Conference review: CEPHAD 2010 – The Borderland between Philosophy and Design Research (Copenhagen, 26 – 29 sep. 2010)

Last week I got back from „CEPHAD 2010”, the Conference at the Centre for Philosophy and Design at the Danish Design School (Danmarks Designskole) , that brought together Designers, Researchers and Philosophers, to explore and discuss “The Borderland between Philosophy and Design Research”.

Per Galle and his team gave us a very warm welcome and provided not only a well selected compilation of topics and speakers, but also created a nice and comfy atmosphere, which is not least important for one of the most important and inspiring aspects at conferences: The conversations with interesting people in between the talks and presentations.

I must admit, that at first I expected a programme, comparable in its approach to the 2nd BIRD Conference (at KISD 2009), but it turned out, that CEPHAD 2010 was partially rather engineering-oriented. However that was still ok and inspiring to me and to most of the people I have talked with.

Besides the plenary sessions (Keynotes: Louis L. Bucciarelli, Nathan Crilly, Peter Kroes, Terence Love, Peter-Paul Verbeek, Pieter Vermaas, Soren Kjorup; We should not forget Clive Dilnot, who was no official key note, but gave three table-talks!), the format of the “table-sessions” was occasionally motivating. Speakers and their audience literally shared a table to present and discuss the speakers’ topics. Due to the (eight!) parallel sessions, there were eight tables – up to three tables in one room. This led to distraction sometimes and to fruitful discussions mostly. However with a number of roundabout 45 participants altogether, there were occasionally only two or three (or less) people in the table-audience. Although it has been proven, that even such small groups could start off lively and helpful discussions, many participants agreed afterwards, that the majority of speakers would have deserved a bigger audience.

Altogether this conference was worth a visit, since we took home some smart discussion points and opinions. Not least, it was a good opportunity to meet people and positions from the Danish (and of course the international) research community.