At the all-day event sponsored by the Interior Design Show, the participants will share their practical experiences with incorporating the practice of crowdsourcing, social media and open source into their commercial and humanitarian design enterprises.

Here’s the lineup for Thursday’s conference:

John Winsor, the CEO of Victors & Spoils – the first advertising agency built on crowdsourcing – might just be the godfather of collaboration, co-creation and crowdsourcing. More here:johnwinsor.com.

Heather Fleming is co-founder of the non-profit Catapult Design, an organization that helps address the needs of impoverished communities by providing engineering and technological support through collaboration.

Roo Rogers, the director at Redscout Ventures, is the co-author of What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. The book documents how entrepreneurs and businesses are innovating through collaboration.

Hunter Tura, the president of Bruce Mau Design, previously served as managing director at New York’s 2×4, was a member of the design faculty at Columbia University and worked with Rem Koolhaas.

David Benjamin is a principal at The Living – an experimental New York architecture firm that takes an open-source approach to its research and design.

Jason Bruges‘ London studio includes architects, lighting and industrial designers and interaction design specialists. Bruges is best known for creating responsive surfaces and spaces that range from large-scale building facades to interior elements.

Matthias Hollwich is a principal at New York’s HWKN and a co-founder of Architizer, an online architecture community.

Robert Fabricant, vice president of Frog Design, will discuss how to use mobile technologies to change people’s behaviours regarding health issues.

Dan Rockhill is responsible for Studio 804, the design/build program at the University of Kansas School of Architecture and Urban Planning.

Douglas Coupland, the world-renowned Canadian writer and artist (his most recent collaboration was with retailer Roots) will discuss Art, Design and Social Media for Generation X, Y and A (with Helen Walters).

Conversations in Designs: Crowdsourcing Creativity and Community takes place on January 27 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, 255 Front St. W. See conversationsindesign.com for more information.