Speakers

Published 01.07.2022
Get to know the speakers of Future Week 23.

6 June - 7 June - 8 June

 

 

6 June -  Innovation in the newsroom (Norwegian) 

 

Emily Baker-White

Senior writer, Forbes.
Emily Baker-White is a senior writer for Forbes, where she covers social media platforms. She was previously a senior reporter for BuzzFeed News, and before that, worked in content policy at Facebook and Spotify. Emily is also a graduate of Harvard Law School and a classically trained violist. 

 

 

Derek Andrè Bjølgerud

Head of TV2.no.
Bjølgerud has worked at TV 2 since 2014 and has been a manager in the media industry since 2009. He has a background as a journalist and news editor. Derek has previously worked at VG, NRK, and P4 before joining TV 2.

 

 

Samia Touileb

Researcher, SFI MediaFutures.
Samia Touileb is a researcher at the MediaFutures SFI Center, Department of Information and Media Studies, at the University of Bergen. She holds a Ph.D. in language technology and has worked in the field for over ten years. Her research interests include information retrieval, sentiment analysis, biases, and fairness in machine learning models.

 

Judy Parnall

Head of Standards & Industry, BBC Research & Development.
Judy is a passionate advocate of all things media and its positive power for audiences. At BBC, Judy coordinates on the strategy for the influencing industry and government for media technology innovation, including the BBC’s input to standards and industry bodies across production, broadcast and other media spheres. She has worked in the BBC for a number of years in both R&D and the corporate strategy areas. Judy has sat on the EBU’s Technical Committee since 2015 and chaired it since June 2018. 

 

Kristoffer Egeberg

Editor in Chief and CEO, Faktisk.no.
Egeberg was part of the founding project group behind Faktisk.no, and became its first Editor in Chief. From 2002 to 2017 he was an investigative news reporter in the Norwegian national daily Dagbladet, where he also had postings as foreign correspondent in China and worked as an assistant online news editor. He is a winner of Norway’s most prestigious journalism award, Skup (2014), and the IR-prize for international reporting (2015).  


Solgunn Flatebø Mandelid

Journalist, Avisa Hordaland. 
Mandelid is a journalist at the local newspaper Hordaland in Voss, where she utilizes her bachelor's degree in film and video production from NTNU. She is the creative mastermind behind Hordaland's first online series "Full Tank," having singlehandedly developed the concept and directed every aspect of production. "Full Tank" was named the Digital Initiative of the Year at the LLA Conference. At this year's Gull Paraplyen, she was recognized for her contributions, receiving nominations for Best Video and Young Talent of the Year. 

 

Eirik Solheim

Strategic Advisor and Journalist, NRKbeta. 
Solheim is a senior strategic advisor in the development department of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK). He leads projects involving internet services, interactive TV, social media and broadband strategies. His experience includes years of work as a consultant within the media and entertainment industry for Accenture and experience within digital production as a sound designer, editor, steadicam operator and photographer. He is the editor of NRK’s technology web site NRKbeta.no.

 

Josh Holder

Visual Editor, The New York Times. 
Based in London, Josh covers Europe using a mix of data-driven reporting and visual storytelling techniques. For the past year, he has primarily reported on the war in Ukraine, producing visually led stories and graphics that explain the latest developments and give context to the headlines. Before joining The New York Times, he was a Visual Projects Editor at The Guardian.

 

                                 
Hanne Louise Åkernes

Leader of Bord4 and New Digital Formats, BT. 
Åkernes has a strong passion for involving readers in the process of shaping journalism. During her time at BT, she has initiated several projects that engaged primary and secondary school students, women under 40, and parents in Bergen. By actively listening to readers, she believes that journalists can uncover blind spots and produce more relevant content. With her teams, Hanne has collected thousands of inputs from Westerners, who have played an essential role in shaping journalism.

 

Lars Kvamme

Head of Culture and Urban Life, Bergens Tidende. 
Lars Kvamme serves as the Head of Culture and Urban Life Department at Bergens Tidende. Prior to this, he led BT's investment in target audience-oriented journalism, specifically tailored to the people of Bergen. With a background in economics, Lars spent several years working as a business journalist before joining BT. He was previously associated with the shipping department at DNB.

