Marcus Brown

"Beyond a middle aged future - The Billion Dollar show and other stories."

How will stories be told in 2021?

In his new talk, "beyond a middle aged future", Marcus Brown explores how storytelling could develop over the course of the next ten years. Marcus will be presenting three fictional, open source, cases set in 2021; "The Dream Within A Dream", "Murder They Wrote" and "The Billion Dollar Show". Each case study explores what writers, actors, filmmakers and performers might be expected to create for the viewing public of the future. The talk covers areas such as engagement, viewing expectations of the future, complexity, screens, digital improvisation, digital physicality, parallel universes and the breakdown of media channels as we know them today. The talk aims to show that the future might not turn out as we envision it. That as adults we're not best placed to fully understand how the future might look. That, and the fact that the future is going to be pretty cool.

Marcus has been creating characters and making up a lot of stories online. It's what he does. Online he has been the The Kaiser, The Dead Artist, Sacrum, Charles Stab, The Joker, The Lord God Almighty and Jack The Twitter. In 2010 he tried to walk from Munich to Hamburg for a chat with Dr. Peter Figge but failed. One day, however, he will do it.

In 2010 he joined Booming as Head of Social Media.

He lives, loves, works and drinks in Munich.

"Marcus Brown is turning in some of the finest, most important culture criticism being produced today. I know you've heard me say it before, but this time, really: you'll thank me. If you don't die laughing first." — Chris Locke, author "The Cluetrain Manifesto"

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Chris O'Shea

Chris O'Shea is an artist and designer, using technology to make the unimaginable come to life. Inventing new approaches that explore play, human behavior and engagement through interaction design and the visual arts. He creates installations, digital toys, play spaces and experiences for everyone, that take us out of the everyday and fill us with joy and wonder. He will talk about his near future views of playing with technology.

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Matthew Sheret

Matthew Sheret is Last.fm's Data Griot (which basically means storyteller). As a freelance editor and copywriter Matthew has worked for Newspaper Club, 4iP, Thomson Reuters and Men's Health Online. As a slightly more hand-wavy writer he has contributed to Plan B Magazine, Solipsistic Pop, Global Comment and others, and currently writes a column for film website Electric Sheep.

In 2008 Matthew co-founded We Are Words + Pictures, a team who work to promote the UK comic-book community. He edits the comics anthology Paper Science, and really enjoys it when massive artwork files appear in his inbox ahead of new issues. He was recently described as a "Aucheerleader for comics", a job he thinks more people should do.

At Last.fm he writes anything from tweets to radio scripts, and sometimes annoys the data team by asking how numbers work.

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Georgina Voss

Georgina Voss researches, teaches and writes about the social side of technology practices. Her research interests include legitimacy and reputation; user-led design and innovation; business and technological ethics; and sexuality and gender.

Georgina will shortly be joining the Faculty of Arts at Brighton University as a Research Fellow. She was previously the Research Manager at Tinker London, where she oversaw the 'Homesense' project on domestic user-led design, and she has conducted research on Silicon Roundabout and technology meet-ups for WIRED UK magazine. Georgina currently teaches innovation and technology ethics at Sussex University, and is an Honorary Research Associate at the Science and Technology Studies department, University College London.

Georgina will be talking about risks, ethics and informed consent in play.

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Al Robertson

Al Robertson writes science fiction, fantasy and horror. His short fiction?s been published alongside work from Bruce Sterling, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury and others, and he's just completing his second novel.

Professionally, he's helped everyone from Ericsson and Sony to the British Council and Strawberry Hill House work out what sort of stories they need to tell, and then find ways of telling them. Sometimes he's done that off his own bat, sometimes through agencies including Imagination, Afia, Corporate Edge and the Tuttle Club.

He thinks that science fiction is - at heart - a genre built on play. He's going to be talking about why that is, touching on everything from the importance of business parks in shaping tomorrow to why the heat death of the universe is actually a good thing.

