Participatory Design Conference 2018

In 2017 I was asked by University Hasselt to manage the practical side of their Participatory Design Conference in 2018! Sure, I loved to obviously! We were all very proud that an international company of designers, researchers, academics, … would come to our hometown for this conference. And we were determined to show them what Belgians super organised nature looked like.

The Participatory Design Conference (PDC) is an international conference that is organised every two years and is all about approaching design processes and projects (of cities, products, ICT systems, etc.) in participatory ways, with the people who have a stake in these processes and projects (citizens, policy makers, businesses, etc.).

So I started to make plans and plannings, look for venues with a story, linked activities, inclusive caterers, DJ’s, busses, technical equipment, interns, … And along the way plans grew bigger and bigger into a massive conference of 4 days, 2 fully veggie catered venues in different cities for the day program, 4 all veggie dinner parties with late night activities on different and special locations, 1 closure party and 200 attending guests from all over the world and we all wanted it to be a sustainable, inclusive, original experience the guests would talk about for years.

Did we succeed? Oh yes! Did we sweat? Yes! Did we bleed? Figuratively, yes! Where there tears? Hell no, it was great! Was there a panic call from one of the local hosts about the foodtruck we hired showing up with a display full of meat? Yes and it was the most hilarious conversation I ever had (no worries, we managed to switch the complete display to veggie proof).

These four days and the preparatory months ahead where memorable in every way.