Russell Davies

Russell was born in Derby, enjoyed an uneventful childhood, did college, all that. After failing as a popstar and a joke writer he ended up in advertising and tried to do ‘interactive marketing’ way before anyone was interested. Ended up at Wieden + Kennedy working on clients like Microsoft, Nike and Honda. Then he went to work for Nike as Global Consumer Planning Director. He went freelance in 2006 and works with shadowy organisations like the Open Intelligence Agency and the Really Interesting Group. He also writes eggbaconchipsandbeans occasionally organises ‘Interesting’ conferences, plays with things like speechification, dawdlr and slowpoke and does columns for Campaign magazine and Wired UK.

Toby Barnes, Mudlark

After helping to launch Emap’s Internet publishing group, Toby worked at NTL founding their interactive division; launching the world’s first digital interactive TV service and multi-platform gaming product. Moving to MTV Networks Europe, Toby created a number of innovative entertainment web sites, headed their interactive division, won a BAFTA and brought a strategic approach to their mobile ideas. After a brief stint on the Pacific Rim, as surfer, film maker, consultant and beach bum Toby returned to the UK and his new base in the Midlands. Here he has worked with a number of the region’s independent digital media companies, and after working as Executive Producer at EM Media, the regional screen agency in the Midlands, Toby created Videogames & Digital Media Consultancy Pixel-Lab. In 2008 Toby, along with Active Ingredient and Charles Hunter, set up Mudlark - a production company obsessed with making life playable.

Karsten Schmidt, PostSpectacular

Karsten Schmidt (aka toxi) is a software developer, designer and artist with particular interest in computational design. For the past 16 years he’s been laterally involved in a wide range of digital disciplines. With his studio PostSpectacular, he is actively exploring possibilities at the intersection of design, art and software development. Collaborating cross-disciplinary with other creative minds, Karsten’s design approach is based on treating ideas as software at the heart, which in turn informs all other facets of each project. When not creating, he travels the world consulting companies and developer & designer communities about open source and employing collaborative tools. Karsten has been a key contributor to the Processing.org project and to various books about programming and graphic design, and his work has been featured in the press and exhibited internationally, including the MoMA, New York.

Adrian McEwan, MCNQ

With a life-long interest in technology, Adrian McEwen spent the early part of his career building web browsers for mobile phones with a startup that was acquired by Microsoft in the late 90s. After a few years with Microsoft he left to start MCQN Ltd, a consultancy working at the intersection of web, mobile and ubiquitous computing to help companies get to grips with the Internet of Things. This work has ranged from leading a team to prototype a new phone user-interface for Motorola, connecting the River Mersey to Twitter and developing hardware to monitor electricity usage and graph it on the Internet.
(CC: Image via Flickr courtesy of Nick O’Leary)

James Boardwell, Rattle Research

James is an expert in social research and design methods. Prior to Rattle he worked at the BBC as a Research Manager and Producer. He is currently researching communications hierachies and mobile use.

Daniel Heaf, Channel 4

Daniel Heaf is a creative technologist. He was Interactive Editor for the award-winning BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra and director of digital ventures at BBC Wordwide during the aquisition of Lonelty Planet. He’s currently working for 4iP, Channel 4’s £50M digital innovation fund. He lives in North London with his wife and step daughter.

Matt Watkins, Mudlark

Matt Watkins is an artist, developer and designer. His role as Creative Technical Director and co-founder of Active Ingredient involves responsibility for the creative and technical delivery of the work. He is also a lecturer in Multimedia and sometime actor.

Matthew Somerville, Dracos

Matthew lives in the UK, working from home planning, designing and programming websites, currently mostly for mySociety. He grew up in Manchester and then studied Maths at Trinity College, Oxford for four years. He then moved to Cheltenham where he was a civil servant, but gave that up in March 2006 when he realised that open-access democracy and actually getting to create stuff was more fun and rewarding.

Pete Ashton, Blogger

Pete Ashton is a blogger and social media advisor based in Birmingham specialising in helping individuals, businesses and organisations understand, follow and engage with the social internet. He set up Created in Birmingham, a blog linking up the city’s creative and artistic communities, and ran it for a year, joint-winning the Guardian Media award for best blog in 2008.

Nikki Pugh, BARG & W i d e O p e n S p a c e

Nikki has have recently completed degrees in both Materials Science and Art and Design and now works as a freelance artist operating across Art, Science, Technology and the gaps between.

Her work usually places an emphasis on process rather than a finished product as she is primarily interested in how people relate to – and interact with - the things around them (physical landscapes, social contexts, objects, other people..).