I campaigned to organize Overlap this year and to bring it to Toronto. Among other things, as Ralf points out, there are some amazing thinkers here: in addition to those already mentioned, Luigi Ferrara of Institute without Boundaries and Peter Evans of MaRS were also at the conference. In addition to the Rotman folks, Alexander Manu was joined by several of his colleagues from the Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity.

About half of this year’s attendees came from the United States and about half from the Toronto area. We had several attendees who have run large businesses, from the last president of Sprint Canada to an entrepreneur who has done information systems work from Saudi Arabia to Canada. In all, about 20 per cent of attendees were alumni of the first Overlap, with a very healthy infusion of newcomers.

Overlap is, we are starting to agree, something different. It is not exactly an un-conference, at least not on the model of the Camp movement. It is both a conversation and, I proposed to this year’s gang, it is a happening.

We spent more time this year talking about business and innovation. We dug into the area of sustainability, but to examine it as a fertile field for innovation and overlaps of many kinds and not as an occasion to sing “We are the world” or “Kumbaya”.

There was a consensus, I’m happy to say, that Overlap should have another outing in 2008. It will remain a by-invitation event and we will keep the cap of 50 on attendance at least for the coming year. The intimacy and the quality of conversation at Overlap are truly special. And as someone who attends too many conferences hyped as “musts”, I find Overlap to be a rare gathering of authentic concern, curiosity and (as Mick might say) it’s just a gas, gas, gas!

We started a Ning site this year, which requires a registration, but is open to all interested. Please visit overlap07.ning.com to request an invitation to the site.

Last year we had a very strict plan for a session format: instead of a series of lectures, each person who was speaking was there to seed a discussion and they were to hand off to a second person who would facilitate a discussion, taking the seeds into something new. Not one of the sessions used that format. Many used up most of their time in a traditional presentation, and then any discussion was with 50 (? I don’t remember the size) people sitting around in a circle, where the aggressive/extroverted were able to dominate.

But what was worse was the topic was no longer business meeting design, it was the imperative for designers to save the world from all the social, environmental, sustainable injustices imaginable. The language shifted to the despised “as designers, we…” which was so exclusive since all were not designers, and the whole point of “overlap” was to look at a variety of worlds, not “designers.” The group wouldn’t collectively address the meta issue of the topic shift and there was a dramatic lack of leadership/facilitation to get things back on track.

There was a definite element in the organizing of “let’s see what happens” but there were also some clear expectations set around topic and focus, and that failure was very very disappointing to me.

As the originator of Integrative Thinking™ I naturally believe all designers and managers could benefit from training in the fundamentals of science-based Integrative Thinking™. Accordingly, I offer low-cost training modules in Integrative Thinking™ on my website.

good to read also that you have not fallen for the iPhone mania - the most overrated gadget there is…. yakkk - nokia n95 is solid fun.

i know how much jobs did by bringing design on the agenda… hey, but there are to many people out there who confuse apple with good design in general. that may be good for apple - but it is pretty bad for mankind.

so: thumbs up for a disappointing launch of the iPhone . i predict ok sales in usa - whereas staying way behind expectations. and pretty, pretty moderate sales in europe. we just hang our way to much in bars and sinister places and this touch-pad thingy will be way too complicated and too clean. — too clean as apple design always is. — but not green, as we know. …— style dictator jobs, it is good to see that nokia has nothing to do with your little games and has a design that speaks pure functionality. bravo! - and bravo, ralf! good choice.

As to Heather Frazer: I was in a web-based conference she did a while ago on business & design and was quite disappointed… very little to take away for practitioners - particularly when she talks about business model (design).

I wonder how the Overlap conference was…

Unfortunately they didn’t set up a blog as last year so there’s not much room for potential gossip stories … anything you can share from talking to his team mates ;-)