 Hi all, I'm Mark and welcome to a special episode of the service design show. This channel is all about helping you to design services that have a positive impact on people's lives and are good for business. And a great way you can do that is of course not only by watching this channel, but also offline at conferences. And this episode is fully dedicated to the SERVDES 2018 conference that is taking place in Milan on June 18th, 19th and 20th. So I've invited one of the conference organizers, Anna Maroni, to tell us a little bit more what we can expect at this year's SERVDES conference. Welcome to the show, Anna. Thank you. Hi. It's very nice to actually talk about the first service design conference in 2018. I'm really excited to hear your story. And the first thing I'm really curious about is, is there a theme this year? And if there is one, why did you choose this specific team? Yes, Mark, sure, we have a team which is a service design proof of concept. And the idea of these themes is connected to the fact that, yes, a service design is still a recent discipline, but not that recent, not to be already assessed. So the idea of the conference is really to see after almost 20 years what about service design, what kind of impact service design actually has in the society, in the design, in the job also. So that's the theme. Great. Yeah, it's been 20 years. It's a long time since SERVDESign has been really, really up and coming. It's still a work. It's still a job difficult to explain to the ground mother. So I'm a service designer, it's still a mess for the people to understand. Oh, well, maybe we should be lucky that we're there still enough to explore and to discover. What is, what can I expect this year as an attendee? What does the conference have to offer for me? Well, we are experimenting with a mix, with mixing the people from different fields. So not only academics, but also predictioners and company. In the reality, this is the real big challenge of the conference, because it's not so common that scientific conferences also host practitioners and host case studies or reflections, which are not, not really from the academics or academics. So our effort for this conference is really to try to create the ground for these three kinds of experts to talk, to exchange knowledge. And this is also the reason for proof of concept for the theme. OK, let's see. Now, we have been able to make it work in the real world. And is it, is it different than the previous SERVDES conferences that you change anything in that area? Yes, we are changing, but in the line with the strategy of the conference, because in the previous conferences in 2014 and 16, there was the intention, actually, to savour it, to foster this meeting, this encounter of different profiles. And so we are really trying to do it this year. We're going to have sessions, traditional paper sessions, in which we have a number of invited case studies. And these case studies in total are 14, so a lot. These case studies are from the public sectors, from the companies and so on and so forth. Then we are going to have workshops. And again, these workshops are a mix of proposals that came from the university and so from the academics and other companies and agencies. So again, it's going to be interesting to see how maybe a same topic is approached. And then we are going to have also in the beginning of the conference, and we hope this is really funny, we will be really funny. We will organise a service design drink. That's always good. Yeah, which I guess it's a pretty well-known international forum in which some of our track chairs will talk, in a way, which is a little bit more informal and to give the people the real touch of the Italian design, we will conclude the conference with the participation to the Compasso d'Oro awards ceremony. And the Compasso d'Oro is the biggest design prize in Italy. Oh, really? Yeah, it's awarded every two years. So it really will be a deep dive into the Italian culture of design. So it's a mix of case studies, workshops, awards and Italian culture. Yeah, I guess the program is really, really dense. And I hope that attendees will come really energetic because it will be hard. So this is a little bit about the structure of the conference. Can you share with me like two or three things that I will actually be able to learn as a participant during the conference? I don't need to know everything, but just two or three things that you think might be really interesting. Let's say one of the things that we believe we want really to focus on is trying to clean up a little bit the confusion between a series design, design thinking, strategic design and those kind of stuff, which is really now also very hype. And so we will try to to to to understand what's the difference, what are the skills, what are the contribution, different contributions. So two in a way, positions are designed within this. Then we will touch upon a number of let's say frontier topics like service design in government, so with public policies, service design and collaboration. So all is about co-creation, but also co-delivery. And then around the creation of communities, so how service design contribute to this, but also and this is a very news, if you like topic, how service design can contribute to distributed manufacturing and so to 4.0 industrial. Yeah. So I think we are really moving from a different field and sector. So the idea is to try to have a conversation on the frontier of the discipline and the ambition at least is this one. Well, that's that's also the ambition of the show. So we have a match there. It sounds like a lot and it sounds super interesting. As a conference organizer, you always experience this journey in a different way than an attendee. I'm really curious, what is the thing that you're looking forward to the most yourself? Well, I think we are a big group of people working around this conference. So first of all, to be able to collaborate and to bring these different perspectives is is is not it's not a it's not a minor, minor issue in Italy and in Polytechnic. In particular, we have a long tradition in service design since 20 years, as I said. So our ambition is really to also set a new way of creating this kind of scientific conferences in which can become more open to yes, to the other words, the words of prediction, other words of companies. So we hope this will happen. And so this is our ambition in a way. This is your ambition as a conference organizing team, but what is your personal thing you're looking forward to the most, the day that it's over? Or is the specific thing that you would like to see? Most of all, surviving to the conference, because I think this is the main issue. Personally, I hope to to grow up in terms really in terms of understanding how these these field work work with in the minds of the people. And also, since I am also the director of a program, academic program, I personally hope to have a way to better understand opportunities that my students have in the in the real world in the job market. Anna, one final question, and that is if people are interested and excited about your story and thinking about going to the conference, there isn't a lot more time. But can they still get tickets? Can they still enter the conference? And if so, how? Yes, of course they can. We still have their registration open until couple of days before the conference. They like to serve this.org. So it's a website, very, very easy. We of course will close the registration when we will reach the full amount of participants that we can host. But we still have some options. So last minute options to going to Milan and tasting the Italian culture, that's still an option. Anna, thanks so much for sharing the story. It sounds like it's super interesting conference. I'm looking forward to the stories that will be there after the conference. Good luck with the final preparations. Don't forget to have fun. And I look forward to meeting you somewhere in the future. Oh, for sure. We will miss you in the conference if you will come. So please, Marc, next time put it in the agenda. I will for sure. We hope to have a lot of people. Thank you very much. Thanks, Anna. Ciao. Ciao. So if you would like to learn more about the conference, make sure you head over to serve this.org. I really hope you enjoyed this video. And if this is your first time here, make sure you click that subscribe button because we'll be discussing all the major service design conferences in future episodes. Thanks for watching. And I look forward to see you in the next video.