What John does best is help companies and their people, find the courage and the sense of humor to consider whole new, wrong ways of bringing their stories, ideas, and innovations out into the world. John feels so strongly about the value of thinking wrong that he created a program called Project M that is designed to inspire and educate young designers, writers, photographers, and filmmakers by proving that their work—especially their wrongest thinking—can have a positive and significant impact on the world. Project M has developed projects to help a conservation area in Costa Rica, Micro-financing in Ghana, New Orleans after Katrina, the community of East Baltimore, connecting households to fresh water in Hale County Alabama and recently addressing the the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Alabama. In his career, John has won more than 250 design awards, was nominated for 2 National Design Awards from the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, served on the AIGA National Board of Directors, and teaches at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has acquired six of his projects and staged a solo exhibition in 2000. In addition, John was awarded the Skandalaris Award for Design Entrepreneurship from Washington University in St. Louis in 2009 and is a member of AGI (Alliance Graphique International).

Liz Danzico is equal parts designer, educator, and editor. She is chair and co-founder of the MFA in Interaction Design Program at the School of Visual Arts. She is an independent consultant in New York, columnist for Interactions Magazine, on the boards of Rosenfeld Media and Design Ignites Change, and writes and lectures widely. She’s been user experience director at Happy Cog editor-in-chief for Boxes and Arrows, editor-in-chief for A Brief Message, and an advisory board member of the Information Architecture Institute, adjunct faculty at the New School University and the Fashion Institute of Technology. In the past, Liz directed experience strategy for AIGA, Before that, she directed the information architecture teams at Barnes & Noble.com and Razorfish New York. She has a BA from Pennsylvania State University and an MA from Carnegie Mellon University. Liz has written for Adobe, AIGA Journal of Design, UX Matters, and writes ongoing for Bobulate.com.

Meredith Davis is Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in Graphic Design. She formerly held the position of Department Head in Graphic Design and Director of the Interdisciplinary PhD in Design program and holds graduate degrees from Cranbrook Academy of Art and Pennsylvania State University. Meredith is a fellow and 2005 national medalist of the AIGA, a former AIGA board member, and former president of the American Center for Design and the Graphic Design Education Association. She recently served as a member of the organizing committee for the AIGA conference, New Contexts/New Practices and on the design futures working group for the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. Meredith is recipient of more than 50 national and international design awards and a frequent author and lecturer on design and design education. She serves on the editorial board for Design Issues and is currently authoring a college textbook series on design for Thames and Hudson, Ltd.

Anthony is professor and head of the Design Interactions department at the Royal College of Art in London. He is also a partner in the design studio Dunne & Raby. He studied Industrial Design at the RCA before working at Sony Design in Tokyo. He later completed a PhD in Computer Related Design at the RCA and was a founding member of the CRD Research Studio where he worked as a Senior Research Fellow leading EU and industry funded research projects. His projects with Fiona Raby use design as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of emerging technologies. Their projects have been exhibited and published internationally and are in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Frac Ile-de-France and Fnac. Anthony was awarded the Sir Misha Black Award for Innovation in Design Education in 2009.

Juan-Carlos Fernández was born and raised in Mexico City. He studied Graphic Design at Universidad Iberoamericana and was a Design Director at Design Center/Zimat. He conducted post-graduate studies at Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, California on Corporate Identity. After finishing his MFA, Juan Carlos was hired by Addison Design Company and moved to New York. Two years later he was hired by Siegel & Gale as Vice President Design Director. During his 5-year stay in New York, Juan Carlos studied a Certificate in Marketing at New York University. In 1999, Juan Carlos went back to Mexico and founded Ideograma, a positioning and corporate identity consulting firm. Since summer of 2009, Juan Carlos moved to Montreal to open the first Ideograma office abroad. He continues his work as creative director of the consultancy and develops the Canadian market. He continuously gives lectures on corporate identity at design conferences and universities nationally and abroad.

Originally a graphic designer Gillian Crampton Smith started her interaction design career in 1981, designing and programming a magazine layout programme for the Apple II. This experience made her passionate about bringing graphic design knowledge to the design of digital products, systems and services.

