Chris Speed is Chair of Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh where he collaborates with a wide variety of partners to explore how design provides methods to adapt, and create products and services with a networked society. He is especially favours trangressive design interventions, to help identify and promote the values we care about most, including the design for the blockchain, an application for sham marriages, and an SMS platform for shoplifting. Chris is co-editor of the journal Ubiquity and co-directs the Design Informatics Research Centre that is home to a combination of researchers working across the fields of interaction design, temporal design, anthropology, software engineering and digital architecture, as well as the PhD, MA/MFA and MSc and Advanced MSc programmes.

Isabella Bunnell is a communications designer at design agency, Snook. She works on making their stories faster, smarter, and better looking : to new and familiar faces. Outside of this she works as a illustrator, working for clients big and small. Her visual work explores equality, humour and colour and she usually finds herself at the intersection of all three.

The Scottish Artists Union is the ONLY representative voice for visual and applied artists in Scotland. Artists tend to work alone, individually we have little influence or political ‘clout’. Together we can make policy-makers appreciate the needs and importance of artists in the Scottish cultural, social and economic scene. On top of that you get free public liability and professional indemnity insurance, access to our free learning and professional development programme and a range of benefits.

John McHhugh introduces and talks about his business Gigly. As well as the issues of automation in the workplace of the future and his ideas on handling them through technology.

Citizen’s Basic Income Network Scotland are a charity supporting the Basic Income movement in Scotland. We work with a network of Basic Income advocates - providing training and a platform for discussion. We lend our expertise to government and share the stories of people who would benefit from a Basic Income.

Shona Macnaughton is an artist based in Glasgow. Her practice is rooted in performance, writing and film, and questions of technology, subjectivity and labour. She explores the political conditions around specific architectures and institutional frameworks. Alongside this she takes part in projects with the collective Eastern Surf. Forthcoming projects include We Nurture, a commission from Collective gallery, Edinburgh.

Oscar McKay is a recent graduate of GSA’s product design course and fascinated in speculating on what’s going to come next. In his dissertation, he explored how life will be for casual workers in the future. His Pecha Kucha will focus on the social change required for a better future relationship to un-employment.

Brian Weaver’s previous paid employment includes drug sales, money lender, and cowboy. In his fifties he managed the Business Starts programme for Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and in his sixties he fronted HISEZ, which gives business advice to social enterprises, while managing to be a profitable, not-for-profit business in its own right. Impact Hub Inverness continues the work of HISEZ, but also provides a small co-working space with 100 partners world-wide. Brian didn’t predict the fax, the computer or the mobile phone, and doesn’t have a clue about what will come next.