February 2019
In early 2019, writers, technologists, and businesses came together to look at how technology is changing the way we make and consume stories, while creating fresh opportunities to reach new audiences.
New ways to tell stories
Interactive fiction, mobile, virtual reality, social media, gaming, machine learning… Creative pioneers talk about their adventures in storytelling.
Kate Pullinger
Kate is an award winning novelist who writes fiction across multiple platforms. She is Professor of Creative Writing and Digital Media at Bath Spa University. Recent work includes “Breathe”, a ghost story for smartphones, and the digital WW1 memorial, “Letter to an Unknown Soldier”.
Michael Bhaskar
Michael is Writer in Residence at leading AI company DeepMind, the author of “Curation: The Power of Selection in a World of Excess”, and co-founder of Canelo Publishing. He is co-editing the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Publishing.
Aki Schilz
Aki is the Director of The Literary Consultancy, a Trustee of Poetry London, and sits on the advisory board for the award-winning publisher Penned in the Margins. She is also a prize-winning writer, and co-founder of the Saboteur Award-shortlisted #LossLit digital literature project.
Jon Ingold
Jon is narrative director at inkle, an independent studio creating award-winning interactive fiction. Their game “80 Days” was TIME magazine’s Game of the Year and also one of the Telegraph’s best 100 novels; and, ink, their scripting language for dynamic narrative, is used by game studios worldwide.
Nosa Eke
Nosa is a writer-director and is a 2018 BFI Flare and BAFTA mentee. She was spotlighted as one of “Britain's next level gaming talents” by Apple for writing a real time narrative mobile phone experience and is currently writing an episodic series on the Amazon Alexa for the BBC.
Chris Bateman
Chris is an award-winning game designer with more than fifty published game credits, most recently the acclaimed PlayStation VR game The Persistence. The founder of International Hobo Ltd, the first consultancy to combine narrative and game design skills under one roof, he is currently working on nine game projects.
Guy Gadney
Guy is the CEO of To Play For, the media technology platform behind Charisma.ai. They are producing new forms of immersive stories powered by artificial intelligence, including an adaptation of the immersive theatre production “For King and Country”, as well as John Wyndham’s scifi classic The Kraken Wakes.
Jane Gauntlett
Jane is an artist, writer and director for interactive theatre, audio, game and XR. Jane’s work is inspired by human connection, the power of storytelling, advances in technology and audience impact. In 2009 she founded The In My Shoes Project; each piece combines multi-sensory theatre, technology and first-person documentary to recreate extraordinary real-life events.
Adipat Virdi
Adipat is an award nominated writer/producer. He has worked on various films, TV series and plays, and designed and run the BBC Future of Content think tank across 50 BBC teams.
Tom Chatfield
Dr Tom Chatfield is a British writer, broadcaster and tech philosopher. His seven books exploring contemporary culture—most recently Live This Book! (Penguin) and Critical Thinking (SAGE Publishing), researched as a Visiting Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute—are published in over two dozen languages. His first novel, an international conspiracy thriller set in the world of the dark net, will be published by Hodder in July 2019.
Justo Hidalgo
Justo is co-founder and CEO of 24symbols, a subscription service for ebooks and audiobooks. He is the author of “Idea, producto y negocio”, teaches Product Strategy, Innovation, AI for Business people, and Lean Analytics, and is a startup mentor.
Chris Meade
Chris is a transmedia writer and founder of if:book uk, the charitable company founded in 2007 exploring the future of the book. In 2018 he became a Doctor of Nearlyology, completing a practice-based creative writing PhD at Bath Spa University.
Dr James Pope
Jim has a continuing interest in fiction across the media, particularly looking at how digital media may be changing narrative forms and reading and writing practices. He has specific research interests in interactive fiction, the teaching of creative writing in digital media environments, and children’s literature.
Joe Reddington
Dr Joseph Reddington has worked and published in various forms of technology based storytelling since 2009. He is the designer of the White Water Writers project, using book sprints for educational purposes in universities, schools, hospices, and secure units.
The storytelling business
Inventive storytellers talk about how they are tackling the impact of technology on traditional business models, and harnessing the power of narrative in new ways.
Sam Conniff Allende
Sam is the best selling author of Be More Pirate, and a multi-award-winning serial entrepreneur, with 10 start-ups to his name, including the Bafta Winning content agency; Don’t Panic, the genre defining interactive TV Series Dubplate Drama; and the industry leading Creative Youth Network; Livity.
Katie Vanneck-Smith
Katie is the co-founder of Tortoise, the most funded journalism startup in Kickstarter history. She was formerly President of The Wall Street Journal & Dow Jones.
Dominic Young
Dominic is the CEO of Agate. He has served in senior roles at News Corp, as Chair of the Newspaper Licensing Agency and as CEO of The Copyright Hub. He has also done a stint as an advisor and NED for investors and startups, before starting his own.
Emma Barnes
Emma is a seasoned publishing innovator, founder of indie publisher Snowbooks, publishing workflow platform Consonance, and most recently the instantly profitable education-focused side-project Make Our Book
Anna Faherty
Anna collaborates with museums to find and tell stories in a range of settings. She teaches content innovation and digital storytelling at City, University of London.
Duncan Clark
Duncan is the co-founder of Kiln, the interactive studio that created the data visualisation and storytelling tool Flourish. He was previously a consultant editor at the Guardian, a commissioning editor at Profile Books, and a visiting researcher at UCL.
Hari Patience-Davies
Hari is a produced screenwriter, novelist, and digital consultant. She has recently set up Accenture Digital’s Digital storytelling guild to bring storytelling to the financial services, retail and consultancy.
Jonny Kaldor
Jonny is the co-founder of Pugpig, an app publishing platform that powers many of the world’s biggest media brands, from The Economist, Vogue and Wired to The Independent, Porter and Tortoise.
Simona Fautre
Simona is leading content development for Moody’s flagship events in EMEA region. She creates event programs for capital market audiences, develops engagement campaigns, and shapes credit narrative delivery on the day of the event.
Workshops
Expert insight and practical advice.
Rachael Kent
Dr Rachael Kent is a Teaching Fellow in Digital Media and Culture, Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London. Rachael’s research focuses on the impact and influence of new media upon our social and cultural dimensions, specifically the intersection of technology and the body, health and surveillance. Recent research and publications examine the use of self-tracking technologies and social media in self-representations and management of health.
Christopher Norris
Chris is director of crowdfunding of CrowdPatch, the free crowdfunding platform, founder of Smart Crowd Productions, the sponsorship production agency, and organiser of the free weekly Meetup group, The Wisdom of Crowdfunding.
Lisa Gee
Dr Lisa Gee is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at King’s College London and the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge University. She is the author of Stage Mum and Friends: Why Men and Women Are From the Same Planet and the editor of Bricks Without Mortar: the selected poems of Hartley Coleridge.
Your hosts
Justine Solomons
Justine is the founder of Byte The Book, a networking organisation for people in book publishing and related fields. She consults to media technology companies on business development, content acquisition and strategic partnerships.
Michael Kowalski
Michael is the founder of mixed reality startup Storienteer, the third in a trilogy of creative media tech startups.
Partners
Confluence couldn’t have happened without our partners. We’re truly grateful for their support.
Where: Academy London
When: 15 February 2019
Confluence is in partnership with Academy London, Google’s dedicated learning space in Victoria