Interaction12 Blog

More about our Defuse Dublin speakers

At the Welcome Party on Wednesday we had some brave Dublin designers step up to the stage to tackle the Ignite talk format: 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide.

Afterwards we had lots of requests wanting to know more about our talks and speakers, so find out a little bit about each of them below.

Some useful links

Photos from the Welcome Party
Watch more Defuse Dublin talks on Youtube
Defuse Dublin website

Fiachra Ó Marcaigh: Interacting with Dublin – welcome

fomarcaigh@gmail.com / @fiachra

Fiachra is a director at the internet strategy and communications consultancy AMAS, which has been helping clients to maximise their returns from the internet for over a decade. His clients there include government bodies, corporates and some of the innovative tech companies that drive Ireland’s technology boom.

Fiachra’s not-to-miss in Dublin:
Georgian Townhouse Museum, 29 Fitzwilliam Street Lower
Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Square

Stephen Howell: Teaching kids to program using Scratch and the Kinect

scratch.saorog.com / stephen.r.howell@gmail.com / @saorog

Stephen is a computer science lecturer with the Institute of Technology Tallaght, where he lectures on Software Development and Interactive Media Design & Development. For fun, he likes to hack together games, digital art and educational materials with his four kids.

Watch Stephen’s talk from IxDA Dublin’s Defuse 2010:

Simon Rand: Big flush or little flush?

simon@iorum.ie / @simonrand

Simon is a director at iorum, a Dublin based firm who create web, mobile and social applications. Holding a degree in Industrial Design, but having programmed since he was 7 years old, he can talk code to the coders, and design to the designers. And music to the musicians.

Watch Simon’s talk from IxDA Dublin’s Defuse 2010

Zanya Dahl: All work and no play…

zanya@artizan.ie / @artizancreative

Zanya Dahl is managing director of interactive design agency, Artizan. Formerly a graphic designer, a 3D animator and a webmaster, she is always interested in the visual and the interactive and how that impacts on our behaviour.

Watch Zanya’s talk from IxDA Dublin’s Defuse 2010

Colin Bentley: Selling online. Choice, freedom and control

colin.bentley@iqcontent.com / @colinbentley

Colin is a user experience designer with iQ Content, building extraordinary customer experiences for smart organizations. He has been working on a long-term engagement with Vodafone, creating and fine-tuning their online sales through workshops, user research, prototypes and testing. Before he joined iQ he worked as a business analyst for very different companies, from a dental software developer, to an e-business consultancy.

Watch Colin’s talk from IxDA Dublin’s Defuse 2011

Simon Dennehy: Quantitative vs Qualitative; why can’t we all get along?

simon@perch.ie / @Perch_Design

Simon Dennehy has worked in industry for many years, as an industrial and graphic designer. In 2008, he completed a 2-year research masters in Industrial Design, with NCAD and chose ergonomic school furniture as his subject matter. Since completing the study, he has received lots of interest in the IP and product offering. He has received funding from Enterprise Ireland’s, CORD scheme, and “Perch Dynamic Solutions” has been established to bring the products to market.

Ellen Dudley: What are you most afraid of?

ellen.dudley@gmail.com / @meetforeal

Ellen is a biomedical engineer turned startup founder. She’s been hacking socializing for the last few years with her startup, crowdscanner.com, so that awesome face-to-face conversations are more likely to happen between strangers.

Her mission is to make it more natural to talk to new people, about topics that matter, so we learn about ourselves, each other, and the world, and make the most of our short time here.

Outside of conversations, design and startups, she loves speaking on stage, living in new places, Mexican food, exploring, and giving myself a hard time about not meditating enough.

Watch Ellen’s talk from IxDA Dublin’s Defuse 2010

Morgan McKeagney: On hype & bubbles: is UX a ghetto?

morgan@iqcontent.com / @morganmck

Morgan McKeagney is co-founder and Managing Director of iQ Content, a world-class user experience company based in Dublin. Since 2000, Morgan has been helping smart, global organisations use online to become more successful, more customer-focused, more innovative, more profitable and more efficient. Economist by training, entreprenuer by nature, Morgan’s big passions are business, creativity, technology and innovation, and how all four can combine to make the world a slightly better place for everyone.

Interaction12: February 1st to 4th 2012:Dublin, Ireland, Europe