SPEAKERS.

Sebastian Feydt was born in Cottbus in 1965 and later attended the Kreuzschule (School of the Cross) in Dresden. He studied Evangelical Theology in Leipzig and as part of his period of ministry training, he spent a year in the Evangelical Provost´s Church Jerusalem belonging to the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in the Holy Land. After successfully completing the second examination in Theology in 1995, he was ordained to the Church of Bethlehem in Leipzig where he remained pastor until 2007.
In 2007, Sebastian Feydt was appointed to the Church of our Lady in Dresden. As one of the two pastors in this house of prayer, he regularly holds sermons, wedding and christening services, organises the many different facets of spiritual life within the Church of our Lady and also carries out peace work.
Sebastian Feydt regularly publishes homiletic meditations and studies (Kreuzverlag Stuttgart) und is co-author of the book “Devotions from the Church of our Lady. Words from beneath the dome”. (Evangelical publishing house). He is also a member of the jury which awards the Saxony Citizen´s Award presented annually in the Church of our Lady.

Dr. Urs Gasser is the Executive Director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School. His research and teaching activities focus on information law, policy, and society issues and the changing role of academia in the digitally networked age. At Berkman Klein and in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, he co-leads the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Initiative, with a particular interest in global governance issues and the broader implications of next-generation technologies, including questions of human autonomy and inclusion. As a long-term research interest, he studies the patterns of interaction between law and innovation, and innovation with the legal system in the digital age.

Joerg began his career as a commercial trainee at Bayer AG. After spending several years in the US, he returned to LANXESS in Germany to restructure and sell its Synthetic Fibers business. Following an assignment at Reliance Industries in India, he came back as Managing Director of LANXESS’ Pigments business unit. Since 2017, he leads and orchestrates the Digital Transformation initiative at LANXESS as Chief Digital Officer. Focus areas are the digitalization of production, the introduction of new tools and systems throughout the value chain, as well as promoting the value of data to become an institutional asset for the entire group. Additionally, he is responsible for exploring new business models. As such, he founded CheMondis, where he serves as a supervisory board member today. This start-up company is currently growing a digital marketplace for the chemical industry. All the above goes along with overseeing skill and talent development for digital LANXESS as well as driving a new change and culture transformation.

Michael Kretschmer was born in Görlitz on 7 May 1975. He is Protestant and the father of two sons. Following his schooling, he completed an office IT technician’s apprenticeship and gained entrance to a university of applied science through this alternative educational path. From 1998 to 2002, he studied industrial engineering at Dresden University of Applied Sciences, obtaining his degree in 2002.

Michael Kretschmer began his political career as a city councillor in his hometown of Görlitz from 1994 to 1999. From 1993 to 2002, he was on the regional executive committee of the Young Union (Junge Union) of Saxony and Lower Silesia. On 23 April 2005, Michael Kretschmer was elected secretary general of Saxony’s CDU party, and was confirmed in office several times thereafter. He has been the leader of Saxony’s CDU regional association since 9 December 2017.

He was first elected to Germany’s Bundestag as a direct candidate in the Görlitz electorate in 2002, and remained a member until 2017. From 2005 to 2009, he was the deputy chair of the Education and Research work group run by the CDU/CSU parliamentary party in the German Bundestag. Michael Kretschmer was deputy party leader, with portfolios in education and research, art, culture and media, from 2009 to 2017. From the German federal election in 2013 to September 2017, Michael Kretschmer was also the leader of the Saxon regional group within the CDU/CSU party in the German Bundestag.

On 22 August 2017, Michael Kretschmer was elected president of the Sächsischer Volkshochschulverband e. V. (Saxon association for adult education centres). He is also involved with the “Fürst-Pückler-Park Bad Muskau” development association.

On 13 December 2017, Michael Kretschmer was elected Minister-President of the Free State of Saxony.

