Hi there, this is Limassol a second year student in the MS-SDM program and I am writing about the awesome festival Brooklyn 1.0 that I was so happy to have been invited to by Patrick Van Hoof, director at the digital agency Huge, and Fern Diaz, community development manager at Huge. The conference which was also branded under the name Point Oh! took place at the Irondale Center in Fort Greene Brooklyn this October and brought together a diverse group of designers, developers, artists, strategists, technologists, and thinkers. The speakers generously shared with the audience their thoughts and work around a hot topic in today’s world: how design is increasingly responsible for shaping our lives. What we make—and what we choose not to make—matters.

The long and impressive lineup of speakers included MIT’s Andrew McAfee, who talked about the second machine age we are living in today and shared his optimism about where the economy is going given the access to resources that technology is providing. NPR’s managing editor Brooke Gladstone shared neurological studies that demonstrate how human emotions have a much bigger and faster impact on our decision making than our brains do, and shed light on the role of design in shaping human behavior on both levels, the emotional and rational.

Andrew McAfee and Brooke Gladstone at Brooklyn 1.0
| Photo Credit: David Everly

Brooke Moreland, founder of Jewel Bots, the friendship bracelet for the smartphone era, was also one of the speakers on Thursday October 8 and walked the audience through how these wearables allow their users to become coders themselves. Her talk further highlighted the increased attention in how wearable tech is providing solutions to daily life problems, especially in the emerging market, coding for girls.

The second day of the conference included speakers like Casey Gerald, founder of MBAs Across America, and BJ Miller, executive director at Zen Hospice Project, a company that aims to change the dramatic experience of dying. The attendees were comforted with food and snacks, and had free access to A Design Film Festival NYC 2015, conceived by Felix Ng’s Singapore-based design company Anonymous.

Brooklyn 1.0 certainly fulfilled its mission to bring leaders together with solitary workers and agencies, so that we as designers can embark on a humble exploration of shared responsibility, while questioning each other and learning from each other. Loud applause for Huge!

www.pointoh.co

www.huge.com

This conference was reviewed by Limassol Zok, MS-SDM ‘16. Stay tuned for more conference reviews and do let us know if you are attending one and would like to review it.

Follow us on Instagram @Parsons_MSSDM and Twitter @SDSDesignManage