Her career since, at St Martin's and the Royal College of Art in London and the Institute founded by Telecom Italia and Olivetti in Ivrea, has concentrated on the development of this theme: encouraging design students to think out of the box about the potential of digital technologies and persuading companies that design can go beyond problem solving. She has always enjoyed collaboration between business and academia, believing that both have much to learn from each other. Her collaborations have included companies such as Apple Computer, Interval Research, H-Farm, IDEO; and her students are to be found in many of the leading Interaction design studios and companies worldwide.

For the past five years she and Philip Tabor have run the interaction design path in the Graduate Programme in Visual and Multimedia Communication at Venice's Iuav University.

Dr Troy Innocent is a world builder, iconographer and reality newbie. Since 1989, he has been constructing languages and evolving artificial worlds. He has received numerous awards, including Honorary Mention, LIFE 2.0: Artificial Life, Spain (1999); Foreign Title Award, MMCA Multimedia Grand Prix, Japan (1998); and Honorary Mention, Prix Ars Electronica (1992). Innocent is currently Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Art & Design at Monash University, Melbourne.

Innocent has been exploring new aesthetics enabled by computers since 1989. Deconstructing and understanding the endemic properties, language and nature of the digital realm has been the underlying theme of his work. Trained as a designer and practicing as an artist, he has moved across media in works involving digital games, generative systems, artificial life, computer animation, installation, interactive media, synthetic images and sound. His work has been exhibited widely at national and international galleries, conferences, and symposia, including Ars Electronica in 2004.

Recent works include Semiomorph (ISEA02, Nagoya, Japan), Iconica; trans’forms (Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, Australia), lifeSigns: eco-system of signs and symbols (2004: Australian Culture Now, ACMI, Melbourne, Australia), Scenes from Ludea (SIGGRAPH2006, Boston, USA) and noemaflux (Ogaki Biennale, Ogaki, Japan). Troy Innocent is represented by Tolarno Galleries and Hugo Michell Gallery.
More information at troyinnocent.net

Apex Pang Soong Lin was born in Donggang Town of Pingtung County, Taiwan, in 1957. He received his M.F.A. from the Graduate Institute of Fine Arts, National Taiwan Normal University, and is currently vice president of the school. Lin has been acclaimed mentor of design in Taiwan and was the winner of the 2007 National Award for Literature and Arts. In avant-garde and contemporary design, his concentrated visual language in poster designs portraying the image of the island of Taiwan has taken the field of design of Taiwan into international realms.

Lin established Taiwan Image Poster Design Association in 1990, actively encouraging Taiwanese designers to participate in international competitions, cross-strait exhibitions, and other activities ever since. In 1993, he was listed top 12 CI designers in Asia by New DECOMAS. Then in 2002, he was honored with the ICOGRADA Achievement Award by the International Council of Graphic Design Associations. He was later listed among 100 Graphic Designers in the world by Phaidon in 2003. In 2004, he received the First Outstanding Award of Commercial by MOEA. In 2005, he was granted the Design for Asia Award by Hong Kong Design Center, as commendation of his great artistic influence in Asia.

Kees Overbeeke studied psychology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (Ma 1974). After working there, he moved to the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, where he gained his PhD (1988) on spatial perception on flat screens. He headed the group of Form Theory as Associate Professor until his move to the Department of Industrial Design of the TU/e in 2002. During the 2005-2006 academic year he was Distinguished Nierenberg Chair at Design CMU Pittsburgh, USA. In 2006 he was appointed full professor at TU/e. He now heads the Designing Quality in Interaction group (DQI). DQI consists of nine PhD-ed designers, and is one of the leading design research groups in the world. He strongly believes that design research should be theory driven, and that collaboration with industry is paramount (among others, collaboration with Philips, BMW, Unilever, Nissan, Adidas, and Microsoft). Kees Overbeeke (co-)initiated several new subjects in design research: design and emotion, funology, aesthetics of interaction, rich interaction and design and ethics. He published extensively on these subjects in journals, books and conference papers. He (co-)initiated the “Design and Emotion” and the “Designing for Pleasurable Products and Interfaces DPPI” conferences. He was keynote speaker, and member of the scientific committee, of several international conferences, and has been plenary speaker at CHI 2009 in Boston, USA. He is also editor and member of the editorial board of several leading international design journals.

