A professor of mathematics, the head of a decacorn gaming empire, the EU Commissioner for Competition, a forensic scientist, the founders of Wikipedia and Skype, a Formula One Champion, Facebook's head of counterterrorism and the Mayor of London walk into a conference centre… sounds like the beginning of a long-winded gag, the punchline of which would, inevitably, be a complex formula.
In fact, it's just a selection of the 90-plus inspirational speakers we were delighted to welcome onstage at WIRED Live, our annual two-day festival, in early November. The team decided to reset the event this year, maintaining a deep bench of keynote speakers - from Firuzeh Mahmoudi, the executive director of human-rights startup United4Iran, to Eleanor Stride, a professor of engineering science at the University of Oxford; Matt Brittin, who leads Google in EMEA to Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of Bumble; Herman Narula, the co-founder of Improbable to Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League - while expanding its scope with a second stage where delegates were able to enjoy fireside chats and Q&As with speakers.
We also developed the celebrated Test Lab - curated by our product editor Jeremy White - to give more space to innovative technology that delegates can get hands-on with. And there was more: a bookshop curated by our friends at Libreria; a screening room with a series of short films; a networking area with furniture from IKEA; a WIRED cocktail and - as we were in east London - some live pickling. Oh, and let's not forget an extremely noisy demonstration by Richard Browning, the oil trader turned inventor who rose through a void in the building to hover before the audience in his self-designed Iron Man suit. It's the type of challenge we like to give our insurers. Browning's demo was repeated the following day at Next Generation, our event for 12- to 18-year-olds, which hosted an enthusiastic group of young people attending talks and participating in workshops.
November has been quite a month for WIRED: a week after our events, our acting commissioning editor Matt Burgess published a piece of first-class reporting - the first incontrovertible evidence that Twitter accounts linked to Russia attempted to influence opinion around the referendum, which was picked up by news sources around the world and was part of a speech that the prime minister gave at the Lord Mayor's Banquet. The same week, we published The WIRED World in 2018, our annual trends report that offers perspectives from our network - from Sir Martin Sorrell to Mustafa Suleyman - on the ideas and innovations that will be significant in the upcoming year. The best part of all this? There's plenty more to report on. See you in 2018 for the freshest takes on how the world is changing.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
