Session 1: FinTech Near Futures
This session focuses on understanding blockchain and distributed ledger technologies and discusses their implications for economic and financial futures.
Sarah Meiklejohn is a Reader in Cryptography and Security at University College London. She has worked on topics such as anonymity and criminal abuses in cryptocurrencies, privacy-enhancing technologies, and bringing transparency to shared systems.
Gavin Littlejohn is a fintech entrepreneur with experience of developing innovative solutions to mass market problems. Gavin was appointed as Convenor of the Fintech Stakeholder Group of the UK Open Banking Implementation Entity in October 2016. He serves as a Director and Non-Executive Chairman of the Financial Data and Technology Association www.fdata.org.uk where he successfully led the campaign to have account aggregation added to PSD2. Gavin is well-renowned as the Founder of Money Dashboard, and acted as its CEO until July 2015.
Dug Campbell is a freelance blockchain consultant and writer. In 2014, he started the Scottish Blockchain Meetup, followed by the Scottish Bitcoin Conference and organised the first Ethereum meetups in Scotland. He gave one of the earliest TEDx talks on Bitcoin and still provides commentary to a range of press outlets on the blockchain scene. In a past life he’s been a lawyer with an MBA and a product manager in a FinTech startup.
Chaired by Kristen Bennie who conceived and led the creation of Open Experience at RBS. Open Experience is a place where people from across the organisation and elsewhere come together to collaborate, explore, design and develop new opportunities. Kristen’s career spans roles in agency, software and brand always working at the intersection of design and technology.
Session 2: Policy, Value and New Economics
This session explores the societal challenges and opportunities these new economic shifts raise for councils, governments and its citizens.
Phil Godsiff is a Senior Research Fellow working for the Surrey Centre for the Digital Economy in the Business School at the University of Surrey. His research interests are the disruptive influences on the economy and society of distributed ledger technology – aka Blockchain which underlies crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin. He was a member of the panel preparing the Government Office for Science report – Distributed Ledger Technology: beyond blockchain
Alexandre Pólvora is a Policy Analyst and Researcher at the EU Policy Lab of the Joint Research Centre, European Commission, with current focus on participatory and distributed technology models and collaborative and transdisciplinary frameworks for policy advice. Main research and publication fields ranging from everyday life studies and qualitative social analysis to co-creation and action research.
Doreen Grove leads Scotland’s involvement with the Open Government Partnership. Globally OGP is driving changes that ensure people are able to see, understand and influence the decisions that affect them. In Scotland, this supports public service reform, improved democracy, financial transparency and the innovative use of technology and participative processes.
Chaired by Duncan McCann who works for the New Economics Foundation researching the future of money, modern land reform and the impact of AI, big data and digital platforms. He is the author of the Scotpound proposal and co-author of People Powered Money.
Session 3: Cultures of Commodification
This session presents a series of creative explorations reconsidering and challenging norms, practices and cultures of commodification and their value(s).
Max Dovey is an artist, researcher and lecturer specialising in the politics of data and algorithmic governance. His works explore the political narratives that emerge from technology and digital culture and manifest into situated projects – bars, game-shows, banks and other participatory scenarios. He is an affiliated researcher at the Institute of Network Cultures and regularly writes for Open Democracy, Imperica & Furtherfield.
Pip Thornton is a PhD student in Geopolitics and Cyber Security at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her thesis ‘Language in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction’ explores the linguistic and political implications of the digitisation and monetisation of language by companies such as Google.
Dominic Smith is an artist and curator whose practice involves a hands-on, open and interrogative approach to working in the overlapping fields of art & technology. This has presented itself as ad-hoc artists groups, surreptitious apocalypse proof P2P systems, drone based investigations and recent research into block chain technologies.
Chaired by Ruth Catlow who is an artist, writer and, curator working with emancipatory network cultures, practices and poetics. She is the co-founder, co-director of Furtherfield.