Dave Birss feels uncomfortable being asked what he does because he’s never entirely certain himself. He envies those people who can describe what they do in an elevator ride. He can kind of do it in a wheezing climb up 17 flights of stairs. So this is an incomplete and rambling summary.

Dave writes books. His latest book, Friction, which he co-wrote with Soon Yu, has just been released in the US. His copies won’t be delivered to London for another month (thanks Amazon). He’s also the author of How To Get To Great Ideas, Iconic Advantage and A User Guide To The Creative Mind. And he’s just started work on his next book about curiosity.

Dave is also an educator. He has several courses on LinkedIn Learning. And he’s also started releasing his own courses on davebirss.com. During lockdown he launched Virtual Presenting Academy to show people how to come across professionally on a webcam. His approach has gained him a lot of attention and he now advises companies on their pitches and virtual events.

He’s also a film-maker, father, international catwalk model and occasional liar.

davebirss.com

Katy Leeson is the former Managing Director of Social Chain. Following her appointment, Katy made the Northern Power List, was shortlisted for Northern Power Women’s Transformational Leader award and was listed as one of the Top 22 Businesswomen to Watch in 2022.

Katy has long been vocal across her social platforms in regards to the challenges people face within leadership positions, as well as advocating for more purposeful and value-led social media usage. A key component of this is her podcast ‘I Shouldn’t Say This, But’ which is dedicated to the difficult conversations we can all relate to but struggle to have – the most recent season of which is dedicated to re-defining social media as a force for good.

Katy is dedicated to breaking down barriers in leadership and making the workplace a kinder, more human-focused place in which every member of every team can thrive as their true selves. A big believer in the concept of ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’, Katy is using her digital platform to show over 70,000 people that anyone can be a good leader, so long as they remain rooted in empathy.

www.katyleeson.com

“If I was walking down the street and I saw somebody with a jetpack fly over me, I’d believe anything’s possible.

I’d be inspired.

Doesn’t that make the world a better place?”

This isn’t Dean’s quote – it’s from the Disney film Tomorrowland. The movie itself is entertaining, visually stunning, but most importantly… it’s inspirational.

That’s what Dean Johnson has brought to brands – and real people – for the past three decades. He has pushed boundaries in Design, Technology and Innovation to design the future through emerging technology, dynamic storytelling and a deep understanding of the creative industry.

Dean is shaping the connected future for Film, TV, Automotive, Publishing, Music, Education and Leisure sectors with the emphasis on user experience and engagement. Dean is a Fellow and President Elect of the Chartered Society of Designers, a Mentor for the British Fashion Council and Startup Sesame, Ambassador for the European Startup Prize for Mobility and his book ‘Digital Publishing: The Next Steps’ has been in the Apple Books Design top 20 for the past 10 years.

Continuing to push boundaries in design and technology, Dean spent 48 hours in Virtual Reality in 2017 and has built a full body XR Immersion Suit featuring haptics, AR, VR, Bionic enhancements and a flame thrower. He’s already living in the future.

www.activrightbrain.com

Victoria has an insatiable curiosity for the exceptional, which explains her unique and innovative approach to experience.

A consultant, advisor and experience designer to the brands she works with, Victoria’s imagination and ideas are described as an unlimited vault of potential and possibility.

There are five fundamentals that lie at the core of the work she does:

• Always human centred.
• Always fuelled by imagination.
• Always distinguished by difference.
• Always future thinking. 
• Always delivers on promise.

The intersection of these equal unique, extraordinary, meaningful experiences.

In today’s experience economy, difference is a superpower and Victoria empowers her clients to deliver different through experience and experiential led strategies that surprise and delight in experience, increase brand engagement, sentiment, purchases, and loyalty.

Where depleting attention has become a currency, imagination is a commodity and Victoria’s work is to imagine, advise, design, and create experiences that capture attention, keep it, and deliver beyond exceptional.

She has worked with an array of clients, from boutique experiential experiences and projects with market leaders such as Warner Bros, Aston Martin, Kempinski Hotels & Resorts and the like, to ultra-high net worth individuals, Victoria’s work is soaked in variety, creativity and imagination.