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Sami Niemelä

Sami is a designer, thinker and an optimist, making the world a better and more meaningful place, project by project. He is always looking ways to combine the bleeding edge with business viability and good design for real people to use and enjoy.

Currently he is the creative director and one of the founding partners of Nordkapp, a Helsinki-based group of experienced designers, strategists and technologists. They are set out to make the future happen, and have no intentions to fail while doing just that.

Sami has worked on all things internet since 1997, from startups to multinational corporations between Helsinki and London. His work has lead to several patents and solutions used worldwide by millions of people.

Besides writing profile descriptions of himself in third person, in his spare time Sami spends time with his family, music and bicycles and organizes events for the local IxDA community.

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Brendan Dawes

Playing Properly

Brendan Dawes couldn't wait to grow up because now he can play properly. Whilst many believe the golden time for play is when you're a child, Brendan thinks the opposite is true; as an adult you have resources available to you that you just didn't have when you were a kid. In his talk Brendan takes you through some of the projects and thinking born from taking play seriously, from romantic electronics to useful 3D printed objects.

Brendan Dawes is co-founder of Beep Industries and Executive Creative Director for magneticNorth, a digital design company based in Manchester, UK.

Ever since his first experiences with the humble ZX81 back in the early eighties, Brendan has continued to explore the interplay of people, code, design and art both in his role leading the team at mN (mnatwork.com) and on brendandawes.com, a personal space where he publishes random thoughts, toys and projects created from an eclectic mix of digital and analog objects. In 2009 he was listed among the top twenty web designers in the world by .Net magazine and was featured in the "Design Icon" series in Computer Arts. In 2008 his Cinema Redux project was acquired by MoMA in New York for the permanent collection. In 2011 his Doodlebuzz news interface will be featured in the Talk to Me exhibition at MoMA in New York. Doodlebuzz won a D&AD in 2009 for interface design.

Three of Brendan's most famous pieces of work are born from his on-going love affair with film. The Webby nominated "Psycho Studio", created in 1998, was one of the very first video editors created in Flash and allowed people to re-cut their own version of the infamous shower scene from Psycho. "Saul Bass on the Web" is an online homage to the father of film titles, the graphic design legend Saul Bass and has been featured in many books on interface design. "Cinema Redux" attempts to distill whole movies down to a single image using specially written software that samples a single frame of a movie every second. The Museum of Modern Art in New York featured Cinema Redux as part of "Design and the Elastic Mind" in 2008 and later acquired two pieces for the permanent MoMA collection. Cinema Redux is currently on show in the exhibition "Action! Design over Time" at MoMA.

MoviePeg, the super simple stand for iPhone is a physical product invented by Brendan in 2010 and has now shipped to over eighty countries and is sold in retail stores all over the world through Beep Industries.

In 2010 he released The Accidental News Explorer - an iPhone app for serendipitous news discovery that was featured as 'new and notable' in the US app store.

Brendan's work has been featured in numerous journals including idN, Creative Review, MacUser, Computer Arts, Create, Wired, Eye, The Guardian, The Times, Communications Arts and was interviewed by Computer Arts in December 2008 for their "Design Icon" series. He has also been featured in various books including "New Masters of Flash" (Friends of Ed 2000), "In Your Face Too - the best of interactive interface design" (Rockport 2000) , "Flash deConstruction: The Process, Design, and ActionScript of Juxt Interactive" (2001 New Riders), "Personal Web Sites" (Rockport 2002), "The Digital Canvas" (Abrams Studio 2006) , "Graphic Design: The New Basics" (Princeton Architectural Press 2008), "Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools (Electronic Mediations)" ( Univ Of Minnesota Press 2008) as well as authoring "Drag Slide Fade - Flash Actionscript for Designers" in 2001 for New Riders. In October 2006 he published "Analog In, Digital Out" - an eclectic mix of anecdotes, observations and thoughts on technology and interaction design, inspired by the world around him.

