GDTA Spotlight: Reflections from the Global Design Thinking Festival

In 2022, the Global Design Thinking Alliance (GDTA) set out to celebrate Design Thinking coming of age, as well as the discipline’s global expansion.

In September, the HPI School of Design Thinking in Potsdam celebrated its 15-year anniversary with its Design Thinking ImpAct Conference – with students, alumni, project partners, friends, and family attending the two-day conference, along with more than 50 speakers.

All celebrations culminated with the third d.confestival – a Design Thinking conference-meets-festival hosted at the newly built HPI d-school building (funded by the Hasso Plattner Foundation), home to the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town in October.

Over the course of three days, the d.confestival brought together a boisterous mix of change-makers from business, government, education, and social development to celebrate the success of Design Thinking globally and explore its potential for dialing up Africa’s creative potential to solve complex problems across the continent.

There were two big celebratory moments at the d.confestival: firstly, the GDTA celebrated its five-year anniversary of connecting the international Design Thinking community with members and delegates who attended.

Secondly, and with what was an African celebration of note, the official opening of the HPI d-school building was a momentous occasion as over 400 guests attended, explored the building and event experiences, and danced the night away to local talent, a night to remember. The building was officially launched by Prof Dr. Hasso Plattner and Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng, UCT’s Vice-Chancellor, who unveiled the building naming plaque before the dancing began on 13 October.

On the last day of the d.confestival, it wrapped up with the announcement of the winning teams for the Global Design Thinking Challenge (a four-week hybrid challenge) to innovate and create solutions for the fourth UN Sustainable Development Goal. As part of this Challenge, learners had the opportunity to create global impact.

Our speakers:

Prof. Uli Weinberg, GDTA President and Director at the HPI School of Design Thinking, Jenni van Niekerk, Program Curator d.confestival, Dr. Claudia Nicolai, Academic Director at the HPI School of Design Thinking, and Sherif Osman, Program Lead at the HPI School of Design Thinking.

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