Do you know how crowdsourcing is being used to push boundaries in emerging technologies, art and creativity, and machine learning?  The newest confirmed speakers for Crowdsourcing Week Global 2016 will be sharing just that, during one can’t-miss week in London.

Four brand-new speakers join the already impressive and growing CSW Global 2016 speaker roster. Below find a sneak preview of the cutting-edge content these thought leaders and practitioners from the Vatican Museums, London School of Economics, DefinedCrowd and Ability Net will deliver.

Daniela Braga, President, DefinedCrowd

How can machine learning be combined with human input in a powerful way? What is crowdsourcing’s role in improving speech technology like Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana or Amazon Echo? What about issues like quality and privacy?

Dr. Daniela Braga will share you mindblowing presentation in this area. She is the President & Cofounder of DefinedCrowd, a company headquartered in Settle, WA with an R&D center in Lisbon, Portugal, that combines crowdsourcing and machine learning to provide big data to speech technology and natural language processing applications. With fifteen years working in Speech Technology both in academia and industry in Portugal, Spain, China and the US, Dr. Braga has deep expertise in Speech Science and has successfully introduced Crowdsourcing as a scalable big data solution in Speech at Microsoft and recently in Voicebox Technologies. Her effort has resulted in reducing data collection and processing costs by 80%, by taking quality control to 98% of accuracy and by speeding up the language expansion roadmap by 50%. Dr. Braga is a guest lecturer on crowdsourcing at the University of Washington, and has several patents mainly in crowdsourcing for speech technology.

Father Mark Haydu, ‎International Director, Patrons of the Arts of the Vatican Museums

How the Vatican is engaging with the global online community to restore artworks?

Find out from Father Mark Haydu. Father Mark serves as the liaison between Patrons who support art restoration and the Vatican Museums. By linking people all over the globe to the Vatican, he advances the museum’s mission of spiritual and artistic expression. In addition to this important work, he has realized his priestly ministry by working as a spiritual director, retreat leader, and as author of two award-winning books: Meditations on Vatican Art and Meditations on Vatican Art: Angels.

Robin Christopherson, Head of Digital Inclusion, AbilityNet

What’s the real power and the promise behind diverse crowd technologies?

Robin Christopherson will challenge any preconceptions we may have about the potential of technology and the power of the crowd to help everyone, regardless of ability. Being blind himself, he provides us with an excellent first-hand example of the impact we can make for our customers and users if we simply design with an eye for inclusion. Robin will be talking about (but, more importantly, demonstrating) a range of technologies that use crowdsourced data or assistance and how they are transforming people’s lives regardless of ability or environment. Will you be part of an inclusive technological future?

Peter Bryant, Head of Learning Technology and Innovation, London School of Economics

What does it mean to be a citizen of a crowdsourced community? How do you leverage the power of the crowd to act as a learning community to solve problems, engage collaboratively and actively change society?

Peter Bryan will answer these questions and dig further into these huge opportunities. Head of Learning Technology and Innovation at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Peter was previously a Principal Lecturer in Educational Technology at the University of Greenwich where he led on the innovative Greenwich Connect project, which was designed to transform learning and teaching with technology. He is a creative technology and education leader, and an active researcher in both educational technology and arts and media, with research interests including digital identity and social media, the emergence of digital pedagogies, institutional resistance to technology and participation and digital citizenship.

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