Sustainability, as well as digitalisation, are two of the hot topics at the moment. Yet, they are sometimes contradicting. Burak Can is researcher and founder of sustainably.io. In his PechaKucha presentation, he explores how we can stop ruining ourselves and fare the new digital revolution towards better shores by merging sustainability and digitalisation. 

Chitranshi Khandalkar, mechanical engineering student, handles the issue of increasing automation all around and its impending impact on the employment and employability.

Allan Young is a Green Party councillor for Govan. He is the Glasgow Greens spokesperson on the economy and workforce and sits on the City Administration Committee. Allan’s background is in campaigning, policy and research around a range of issues including human rights, refugees and antipoverty work. He lives in Ibrox with his wife Rachael and his two cats.

Still Not Quite is a fictional online marketplace for objects and ideas from plausible futures. SNQ team believes that the design of the future of objects and services should be as democratic as possible and aims to open the possibility to explore the future to a larger public. To do this Still Not Quite aims to collaborate with communities, organisations and institutions and explore future issues close to their area of expertise. Their research is made public via a fictional online department store, where it is possible to browse through products from different futures they collaboratively explored.

Over the last two years Sophia Grant has been working in the Service Design and Innovation Directorate at Skills Development Scotland to define the skills that Scotland’s people will need to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution, and to consider how these skills will be embedded in SDS’s apprenticeship qualifications. Before arriving in Scotland, Sophia worked for the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs where she applied human-centred design to transform public services relating to passports, citizenship and births, deaths and marriages.

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.

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.

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.