Program

Decades before the advent of social media as we know it, Gilles Deleuze observed that it was "a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying." Nothing has become more precious, in today's economy of attention, than nothing.

In this opening keynote, visual artist Jenny Odell will explore the architecture, politics, and rewards of nothing, arguing that the cultivation of nothing has new salience in the age of everything.

The past year, fringe views have traveled into the mainstream with disrupting results in politics, media and society.

This session offers a look at the history and the now of how radical turns normal at an ever increasing speed. But also, how “art thinking” can be a tool for breaking long-lived norms and ultimately create a new normality. And what’s normal, anyway?

SPEAKERS

Jamie Bartlett - Writer

Jamie is author of the book Radicals which is an exploration of the individuals, groups and movements rejecting the way we live, and are attempting to find alternatives.

Amy Whitaker - Author & Professor, NYU

Amy will share her methods and mindset from her book called ”Art thinking” which is about inventing yet unimagined worlds to allow something to exist.

Nathaniel Raymond Director of the Signal Program, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative

Nathaniel will talk about how societies make, use and discard many different types of norms - rights, ethics, taboos, and laws - to socially negotiate the use of new technologies into what's considered normal.

While at The Conference, take the opportunity to get to know some new people. Register for this event and we’ll hook you up with some great humans over lunch. The setting will be splendid, of course.

Note that this event is only available for people attending The Conference. Limited seats so don’t wait.

Borders between lies and fiction are being blurred and manipulated, challenging who and what we can trust.

In this session we’ll explore alternative systems and methods for building trust and communicating truth, if there is one.

SPEAKERS

Muneeb Ali - Co-founder Blockstack

Muneeb is a computer scientist with a mission to build a fairer internet. He is a co-founder of Blockstack, a new decentralized internet where users own and control their data.

Amy Adele Hasinoff - Assistant professor, University of Colorado

Amy will talk about sexting, and the need to design for consent, in relation to communication technologies.

Caroline Jack - Media historian, Data&Society

Caroline will explore how terms such as "fake news" and "propaganda" express hopes and anxieties about media, intent, and power.

The city is becoming the home of 80 percent of our future global population. People move to cities to find jobs, shelter, opportunities and community.

Urbanization shows no signs of slowing down, challenging how we live and work together and how we care for the people and places we leave behind.

SPEAKERS

Nina Rappaport - Director, Vertical Urban Factory

Nina is an architectural critic, curator, historian, and educator. She directs Vertical Urban Factory, a think tank and consultancy, which includes a recently published 480-page book of the same name, a traveling exhibition and development projects on urban manufacturing and ecological industrial urbanism.

Erin Malone - Communications Director, Forward together

Long-time organizer and communications strategist Erin Malone will talk about some of the sacrifices that comes with urbanization, highlighting the rural/urban divide and how people are being forced into becoming economic refugees.

Tommy Francois - VP Editorial, Ubisoft

Tommy Francois is the VP Editorial at Ubisoft, at The Conference he will explain how Ubisoft teams are building meaningful open worlds that will immerse players into their very own unique experience, that they can then share with others from the community.

In this keynote session Sociology Professor Saskia Sassen is going to talk about the city as a place where people without power can get to make a history, culture and economy. Cities are the greatest frontiers of our time and have outlived endless of other actors, institutions, nations and companies.

If we want to safeguard equity, democracy and rights in our cities, we must first ask ourselves, who owns the city?

SPEAKER

Saskia Sassen - Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University

We all know that design changes the world, but how do we design a world that works better for all of us?

Shifting from linear to circular systems requires a shift in mindsets and the rapid adaptation of thinking tools based on a more complex understanding of the systems at play in the world around us. In this fascinating keynote, Leyla will share tools for creative disruption by design and challenge you to think in circular systems.

SPEAKER

Dr Leyla Acaroglu - The UnSchool of Disruptive Design

Leyla is a New York based Australian designer, social scientist, sustainability provocateur and a United Nations’ Champion of the Earth.

