Speaking.
I am a professional keynote speaker with a unique take on how technology impacts our lives, our politics and our future.
I began public-speaking as a competitive student debater in Canada, the US and Ireland. That combative beginning means I’m comfortable in intimidating environments, but nowadays I see speaking as a collaborative and sometimes even magical thing that happens between an audience and a speaker who wants to truly meet and then bring them somewhere new.
I work carefully with clients to understand their audience, context and goals. I’m not a speaker you engage if you just want to hear a pitch for my book, or conventional treatments of tried and trusted topics. If you want a counter-intuitive but ultimately positive take on tech that goes beyond today’s use cases and delves into literature, philosophy and social science, then let’s talk.
I speak to:
- Business Leaders
- Technology experts and innovators
- Think tanks, policymakers and civil society audiences
I speak about:
- Data and power
- How the way we visualise the Internet shapes our ability to imagine its future(s)
- Cybersecurity and geo-politics
- Privacy, security and autonomy in an era of ubiquitous computing
- Using science fiction and storytelling to imagine and build better futures
- The Internet naming and numbering systems
- What feminism can tell us about technology and change
To engage me for a speaking event, please email me.
Previously.
Bristol Festival of Economics: Cryptocurrencies and the Future of Money
Bristol, 2022
Writer and tech critic Maria Farrell chaired a discussion with digital evangelist Dinis Guarda; John Turner and Will Quinn, authors of Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles; and Jillian C. York, Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the author of Silicon Values.
—
RTE Radio “Sunday Miscellany”
“Crimea”, Dublin, 2022
“In September 2005 I flew with a group of academics and journalists to Sevastopol, Crimea. After the heady buzz of Kyiv, whose Orange Revolution had just set Ukraine on course to a European future, Sevastopol was a time capsule of the Soviet past.”
A story of Yalta’s winding, honey-suckle lanes, some wedding crashers, and how Anna Akhmatova’s poetry of Stalin’s Terror holds a powerful truth for today.
—
CENTR
Brussels, 2019
Twentieth anniversary keynote:
Europe’s ‘Internet of Values’
INEX
Dublin, 2019
This is your phone on feminism
—
European Forum Alpbach
Austria, 2019
Keynote: The Spy in Your Pocket
—
Tallinn Summer School of Cyber Diplomacy, 2019
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and NATO, Estonia
Internet Governance and Geopolitics; How storytelling teaches you to read them
—
40th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners
European Parliament Hemicycle, Brussels
Scene-setter: Is technology designed to serve humankind?
—
Ely Cathedral
Cambridgeshire, 2019
Cybersecurity and Ethics: Just a way of avoiding talking about power?
Dublin Information Security Summit
RDS, Dublin
Brexit, GDPR and what it means for Ireland
—
Password 2018
Tallinn, Estonia
Keynote: The Internet versus Everyone Else
—
Royal Institute
London, 2018
Welcome to the Data-Verse; you can opt-out, but never leave
—
Nine Dots Prize
Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
University of Cambridge, 2018
—
NESTA
London, 2018
Building a human-centric future Internet
Arnes, 25th Anniversary
Ljublana, Slovenia, 2017
Keynote: Technology, Power and Human Nature; How the Internet of Things is Changing Public and Private Spaces
—
The Royal Society
London, 2017
The Internet of Things and our Political Imagination
—
The Royal Institute of International Affairs
Chatham House, London, 2017
How the Internet of Things is changing power relations between citizens, the private sector and the state
—
British Council
London, 2017
Cyber security as an enabler for civil society
—
TNC Géant
Prague, 2016
Keynote: Winners and Losers in the Internet of Things, and What We Can Do About It
