I do believe that it is time for designindia to invite suggestions
from its members on how the site should evolve next. Even Design
India mini-conferences in a few cities in India and maybe a couple
outside of India to discuss this issue could help. As the size of the
membership increases, we will have more people who have distinctive
interest in interacting with others who are a part of the network.
While it seems natural for some people to use this forum as a way to
chat with long lost friends from shcool, maybe another forum such as
alumni.com would be more appropriate for such interactions. The
evolution of this forum should ideally reflect the diversity of
interest groups within the design community, especially amongst those
who have a stake in the future of design in India.

As a natural consequence of a lot of attention India is attracting
around the world, as a place where action is likely to be in the
future, we need to evolve this forum, keeping in mind a much wider
network of people who are developing an interest in India. I do
believe that it would help immensely if this forum had a website and
from there pathways into various topic areas (e.g. core77). As we go
through this evolutionary process we need to ensure that the open
source model of sharing information and building ideas is at the
heart of this forum.

My companywould be glad to coordinate a Future of "DesignIndia"
conference in the U.S. If there are any takers to this idea, we can
start here and then take the road show to U.K. There have been a
number of initiatives in discussing Future of Innovation in China.
maybe it is time to make a big impact by creating an event where
stakeholders of future of Innovation in India get together and think
about it even outside of India. We can then feed the outcome back
into shaping how DesignIndia should evolve.

Let me know what you think about it.


Uday Dandavate
Principal
SonicRim Ltd.
Graduate of NID 1981 batch in Industrial Design.