Category: AMA session

Friday 11 December; 15:00-15:45 CET

The annual State of Responsible IoT (RIOT) report will be unveiled by Andrea Krajewski and Peter Bihr — and some of these amazing authors will be there to join in on the fun as well:

Adrian Gradinar (ImaginationLancaster)
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (Designswarm)
Andrea Krajewski (Hochschule Darmstadt, ThingsCon)
Antja Karoli (Futurium)
Davide Gomba (Officine Innesto)
Dries de Roeck (Studio Dott, ThingsCon)
Elisa Giaccardi (Delft University of Technology)
Elise Marcus (Studio of Earthly Matters)
Felipe da Motta Rezende Pierantoni (Delft University of Technology)
Fieke Jansen (Data Futures Lab)
Gabriele Zipf (Futurium)
Harald Welzer (Futurzwei)
Iskander Smit (INFO, ThingsCon)
Maximilian Brandl (Hochschule Darmstadt)
Michael Stead (ImaginationLancaster)
Michelle Thorne (Mozilla Foundation)
Paul Coulton (ImaginationLancaster)
Peter Bihr (The Waving Cat, ThingsCon)
Philipp Kaltofen (Hochschule Darmstadt)
Simon Höher (zero360 Hybrid City Lab, ThingsCon)

Friday 11 December; 16:05-16:50 CET

Patrick is founder, curator, and publisher of Sentiers Media, which gathers the most interesting ideas to bring context, sense, and understanding. There’s a public weekly bulletin synthesizing and contextualizing the changes in technology and the many ways in which it transforms society, and custom monthly briefings for clients, at the intersection of technology and each client’s specific field and needs. 

Previously Patrick was a web developer for 15 plus years, co-founded the first coworking space in Montréal, Station C, and co-initiated the critically acclaimed print magazine The Alpine Review. Over the years he also helped start a number of groups bringing people and ideas together: The Awesome Foundation Montréal, Webcamp, Creative Mornings Montréal, and Hacks/Hackers Montréal. Back in the day Patrick was caretaker of the oldest and longest running blogger meetup, Yulblog.

In this AMA session he will explore the theme of Just Enough.

Friday 11 December; 17:05-17:50 CET

Nadya Peek is an assistant professor in the department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) where she directs the Machine Agency. Her work focuses on unconventional digital fabrication tools, small scale automation, networked control systems, and advanced manufacturing. Spanning electronics, firmware, software, and mechanics, her research focuses on harnessing the precision of machines for the creativity of individuals.

In 2020, Peek was named to the MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35.

Before joining the HCDE faculty in February 2018, Peek was a postdoctoral research scientist at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms. She is VP of the Open Source Hardware Association, half of the design studio James and the Giant Peek, and plays drum machines and synths in the band Construction.

Friday 11 December; 14:05-14:50 CET

Matt Webb runs a specialist consultancy Mwie based in London, UK, focusing on ventures and design-led special projects.

He helps corporates navigate the ventures space, able to define and operate in the space between business needs and the startup ecosystem. Clients include R/GA Ventures (where he was Managing Director of two London-based startup accelerators), Nesta, and GDS.

He takes on special projects, usually for the purposes of product invention and innovation. His engagement with Google produced two patents. The self-initiated project Machine Supply (a bookshop in an internet-connected vending machine) was covered by the BBC and hosted by the publisher Hachette amongst others.

Also founder of Job Garden, a recruitment startup in the ventures space, with a handful of advisory roles with London-based startups.

Speaking engagements have included conference keynotes in Sydney, Copenhagen, and Osaka, and in-house at Hachette, EE, and Nespresso.

Previously co-founder of BERG. Clients included Intel, the BBC, Google, Twitter, and Bonnier, before pioneering the consumer Internet of Things, manufacturing our own products, and spinning out an IoT platform startup. Fast Company placed BERG as one of the world’s 50 most innovative companies.

Co-author of Mind Hacks (O’Reilly, 2004).

Friday 11 December; 12:05-12:50 CET

Vladan Joler is a professor at the Academy of Arts at the University of Novi Sad and founder of SHARE Foundation. He is leading SHARE Lab, a research and data investigation lab for exploring different technical and social aspects of algorithmic transparency, digital labor exploitation, invisible infrastructures, and technological black boxes.

The SHARE Foundation was founded in 2012 in Serbia, with the goal to fight for sustainability of open, free and decentralized Internet and for the implementation of human rights standards in the digital environment. In the last 3 years, we have produced some of the biggest educational events in the Balkans and the Middle East (SHARE Conference in Belgrade, Beirut and Rijeka), bringing together thousands of Internet activists, and organized smaller tailor-made events in Tunisia, Ukraine and Kosovo. In 2013, we have established a new component – SHARE Defense team, a unique policy think tank and watchdog unit proposing new approaches to the issues at the intersection of law and technology.

AMA (Ask Me Anything) session

At this moment in the 21st century, we see a new form of extractivism that is well underway: one that reaches into the furthest corners of the biosphere and the deepest layers of human cognitive and affective being. Thousands of corporate and government actors compete to stick their flags into the uncharted territories of our behavioral, emotional and cognitive landscapes, invading deeper and deeper into our bodies and minds. This lecture mainly builds upon research and maps that have made in collaboration with others, especially Kate Crawford in Anatomy of an AI and Nooscope with Matteo Pasquinelli, and research done within the SHARE Lab.

Friday 11 December; 11:05-11:50 CET

Alexandra is an author, consultant, public speaker, entrepreneur and designer living in London.

She wrote ‘Smarter Homes: how technology will change your home life’ (Apress, 2018) and her new book ‘Creating a Culture of Innovation’ is out later this year.

She is the founder of the Low Carbon Design Institute, a residency for creative people focused on climate change.

She ran the internet of things meetup in London for 8 years, one of the largest in the world and helped the community create BetterIoT, a free checklist to help founders and product managers make more ethical decisions.

She was the founder of the Good Night Lamp a connected product for global families included in the permanent collection of the London Design Museum as a key example of the internet of things.

She co-founded Tinker London, the first UK distributor of Arduino, the open source electronics education platform that kicked off the maker movement. Two of her projects are in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

She was named 1st in a list of 100 Internet of Things Influencers (Postscapes, 2016), 2nd in Top 100 Internet of Things Thought Leaders (Onalytica, 2014) and in the Top 100 Influencial Tech Women on Twitter (Business Insider, 2014). She’s been included in the longlist of Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in Tech in the UK (2017, 2018 2019, 2020).

She studied industrial design at the University of Montréal and interaction design at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea.

AMA (Ask me Anything) session

Alexandra will talk about the coopting of maker culture by corporations and their approach to innovation work compared to the early maker community. It’s in one of the chapters in her new book Creating a Culture of Innovation.