KALW 91.7 FM broadcasts Tim Brown and Yves Behar’s Commonwealth Club conversation on design thinking. Check out the segment here.

IDEO has customized the software platform that runs OpenIDEO.com to help the Knight Foundation transform the way they run their news challenges and issue grants. Their first challenge is around Open Government and is open to anyone to submit proposals. Join the challenge and submit your ideas here.

In the spirit of building and making, create an IDEO bot at bots.ideo.com to share with the world. Happy holidays from IDEO!

As part of the IDSA 2012 International Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, IDEO — along with several other Cambridge and Boston-based design firms — will be hosting “offsites” on Thursday, May 16, 2012 from 4:30 p.m. EST to 8:30 p.m. EST for all conference attendees and IDSA members. For more information, visit the IDSA.org conference site.

Edutopia, IDEO and the Riverdale Country School are offering “Design Thinking for Educators,” a five-week, free virtual course for K-12 teachers. The workshop starts on July 30. To sign up, visit Edutopia’s website. Read more about the course on Good magazine’s site and MarketWatch.

Tim Brown spoke as part of the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival. His talk, “From Newton to Design,” presented design as an evolutionary process. Watch a 2-minute clip on the Aspen Ideas website.

David Kelley spoke at TED2012, and now his talk on building creative confidence is posted on the TED site. Watch the video here.

Jeff Chapin talked about design’s ability to enable conversations at TEDxChange: The Big Picture, an event hosted by TED and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Jeff shared the stage with Baaba Maal, Melinda Gates, Sven Giegold, and Theo Sowa. Catch his talk at 3:38 here.

Tom Hulme speaks about Designing for Emergence at TEDxCSM: four ways we can design to have value emerge and capture it. Watch the film here.

David speaks about the need for creative confidence at the TED2012 conference. His wish: “Don’t divide the world into ‘creative’ and ‘non-creative.’ Let people realize they are naturally creative. .. When people regain that confidence, magic happens.” Read a summary of David’s talk on the TED blog.

Join IDEO Founder David Kelley and the faculty of Stanford’s Design Group for the 2012 Innovation Masters Series.

For three days, Stanford University will open up its design labs and classrooms to executives, business leaders, and decision makers faced with the daunting task of retooling and revitalizing their enterprises. Senior faculty will lead you through hands-on workshops where you will learn the problem-solving tools and problem-finding frameworks that lead to innovation and strategic leadership, pioneered by the Design Group and the d.school at Stanford. Find out more at: scpd.stanford.edu/design

Tim Brown and Joi Ito lead a conversation at the MIT Media Lab around design’s relationship with current challenges and platforms.

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announces that the U.S. State Department will be working with the American Refugee Committee (ARC) and IDEO on the “Neighbors” campaign to raise awareness and funds for the relief effort in Somalia. A video and transcript of the speech are available here.

To read more about IDEO’s prior work with the American Refugee Committee read here.

Fred Dust, David Kelley, and Sandy Speicher spoke as part of this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival, held June 27-July 4 in Aspen, Colorado.

Fred and David shared the stage for “How Is Design Inspiring New Directions in Education and Our Society?,” and Sandy spoke on a panel titled, “How Do We Design the Learning Environments of the Future?”

Adam Vollmer and Judy Lee are the hosts of Design Squad Nation, a 10-part series of TV shows and accompanying online video blogs. They partner with kids around the world to make their dreams come true through engineering. You can also catch the shows online at the Design Squad Nation site, or check your local PBS television listing.