A thought leader, keynote speaker and lifelong researcher, you will find Victoria always asking one underlying question: How can we make this extraordinary?

www.victoriatayl.uk

Dutch artist and innovator Daan Roosegaarde is a creative thinker and maker of social designs which explore the relation between people, technology and space. He founded Studio Roosegaarde in 2007, where he works with his team of designers and engineers towards a better future. Together they develop ‘Landscapes of the Future’ building smart sustainable prototypes for the cities of tomorrow. 

Roosegaarde has been driven by nature’s gifts such as light emitting fireflies and jellyfish since an early age. His fascination for nature and technology is reflected in his iconic designs such as Waterlicht (a virtual flood) and Smog Free Project (the largest outdoor air purifier in the world which makes jewellery from smog) and Space Waste Lab (the mission to upcycle junk that floats in space). 

Roosegaarde graduated from The Berlage Institute with a master in architecture. He is a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, a visiting professor at several universities, was selected by Forbes and Good 100 as a creative change maker and named Artist of the Year 2016 in The Netherlands. 

Roosegaarde has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the Shenzhen Global Design Award, Ethics Ethical Award, World OMOSIROI Award Japan, Dezeen Award, London Design Innovation Medal, DFA Gold and Grand Award Hong Kong, LIT 2017 Lighting Designer of the Year Award, D&AD Awards 2017, the World Technology Award, two Dutch Design Awards, the Charlotte Köhler Award, and China’s Most Successful Design Award. He has exhibited at the Design Museum London, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Tate Modern, Tokyo National Museum, Le Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris, Victoria & Albert Museum, and various public spaces across the globe. 

Daan Roosegaarde frequently shares his visionary ideas at conferences across the world such as TED, World Economic Forum and NASA. The video for his TED 2017 talk titled “A smog vacuum cleaner and other magical city designs” has 1.1 million views. Recently a new monograph of Daan Roosegaarde was published by Phaidon.

 www.studioroosegaarde.net

Sir Paul Collier is a Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, and a Director of the International Growth Centre, and the ESRC research network, Social Macroeconomics. 

His research covers the transformation from poverty to prosperity; state fragility; the implications of group psychology for development; migration and refugees; urbanization in poor countries and the crisis in modern capitalism, which is the subject of his book, “The Future of Capitalism”. 

Sir Paul received a knighthood in 2014 for services to promoting research and policy change in Africa and has been listed as one of the hundred most influential public thinkers.

The video for his TED 2008 talk titled “The ‘bottom billion’” has 1.6 million views.

www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/people/paul-collier 

Michael G Jacobides is the Sir Donald Gordon Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation and Professor of Strategy at London Business School. He is Academic Advisor to the Boston Consulting Group, Visiting Scholar at the New York Fed, and Visiting Fellow at Cambridge. 

In 2021 he was selected as one of the Thinkers50, the top 50 business and management thinkers worldwide, and is a leading expert on business ecosystems, and how firms navigate shifting, digital environments. 

A frequent keynote speaker, he engages in corporate, industry, and broad-appeal events such as TEDx and the Global Drucker Forum. 

A winner of the 2018 Theory to Practice Award from the StrategieForum, he advises disruptive start-ups and Fortune500 firms alike in Europe, the US and Asia. He works on thought leadership with consultants such as McKinsey, IDEO, Accenture, PwC, Deloitte, Keystone and ECSi, and on strategy with corporates such as Haier, Huawei, Spotify, MasMovil, Vodafone, Nokia, SAP, Enel, Santander, Helvetia, Zurich, CS, Airbus, DeBeers, Burberry, MerckSerono and the NHS.  

He has visited Harvard, NYU, Cambridge, Imperial, Bocconi and Wharton, where he obtained his PhD, after studying at Athens, Cambridge and Stanford. His work, which has received the Sloan Foundation Award, has appeared in the top academic journals such as SMJ, AMJ, AMR, OrgSci and Industrial & Corporate Change, where he is a co-Editor, as well as HBR and FT. He appears on CNN and BBC. 