 


Denis Parra Santander

Associate Professor, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
Denis Parra is principal researcher at the excellence research centers CENIA (National Center for Research in Artificial Intelligence in Chile), iHealth, and adjunct researcher at the IMFD (Millennium Institute for Research on Data Fundamentals). Prof. Parra research interests span Recommender Systems, Intelligent  User Interfaces, Applications of Machine Learning (Healthcare, Creative AI) and Information Visualization. 

 

  

Wim Zwijnenburg

PAX/Bellingcat
Wim Zwijnenburg works for PAX, a Dutch peace-organisation and is a long-time contributor to the open-source resource collective Bellingcat, specializing in tracking environmental impacts of armed conflict and emerging military technologies through the use of innovative methodologies. He received the UNEP/UNOCHA Green Star Award for his work on environmental emergencies and writes environmental OSINT guides for journalists and activists to track anthropocentric origins of eco-system damages.

 

 

Camille Pollie

Generation Next, VRT
Over the past ten years Camille Pollie gained experience in content creation as a host, producer and director of different radio shows, editor and researcher for tv programmes. And finally, she ended up running a talent hub for young creatives at VRT for 6 years. Giving them opportunities to grow and create (mostly digital) content within the Flandrian public broadcaster. Since 2022 she’s working as an advisor on content and distribution towards a young audience for several teams within VRT. 

 

Marie Jareid

PhD Candidate, University of Oslo
Marie Jareid is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Oslo. Her research focuses on political influence on social media, with a specific emphasis on TikTok. Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked at the Police Directorate and holds a master's degree in Political Science from the University of Oslo. Additionally, she has studied at the Police Academy in the Netherlands.

 

Martin Kermit

Head of Data Science, DN Media Group
Martin Kermit has implemented various products and solutions based on machine learning and language technology for Dagens Næringsliv. Kermit has a PhD in machine learning and more than 20 years of experience in the use of AI and data science in various sectors. His main interests are to contribute to organizations becoming more data-driven and how machine learning and data analysis technologies can be implemented successfully, both practically, technically and from a business perspective.

  

Amy Davies

Vice President, Insights & Publishing, VICE Media Group
In her role at VICE, Amy works alongside clients and internal teams to arm them with VICE’s proprietary data sources and research expertise, build cultural relevance and decode consumer behaviour. As a champion of VICE Insights, Amy promotes and executes a range of work, including the VICE Guide to Culture. Prior to VICE, Davies was Associate Director of the CFC Media Lab, an award-winning institute for interactive storytelling, media think-tank and entertainment technology accelerator.

 

Joshi Herrmann

Founder, The Mill
Joshi is a British journalist who has reported for The Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian, and has twice been Highly Commended at the British Press Awards. He is the founder of The Mill, an local news startup which publishes long form stories in Manchester. The model, which is based on paid subscriptions and delivered via email newsletters, has now spread to two more cities in England: Sheffield and Liverpool. He is @joshi on Twitter.

 

Olga Lubiv

Investigator of the Justice & Accountability Unit, Bellingcat
Olga is an open source investigator with a background in law. She has worked as a freelance researcher for two years before joining Bellingcat. Before that she worked as a tax and legal adviser at one of the 'Big four' audit companies. Currently Olga is an investigator of the Justice & Accountability Unit at Belligcat, which conducts in-depth investigations into potential atrocity crimes that happened as a result of the full scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine since 24 February 2022.

 


 

Guro Istad

General Manager, Pressens Hus. 
Guro Istad has over 25 years behind her as a journalist and media manager, from BT, VG and BA and more. Among other things, Istad has also worked as a project manager for Oslo Media House and was an editor at the advertising agency Publicis Kitchen, with a wide range of clients in everything from foster care, finance and tech/telecom.
Photo: Anita Arntzen.

