#DesignIndaba2017: Featuring future technologies and ideas

This annual event is a three-day showcase of the world’s best creative minds and broadcast live to multiple cities via simulcast.

"Design Indaba provides endless inspiration, fresh perspectives and universal solutions to new and familiar challenges. Technology is a problem solver and will feature strongly this week," said conference founder, Ravi Naidoo.

The conference has been a highlight of South Africa’s creative calendar since 1995. It contributes vastly to uplifting the design sector and associated industries that benefit from the economy of ideas.

"We all know the future is digital. Recognising this, Design Indaba 2017 will be a veritable gathering of the greatest minds in technology today. From the founder of Airbnb to MIT Fellows and the best graduates from the best schools, they'll be in Cape Town this week," Naidoo added.

Tech speakers

Joe Gebbia spearheaded the sharing economy with his innovative accommodation platform Airbnb. Serial innovator and extraordinary genius Luis von Ahn sold two companies to Google in his twenties, is a MacArthur Fellow and a Carnegie Mellon professor. Von Ahn also created the world’s most successful language learning platform, Duolingo.

Meanwhile, ex-Nokia product designer and MIT Fellow Marko Ahtisaari built a platform that collects detailed, unique data sets to create personalised musical therapeutics (medicines).

TL Uglow, creative director of Google’s Creative Lab in Sydney, explores the intersection of technology and the arts through augmented audio, digital books, proximity tech, non-linear storytelling and the physical web.

Lost your way? British tech entrepreneur Chris Sheldrick got fed up with losing his and created what3words pinpoint locations using three easy-to-remember words. Sheldrick is the most-awarded techie in Britain, and what3words won an Innovation Lions Grand Prix at Cannes.

Information designer Giorgia Lupi, best known for her book Dear Data, creates visual metaphors through which she shares intimate details of human behaviour.

Combining the digital with the tangible

Artist and data designer Ekene Ijeoma creates socially focussed work in multiple mediums to trigger emotional responses in his audience. These two master interpreters translate data into forms, expressions and languages that we can understand on a more human level.

Triggerfish animation studios are using digital technologies to bring to life African mythologies, revolting rhymes, and other imaginative stories to life in superb animation.

"Young talent combining the digital with the tangible to create real-world systems that respond in intuitive ways will feature strongly next week. We encourage interested South Africans to lend their creative sparks to the growing Design Indaba talent pool," concluded Mr Naidoo.