Liveblogging The Serious Play Conference

The Art Center College Of Design, in Pasedena, California, is sponsoring its biennial conference and the theme is Serious Play. I will be here capturing anything that looks interesting. I like idea factory conferences like this one (TED also springs to mind). I think design concepts, in particular, can help intelligence students and professionals think about new ways to present and facilitate intelligence analysis. I hope to come away with some new ideas about how to improve communication without seeming to sell my analysis and and how to facilitate collaboration/interaction without demanding it. I am also looking for new ways to make teaching more interactive and hands-on.

Serious Play may seem a pretty big leap outside the realm of intelligence and analysis but I believe that truly new and useful thoughts can come from looking at your current experiences through totally different lenses (See! I have only been on the west coast for a couple of hours and I am already starting to speak like a Californian!). Going to professional conferences within one's discipline does make a lot of sense but, if your goal is to push the outside of the envelope a bit, it also seems to make sense to mix it up a little.

The list of speakers is eclectic and the venue seems designed to generate new ideas. This evening I will be able to participate in a workshop with David Macauly, author of the wonderful The Way Things Work book among others. He will be talking about how to draw what you know (a workshop tailor made to meet my first objective, I think).