing award-winning products for over twenty years. She is the co-founder of Birsel + Seck, an innovative design studio in NYC that partners with leading brands and Fortune 500 companies, including Target, Herman Miller, Hewlett Packard, Johnson & Johnson and Toyota. She has also consulted GE, Hasbro, The Drucker Institute and Bridgestone Turkey, among others, on design thinking, strategy and innovation projects. Called affectionately by the press the “Queen of Toilets” and “Queen Bee” for her bathroom designs and office systems respectively, she brings new solutions to old problems by thinking differently, using her user-centered, humanistic design approach and her unique process, Deconstruction:Reconstruction.

  dereconstruction.com

  making now
• Paul Dillinger
  Levi Strauss & Co.
  

  Paul Dillinger is the Vice President of Global Product Innovation at LS&Co. Following his passion for sustainability, Dillinger has been an integral partner with the company’s Social and Environmental Sustainability group to develop front-end methods for applied sustainability in the design process. Dillinger also led the design team that created the Dockers® Wellthread collection, a result of a fellowship with the Aspen Institute. He is the first fashion designer to earn a First Movers Fellowship with the renowned organization. Before joining LS&Co., Dillinger worked as a fashion designer and brand development specialist for 16 years at a variety of fashion houses in New York, including Calvin Klein and DKNY.

  levistrauss.com

  collaboration now
• Nicole Jacek
  NJ (L.A.)
  

  Nicole Jacek is an award-winning graphic designer (Red Dot, D&AD, Art Directors Club, Type Directors Club New York & Tokyo, etc.) and founder of Venice Beach based design studio NJ(L.A.)TM, a small shop that opened up in May 2013. NJ(L.A.)’s clients include Adobe, Nike, Beats by Dre, GOOD Magazine, Sarah Staton and New York University, among others. NJ’s work has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers, and books around the world. She was winner of Print’s New Visual Artists, as well as an ADC Young Gun. She currently serves as the youngest Art Directors Club Board Member and teaches at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. NJ graduated from Merz Akademie— University of Art, Design and Media, Stuttgart in Germany.

  njla.us

  business now
• Jessie Kawata
  NASA JPL
  

  Jessie Kawata loves to explore the space of science and the science of space. By day, Jessie is a designer and creative strategist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. She helped to pioneer the first in-house art and design studio at NASA, where they translate complex scientific ideas into meaningful and awe-inspiring *creativeprojects. Jessie is also creative lead on NASA JPL's early mission architecture team where she has initiated the integration of design-thinking, creative methodologies, and visual storytelling into the process of designing space mission concepts. When she is not staring into space, Jessie also illustrates, sails tall ships, and is also a part-time product design instructor at Art Center’s Saturday High Program.

  jpl.nasa.gov

  the future now
• Sly Lee
  The Hydrous
  

  Sly Lee is a marine scientist, science communicator, and Founder and President of The Hydrous, whose work has been featured in TEDx talks, WIRED Magazine, and REAL 2015. He has led projects around the world including Bahamas, Palau, Hawaii, Guam, Maldives, Solomon Islands, and Easter Island. Lee combined his passion for photography and experience from the groundbreaking USS Arizona 3D mapping project to pioneer new methods of coral reef imaging utilizing photogrammetry and Autodesk's latest 3D software to create ultra-high resolution, interactive 3D computer models of corals for revolutionary scientific and educational tools. Lee is passionate about interdisciplinary collaborations, and is forming an eclectic team for an ambitious quest to capture all of the world’s coral reefs in interactive 3D for open access science and educational experiences. Near future projects include Singularity University Start up Project, X-Prize Happiness, and XPrize Ocean Mapping competitions.

  thehydro.us

  collaboration now
• Matthew Manos
  VeryNice
  

  Matthew Manos is an artist, strategist, and author interested in experimental economies and conditional systems for creative inquiry. He is the Founder and Global Strategy Lead at verynice, a design, strategy, and foresight consultancy that gives half of its work away for free to non-profit organizations. As of 2015, verynice has been able to gift over $3,000,000 worth of pro-bono design and consulting services across 45 countries to benefit hundreds of organizations thanks largely to a volunteer staff of 400+ practitioners. Matthew is also the author of How to Give Half of Your Work Away for Free, creator of the Models of Impact project, and Adjunct Professor at both the Art Center College of Design and California College of the Arts' Design MBA. He holds a BA in Design Media Arts from UCLA, and an MFA in Media Design Practices from Art Center College of Design.