She is also the founder of The Un-School of Disruptive Design, an experimental knowledge lab for adults and two design agencies; New York based Disrupt Design and Melbourne based Eco Innovators. Both are multidisciplinary studios focused on pioneering social and environmental change through design. Leyla’s award winning design works span a variety of locations, fields and mediums and is driven by the agenda to effect, create, and see positive social and sustainability change in the world.

Leyla’s unique and thought provoking perspective on sustainability and innovation has led to her TED talk having over 1 million views, the most of any sustainability-based talk on the platform.

We need new thinking to tackle some of the world’s most acute challenges.

How can we grow and create without taking a toll on global resources, and challenge the status quo in production, economics and design?

SPEAKERS

Chris Grantham - Portfolio Director, IDEO

Chris will share his perspective on the journey we are on - from a linear economy and mindset to an economy rich in circular flows of resources and a different way of thinking about the prosperity we want the economy to serve.

Ingrid Zeegers - Program Director, Circulair Friesland

Ingrid is going to share her insights and learnings from the Circulair Friesland project, a Dutch province that aims to develop towards a true circular economy.

May Al-Karooni - Founder, Globechain.com

May will share her journey on starting Globechain, a reuse platform that lets the waste from big companies be used by charities and smaller enterprisers, which last year prevented 1,000,000 kilos of waste from ending up in landfills.

While at The Conference, take the opportunity to get to know some new people. Register for this event and we’ll hook you up with some great humans over lunch. The setting will be splendid, of course.

Note that this event is only available for people attending The Conference. Limited seats so don’t wait.

When constantly exposed to new ideas our identities change faster today than before, challenging century-old cultural value sets in some parts of the world.

At the same time our life on the web exposes intimate details about ourselves and what we really think. How can we truly own our online identities?

SPEAKERS

Yousef Tuqan - VP of Brand Marketing & Loyalty, Jumeirah Group

Yousef will uncover what the new tribes of Arabia look like, and how the digital generation in the region is shaping their identity, their creative expression, and their future.

Vesselin Popov - Business Development Director, University of Cambridge Psychometric Centre

Vesselin academic research and commercial insight to transform how we work, shop, move, meet and play, and ensuring citizens retain control over their digital identities in the process.

Mari Magnus - Web Producer, NRK

Mari Magnus is the Web producer of NRK's web drama series SKAM. At The Conference she will talk about how the SKAM team tried to, and succeeded to, capture the identity of the Norwegian teenagers and what they had to do to make a show on the audience’s premises.

Many things in our daily lives are decided by algorithms. And at the same time, some of the things that we believe are run by algorithms, are in fact not.

To make sure that the development and implementation of A.I. happens in a responsible way and caters to the society as a whole - more people’s perspectives are needed. In this session, the speakers raise awareness of how A.I. can judge us and how algorithmic thinking works, so that more of us can see where and how to make use of it.

SPEAKERS

Stephanie Dinkins - Artist, Stony Brook University

Stephanie will discuss artificial intelligence as it relates to social equity and explore how AI and big data impact our daily lives and future histories.

Sebastian Schmieg - Artist

Sebastian will explore the precarity of digital labor and the amalgamation of humans and software by looking at the hidden manual labor behind so-called artificial intelligence.

Dr Rand Hindi - Founder & CEO, Snips

Rand will talk about the future of work, how many jobs will rather be transformed than vanished and how continuous education will be a key to solve the A.I. job crisis.

How does music really work? What does music look like? And how can you visualize something non-visual?

In this session, Alexander Chen, Creative Director at Google Creative Lab, will explore these questions through sharing projects that combine the areas of coding, graphic design, physics, and machine learning, together with music.

In the closing keynote of The Conference 2017, artist and programmer Gene Kogan will take you on a tour through trends and opportunities in the creative fields of AI.

He will also provide an overview of educational materials and resources for creative professionals to apply machine learning within their practice.

SPEAKER

Gene Kogan - Artist & programmer