Adrian Hon is an English writer and game designer, known for his expertise in alternate reality games and transmedia storytelling. As the CEO of Six to Start, he created the bestselling fitness game “Zombies, Run!” and authored books like “You’ve Been Played” (2022) and “A History of the Future in 100 Objects” (2020). He studied neuroscience at Cambridge, UCSD, and Oxford, and has spoken at TED, Long Now Foundation, GoogleX, and Disney Imagineering.
Robin Allenson is a serial entrepreneur who studied AI at University of Edinburgh in the early 90s, and went on to found a series of AI-powered ventures. His current venture Similar.ai uses AI to automate the important and often laborious process of optimizing web sites for SEO.
Douglas Hofstadter is a professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature at Indiana University in Bloomington. His research into cognitive science includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics. His 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid won both the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. His AI interests explore the subtlest and most slippery aspects of human intelligence, as embodied in deceptively deep analogy problems like ABC is to ABD as XYZ is to what?
Dr. Julie Gurner is an executive performance coach with a Doctorate in Psychology. She has coached top-percentile executives, talent, and teams operating in fast-paced, competitive environments for over ten years, helping her clients unlock peak performance. She publishes the Ultra Successful newsletter on Substack.
Joakim Achrén, “the gaming startup guy”, is a games investor, and founder of Elite Game Developers, which provides advice for game founders. He co-founded Next Games (which was acquired by Netflix), and worked as Director of Analytics at Supercell.
Pavel Samsonov is a design architect and UX Practice Lead at Amazon Web Services (AWS) based in New York City. With a background in graphic design and a passion for human-computer interaction, Pavel has spent the last three years at AWS helping large companies adopt cloud computing and build innovative products using design methods. His professional accomplishments include being named a top UX designer by prominent industry publications, and his work has been featured in major design exhibitions and conferences worldwide. In addition to his work at AWS, Pavel is also a contributor to UX Collective, a prominent online publication in the design community.
Kevin Kelly is a writer, futurist, and Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He co-founded Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor for its first seven years. His books include The Inevitable, about future trends, and What Technology Wants, a theory of technology. He is founder of the popular Cool Tools website, which has been reviewing tools daily for 20 years. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a subscriber-supported journal of unorthodox conceptual news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers’ Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985.
Celia Hodent, a Game UX Strategist with a PhD in Psychology, has dedicated 15 years of her career to applying user experience (UX) and cognitive science in product development, particularly in the realm of video games. Her impressive portfolio includes her role as Director of UX at Epic Games for Fortnite, as well as work on well-known franchises such as Star Wars: 1313 at LucasArts and Rainbow 6 at Ubisoft. Hodent has shared her expertise with the world in her book, The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX can Impact Video Game Design.
Vinayak Joglekar is head of India operations and chief technology officer at Excellarate, with more than three decades of professional software development and delivery experience.
Joglekar earned his mechanical engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology and a master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Management and mentors bright minds in software development and product delivery.
Osama Dorias is a Lead Content Designer at Blizzard Entertainment. In the past, he’s worked at Unity, Warner Brothers, Gameloft, GEE Media, Ubisoft, and Minority Media. He also teaches game design at Dawson College and loves to empower people in expressing themselves through game-making, especially marginalized people and causes.