  verynice.co

  business now
• Mickey McManus
  MAYA DESIGN & AUTODESK
  

  Mickey McManus is a pioneer in the field of collaborative innovation, pervasive computing, human-centered design and education. He is visiting research fellow in the office of the CTO at Autodesk, a principal and chairman of the board of MAYA Design in Pittsburgh. He holds nine patents in the area of connected products, vehicles, and services.

  maya.com

  the future now
• Dr. Ivan Poupyrev
  Google ATAP
  

  Dr. Ivan Poupyrev is an award-winning scientist, inventor and designer working at the cutting edge of interaction design and technologies blending the digital and physical realities. Prior to Google, he was Principal Research Scientist at the Walt Disney Imagineering research division and at Sony Corporate Research laboratories in Tokyo. He also did stints at the University of Washington as a visiting scientist, and at Princeton University School of Architecture as a Visiting Lecturer. Ivan currently leads a team of technologists and designers that focuses on inventing new interaction technologies and design paradigms to seamlessly blend digital and physical interactivity in devices, everyday objects, and living environments on a large scale.

  https://google.com/atap/project-jacquard/

  collaboration now
• Brendan Ravenhill
  Brendan Ravenhill Studio
  

  Brendan Ravenhill runs a studio specializing in furniture, lighting, and product design. The studio's work is devoid of excess and ornament, striving for a logical celebration of physics, material and craft. During childhood years in Cote d’Ivoire and summers in coastal Maine, Brendan fell in love with the functional beauty of working tools and wooden boats. His father curated a show called the Art of the Personal Object at the Smithsonian when he was a kid. Brendan received a Sculpture degree from Oberlin College in 2001 and a Masters in Industrial Design from RISD in 2009.

  brendanravenhill.com

  making now
• Ryder Ripps
  OKFocus
  

  Ryder Ripps is an artist and creative director who, for the past 8 years, has been #breakingtheinternet. Called a “consummate Internet cool kid” by the New York Times, Ripps has a unique practice that has earned him the attention of museums and rappers alike. In 2009 he created Internet Archaeology – archiving and acknowledging artifacts of the consumer internet from when he began making things in 1998. In 2010 he founded dump.fm, a social network for realtime communication with images – credited as being integral in fostering the current wave of net art. In 2011 he worked with V Magazine and was the force behind VFILES – a vibrant fashion platform. In 2011 he founded creative agency OKFocus with Jules LaPlace, effectuating forward thinking work for clients such as Nike, MOCA, Kenzo, Soylent, Mike Will Made It, Red Bull, Phillips, Atlantic Records, Instagram, Been Trill and other famous brands and people.

  okfoc.us

  business now
• Ravi Sawhney
  RKS Design
  

  Ravi Sawhney, an entrepreneur, author, lecturer and designer, leads RKS in Southern California, a firm he founded in 1980. Today, his team works across the globe for major players and start-ups in all aspects of design, from environments to technology and interaction. Having won well over 150 major design awards, his work he asserts is simply built on his interpretations of Abraham Maslow and Joseph Campbell. Through a systematic and pragmatic insight analysis framework, his team sets the stage for creation of aspirational experiences that motivate and reward audiences time and time again.

  rksdesign.com/

  business now
• Nadine Schelbert
  WET
  

  Nadine leads all aspects of design at WET. She sets creative direction and cultivates innovation in design at every stage. With the wave of a magic wand, Nadine and her multidisciplinary team unleash the spirit of the elements. Conceptual designers, illustrators, animators, graphic designers, motion and interaction designers, cinematographers and photographers, transform spaces into experiences. Magic permeates through the design studio in the form of inspiration. Water, fire, and ice are reimagined with unbounded possibility. Designers ally with engineers to create never-before-seen water expressions, developing new ways of experiencing water and implementing them in projects across the globe.

  wetdesign.com

  making now
• Pip Tompkin
  Pip Tompkin Studio
  

  Pip Tompkin was born in Nottingham, England. He graduated top of his year with 1st class honors majoring in Industrial Design from Northumbria University in Newcastle. He then attended the prestigious The Royal College of Art in London and gained a Masters of Industrial Design with a special examiners distinction. After graduating, he worked with both architecture and design companies in England, Norway, Sweden, Finland, China, Korea and The Netherlands, before moving to the United States in 2001. Pip Tompkin’s philosophy, Assume Nothing together with his Big Think Big idea methodology, has helped develop award winning products and brands for numerous businesses. He actively promotes design education and his work has appeared in many publications.

