I’ve published the schedule for this year’s dConstruct. Curating an event like this doesn’t stop when the speakers have been finalised. Figuring out the flow of the day is another aspect that I really wanted to get right. It’s like making a mixtape.
Anyway, here’s what I’ve got planned …but maybe I’ll add the “subject to change” caveat just in case I change my mind:
Regardless of what order the talks end up in, I’m really excited about seeing every single one of them.
Warren’s talk is simply called “A Cunning Plan”:
Inventing the next twenty years, strategic foresight, fictional futurism and English rural magic: Warren Ellis attempts to convince you that they are all pretty much the same thing, and why it was very important that some people used to stalk around village hedgerows at night wearing iron goggles.
Jen’s is “Enigmas, not Explanations: a Speculative Nonfiction”:
A wander through indescribable projects, magical realisms, and the fantastical present. A speculation on resonances within the network and the good that can come from making questions without answers.
Clare will talk about “Memes for Cities”:
A giant water slide. A talking lamppost. A zombie chase game. These recent city interventions were enabled by networks of people, technology and infrastructure, making the world more playful and creating change. In this Playable City talk, Clare will take on the functional image of a future city, sharing how to design playful experiences that change our relationships with the places we live and work.
Aaron’s talk is intriguely titled “Still Life with Emotional Contagion”.
I love where Brian is going with “Humans Are Only a Self-driving Car’s Way of Making Another Self-driving Car”:
Over 10,000 years ago we lived in balance with the network. Since then we’ve tried to control, rule and bend it to our whims. In all that time, we’ve never asked ourselves if we’re building something that controls us?
Mandy will be talking about “Hypertext as an Agent of Change”:
Mandy Brown contemplates how hypertext has changed us, and what change is yet to come.
Leila’s talk will be the autobiographical “Running Away with the Circus”:
Lessons of launching your own magazine and event series, how to make it work, what not to do, and how to keep the right attitude and get interesting stuff done against the odds.
Tom will take us on a journey to 2030:
Privacy’s dead. What happens next?
And finally, Cory will declare “Information Doesn’t Want to be Free”:
There are three iron laws of information age creativity, freedom and business, woven deep into the fabric of the Internet’s design, the functioning of markets, and the global system of regulation and trade agreements.
You can’t attain any kind of sustained commercial, creative success without understanding these laws — but more importantly, the future of freedom itself depends on getting them right.
They all sound bloody brilliant!
There are still plenty of tickets left so if you haven’t got your ticket to dConstruct yet (what’s wrong with you?), you can grab one now.