  

7 June -  All about media tech and trends

 


Jack Sweeney

American programmer and entrepreneur
In 2022, Jack became known for creating Twitter bots to track the private jets of prominent individuals, most notably Elon Musk, through the ElonJet account. He established a company called "Ground Control" that monitors the flight activity of other billionaires and celebrities. Prompted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he began tweeting the locations of approximately 30 private jets belonging to Russian oligarchs.

 

Dalit Shalom

Design Lead, New York Times. 
Dalit guides the creation of new formats, elements and features that advance storytelling. Her work lives at the heart of editorial, research, ideation, and prototyping, and she believes in design as a vehicle for helping people understand and navigate complexities. In her current role, she focuses on Trust and Credibility, interfacing with multiple desks and teams across the newsroom, and working closely with the masthead partners to define key moments that help clarify The Times’ journalism to readers. 

 

Niklas Laninge

Psychologist, author and entrepreneur
Laninge is the founder and CEO of Nordic Behaviour Group, a company dedicated to helping organizations achieve large-scale behavioral change. For the past decade, he has helped large organizations such as Schibsted and the Swedish Department of Pension startups and provided the UN with insights into more behavior-informed policy.

 

 

Agnes Stenbom

Head of IN/LAB
Stenbom is the Head of IN/LAB – a new experimental effort by Schibsted and the Tinius Trust exploring how emerging technologies can make journalism more inclusive. She is also an industrial PhD candidate at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, where her research centers around hybrid processes combining artificial intelligence (AI) and human competences for newswork. Before founding IN/LAB, she led Schibsted Group's work on Responsible AI. Stenbom is the co-founder of the industry network Nordic AI Journalism.

 

 

Olav Sandnes 

Editor-in-chief and CEO of TV 2 
Sandnes was previously the CEO of Egmont Publishing. He holds a number of board positions, including in the Norwegian Editors' Association and in the Norwegian Press Association. Sandnes holds an MBA from IESE Business School, University of Navarra, and a Bachelor of Economics from Copenhagen Business School. He also holds the International Baccalaureate, United World College of the Atlantic.

 

 

Kai Johansen

Manager, Professional Security Services, Crayon

Kai is a skilled expert with 25 years of experience in developing and building large-scale data networks, including internet service providers and telecommunications, information security, and incident management. With a strong background in cybersecurity, he has dedicated the last 10 years of his career to working with media security at NRK. Today, Kai is part of Crayon, where he utilizes his considerable expertise in cybersecurity to build and lead a department specializing in IT security, including the prevention and response to cyber incidents.

 

Duc-Tien Dang Nguyen

Associate professor, University of Bergen.

Dang-Nguyen is an associate professor of computer science at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen. His main area of expertise is on multimedia forensics, lifelogging, multimedia retrieval, and computer vision. He is a member of MediaFutures WP3 - Media Content Analysis and Production in Journalism and The Nordic Observatory for Digital Media and Information Disorder (NORDIS). 

 

 

Rotem Rise-Dotan

Founder & Coach

Rotem is a seasoned executive with over 15 years of experience in product management and storytelling. Rotem's unique ability to weave compelling stories into his work has been a key factor in his success. He is now focused on sharing his expertise with others through his academy of storytelling for product managers, where he is helping to shape the next generation of product leaders. With his passion for teaching and wealth of experience, Rotem is a valuable mentor and thought leader in the product management community.

Guillaume Polaillon

Broadcast Industry Product Manager, NVIDIA
Guillaume Polaillon leads product management for Professional Broadcast at NVIDIA. With over 20 years of experience in technology and innovation, Guillaume works with developers, inventors, and engineers to transform their vision into groundbreaking solutions for their customers. Guillaume’s expertise lies in GPU acceleration for advanced graphics, compute, and artificial intelligence, as well as accelerating the transition to IP-based broadcast for live production. 

 

Chris Black

Head of Global Brand and Communications, Vizrt Group
Chris Black’s career in the media industry has spanned more than 25 years, specializing in communications, virtual graphics productions, live productions, mapping systems, and active as an art director and director/technical director for television stations across the United States. Today, Chris is the Global Head of Brand and Communications for Vizrt Group and leads a team of talented creatives who help explain and visualize the world of software defined visual storytelling.