  piptompkin.com

  business now
• Tad Toulis
  Sonos
  

  Tad Toulis is VP of Design for Sonos – a smart speaker system that uses your WiFi to stream the music you love throughout your home. In his role, Tad oversees both the hardware industrial design and user interface design that provides a clean and seamless experience for music listeners in the home. Before joining Sonos, Toulis was Creative Director of TEAGUE’s Seattle‐ based Design Studio from 2007‐2012 where he architected a restructuring of the agencies’ product studio offering. A frequent speaker and lecturer at universities, conferences and design symposiums, his work has received numerous awards of distinction and has appeared in publications across the globe. In addition, Toulis was a founding member of designRAW, a San Francisco‐based design collective.

  sonos.com

  collaboration now
• Javier Verdura
  Tesla Motors
  

  Mexico City-born Javier Verdura graduated from Art Center College of Design with a degree in Product Design in 1991.  His first position as a Product Designer was at Group Four Design, an award winning New England firm; later he joined inno as Design Manager, while in Atlanta he also became a part-time professor of Industrial Design at Georgia Tech's School of Design and Architecture.  In 1998 he joined then start-up firm Product Ventures, he remained there for 15 years as the Vice President of Design and Development, during his tenure he helped grow the company from 6 employees to almost 50. His most recent position has brought Javier back to Los Angeles where he is currently the Director of Product Design at Tesla Motors.

  teslamotors.com

  the future now

Schedule

Thursday, Friday, Saturday

• Day One

  Thursday, October 22nd

  • Welcome Drinks

    • 7:00PM — 10:00PM
      Check-in at Broadway Bar (830 South Broadway) with open bar and musical entertainment

• Day Two

  Friday, October 23rd

  • Registration

    • 8:30AM — 9:30AM
      Coffee and a light breakfast will be served

  • Opening Remarks

    • 9:30AM — 9:40AM
      Stuart Constantine, co-founder and publisher of Core77

  • Collaboration Now

    • 9:40AM — 10:10AM
      CONVERSATION: PROJECT JACQUARD With Project Jacquard, Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) division is weaving touch-interactive fabric into everyday materials—and creating a blank slate for fashion designers, furniture makers, software developers and others to invent new uses for conductive textiles. Jacquard’s first partner is Levi’s—and here we’ll have a conversation between Google ATAP’s technical program lead, Ivan Poupyrev, and Levi’s vice president of global product innovation, Paul Dillinger. Together with Core77 managing editor LinYee Yuan, they’ll discuss their vision for a world of touch-interactive clothing and environments.
    • 10:10AM — 10:30AM
      TAD TOULIS: MERGING HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE DESIGN As the vice president of design at Sonos, Toulis works at the intersection of industrial and user-interface design to create home-music products that look and function beautifully. He’ll tell us what he’s learned about bringing together—and communicating effectively between—hardware and software designers for enlightened product development.
    • 10:30AM — 10:50AM
      JOHN BIELENBERG: DOING RIGHT BY THINKING WRONG Presented by Eastman Innovation Lab Bielenberg is a designer and entrepreneur with an extensive resume helping creative professionals generate ideas for solving global challenges. He’ll talk about his “thinking wrong” philosophy, and his newest ventures—including Future Partners, a Silicon Valley innovation firm, and Secret Project, an immersive, cross-departmental class at California College of the Arts.
    • 10:50AM — 11:10AM
      SLY LEE: DIY OCEAN EXPLORATION Lee is a marine scientist, science communicator and the founder and president of The Hydrous, which is on an ambitious quest to capture the world’s coral reefs in interactive 3D. He’ll present the goals and challenges of this project, and explain how he’s combining design, science and robotics to create a global community of DIY ocean explorers.

  • Making Now

    • 11:25AM — 11:45AM
      NADINE SCHELBERT: SCULPTING WATER Schelbert is the director of design and branding at WET, the Los Angeles firm responsible for spectacular water features at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, the Dubai Fountain and New York’s Lincoln Center, to name just a few of its more than 200 installations. She’ll give us a behind-the-scenes look at how WET’s multidisciplinary team designs, engineers and fabricates its fiendishly complex installations.
    • 11:45AM — 12:15PM
      CONVERSATION: BRENDAN RAVENHILL STUDIO Ravenhill got his start building wooden boats in Rhode Island and now runs a busy lighting and furniture design business in Los Angeles. His practice is based on tapping into LA’s often underutilized manufacturing base and figuring out how a producer’s particular skills and capabilities can drive a new design. Ravenhill will sit down with journalist Alissa Walker for a conversation about his career, his manufacturing methods and why LA is the ideal city for making it as a designer-maker.
    • 12:15PM — 12:35PM
      TANYA AGUIÑIGA: CRAFT WITH A CONSCIENCE Aguiñiga is a Los Angeles artist, designer, teacher and activist whose work spans textiles, furniture, accessories and installations—including, recently, a monumental wall hanging for the Ace Hotel in downtown LA (made from the blankets handed out to the homeless on nearby Skid Row). Her work is not only about making objects and experiences but also creating community—and she’ll share her vision for how craft can diversify conversations in society.
    • 12:35PM — 1:10PM
      AYSE BIRSEL: DESIGN THE LIFE YOU LOVE Birsel is the co-founder of the New York design firm Birsel + Seck—and she's the author of the new book Design the Life You Love, based on a series of workshops she developed that teach people how to make their lives their biggest design project. In this interactive conversation, Birsel will describe how her ID practice led to these life-design activities—and lead audience members in an exercise from the new book (pens and sketchbooks will be provided).

