The Digital Festival is an annual festival of ideas and a celebration of global innovation, animated via talks, workshops, debates and performance.

Carlos Moedas

Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, European Commission

Carlos Moedas was born in Beja (Portugal) in 1970. He graduated in Civil Engineering from the Higher Technical Institute (IST) in 1993 and completed the final year of studies at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris (France). He worked in engineering for the Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux group in France until 1998.

Howard Rose

Chief Executive Officer, DEEPSTREAM VR

Howard is CEO and co-founder of DeepStream VR, a software company bringing virtual reality NeuroGame for pain relief to the mass market. Howard has been a pioneer in virtual reality for over 20 years, creating iconic health applications like SnowWorld to relief burn pain, IraqWorld to treat battlefield PTSD, and Attack of the S. Mutans to improve self-care habits.  Howard will share his expertise on developing games that tap into the powers of human sensory system and how to bring VR NeuroGames into healthcare practice.

Tibor Navracsics

Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth & Sports, European Cimmission

Tibor Navracsics is the Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sports for the Commission of President Juncker (2014 – 2019).

Ghislaine Boddington

Co-founder and Creative Director, body＞data＞space

Co-founder and Creative Director of body＞data＞space and Women Shift Digital, Ghislaine is a curator, presenter and thought leader specialising in body responsive technologies, Ghislaine is recognised as an international pioneer advocating the use of the entire body as a digital interaction canvas for over 25 years. She has co-created and directed many public experiences exploring the hyper enhancement of our human senses through the digital including “me and my shadow” for the Royal National Theatre in 2012. She has been lead director of international multi-partner projects since the 90s, including the successful EU project “Robots and Avatars”. 

Antanas Guoga

MEP

Nadia El-Imam

Co-founder, Edgeryders

Nadia is an engineer and designer born in Sweden, raised in Europe and Asia, now living & working in Stockholm & Brussels. She is a proud co-founder of Edgeryders, a distributed think-tank of citizen experts, combining the intense focus and rigour of consultancy with the scale, openness and democratic legitimacy of citizen consultation.

Robert Madelin

Senior Advisor for Innovation, European Commission

Before taking up this post in September 2015, Robert was the Director General of the DG for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (known as DG CONNECT, formerly Information Society and Media) in the Commission, where he was responsible for managing the European Commission's digital agenda.

Chagall van den Berg

Vocalist, Songwriter & Electronic Music Producer

In 2013 she moved to London to be closer to the invention of modern electronica where everyone with a bedroom can become a producer. 

Always having been interested in bringing electronic music to the stage in an intuitive way, she now writes, records and performs her work with mi.mu gloves. In 2015 she created her glove song and live video ‘Sappho Song’.