Brendan spends much of the year speaking at various conferences around the world which in the past have included the HOW Design Conference Chicago, Flashforward New York, New Media Age Congress London, South by Southwest Austin, Microsoft Research Redmond, Macromedia Web World Seattle, Art Directors Club of Spain, Madrid, Europrix Vienna, Voices that Matter San Francisco, Future of Web Design London, Internet World Los Angeles as well as various lectures in universities around the UK. He also sits on the advisory board for D&AD North and in 2008 was a jury member for the Art Directors Club awards in New York and D&AD. In 2009 he was the Chairman for the interactive design jury for the Art Directors Club New York.

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Mills™ — CHIEF WONKA™

CHIEF WONKA ™ · living and breathing mobile as the self proclaimed King of Succailure™. mills™ has created apps which have sold globally in their hundreds. He often and openly talks about the ups and downs of running a 90 person, cash positive, non-venture funded, playful, idea generating Mothership.

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Matt Ward

Matt Ward is a Lecturer in Design at Goldsmiths, where he runs the BA Design. His research is diverse in nature and includes the investigation of emerging technologies, design methods and processes and critical/speculative design practice. He is a member of DWFE; an experimental design syndicate producing projects that look at how artefacts, systems and material culture can offer some degree of relief from the emptiness of contemporary living.

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Paul Rissen

Paul is an Information Architect at the BBC, having wanted to work there since he and his brother started watching repeats of a certain popular science-fiction/family drama programme on UK Gold in the mid-nineties.

Having served an apprenticeship with Siemens, working on iPlayer in the year before it launched, he joined the BBC in late 2008, working on bbc.co.uk/programmes. In April 2010 he moved to work on the BBC's Learning and Knowledge portfolio.

Having been introduced to the ideas of the Semantic Web and Linked Data by the clever people on the /programmes team, Paul asked the obvious question - well, how can I apply that to Doctor Who?

Since that day in 2008, he's widened the scope to investigate all kinds of drama, entertainment, documentaries, news and sport, and see how the principles of the Web can be applied in a way that's accessible, entertaining and useful for everyone. In doing so, he's been involved in various prototypes such as the Mythology Engine.

He's made it his mission to make websites which aren't just an add-on to a TV or radio programme, but instead attempt to fully represent the world within them, and in general to use the Web as a medium in its' own right.

Paul will be speaking about Linked Data, Mario, MMORPGs, and how we can make it all a bit more fun - with a probable pit-stop in the depths of time and space.

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Richard Lemarchand

Richard Lemarchand is a Lead Game Designer at Naughty Dog in Santa Monica, California, and is currently working on the studio's forthcoming game, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. He was the Co-Lead Designer of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which has been the studio's most successful game to date, winning 34 Game of the Year awards and four BAFTAs. Richard also worked on Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Jak 3 and Jak X: Combat Racing for Naughty Dog, and helped to create the successful game series Gex, Pandemonium and Soul Reaver at Crystal Dynamics.

Richard has made storytelling action games the focus of his career, and he is interested in the way that narrative, aesthetics and ludic mechanisms can hold a player's attention and facilitate the expression of their agency. His role at Naughty Dog includes production as well as design, and his controversial talk at DICE 2010 about Naughty Dog's unique production methodology is much discussed for its original take on development studio best practices. A passionate advocate of indie and experimental games, Richard was the conference co-chair of IndieCade in 2010. He hosts the annual GDC Microtalks, and is a faculty member of the GDC Experimental Gameplay Sessions.

Richard grew up in a small town in rural north Gloucestershire, dreaming of ancient civilizations and outer space. Perhaps as a result, he has a degree in Physics and Philosophy.

We're living in an age of science fiction videogames. We might not be acting out Hamlet on the holodeck yet, but thanks to the technology, and maybe even more importantly, the craft that game developers have honed over the years, videogames now offer emotional entertainment experiences that can rival the best of film and television. I'll show some examples of the way that Naughty Dog uses character in an interactive context to shape the emotional experience of the Uncharted games, and mention the impact that the amazing, innovative world of independent and art games has had on my design process.