  • Lunch

    • 1:10PM — 2:40PM
      Lunch served in the garden
      Book signing with Ayse Birsel

  • Business Now

    • 2:40PM — 3:00PM
      MATTHEW MANOS: HOW TO GIVE HALF YOUR WORK AWAY FOR FREE Manos is the founder of verynice, a global design strategy and foresight consultancy that gives away more than 50 percent of its work to nonprofits. He will explain how this “give half” model works—and argue why, for designers, giving work away doesn’t necessarily mean losing something.
    • 3:00PM — 3:30PM
      CONVERSATION: RUNNING AN ID CONSULTANCY TODAY Victoria Slaker, vice president of design at the San Francisco consultancy Ammunition, and Pip Tompkin, founder of LA’s Pip Tompkin Studio, will sit down to discuss the realities of running an ID business today, in a conversation moderated by Core77 contributor Rebecca Veit. They’ll talk about identifying new market opportunities, finding good design talent, keeping up with the increasingly rapid pace of product development, and other challenges and opportunities facing design entrepreneurs and studios.
    • 3:30PM — 4:00PM
      CONVERSATION: BLURRING DESIGN BOUNDARIES Ryder Ripps is a conceptual artist living in New York and the creative director of OKFocus, a digital marketing and design agency. Nicole Jacek is an award-winning graphic designer and the founder of the Venice Beach design consultancy NJ(L.A.). Both studios create playful, experimental work for a variety of corporate and cultural clients. Together with Core77 senior editor Mason Currey, Ripps and Jacek will talk about running multidisciplinary practices that are blurring the lines between art, design, branding and Internet mischief.

  • The Future Now

    • 4:15PM — 4:35PM
      JESSIE KAWATA: DESIGN THINKING FOR SPACE EXPLORATION Kawata is a creative strategist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she helped pioneer the first in-house design studio. In this presentation, she’ll talk about her work integrating design thinking, creative methodologies and visual storytelling into early space mission concepts.
    • 4:35PM — 4:55PM
      MICKEY MCMANUS: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE THINGS WE DESIGN WAKE UP? Presented by Autodesk Fusion 360 McManus is the chairman and a principal of MAYA Design, a design consultancy and technology research lab based in Pittsburgh. He’s also a pioneer in the fields of human-centered design, collaborative innovation and pervasive computing (often called the “Internet of Things”). Here, he’ll explain how three trends—pervasive computing, digital manufacturing and machine learning—are on a collision course that will profoundly change business paradigms and the role of the designer, who can no longer afford to design only for disconnected, “dead” products.
    • 4:55PM — 5:25PM
      CONVERSATION: TESLA MOTORS Javier Verdura, the director of product design at Tesla Motors, will sit down for a conversation with Eric Noble, the founder and president of The CARLAB, an advanced automotive consulting firm that helps manufacturers and suppliers plan and design new vehicles. They’ll talk about Verdura’s design work at Tesla, the company’s upcoming ventures and the big-picture future of automotive design.
    • 5:25PM — 5:45PM
      GADI AMIT: THE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY DESIGN Amit is the creative leader and president of San Francisco’s NewDealDesign, where he works with technology from the inside out to disrupt markets for global brands and help turn startups into success stories. He is also a thoughtful commentator on the state of the industrial design profession, and a strong believer that designers are now in a position to influence the lives of people to a greater extent than ever before. His talk will reflect on this moment—one of great promise for the design community, but also one of uncertainty and risk.

  • Closing Remarks

    • 5:45PM — 6:00PM
      Stuart Constantine, co-founder and publisher of Core77

  • Party!

    • 6:00PM — 8:00PM
      Drinks and hors d'oeuvers in the garden

• Day Three

  Saturday, October 24th

  • Field Trips

    • 11:00AM — 1:00PM
      Guided excursions to local design destinations. Trips leave from the Ace Hotel (929 South Broadway) at 11:00AM.

  • Farewell Picnic

    • 1:00PM — 3:00PM
      A lively picnic lunch to wrap up the day. Busses bring us back to the Ace Hotel by 3:00PM

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