 

Olcay Buyan

CEO, Television.AI
Olcay Buyan is the Founder and Managing Director at Television.AI. He has been working in the international media industry for about 15 years. During this time, he has worked for companies such as Axel Springer, FUNKE Mediengruppe and ERICSSON in Europe and North America in the capacity of developer, product and portfolio manager, and has been responsible for projects in the areas of Content Discovery, Metadata and Production Processes. His work has been recognized in the past by companies such as Facebook, Axel Springer, WikiData, Microsoft and Volkswagen.

 

Maarten Verwaest

CEO, Limecraft
Maarten is founder and CEO of Limecraft. Limecraft helps media professionals improve collaboration, to eradicate manual work and to spend more time on creative story telling. Prior to incorporating Limecraft, in his capacity as a programme manager for the R&D department of VRT, he was involved in the introduction of several innovative technologies. 

  

 

Frans Olsthoorn 

CEO, Scriptix
Frans Olsthoorn is and raised in The Hague Netherlands, he studied History before working in various roles related to speech recognition in the past 10 years. Late 2019 Frans founded Scriptix with the mission to make the spoken word accessible to everybody regardless of language, dialect or context. To that end, Scriptix develops custom speech recognition models that are exposed through an easy-to-integrate API platform and user friendly UI’s.

  

Bernt Johannessen 

Business Director, Broadcast & Live Events, Epic Games
Bernt is an experienced leader with experience in the computer software and media industries, Bernt came to Epic after 18 years at Vizrt specializing in broadcast graphics solutions for live media. Bringing a solid understanding of the needs of professional live media content creators to every project, he has supported top-tier broadcasters on all continents, helping them to achieve their creative visions and create engaging content.

 

 

Martijn Wiertz

Technical Sales Lead EMEA, IBM AI Governance
Martijn combines his technical, analytical and industry knowledge to help clients understand and validate the unique value that the solution can bring to help them enact responsible AI. He has 25 years of experience in the field of advanced analytics, experiencing all major developments in the evolution of the industry first hand. Prior to his current role, Martijn was the global technical sales lead for IBM’s solution to combat financial crimes and he was Director, Enterprise Solutions at SPSS Inc.

  

Jesse Wilkins

Senior Growth Manager, The Guardian
Jesse has spent the last eight years in the donations/subscription space, thinking about how to convert readers of the Guardian, which has a free and open model of journalism with no website paywall. He was part of a small team that launched the Guardian’s Contributions product in 2016 and played a key part in reaching 1m acts of financial support, helping to pivot the organisation towards a reader funded model. 

  

Mark Macdonald

Customer Success Manager, everviz
Mark is head of customer success at everviz that makes a data visualization tool with the same name. He was previously a Staff Reporter at Kamloops This Week newspaper where he covered the health and education beats. Mark holds a Bachelor of Journalism from Thompson Rivers University. Previously, Mark worked at Vizrt training and certifying customers and as a translator in the Norwegian to English language combination.

  

 

8 June - mcb tech .23

 

Marty Cagan

Founder and Partner, Silicon Valley Product Group.
Before founding the Silicon Valley Product Group to pursue his interests in helping others create successful products through his writing, speaking, advising, and coaching, Marty Cagan served as an executive responsible for defining and building products for some of the most successful companies in the world, including HP Labs, Netscape Communications, and eBay. As part of his work with Silicon Valley Product Group, Marty is an invited speaker at major conferences and top companies across the globe.

 

Nina Schick

Author, entrepreneur and advisor specialising in Generative AI
Schick is focused on the intersection of society, politics, and technology, with expertise in geopolitics, artificial intelligence, synthetic media, and deepfakes. She advises organizations on navigating the risks and opportunities of the rapidly changing global outlook. Previously, Nina worked with BBC, CNN, and The Sunday Times, covering politics. She founded her own business advising governments, NGOs, and private sector businesses on cybersecurity, espionage, disinformation, and geopolitics of tech. 

