Fast Company’s got a little post in praise of a US-based design organisation, which has put together an uncharacteristically fun-sounding industry event. Inspired, perhaps, by the event’s location, it seems the sparky people at the Industrial Designers Society of America have decided to do away with yawnsome presentions in favour of 10-minute shows and “free flowing discussions”,
Also on the agenda for this year’s Project Infusion conference: yoga classes, 90-minute lunches and Happy Hour drinks and a closing party at Nikki Beach.
All inspired stuff. Except…it made made wonder how long the presentations would be next year. We boil down statements to 140 characters, and it’s been said that the human concentration span is only seven seconds, so it makes sense to shorten presentations to something digestible.
But there’s something slightly disheartening about the shrinking time-span allowed for presentations. I’m not crticising the IDSA specifically — I’d imagine its visually-led work lends itself well to shorter speeches. It’s more our apparently dwindling attention span.
If you sign up (and pay for) for an industry event, chances are you’re likely to be halfway interested in the agenda. And if you get a lively speaker with a theme that’s captivating, 10 minutes may seem to short. There’s a TED Talk by Ken Robinson that’s just shy of 20 minutes. But it’s also among the most highly rated of all time.
I’m not quite signed up to the International Institute of Not Doing Much’s “Slow Manifesto“. But that’s only because I’ve not got the time to read it…
