 Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to a special episode of the Serves Design Show. This show is all about helping you to design services that have a positive impact on people and are good for business. And a great way to learn how to design these services is by listening to other practitioners at conferences. And this episode is fully dedicated to the Serves Design Hong Kong Conference that will be taking place on November 28th and 29th, 2018 in Hong Kong. I've invited the organizing team to tell us a little bit more about what we can expect at this year's edition. Here we go. Welcome to the show, team, who are you? Hi everybody. You're in the new faces compared to last year. Absolutely. Same magic behind the scenes, but my name is Kate and I'm here with... I am Sudesh. We'll be your emcees for Serves Design Hong Kong this year. All right. Awesome. The emcees. So the crop of the crop. Are you excited about the conference? Are you nervous? In which state are you in right now? You know what? We plan to just bring it. I've just met him for the first time today. I don't know who this woman is. Yeah. Absolutely. We're looking forward to it. It's going to be great. And, you know, improvising. That's, I guess, a key characteristic of any designer. Tell me, is there a theme this year? There is, in fact, a theme. We're actually really excited about this theme. The theme is human futures in smart cities. Typically, the smart city agenda is led by technology. And this year in Serves Design Hong Kong, we're actually going to flip that conversation back to a human-led narrative where we can really talk about the human impact and inspire some interesting stories about what we can create for ourselves in a tech-led society. Anything to add to that, Silesh? Smart city is a key topic in Hong Kong now. Carrie Lam just did her policy address yesterday. If you don't know who she is, she's the chief executive of Hong Kong. And one of the topics was about smart cities and innovation and technology and how that is going to be helping Hong Kong to go to the next stage. I keep telling people that the most exciting thing that happened in Hong Kong was the octopus card. And it's still the most exciting thing, actually. But then smart city is the next big thing. Keeping people in a more safe, secure, innovative environment for work, jobs, as well as creative way of doing things differently. From working at home to stay-at-home moms who they can do work differently. And it's no longer about coming to an office anymore. So how can we be a bit different? So human perspective from smart cities, what was it exactly? Futures in smart industries. Awesome. So what can I expect as a visitor to the conference in terms of experience? Absolutely. We have a jam-packed two-day agenda. So we're going to start off all at the Maritime Museum down in the Hong Kong Harbor Front. It's one of the best venues in Hong Kong where we're going to hear from a bunch of fascinating and engaging speakers from around all of Asia. Showcasing interesting topics around behavioral economics into circular economies, entrepreneurship, and even prototyping democracy, for example, in Taiwan. And then in day two we'll be scattered across the city doing hands-on workshops, actually engaging with the topics, with the speakers, and what does it mean to actually have agency and to put these concepts and these ideas into practice? Again, Sudesh, in terms of experience, what can I expect? So I'm in the corporate side. So I'm in AXA. So as a company itself, we are looking to be a bit different for consumers, for customers, for employees, and staff. And smart cities is a very key topic for us in terms of getting a different kind of a workforce coming into the office. It's very hard to find people in Hong Kong to work. There's only seven million people in Hong Kong with a workforce of about four million. So that's it. Hong Kong is not going to grow anymore. So how do we get different kind of workforce and different kind of innovation? So these two days is going to be just about that. It's about talking about the new way of working and how do Hong Kong sustain and survive. And how can that be used up across the region as well? Well, that would be my next question because who should it end? Is it only relevant for people inside of Hong Kong, designers inside of Hong Kong, or what kind of participants do you hope to see at the conference? Well, we're hoping to attract just about everybody from the experienced service designer to those that are interested in design and leading to the change makers, to the government officials, so the corporate executive. We want to attract the people that want to have agency and want to be a part of the conversation because this is the community and the group that's going to be shaping that conversation. And so we want diversity of experience, of perspective, of opinion to all come together and for us to really create a really dynamic and engaging conversation together. So I remember three years ago when I first joined the first conference, it was just UX designers and UI designers in the crowd. All young people, I felt really out of place. I was giving my keynote, everybody was like looking at me, oh, who's this fellow? But people who are coming out are very different that conference attending, educators coming in, government officials. It's like all walks of life. And people who just want to see what's happening. Everybody is talking about design thinking and thinking differently and creative design and people are going away from PowerPoints and going back to pen and paper and posting notes, which is cool. So it's nice to see, it's going to be a different blend of audience. What's the thing you're looking forward to the most, Adesh? Being on stage with the boss coming. Who doesn't want to be next to this lovely woman over here. But then again, it's just a different experience. I mean, it's great to see people speaking a topic which I'm passionate about, which is design thinking. And to feel a little young again. Just a little. Just a little young again. How about you guys? Anything special that you're looking forward to? I mean, I cannot wait to be surrounded by the conversations. To be honest, we have got such a stellar lineup of speakers from across Asia doing incredible things and really pioneering the edge of human futures and reshaping the conversation about what it's going to mean to live with smart technology and our role in that. And I couldn't be more optimistic about the future and about these conversations and I'm excited to be a part of it. Plus the banter is going to be fun. And it's a bigger venue again this year. It is, yeah. How many people do you expect? How big will it be? We expect 200 people. So this will be our third year at Services Design Hong Kong. We've sold out every year. We're really looking forward to topping the numbers and growing the impact. We've been included and we're honored to be included with the Business of Design Week, which is one of the largest design initiatives in Hong Kong. And so we're a partnering event and we're looking forward to what that brings. As in 200 people will be attending and you've sold out over the last year, can people still sign up or if they want to have more info about the conference, what should I do? Please, absolutely. We still have tickets available. Please go to servicesdesign.com.hk to check out the long list of speakers to here look at their bios and also be linked into buying tickets there. We've got groups of accounts that people want to come as a group and things like that and to stay tuned to our Instagram page for more deals and discounts as we get closer. Just be nice to me and I might sneak you in. Well, talking about being nice, I think you mentioned something like we're doing a contest or some kind. What's that about? We're doing a contest for viewers of your show to connect them and give everybody an opportunity that listens to the show to actually win a ticket. So either if you're coming to visit Hong Kong, which is a great place to visit, and you want to come to the servicesign Hong Kong event or if you're local here in Hong Kong, we've got a question for you that you can answer in the comments and that would be your free ticket to servicesign Hong Kong. So what's the big question? It's yours to ask. Okay. It's serious. It's a really serious question. If you're in Hong Kong, how would you call a person who lives in Hong Kong? Do you call them a Hongki or do you call them a Hongkonger? How do you call someone living in Hong Kong? That's a great question. Not really hard to make a chance to win the ticket. If you want to participate in the contest, I'll also list all the details down below. So that's Kate. The only thing left for me to do is to wish you a lot of fun at the conference. Enjoy yourselves and share the experience with us. Absolutely. We look forward to it. Thanks for connecting. Appreciate it. So if you're excited about the conference and would like to learn more, head over to servicesign.com.hk for all the details. And if you're interested to learn how to participate in the contest in order to win one of these conference tickets, check out the description down below the show notes of this video for all the details. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if it was your first time here on this channel, I'd love to have you to subscribe so that we can keep bringing you more videos like this. Thanks for watching and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.