 

Evan Shapiro

Media Universe Cartographer
Evan Shapiro is an Emmy and Peabody winning producer and a professor of Media Studies at Fordham University and NYU. Recently, Shapiro’s impact on media has expanded, as he has evolved into a noted commentator on the entertainment industry and become recognized as the Unofficial Official Cartographer of The Media Universe. This has made him one of the most influential thinkers in the business.

 

 

Nir Eyal

Expert in the intersection of psychology, technology, and business.
Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. He has co-founded and sold two tech companies and is known as "The Prophet of Habit-Forming Technology." He is the author of two bestselling books, Hooked and Indistractable, which received critical acclaim. Nir's writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Harvard Business Review, Time Magazine, and Psychology Today. He also invests in habit-forming products that improve users' lives. 

 

 

Bruce MacCormack

Principal, Neural Transform.
Bruce focuses on AI's impact on news operations, particularly reducing misinformation. He co-leads Project Origin, a media provenance initiative with the BBC, New York Times, CBC/Radio-Canada, and Microsoft. He's on the steering committee of the Partnership on AI and the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity. Bruce was previously Head of Business Strategy at CBC/Radio-Canada and served as President of digital media for a large Canadian newspaper chain. 

 

  

Kjersti Løken Stavrum

CEO, Tinius Trust.
Kjersti Løken Stavrum is the jury leader for the Anne Jacobsen Memorial Prize. She has a background as a journalist and editor. Løken Stavrum is the CEO of Tinius Trust - the controlling owner of Schibsted ASA, has been the chairman of Norwegian PEN, and led the Freedom of Expression Commission in Norway. She has previously been the secretary general of the Norwegian Press Association, has an education in political science, and has a master's degree in management.

 

Björn Myreze

Serial Entrepreneur.
Björn started out from his bedroom when he was just nine years old, and he dreamed of reaching the whole world. He started his first TV channel when he was 12 years old and got a job at TV 2 Norway when he was 16 years. Since then, he has worked with everyone from Kaizers Orchestra to Heidi Klum, TV 2 Norway to Warner Brothers. Björn is the CEO and founder of Myreze, a world-leading company in visual communication. 

 

Aaron Kroon 

Award-winning leader, diversity and inclusion.

Aaron is a prominent advocate for diversity and inclusion within Swedish business, leveraging over two decades of leadership experience across multiple industries. As an executive in companies like ICA, Vattenfall, and Schibsted, he draws upon his personal background as a gay black man to disrupt traditional norms and push for progress. In 2022, he was awarded as one of the top three Swedish role models of the year by the Diversity Index Award.

  

Pinar Heggernes 

Professor, Deputy rector University of Bergen
Pinar Heggernes is the elected deputy rector of University of Bergen. Her areas of responsibiliy contain education and digital knowledge. She is a professor of computer science with specialization in algorithms. Until 2021 she was the head of Department of Informatics at UiB. She has extensive experience as a researcher and educator, as a leader of several externally funded projects and as a member of program boards and editorial committees of international scientific conferences and journals.

  

  
Anders Grimstad

Head of Foresight and Emerging interfaces, Schibsted Futures Lab
Anders specializes in leveraging foresight and tangible experimentation to inspire teams to proactively build for the future. As the head of foresight and emerging interfaces at Schibsted's Futures Lab, he conducts research, analyzes emerging technologies, and creates scenarios and experiments to prepare for upcoming challenges. With a diverse background in media and various industries, Anders brings valuable insights to his work in driving innovation and readiness for the future.

    

  

Chris Black 

Head of Global Brand and Communications, Vizrt Group
Chris Black’s career in the media industry has spanned more than 25 years, specializing in communications, virtual graphics productions, live productions, mapping systems, and active as an art director and director/technical director for television stations across the United States. Today, Chris is the Global Head of Brand and Communications for Vizrt Group and leads a team of talented creatives who help explain and visualize the world of software defined visual storytelling.