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The first Designing Design Education in India conference was held 13-15 March 2013 at the Hyatt Hotel, Pune India as an initiative of the recently convened Indian Design Council. Participants at the conference comprised a large group of experts in Design education from throughout India along with a smaller number of interested academics from other countries. Visually, there seemed to be around 250 participants. Design education in India has a relatively short history, and compared to the size of India's population, there appear to be relatively few design schools and these link back to an even smaller number of original design education initiatives. Design education institutes seem to be mostly private with well developed externally moderated curricula. The format of the conference combined an extensive program of carefully chosen keynote speakers from academia and industry each providing deep insights into the past and current developments of design education and industry design practices in India. Between gaps in the keynotes there were parallel sessions of academic papers describing different facets of current and future educational and industry design practice in India and overseas . In addition there was an evening colloquium from the UK Open University describing the ways the OU teach design remotely. On the concluding afternoon, there were formal co-creation sessions aimed at distilling and aggregating participants' educational and industrial expertise to identify the most salient dimensions of a design curriculum for India. The whole combination ran smoothly and to time in spite of tight linking between the different elements. Congratulations to the organisers on this. The above combination of event types was exactly in-line with the aims of the conference as the initial step to guide the future of design education in India. The strengths of the Indian design education and industry ecosystems seemed to be: a) Quality thinking and expertise in developing and delivering curricula and organising design educational institutions; b) the automotive design sector; c) an unusually strong traditional craft sector; d) robust and expert product design and IT sectors; e) easy and relaxed industrial interaction between engineering design and other areas of design; and, f) strong business, entrepreneurship and design linkages in education. Areas of concern were relatively few: a) once in industry, newly graduated designers in some areas were taking up to 3 years to bring up to speed; b) how to manage the forecasted rapid development of design schools; and c) concern about how best to use design to address the urban-rural divide. The conference management was exemplary with thanks due to the Indian Design Council under Prof. Pradyumna Vyas also of NID, and the conference management team headed by Prof Hrridaysh Despande. The format worked well. Conference timing ran smoothly. All equipment worked well. Food was wonderful, and the location in Pune at the Hyatt Hotel next to the IT cluster and close to the city centre was a great venue offering interesting insights into Indian street life for those new to India. Outputs from the conference include: videos of presentations which will soon be available on the web (www.ddei.in ), a publication of the proceedings, and the recommendations for an Indian design curriculum from the Co-Creator sessions. I believe this is the first of a regular program of international Indian Design conferences organised by the Indian Design Council (IDC). This first conference was managed smoothly in a polished manner, surprising in view of the relatively short time between announcement and the conference itself. Congratulations to Profs Vyas and Despande and their staff for all aspects of the conference. Terry === Dr Terence Love FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI Director, Love Services Pty Ltd PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks Western Australia 6030 [log in to unmask] www.loveservices.com.au === ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------