Last month I took a trip to London to attend a design conference, put together by The Design Business Association (DBA), called The Edge.

The Edge is a cross-discipline design conference and so it was a bit of a departure for me as the events I normally attend are focused on Web design, Digital and Social Media.

This 2 day conference (and after party) cost £299 per delegate and although I went along to the event with some trepidation the DBA did a brilliant job in delivering an event well worth every penny and I've gone on to recommend it to other designers and freelancers as I think it was fantastic value for money.

I'm not going to provide a full run down of all the sessions and speakers here (if you're interested check out the official website here: DBA The Edge).

The first day was split into morning and afternoon sessions (each with a choice of 4 topics). I would've liked the sessions to be shorter so that I could've attended all four but I guess longer sessions provided enough to really get our teeth into the subject matter. The sessions were intense with short presentations, Q & A's and a group exercise.

The morning session was run by Shan Preddy, whose book Marketing Design Consultancy Services (check it out on Amazon) I'd recommend to anyone who runs a design or creative agency. A colleague recommended it to me a few years ago and it's one I've read and re-read and still refer to regularly, so it was great to meet her.

I came away with two major thoughts from the morning pitching session. First, that getting onto a client's roster is difficult in the first place and subsequently winning a pitch is a separate task. Second, a strong recommendation was that agencies should be looking more and more to specialise, either by market or skill, in order to set themselves apart. Interestingly though, I met a number of people over the two days from multi-discipline agencies who saw their variety of skills as a strength.

In the Business Ideas session we deconstructed advertising and looked at three levels of strategy: business strategy; brand strategy and execution strategy. This was really helpful in developing a better understanding of how brand managers operate.

Day two was billed as an opportunity to meet design pioneers and try out some circus skills. The day at The Circus Space in Hoxton Square was mysterious and most people I spoke to at breakfast didn't know what to expect (what an amazing space by the way). As it turned out it was more conference style than the day before with some brilliant speakers. The theme of the conference was risk taking and creativity and we heard from a wide variety of speakers from different industries including the prominent neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield and The Ivy's Head Chef, Gary Lee.  I really enjoyed hearing from people outside of our industry who have an appreciation of creativity and risk in addition to some inspirational designers such as Oliviero Toscani, Erick Speikermann and Richard Seymour.

It was all the small things that made attending The Edge all the more worthwhile. Throughout the day there were a number of design pioneers that sat among the audience and facilitated networking at lunch. It was a great way to meet some of my design heros and the conversations were great.

The audience (at least those I spoke to) were able to easily draw parallels from non-industry speakers with their own experience.

The day included lots of interactive sessions which helped to avoid conference fatigue as we were moving around and participating, the venue was ideally placed to deliver these sessions so it worked really well.

We even participated in a bit of singing and drama to get us all involved and having a laugh. Actually, once I got over the embarrassment of singing, leap frogging and pretending to be a bottle washing machine it was pretty good fun and a great way to break the ice.

Thank you to the DBA for a great event, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend the 2010 event to designers and creatives, you can keep an eye out for developments via their Facebook page or via twitter @DBATheEdge.