Join us on 15 December for our annual ThingsCon event powered by CLICKNL. Participate in interactive sessions, be inspired by the keynotes, and view the thought-provoking projects in our exhibitions. And most of all, meet each other!
Un/ntended consequences
True to ThingsCon mission, we focus on a theme that we feel resonates with current developments and discussions that explore and promote the development of fair, responsible, and human-centric technologies for the IoT and beyond; our current working theme is ‘Un/ntended Consequences’.
Unintended consequences or ‘knock-on effects’ can have an outside cause, the ever-increasing complexity, the growing networks, and the hidden connectedness of our personal environment. But it can also be ‘by-design’, designing for interference or manipulation, or through the use of new augmented intelligence as a design material creating hidden behaviours and potential black boxes. Who is responsible for these consequences? Who suffers from these consequences? How might awareness, prediction, prevention and responsibility for potential negative consequences be more structurally addressed throughout the technology lifecycle?
“The old mantra of ‘Move fast and break things’ is an engineering design principle … it’s not a society design principle” Hemant Taneja (2022) Intended Consequences
What to expect?
Friday 15 December will be our main conference day. With a mix of: interactive sessions, inspiring keynotes, pitches from the community and an inspiring design exhibition.
- Opening and closing keynote
- 12 interactive sessions in two rounds to choose from
- Short project pitches
- Exhibition with the best design student work and case-studies from practitioners.
- Meet fellow participants during lunch and breaks, ending with drinnks
On the evening of Thursday 14 December we will organise a community event with drinks, food, a makers workshop and more.
The program outline
We start the morning with a warm welcome (and create your own badge), and the opening Keynote by Maria Luce Lupetti – Assistant Professor in Interaction and Critical Design at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology and longtime friend of ThingsCon – who will provide an overarching look at the design of consequences.
Before lunch, we have the first round of 2-hour sessions to choose from. During lunch, you will be invited to visit the exhibition and, of course, interact with the other participants. After lunch, we will have a second round of 2-hour sessions. We also have a short round of ‘ignite’ talks from our community, linked to the exhibited projects or introducing a new idea or case study.
To wrap up the day, we have invited Bas van de Poel to be a keynote speaker. Bas is co-founder of the award-winning “office for design and innovation”, and before he was creative director at Space10.
As always, we close the conference with drinks and a chance to interact with new ThingsCon friends.
Read more about the speakers and sessions on our program page.
Registration is open!
ThingsCon is a voluntary organised event. We depend on the support of our partners and registration fees to be able to organise the event. We try to keep the ticket prices as low as possible. Find more details on the registration page.
Finally, please let us know if you would like to support us with more; this is, of course, always welcome and helps us to maintain the high quality of speakers and events that ThingsCon always aims for. Reach out to Iskander.
Location
We are happy to be able to organise TH/NGS 2023 at Nieuwe Instituut again, the location where we had our 2019 conference and 2022 unconference. The Nieuwe Instituut is a lively place as a museum for architecture, design and digital culture. It is located in the centre of Rotterdam opposite the iconic building of Depot.
Check our aftermovie of 2019 event for an impression of the location.
Partners
CLICKNL powers the ThingsCon 2023 program.