Dean is Creative Director and Co-founder of Alt Group, a multidisciplinary design studio based in Auckland, New Zealand. The studio works in CMYK, RGB and things you bump into. Alt doesn't like using computers that much; they just have to use them because everybody else has one. Alt likes the social life of ideas, collaborating with other people, because the problem with working by yourself is the echo. Alt Group has been recognized in over 250 national and international awards, including the Red Dot Grand Prix, Cannes Design Gold Lion, AGDA Pinnacles, ADC Gold Cube, Graphis Platinum, Type Directors Club, TokyoTDC, One Show Pencils, AIGA and the Webbys. Dean is a member of the AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale), and in 2010 was awarded the John Britten Black Pin, the highest accolade given by The Designers Institute of New Zealand. Alts’ work has been featured in leading international design publications including the ID Design Annual and Creative Review and was named the Australasian Design Agency of the Year in CREATIVE’s Hotshop 2010 Awards.

Vibeke Sorensen is an artist working in digital multimedia and computer animation, interactive architectural installation and visual-music performance. Her work in experimental new media spans four decades and has been published and exhibited worldwide, including in books, galleries, museums, conferences, performances, film festivals, television, and the internet. From 1984-1994, she was Founding Director of the Computer Animation Laboratory in the School of Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts, and from 1994-2005 she was Professor and Founding Chair of the Division of Animation and Digital Arts in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. Sorensen is a 2001 Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in Film/Video/Multimedia and the 2005 Knight Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Intel, the USC Annenberg Center for Communication and Zumberge Fund for Innovation in Research. She was Chair of the 2007 ACM SIGGRAPH Art Gallery: Global Eyes, and from 2007 – 2009 the Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo. Currently, she is Professor and Chair of the School of Art, Design and Media, at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Ellen Wagner is a learning industry analyst with a passion for sustaining innovation and accelerating enterprise adoption of technologies for education, training and performance support. Ellen Wagner is a Partner and Principal Analyst for Sage Road Solutions. She is responsible for learning industry market trend research aggregation, trend analysis, forecasting and decision support. Ellen is the former senior director of worldwide eLearning, Adobe Systems, Inc. and was senior director of worldwide education solutions for Macromedia, Inc. Prior to working in software solutions marketing, Ellen was Chief Learning Office and Director of Education for Viviance new education, a Swiss-based elearning company with offices in 10 North American and European countries. She was chief learning officer and VP of Consulting Services for Informania, Inc. prior to its acquisition by Viviance. Before joining the private sector, Ellen was a tenured professor and chair of the educational technology program at the University of Northern Colorado, and held a number of administrative posts, including Director of the Western Institute for Distance Education and Coordinator of Campus Instructional and Research Technologies, Academic Affairs. She worked as Visiting scholar and Project Director at WCET, Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, while on sabbatical leave from UNC. Her Ph.D. in learning psychology comes from the University of Colorado - Boulder. Her M.S. and B.A. degrees were earned at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Hugh Dubberly is a partner in Dubberly Design Office (DDO), a San Francisco–based consultancy that focuses on making hardware, software, and services easier to use, more effective, and more fun, through interaction design and information design. At Apple Computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Dubberly managed cross-functional design teams and later managed graphic design and corporate identity for the entire company. While at Apple, he co-created a series of technology-forecast films beginning with Knowledge Navigator that presaged the appearance of the Internet and interaction via mobile devices. At Netscape, he became vice president of design and managed groups responsible for the design, engineering, and production of Netscape’s web portal. In 2000, he co-founded DDO. Dubberly also served at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena as the founding chair of the Computer Graphics Department. He has taught courses in the Graphic Design Department at California State University -- San Jose, the Design Department at Carnegie-Mellon University, the Institute of Design at IIT, and the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. He edits a column “On Modeling” for Association of Computing Machinery’s journal, Interactions.

Toby Curnow is Design Director at Alt Group and has 10 years experience across a broad range of design disciplines including branding strategy, identity, publication, packaging and interactive design.

He graduated from Elam School of Fine Art with a BFA major in Intermedia in 1994. He is a professional member of the Australian Graphic Designers Association and the Designers Institute of New Zealand.

His work has been recognised in numerous national and international awards, including the Type Directors Club, the AIGA Awards, the Australian Graphic Design Awards, The One Show, and the Best Design Awards.