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Louise Downe

Louise Downe is a service designer & thinker who spends her time anticipating the world of tomorrow and creating new services that can thrive within it. She is a serial pattern spotter, problem solver and sustainability nerd.

Louise is a senior consultant at Seren Partners. Before this she was lead mobile producer at Tate, where she designed everything from award-winning games & films to audio tours and interactive installations.

Louise once gave a talk at Barcamp London 2007 where she tried unsuccessfully to convince a large portion of the web-standards community that owls made ice cream from pain. She is now no longer a vegetarian, but continues to believe in her ability to impersonate fowl.

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Emil Ovemar

Emil Ovemar is co-founder and producer of Swedish play studio Toca Boca. Toca Boca makes digital toys for kids on touchscreens. Emil has a background in interaction design and was previously the UX Director at publisher Bonnier's R&D group. He together with his team tries to create new ways of playing with these devices, not looking at games but instead toys and the ways children play in the real world. So far a digital tea party, hair salon and store have been produced among other things. He will talk about digital play, digital toys and the thoughts behind the Toca Boca apps..

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Ben Terrett

Ben is Design Director at Wieden & Kennedy London. He is also a partner in RIG, and one of the founders of Newspaper Club. In 2010 Ben won the Graphics category in the Design Museum's Designs Of The Year Awards. Ben is also a Board Advisor to id8, an Application Definition & Design company based in San Francisco.

Ben is active in the design industry and has spoken at SXSWi, TEDx, Thinking Digital and at conferences in the USA, India and Romania. He has spoken about design on Radio 4's Today programme, has been a D&AD judge several times and has written feature articles for The Guardian, Creative Review and Design Week.

Previously Ben set up The Design Conspiracy with 4 others and helped grow the turnover to be in the top 5% of UK design consultancies. He sold his stake in the company in June 2008.

Ben has notoriously bad music taste and as a consequence knows all the words to DJ Jazzy Jeff's Summertime.

Ben can't moonwalk.

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Ian Stevenson — Illustrator

Ian Stevenson's influences of the everyday strangeness of people and the world around him shines through in his odd world of distorted characters. Drawing on walls, floors, rubbish and anything else he can find, his works bright cheery colours draw you into a sometimes dark world...

With numerous exhibitions, animations and books to his name, his work ultimately makes you laugh with his combination of words and imagery.

Clients include Tate Modern, ICA, Microsoft, Perrier, Polydor, The Conran Shop, MTV, Warp Films, Nintendo and Paul Smith. As well as a featured guest at Berlins Pictoplasma Conference, Current TV also featured a documentary on Ian and his work.

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Gemma Correll — Illustrator

Gemma Correll is a miniature-sized freelance illustrator from somewhere in the east of England (not Essex). She has drawn things for various clients, including The Guardian, Herm's and Toyota, and she has exhibited in quite a few countries including China, the US and yes, even Belgium. She is a fan of pugs, coffee and talking in a (bad) fake Australian accent.

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Rex Crowle — Illustrator

Rex is an artist and designer who long ago accidentally strayed into the world of TV and videogames. He's created some shows for Disney and MTV, and he's also made some games like LittleBigPlanet 1 and 2. And to keep himself motivated in his day-jobs he created EpicWin in his spare time.

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Mr Bingo — Illustrator

Mr Bingo didn't learn a lot at school but he did discover one valuable thing. He was good at making people laugh. Mr Bingo spent most of his time at school drawing things for the amusement of his classmates. He still does this, but his audience has grown a bit bigger. Working from his studio in East London, he now 'draws stuff' for a wide and diverse range of clients including The New York Times, The Mighty Boosh, QI, Microsoft, VW, Tate, Esquire, WIRED, The Guardian, MTV and Jimmy Carr. As well as illustrating, Mr Bingo regularly speaks at events on topics such as religion, the internet, dating, animals, art and terrorism.

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