Speakers

Irina Bolychevsky is passionate about products and using technology to make things better. She spent many years working on open data at Open Knowledge (as one of the directors and ckan product owner), at web startups, and recently as a data consultant for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Open Data Institute and the UK and Dubai governments.

She co-founded redecentralize.org — a project to promote and bring together people working on and interested in decentralised digital technologies.

Mike Kay Ph.D FBCS is the editor of the W3C XSLT 2.0 and 3.0 language specifications for performing XML transformations, and the developer of the Saxon XSLT and XQuery processing software.

He was educated at Salesian College in Farnborough, and then went to Trinity College, Cambridge to read Natural Sciences. He gained his Doctor of Philosophy degree while working on databases in the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Maurice Wilkes.

He spent over twenty years (1977-2001) with the British computer manufacturer International Computers Limited (ICL). He was appointed an ICL Fellow in 1990. On leaving ICL, he worked for three years with Software AG before forming his own company, Saxonica.

Throughout his career, Jean has worked in startups: before Microsoft, with Inria, the renowned French research Labs (Gipsi S.A. and Grif S.A.); and within Microsoft creating four new startups: XML, InfoPath, opening the Office formats and MS OpenTech (Microsoft’s open source subsidiary). The startups he built created breakthrough platform technologies used today by millions.

He is the recipient of multiple industry awards for his work on XML, semi-structured data, the convergence of documents and data and openness at large.

In addition to core technical design, Jean takes deep care at building healthy ecosystems at worldwide scale. He is credited as one of the key leaders responsible for shifting in a fundamental way, under the guidance of the CEO, Microsoft’s strategy to embrace and love open source.

He has authored ten books with his publications appearing in numerous peer-reviewed journals, and book chapters in English, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese texts. His books include: Digital Inclusion. An International Comparative Analysis (co-edited with Bruce Mutsvairo), Lexington Books 2018; Theorizing the Digital Divide (co-edited with G Muschert), Routledge (2017); The third Digital Divide: a Weberian approach to Digital Inequalities (2017), Routledge; The Digital Divide: The Internet and Social Inequality in International Perspective (co-edited with G Muschert) (2013), Routledge.

Anna’s background is in human rights and global development, having covered them as a specialist journalist at the Guardian and, before that, contributed to programmes and policy outreach at the Center for Global Development in Europe.

At the W3C, Norm was chair of the XML Processing Model Working Group, co-chair of the XML Core Working Group, and an editor in the XQuery and XSLT Working Groups. He served for several years as an elected member of the Technical Architecture Group.

At OASIS, he was chair of the DocBook Technical Committee for many years and is the author of “DocBook: The Definitive Guide”.

Norm has spent more than twenty years developing commercial and open source software and is a Principal Engineer at MarkLogic Corporation where he helps to develop APIs and tools for advanced content applications.

In her previous role, she established a vibrant equalities function at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, founded the Safer Schools Network and led the union’s work on anti-bullying, child poverty, social mobility and violence against women and girls. Between 2006-2012, she worked with business and trade unions at unionlearn, the TUC’s learning project, funded by governments of all hues. 

Wanda was a Starun Senior Scholar at Hertford College, Oxford, where she was awarded a doctorate in European History and subsequently published her first book, Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland 1500-1800 in 2013. It was shortlisted for the Katharine Brigs Folklore Award. She has spoken at various literary events, conferences and seminars and regularly comments in the media, having appeared on BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze and on BBC 1’s The Big Questions.