#eden19 First Keynotes Announced

The first keynote speakers for the 28th EDEN Annual Conference in Bruges have been announced.

Nell Watson

Nell Watson is an engineer, educator, and tech philosopher who grew up in Northern Ireland. She founded Poikos (now QuantaCorp). This original, patented technology enables fast and simple 3D body measurement from only two planes (front and side), using a simple cellphone camera, by applying sophisticated deep learning technologies. This service enables fast and accurate personalization services in telemedicine, mass customization, and retail. Today, Nell educates others in how to implement such technologies, for example, by creating video coursebooks for O’Reilly.

She is also Co-Founder of EthicsNet, a non-profit, building a movement of people who are committed to help machines understand humans better. This community acts as role models and guardians to raise kind AI, by providing virtual experiences, and collecting examples of pro-social practices.

Nell Watson lectures globally on (humanizing) Machine Intelligence, AI philosophy, Human-Machine relations, and the Future of Human Society, serving on the Faculty of AI & Robotics at Singularity University.

Learn more about her here.


Jan Elen

Jan Elen is a full professor at the KU Leuven, Center for Instructional Psychology and Technology. He was the head of the educational support office of the KU Leuven, coordinator of the expertise network School of Education of the Association KU Leuven, and vice-dean Education of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences.

Jan is currently the academic leading the teacher education program in behavioural sciences. He has been the coordinator of the Special Interest Group on Instructional Design of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction and is the current editor-in-chief of ‘Instructional Science’. His research mainly pertains to instructional design and higher education. He teaches courses on educational technology, the design of learning environments and didactics for behavioral sciences.

Learn more about him here.


Steve Wheeler

Steve Wheeler is a Learning Innovations Consultant and former Associate Professor of Learning Technologies at the Plymouth Institute of Education where he chaired the Learning Futures group and led the Computing and Science education teams. He continues to research into technology supported learning and distance education, with particular emphasis on the pedagogy underlying the use of social media and Web 2.0 technologies, and also has research interests in mobile learning and cybercultures.

He has given keynotes to audiences in more than 35 countries and is author of over 150 scholarly articles, with more than 7000 academic citations. An active and prolific edublogger, his blog Learning with ‘e’s is a regular online commentary on the social and cultural impact of disruptive technologies, and the application of digital media in education, learning and development. In the last few years it has attracted in excess of 8 million unique visitors.

Learn more about him here.


Ilkka Tuomi

Ilkka Tuomi has written books, including Networks of Innovation: Change and Meaning in the Age of the Internet which develops theory ofopen innovation based on analysis of Internet-related innovations and open source, and Corporate Knowledge: Theory and Practice of Intelligent Organizations, which develops theory of knowledge management.

He has written several articles in First Monday, an important peer reviewed journal on the Internet. The most famous of Tuomi’s articles is probably The Lives and Death of Moore’s Law , in which Tuomi states that Moore’s law is an expression of technological determinism, used sloppily, and to a large extent not properly founded in empirical studies.

Learn more about him here.