Yrjö Engeström (University of Helsinki)

I am Professor of Adult Education and Director of the Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research at University of Helsinki. I am also Professor of Communication at University of California, San Diego, where I served as Director of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition from 1990 to 1995. I am Honorary Professor in the School of Education at University of Birmingham, UK.

I work within the framework of cultural-historical activity theory. I am known for my theory of expansive learning. I study transformations in work and organizations, combining micro level analysis of discourse and interaction with historical analysis and modeling of organizations as activity systems working through developmental contradictions.

My research groups use intervention tools such as the Change Laboratory, inspired by Vygotsky’s method of dual stimulation, to facilitate and analyze the redesign of activity systems by practitioners. My current research is focused on health care organizations, a bank, and a telecommunications company striving toward new forms of co-configuration and knotworking.

Saara Taalas (Media Futures Network)

Professor Dr. Saara L. Taalas is Chair of Media Business and Director of Media Futures Network at Turku School of Economics in Finland. She is specialised in strategic decision-making and communication in connection to media contents, design, and company foresight. Her research work focuses on the boundary conditions of organising and management in cultural and media economy. She holds two visiting professorships in management in Finland, a visiting post at Bristol Business School in UK, and an associate professorship in organisation theory in University of Lund, Sweden. Taalas has been employed as a specialist in her field by private organisations, Nordic media industry associations, and by the Finnish Ministry of Culture and Education, and the Ministry of Employment and the Economy. She has worked with three European Commission DG’s relating to creative sector development and creative economy foresight, and was one of the authors of the influential Economy of Culture in Europe (2006, DG Education & Culture).

Jiri Räsänen (eCars – Now!)

Jiri Räsänen represents the Electric Cars – Now! project.

Electric Cars – Now! Is a collective venture, which will make electric cars affordable to everybody. The project’s key to success is to gain a critical mass of consumers who desire an electric car. Various professionals working within the project are offering their expertise as attorneys of the consumer, when terms of mass production are been negotiated.

The force that pushes this project forward, has already overturned the world of IT. That force is the Open Source. It has made the Linux OS the most favoured operating system used in Internet servers. It has also created an entirely new way of sharing mental capital, and to do business with various new products and services.

The same power will open the closed code, which the present car industry is based on.

Electric Cars – Now! is an open programme, which is free for any similar community to reproduce. We promise to share all information about the components, the assembly, and the work at large.

http://www.ecars-now.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUfduZy7C0o

Massimo Menichinelli (Open Peer-to-Peer Design)

Massimo Menichinelli is a designer working and researching on open collaborative projects (Open Design/Open P2P Design) and the systems that design them since 2005. He’s interested in the relationships between design, localities, communities and complexity, learning from Open Source, P2P and Web 2.0 software and adopting their principles and practices. He has worked as a designer and also at the Politecnico di Milano where he has given lectures about the relationships between design/locality/community/complexity and he has been interested in the organization of the design community of some courses. He has participated both as participant and as organizer of Design and Open Source related conferences and events both in Italy and in Spain. Recently he was invited as facilitator for a workshop about Open Innovation at UrbanLabs 08, an event organized by Citilab-Cornellà (Barcelona) dedicated to the use of new technologies to generate social innovations for the city and citizens. He was also invited as a co-facilitator for a workshop about Post-Industrial Design at I Realize 09 (Turin) organized by TOP-IX and aimed at researching disruptive innovations.

He collaborates with the P2P Foundation and publishes articles and books within the openp2pdesign.org project, an under construction network for the research and design of open and collaborative projects, systems and processes for communities and localities.

http://www.openp2pdesign.org
http://twitter.com/openp2pdesign