On policy, he has worked with the UK parliament (on the future of financial services), the European Council (on innovation in Europe) and has spearheaded RedesignGreece. He served on the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum (WEF), he is a co-author of the WEF’s White Paper on Digital Platforms and Ecosystems, and has presented in the Davos Annual meetings.

www.jacobides.com

Pete Blackshaw is a globally recognized digital brand builder, innovator, futurist, author and “urgent optimist.”

He leads with two core beliefs: “Trust your inner consumer” and “Understand how startups work — how they think, design, exploit data, and iterate — and then apply that understanding to everything you do.” These beliefs have been cornerstones of his career. He presently serves as CEO of Cincinnati startup catalyst and venture fund Cintrifuse. In his role as Cintrifuse CEO, Pete draws heavily on his experience as both a corporate leader and an entrepreneur. “Being able to see the world from both vantage points,” he says, “enables me to help entrepreneurs looking for business and corporate leaders looking for innovation. It’s a personal high when we help make these partnerships work.” 

Earlier he served as Global Vice President of Digital and Social Media of Nestlé, based in Switzerland. He guided digital innovation for hundreds of other Nestlé brands while creating and leading the company’s industry-recognized Digital Acceleration Team (DAT), Silicon Valley Innovation Outpost (SVIO), and Open Innovation Platform (Henri@Nestle). 

Before Nestlé, Pete served as CMO of NM Incite, a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey. Earlier in his career, he co-founded Procter & Gamble’s digital marketing organization and then left P&G to launch PlanetFeedback.com, one of the web’s first consumer-feedback portals. He also co-founded the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). He’s a two-time Cannes Innovation Lion Juror. He recently served as an Innovation Juror at the 2019 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. 

Pete is the author of Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000: Running a Business in Today’s Consumer-Driven World, and he is a featured columnist for Advertising Age. He was a 2015 MediaPost “Online All Star” Winner, a 2014 inductee of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Hall of Fame, and a 2010 Grand Prize winner of the “Great Minds” award from the Advertising Research Foundation. Most recently, he was inducted into the American Marketing Association’s “Cincinnati Marketing Legends” Hall of Fame. Pete is a graduate of Harvard Business School and the University of California, Santa Cruz. He and his family live in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Fredrik Härén has spent the last 25+ years traveling the world to understand human creativity. 

He has been invited to speak on the topic of creativity more than 2,000 times, by clients in 70 countries on 6 continents. He has worked with hundreds of companies including VISA, HP, KPMG, BMW and IKEA. Was awarded “Speaker of the Year” in Sweden and was included in “The Top Ten Best Swedish Speakers Ever”.

He is the author of 10 books, including “The Idea Book” which was included in “The 100 Best Business Books of All Time”.

www.fredrikharen.com

Christopher S. Penn is an authority on analytics, digital marketing, marketing technology, data science, and machine learning. A recognized thought leader, best-selling author, and keynote speaker, he has shaped five key fields in the marketing industry: Google Analytics adoption, data-driven marketing and PR, modern email marketing, marketing data science, and artificial intelligence/machine learning in marketing. As co-founder and Chief Data Scientist of Trust Insights, he is responsible for the creation of products and services, creation and maintenance of all code and intellectual property, technology and marketing strategy, brand awareness, and research & development.

Mr. Penn is a 2022, five-time IBM Champion in IBM Data and AI, a Brand24 Top 100 Digital Marketer, an Onalytica Top 100 AI in Marketing influencer, and co-host of the award-winning Marketing Over Coffee marketing podcast. Prior to co-founding Trust Insights, he built the marketing for a series of startups with a 100% successful exit rate in the financial services, SaaS software, and public relations industries. His work has served brands such as Twitter, T-Mobile, Citrix Systems, GoDaddy, AAA, McDonald’s, and many others.

Mr. Penn is an IBM Watson Machine Learning Certified Professional, a Google Analytics Certified Professional, a Google Ads Certified Professional, a Google Digital Sales Certified Professional, and a Hubspot Inbound Certified Professional. He is the author of over two dozen marketing books including bestsellers such as AI for Marketers: A Primer and Introduction, Marketing White Belt: Basics for the Digital Marketer, Marketing Red Belt: Connecting With Your Creative Mind, and Marketing Blue Belt: From Data Zero to Marketing Hero, and Leading Innovation.

www.christopherspenn.com