Calling all thought leaders and visionaries!
This is your opportunity to participate in an upcoming IDSA event and lead the conversation about our work as industrial designers. We seek proposals for presentations, interactive workshops, discussion panels, and in-depth training sessions. Your presentation should provide real-world inspiration, tools, and methodologies our audience can incorporate into their own practice. Your contribution to the event program should be professional, memorable, and unique to the event. We are searching for the very best content proposals that represent and articulate the forefront of industrial design today, and opens the door to what we can expect in the future. (Pictured: Ana Mengote Baluca, IDSA presents at IDC 2022 in Seattle, WA.)
2023 events overview
March 29-30, 2023 – Chicago, IL
Now in its 7th year, the IDSA Women in Design Deep Dive empowers the design community to push towards reaching parity for all gender identities within Industrial Design. Created in partnership with the Women in Design Committee, this event is the community’s chance to gather and celebrate the growing network of women in design across the country. Together, attendees will share knowledge and expertise, and build lasting networks across the industry.
Submissions closed.
June 13-14, 2023 – Virtual Event
From unlocking new opportunities with generative methods to evaluating the outcomes of the design process through testing and evaluation, design research plays a critical role in shaping the products that make it to market. The user-centered designer uses a mix of investigative tools to uncover users’ needs and pain points, interpreting data to inform the design process with the sharpest insights, so their design teams can create more effective solutions.
Submissions closed.
October 18-19, 2023 – Virtual Event
With the changing role of the designer in business, entrepreneurial skills have become even more essential to helping product designers survive and thrive in an industry where production has become increasingly democratized. Designers are perfectly poised at the intersection of human experience and business to create products that are both viable and deeply desirable. With design-driven companies out-performing the S&P Index by over 200%, it’s no surprise that more designers than ever are stepping into entrepreneurial opportunities – whether it’s founding your own studio or launching your own product.
Submissions accepted until July 12, 2023
August 23-25, 2023 – New York City, New York
The International Design Conference is IDSA’s biggest event of the year. IDC is a platform for amplifying the unique and bold voice of industrial design while celebrating the deep interconnection with other creative disciplines. IDC is centered on the goal of convening a diverse group of the brightest minds in design, innovation, and creativity. Our interest is in developing a shared dialogue that advances our ability to collaborate and magnifies the impact of our work.
The IDSA Education Symposium has been a platform for celebrating the very best in design academia. Design education is where creativity and learning are forged to form lifelong habits of acquiring, working with, and transforming knowledge into new ideas and solutions designed to help people live better lives. Design schools, educators, and students are central to this.
IDC as a comprehensive event includes: the IDSA Education Symposium, IDSA Business Meetings, IDEA Ceremony & Gala, Exhibitor Gallery, and off-site experiences
Submissions closed.
What to expect
Your success is our success
The success of our conferences and events relies heavily on the contributions of our presenters. Your professionalism, expertise, and individual flair all contribute to a memorable attendee experience. We are here to make sure you are set up to succeed. All speakers are offered coaching and orientation sessions in the weeks leading up to the event. This helps to refine and elevate your presentation materials (visual and verbal) to the highest standard.
Speaker compensation
With exception to our Equitable Speaker Initiative, it is not IDSA standard policy to offer honorariums, travel, or expense reimbursement for your participation. As a non-profit organization, IDSA operates inside extremely tight budgetary constraints to provide members and participants with the most value for their spend with us. Keeping our expenses down helps to keep our events affordable for as many participants as possible. Any revenue generated by our events is used to offset the production expense and/or is directly reinvested into future IDSA programming.
How selections are made
A content team is responsible for reviewing and curating the content of each event. This group will review all submissions and evaluate them for their fit, relevance, novelty, and overall quality. Guideliness are also in place to ensure a diverse and inclusive group of individuals are selected to participate in our events. Creating space for all voices to be seen and heard through our events is deeply important to IDSA.
Indicating a need for support through the Equitable Speaker Initiative will not impact the outcome of your submission. However, due to the high volume of submissions we receive, and limited funds available for the Initiative, not all can be accepted. All submissions that aren’t accepted will be archived and considered for future programming.
Event dates or other event details shown are subject to change without notice.
Who you will present to
It varies by event, but generally our audiences consist of design professionals, design educators, design students, and business leaders from a wide spectrum of different but related disciplines: Industrial Design, Graphic Design, User Experience, User Interaction, Futures & Speculative Design, Design Management, Service Design, Experience Design, Branding, and more!
Equitable Speaker Initiative
We deeply appreciate the time and energy our speakers invest when they volunteer to speak at an IDSA event. We also understand it is not always possible for speakers, especially those with historically marginalized identities, who may lack the resources to speak at or attend IDSA events. In order to create more equitable and representative programming, through the leadership of our Diversity, Equity and Incusion Council, we have developed an initiative to support speaker’s participation in our events. Check the box on the submission form below to indicate that you require support in order to speak at an event.
What's in it for you
Our hope is that you will find our events to be a compelling platform that is worthy of your time and investment, as well as an opportunity for your own professional growth and heightened visibility within the design community. The collection of speakers assembled for each of our events recieve significant promotion and visibility across all of IDSA’s media channels. In addition, most speakers are provided a complimentary registration for the entire event they will be contributing to.
No sales pitches please
We will not accept presentations that may be considered capabilities presentations, brand or product commercials, or generic or pre-canned content. Please respect this request. If your brand would like to present skill-building, training, or educational content about your product or service, paid (sponsored) speaking opportunities are available at most of our events.
Speaker submission form
You may submit a presentation to more than one event, however each submission must be done individually.
By submitting the information to present at an IDSA event, you agree to the following:
- Attend speaker orientation phone / video conference call prior to the event
- Provide presentation materials to event organizers by designated date
- Maintain my allotted presentation time window
- Present content as submitted / approved by event content team
- Be present during the event to participate as an audience member
- Promote the event through my social / professional network