Last night getitmade.com collaborated with Interactive Design Agency Conran Singh to host the first in their new series of events - The CONRAN future sessions. The debate focused on crowdfunding and crowdsourcing from a product designer's perspective. The panelists included Daljit Singh from Conran Singh, design writer Barbara Chandler, Nicolas Roope from POKE London and Plumen and Alexander Grunsteidl from Method with writer and Innovation consultant Nico Macdonald from Spy acting as moderator.

It was a great start to the CONRAN future sessions, with insightful contributions from both panelists and the audience. Some of the subjects covered included:

• Many great products never make it to market because of life or death funding decisions taken by funders remote from the market. In other words, funding defines design. Crowdfunding allows you to access your product's market directly, democratising funding. Changing the nature of funding has the potential to change design.
• Is the Internet a meritocracy? Will the best products succeed?
• Crowdfunding allows us to support products we believe in: that's important, and creates engagement. Engaged, often passionate users become your product's best advocates and help market your product.
• Crowdfunding potentially allows anyone with a good idea and perseverance to realise that idea; a good parallel being the way musicians are by-passing traditional routes to their audience.
• The Internet is inverting the publishing business, can crowdsourcing do this to product design and development?
• The importance of being first to market and establishing a brand. That brand will be your best protection against ripoffs. Then "Invent early, invent often" to protect your brand via constant innovation.
• The crowdsourcing debate provided a more nuanced discussion with examples sited of crowdsourced design having mixed results. Great design is hard, whoever and however many people undertake it. Perhaps the crowd doesn't create, but can provide valuable feedback and help remove rough edges from products or help take products in new directions.

Thanks again for Conran Singh for providing the venue and for all those who participated in a fascinating and insightful debate.