Design at Work 09 was the first edition of a new international trade show which focused on good design, innovation and product development across all sectors of industry.
During 2.5 days (8, 9 & 10 December 2009) about 12.500 professionals visited the show in Kortrijk Xpo, Belgium.
Visitors could discover stands of participating companies, the honoured company, a large productshow with novelties and got deep insights during the programme of lectures and presentations.
“Ideas are nothing, doing is everything” was the conclusion of Ji Lee (USA), Creative Director of Google Creative Labs in New York. It perfectly fit with the DO spirit of Design at Work.
Ji Lee was the keynote speaker for the opening of Design at Work, an evening which attracted some 1.000 people, a much higher number than expected.
“Personal + professional is awesome” was the title of the keynote of phenomenon Ji Lee. Idiosyncratic and very creative, he knows and understands how different inputs can influence and amplify one another. Follow Ji on pleaseenjoy.com. Thank you Ji for that AWESOME presentation.
The honoured company is an organisation which is a leading example into design and innovation. For the first edition Design at Work was proud to collaborate with Oxylane Design, the design team of Decathlon, the sport experience group, headquartered at Villeneuve d’Ascq, Lille in France.
They build a large experience booth, showing how investment in design and innovation is an economic winner in the long term. 3 exclusive workshops on sport creation for eacht time 12 people where hold during Design at Work and those workshops attracted high level professionals as well as young innovators.
The stands are placed along a winding course in the unusual show layout conceived by IE Architecten, who also designed the product show display and the Forum.
The list of participating companies is into the DO guide and not only included Belgian companies but also international ones, such as Piu Products from Germany, Kemo and Ysin from the Netherlands and ISD from France.
Design at Work 09 was the show which a big diversity of companies used to launch their novelties: Nissan, Dyson, Ysin, Alphatronics, Samsonite, Traficon,…
It proved that Design at Work is an excellent launch base for complementary products rather than competitive ones and that the event also offered an excellent infrastructure for the related dealer meetings and customer VIP presentations.
Through the productshow and ‘Things to come’ visitors could discover how important it is to make essential goods, to learn and explore how today durability and ‘cradle to cradle’ can be managed differently, understand that solutions must be honest and transparent in their originality.
Product Design at Apple, The power of people-driven innovation, Enterprise 2.0 innovation, Innovation & co-creation, Protecting your Design, High-end prototypes, Four generations of designers, Online prototype tools, Design & durability, Intellectual property,… were all titles of lectures and presentations visitors could follow for free.
The forum for lectures was not another boring meeting room but was remarkably dressed up with 120 white Panton chairs.
Consult the full programme in the DO guide.
Company STAS won the Design at Work IP Award with its V-Streamline trailer.
Dirk Wynants, the big boss of togetherness-company Extremis reveals his pingpong networking table, which he built with Rollnet, the amazing product of our honoured company Oxylane Design.
Ever networked while playing table tennis? It proved to be very nice to meet new people in a game of table tennis! The opponents? People from Colruyt, Niko, BASF, Namahn, Televic, Emakina, the Flemish government, Toyota, Voka, Philips, Indie group…
Last year’s press coverage included newspapers and magazines as De Standaard, Core 77, Weekend Knack,…. This confirms our strong belief in the professional and international demand for a platform on innovations.
