Rashik Parmar is IBM’s CTO for North East Europe, a Distinguished Engineer and a member of the IBM Academy of Technology.
His leaderhsip of projects related to IBM’s Smarter Cities programme formed the basis of his closing talk for TEDxLeeds – underlying where culture, society, industry and infrastructure can benefit from a ‘smarter planet’, where cities are the fundamental building blocks.
Matt Edgar works in product strategy and design management in the amazing world of web and mobile media. He’s run product strategy for Ananova and design and usability for Orange.
On his blog he wonders about the history of technology and innovation, and the cool stuff that happens when old and new media converge. His TEDxLeeds talk, is a dizzying and visually stunning presentation of Leeds’ technological legacy…
Stuart Childs co-directs The Jam Jar Collective using computers and electronics to make installations and run workshops for adults and children. With a background in designing sound and lighting for theatre shows he now shows people how to pick up a soldering iron and start making things.
Stuart spoke about his 60 seconds project and how he thinks geo-tagged sound recording is changing how we archive, consume and share audio content.
Usman Haque, director of Haque Design + Research, closed the first half of TEDxLeeds2010 with Smart People, Dumb Objects, a discussion of where the infrastructure of cities may become instrumented as an “internet of things”.
Susan Williamson is a retail architect and social scientist who started her UK career 25 years ago during the shopping centre boom. She found her interest increasingly turned to the rationale – both cultural and economic – behind transactional spaces.
Susan’s TEDxLeeds talk focussed on the stories behind such transactional spaces and the expert users of those spaces how to use HR portal: the shoppers, workers, walkers, talkers , the performers and those who simply lurk.