Social Networks of Tomorrow: Building the Decentralized Web

Expert in user research

Independent user researcher, Doctor in political communication and digital governance, Kheira worked as a product manager and then as a user researcher in the British Parliament and Government.
Since 2018, she accompanies private companies, teaches Lean UX practices in schools and in companies. In all her missions, Kheira proposes a user-centered approach in the design and development of digital services.

Designer, design researcher

Through "embodied design" methods (see embodied design), Juan pushes participants to consider social media/networks beyond screens
and to think critically about their broader socio-cultural impact.

Juan is a design researcher and doctoral assistant at EPFL (Lausanne) and HEAD (Geneva), where he explores the role of decentralized technologies on spatial practices. Juan works at the intersection between art and design and organizes critical workshops on contemporary technologies and debates around contemporary editorial practices. He designs interactive installations using the programming tools he develops. He is co-founder of Station of Commons, a research project about digital commons.

Project manager, presentation coach

As part of the program, Isadora will help structure and confidently deliver the final project presentations.

Working for the French Development Agency (AFD), Isadora develops, structures and facilitates accelerated and peer-to-peer training programs, mainly for entrepreneurs and change agents. Isadora strongly advocates the need to deploy programs based on the idea of collective intelligence, developed between peers to multiply the impact of social innovation projects. Previously, Isadora spent 15 years honing her expertise in structuring, financing and monitoring social innovation projects in emerging countries (particularly in Africa and Latin America), and more specifically in the areas of education and innovative financing.

Creator, educator

Jon will co-host a Metaverse workshop with Miller Klitsner and Vytas Jankauskas
Technology products and services are becoming increasingly complex. Jon C Flint's interests as a designer lie in dissecting this complexity and distilling it into a simple, unique physical form. Anchored in the domestic space, often the essential stop for new technologies to impact our lives. These manifest as: IoT devices, mirrors, vendor cases, workshops and even rooms of the future. From 2015-2018, Jon worked as a prototypical designer at the renowned design and empirical futures research studio: Superflux. Over the years, he has exhibited work at the Tate Exchange, the V&A, the Asia Culture Center, the CCCB, as well as various conferences and workshops from Montreal, Canada to Shanghai, China.

Sarah Friend is an artist and software engineer, specializing in blockchain and the P2P (peer-to-peer) web.
She is a participant in the Berlin Artist Program, is co-founder and co-curator of the Ender Gallery (an artist residency that takes place within the game Minecraft), an alumna of the Recurse Centre - a retreat for programmers - and organizer of Our Networks, a conference on all aspects of the web are distributed.

Miller will co-facilitate a Metaverse workshop, with Jon Flint and Vytas Jankauskas

Miller Klitsner is an artist and game developer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. From an early age, he worked in the toy and game industry as a tester and prototyper for his family's business. During his undergraduate studies at UCLA, he dabbled in multiple fields, from documentary to performance, stop motion animation, game development and design. Since then, he has worked as an augmented reality developer, concept artist, game designer, and instructor, in Los Angeles. In 2019, he left Los Angeles to complete a brief fellowship in Shanghai, where he helped develop Unknown, a large-scale installation, with Chronus Art Center in collaboration with Beijing sculptor Yin Xiuzhen. In 2020, he returned to Los Angeles, where he continued his work on augmented reality and taught courses on immersive interactive media at the UCLA Game Lab and Cal Arts.

Communication & social sustainability designer

Alexia will support students in their design process and outcomes, and assist with course coordination.

Alexia is a communication designer. Trained in graphic design, visual didactics and sustainability, she has developed an interest in social sustainability and citizen empowerment. Her professional experience in both the corporate (advertising, fashion and entertainment) and social (food activists, live arts and healthcare) fields has trained her to shape and champion interdisciplinary creative concepts, using co-creation, speculative design and service design.

Cultural anthropologist, ethnographer

Nicolas will give a masterclass on interdisciplinary fieldwork based on observation.

Nicolas Nova is an associate professor at the Haute-Ecole d'Art et de Design (HEAD - Geneva) where he teaches the anthropology of digital cultures, ethnography and design research. He is also co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory, a design fiction agency. His latest books are "Dr. Smartphone: an Ethnography of Mobile Repair Shops" (IDP, Lausanne) and "A Bestiary of the Anthropocene" produced with the collective Disnovation.org and published by Onomatopee (Eindhoven).

Designer, researcher

David will be handling the UX side of the program.

David Benqué is a designer and researcher from Paris FR living and working in London UK. He has a background in graphic design (BA) and speculative design (MA RCA).

He is currently the project manager of CryptPad, an end-to-end encrypted collaborative office suite.

He holds a PhD (2020) from the Royal College of Art, with a practical research on algorithmic systems, using diagrams as a form of media archaeology. He has since continued this work independently under the name of the Institute for Diagram Studies.

Editor and independent researcher

Justin will support students in observation and community-related fieldwork.

Justin Pickard is a freelance researcher and writer. He holds a PhD in Infrastructure Policy and Urban Life from the Institute of Development Studies, UK.
From 2014-18, Justin was co-director of Strange Telemetry, a research firm conducting forward-looking projects for policy and innovation. His current work tackles meaning-making and uncertainty, using horizon scanning, qualitative research methods, writing, and experimental publishing.

Training Manager

Vytas Jankauskas is an artist-designer working on digital related topics. He is responsible for training at the Innovation Lab at La Plateforme in Marseille and also responsible for the Digital Pool at the Haute école d'art et de design in Geneva.
Previously he ran a creative research lab at Chronus Art Center in Shanghai, and worked as a designer-researcher at Superflux, an internationally recognized fictional design studio in London.

Tri.co is a social network that allows upcyclers to buy or collect materials, sell their creations and learn from user-generated tutorials.
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