Designers Accord 2009: An Important Conversation Exploring the Future of Design in Open Systems

Note to readers:  I-Open mistakenly posted the Designers Accord 2009 document as a shareable piece of information. Apologies to our Design colleagues! The document has been removed.

We've asked the authors to supply us with a shareable version we can post here. The Accord unquestionably offers valuable insights for entrepreneurs working in Open Source Economic Development.
You're encouraged to continue to follow along and learn about the related efforts in the design industry at the October Design Ethos conference hosted at SCAD. Thanks for your patience. - Betsey Merkel, I-Open.

Back to the original post:

I-Open is co-sponsor of the COINs2010 conference Oct 7-9 hosted at SCAD in Savannah, GA. The conference will collaborate with the concurrent Design Ethos Conference also hosted at SCAD during the same time frame. SCAD Professors Scott Bolyston, Graphic Design, and Christine Miller, Design Management - hosts of each conference - are developing ways for the two gatherings to intersect, learn, and explore collaboration opportunities.

The Designers Accord document posted here offers an important snapshot of the global educational design community's desire to pursue discovery of the role of design at the intersections of social, economic, environment, and cultural issues today.

Links to learn more:

More about this important 2009 conversation and this resulting report:

The Designers Accord Final Comments document was submitted as a report to the editorial committee of the 2009 Designers Accord Global Summit 2009.

On October 23 and 24, 2009, the Designers Accord convened 100 individuals from some of the world’s most distinguished academic and professional institutions, for two days of highly participatory discussion, planning, and action around the topic of design education and sustainability.

This group of thought-leaders, design educators, and experts discussed, challenged, and conceived of a new path for undergraduate and graduate design programs to integrate sustainability. We tackled topics ranging from creating curricula and writing grants, to communicating to trustees and motivating students. These topics were culled from pre-Summit meetings and brainstorm sessions.

The format of the Summit was structured to enable this group to create a collective point of view about best practices and methods for integrating sustainability into design programs all over the world. We are currently synthesizing the outputs from the Summit. We plan to publish the output online and in printed form. The medium and format will be determined by the content.

You can learn more at this link:
http://www.designersaccord.org/initiatives/summit/