Christian “Mio” Loclair, creative director at Waltz Binaire, is a media artist and choreographer from Berlin, Germany. He explores the harmonic friction of human bodies, movement and nature colliding with digital aesthetics.
Using cutting edge technology in interactive installations, audio-visual experiences, visual narratives and dance performances, he continuously illuminates the beauty and drama of human identity. He is publishing his work on mobile applications, digital projections and theater stages around the world for independent and commissioned projects.

Mio studied Computer Science at the University Potsdam and Hasso Plattner Institute, specializing in Media Engineering and graduated in Human Computer Interaction (2010). He published the scientific paper Pinchwatch about gestural micro interactions at the Mobile HCI 2010 Lisbon.

Mio started his professional career as a dancer in 2001 and became the winner of the International Battle of the year (Popping 2007), the Ruhrpott Battle (2007) and the Wutal Battle (2008 Pina Bausch Festival). Mio was chosen to represent Germany at the UK Bboy World Championships (2007, 2010) and portrayed the world champion of hiphop dance in the US Movie "You got Served 2". Furthermore he choreographed the theater pieces "Marionettes", "Reflection", "Volvere" and co-choreographed "110" (Niels Storm Robitzky) and "POW_2045" (Raphael Hillebrand).

Bertolt Meyer is a Professor for Work and Organizational Psychology at the Institute of Psychology at Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany. He misses his left arm and wears an advanced bionic prosthesis instead. His research includes studying the impact of technology on social systems. As an example, he has recently published a study about how developments in the area of bionics have the potential to change the societal stereotypes associated with physical disabilities. Meyer and his views on bionics have been featured in many media outlets, including the award-winning science documentaries "How to build a bionic man" (Channel4, UK) and "Homo Digitalis" (arte).

„Journalists have bestowed on me the tag of “world’s most influential living philosopher.” They are probably thinking of my work on the ethics of our treatment of animals, often credited with starting the modern animal rights movement, and with the influence that my writing has had on development of effective altruism. I am also known for my controversial critique of the sanctity of life ethics in bioethics.“
“Several key figures in the animal movement have said that my book Animal Liberation, first published in 1975, led them to get involved in the struggle to reduce the vast amount of suffering we inflict on animals. To that end, I co-founded the Australian Federation of Animal Societies, now Animals Australia, the country’s largest and most effective animal organization. My wife, Renata, and I stopped eating meat in 1971.”

Peter Singer is the founder of The Life You Can Save, an organization based on his book of the same name. It aims to spread his ideas about why we should be doing much more to improve the lives of people living in extreme poverty, and how we can best do this. You can view my TED talk on this topic here.
His writings in this area include: the 1972 essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” in which he argue for donating to help the global poor; and two books that make the case for effective giving, The Life You Can Save (2009) and The Most Good You Can Do (2015).

He has written, co-authored, edited or co-edited more than 50 books, including Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, Rethinking Life and Death, One World, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason) and The Point of View of the Universe (with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek. His writings have appeared in more than 25 languages.

Peter Singer was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946, and educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. After teaching in England, the United States, and Australia, in 1999 he becames Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. Since 2005 he has combined that role with the position of Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies. One of the big attractions of being in Melbourne is that his wife Renata and he can spend time with their three daughters and four grandchildren. They also enjoy hiking, and I surf.

Audrey Tang is Taiwan’s Digital Minister in charge of Social Innovation. Audrey is known for revitalizing the computer languages Perl and Haskell, as well as building the online spreadsheet system EtherCalc in collaboration with Dan Bricklin. In the public sector, Audrey served on Taiwan national development council’s open data committee and K-12 curriculum committee; and led the country’s first e-Rulemaking project. In the private sector, Audrey worked as a consultant with Apple on computational linguistics, with Oxford University Press on crowd lexicography, and with Socialtext on social interaction design. In the social sector, Audrey actively contributes to g0v (“gov zero”), a vibrant community focusing on creating tools for the civil society, with the call to “fork the government.”