Most of us will be living in cities in the future, and cities are a scale of operating most of us don't often get a chance to think at. Many cities are expanding exponentially – some 70 million people leave rural areas every year to join nearby cities, the majority to join squatter cities. At the same time brand new cities, such as Masdar - a carbon neutral city in Abu Dhabi - are being built right now.
Frank Kresin is head of research at Waag Society, an Amsterdam based media lab developing creative technology for social innovation. Educated in film making, artificial intelligence and web development, his interest is on social innovation, knowledge management and the use of technology for social goals. Currently he is working on sustainable ecomapping, location based heritage, 4K cinema, tangible interfaces and affective virtual worlds. Frank believes in the human scale, fostering first-hand experiences & meaningful and fulfilling encounters.
Gill is a Director at Plot, and has been quietly exploring the softer side of the Internet Of Things, through research, film making, designing and developing and facilitating workshop interventions with industry. This includes an interactionary in 2005 around the affordances of RFID, a workshop for companies "The Elephant in the Room: Bringing Innovation into RFID Applications, presenting RFID in supporting everyday life situations. In 2006, she took her film, Everyday Intelligence, to the annual RFID industry forum to provoke discussion about how people then felt about these technologies, what they wanted, and most importantly, what they didn't. Since 2008, she has been working on a joint Plot and BDH project as a part of the Sandbox Media initiative. Here she has been exploring the delicate challenge of being able to support people being happy using pervasive media.
Lorna Goulden is a Lead Creative Director at Philips Design responsible for innovation and strategic projects for external clients. She graduated from Sheffield University (BEd hons Design and Technology 1992) and the Royal College of Art in London (MA Interaction Design 1994) where she used RFID as part of her investigations to develop more natural relationships between hardware and software interfaces. Since joining Philips Design's Interaction Design team in Eindhoven in 1996 she has worked closely with Philips Research and Business groups in both Europe, Asia and the US on interaction concepts and new product development. In 1999 she set up and managed a reformed interactive design team developing an Experience Design approach that has evolved into being widely employed by Philips Design today. In addition to her work at Philips Lorna is also on the steering committee of the Virtueel Platform in Amsterdam and a member of the board of the 'Culture for microCredit' foundation.
