CustomerMade is a gathering of highly interesting people with proven track records and credentials. People from product development, the design industry, the media world, software business, and R&D will share their knowledge and experience with you to help give you a glimpse of the future of innovation, design, journalism production and customer behavior.

All presentations are in English.

Paul Gerhardt, Director of BBC Creative Archive (UK)
BBC’s gigantic radio and film archive, which spans over one hundred years, is facing a gigantic challenge: digitalization. The task is not only a logistic and practical challenge, however; it’s also an opportunity for experimentation and user involvement. BBC Creative Archive, the result of this willingness to experiment, is a playground for ordinary Britons, who are free to download and remix, edit and share content in every imaginable way. Paul Gerhardt will be describing the results of this experiment with user-created multimedia content.
Jake Nickell, Jacob DeHart and Jeffrey Kalmikoff, founders of SkinnyCorp.com (US)
SkinnyCorp’s business plan is simple: “SkinnyCorp creates communities.” In record time, Nickell, Kalmikoff and DeHart have created a conglomerate of websites which allow users to participate actively in design, conceptualization, and product development. The product can be anything – from t-shirts (Threadless.com) to music (15megsoffame.com) – the common denominator is user participation. SkinnyCorp’s founders will be sharing their concrete experiences with making participatory creation work – and explaining why design and product development will never be the same again.
Jean K. Min, International editor, Ohmynews.com (SK)
The online newspaper Ohmynews.com didn’t even exist five years ago. Now it’s one of the most influential news media in South Korea. Their slogan is ‘Every citizen is a reporter’, which should be taken literally: 80% of the site’s reportage is written by upwards of 40,000 ordinary citizen-reporters from all over the world. Jean K. Min, editor of the international edition of Ohmynews.com, will be describing how Ohmynews.com works and discuss what possibilities this new journalism opens up for the media and citizens themselves.
Lars Bo Jeppesen, Associate Professor, Copenhagen Business School and guest researcher, MIT Sloan School of Management (DK)
“Customers as Co-developers: Profiting From Innovative Consumer Communities in Computer Games.” Lars Bo Jeppesen’s research focuses on the end consumer’s role as co-developer in commercial innovation processes. The main part of his studies deals with business models for involving user communities in product developments. Based on examples from the computer game industry, his studies show that companies, through the facilitation of user development, have made the foundations for significant commercial successes. One example is Counter Strike and other so-called mods, developed by users of Valve Software’s computer game Half-Life, which paved way for increased sales of Valve’s products. Lars Bo Jeppesen has published a wide range of articles on this subject in international journals.
Søren Lund, Project director, LEGO Mindstorm NXT robots (DK)
Few companies have realized the significance and potential of a product’s development sequence like LEGO has. The users were involved in earnest when the ground-breaking Mindstorm NXT robots were in the making. LEGO approached dedicated fans and asked for their help in developing the next version of the robot toys. Not alone did the users submit suggested designs, they also developed the hardware that ended up being implemented. Søren Lund will describe a development process with the users as designers; he will outline what future perspectives LEGO sees in ordinary people co-producing products, and which problems that might occur in the pipeline.
Teo Härén, founder and CEO, Interesting.org (SE)
In 2005 Teo was nominated best speaker in Sweden. In 2003 he was elected entrepreneur of the year, and he has participated in carrying through numerous innovating ideas. Along with his brother, Teo has organized this inventiveness and idea forming knack on the website Interesting.org – the world’s first idea brokering network, where more than 10.000 people from all over the world contribute in solving problems issued by companies and organizations. Teo will talk about the basic idea of idea brokering – how do you tap into other peoples’ creativity and convert it to concrete ideas? In short: How do you outsource innovation to the customers?