Would you like to know how inclusive design can help you create new products and services? How design methods can take you closer to the customer and give you an innovative edge? Learn how leading brands create new products and services through user focused innovation.

Speakers include Maria Benktzon, Professor/Industrial Designer, Ergonomidesign, Sweden; Julia Cassim, Senior Research Fellow, Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre, UK; Jeremy Myerson, Director/Professor, Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre (Keynote speech: “Discovery Through Design: How design methods take you closer to the customer at the front end of innovation”); Akihiro Nagaya, General Manager Design Development Division, TOYOTA, Japan (Keynote speech: “Aiming at a sustainable society”); Rama Gheerawo, Innovation Manager and Research Fellow, Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre, London; Alison Wright, Managing Director, Easy Living Home Ltd, UK (on creating and marketing inclusively designed kitchens and bathrooms); Matthew White, Design Manager, B&Q, UK (on inclusive product innovation); Jarmo Lehtonen, Design Research Manager, Design for All, Nokia, Finland (on design for all); Clive Grinyer, Cisco Systems/Orange, UK (on inclusive service design); and Toshimitsu Sadamura, President/Director GA-TAP, Japan (on the inclusive design project of the Fukuoka City Tube Nanakuma Line).

The Second International Topic Maps Users Conference will take place at the Thon Hotel Bristol in Oslo on April 2-4 2008.

Join us for three days of tutorials, case studies, technical discussions, and exhibitions! Learn about how the ISO Topic Maps standard is being applied around the world to solve problems of information and knowledge management. Meet fellow users, and talk to some of the world’s leading experts.

Topic Maps 2008 is targeted towards users and potential users of Topic Maps, in particular:

• User experience professionals like information architects, software engineers, and project managers working with portals and web sites
• Knowledge officers responsible for intranet-based knowledge management
• Corporate and commercial publishers
• Public sector providers of information
• Students and teachers of computer science and library and information science

The Norwegian Topic Maps community has been organizing annual conferences since 2002 and this year’s event promises to be the biggest and best ever, with special tracks for Topic Maps in Education, Topic Maps and the Enterprise, Topic Maps and Knowledge Management, and Topic Maps and Web Publishing.

Fredrik Matheson, Are Halland, Oslo Local ambassadors