Nice to meet you!
I'm Oliver. I'm a researcher, designer and facilitator from fractals coop (
https://fractals.coop/). We're four people who before fractals we're doing tech or tech adjacent design and research work. We aren't really doing any of that at the moment as we've been mostly doing consultancy gigs working with charities and campaigning organisations to do strategy work and as a learning and evaluation partner.
3.5 days a week I'm employed as a contract researcher at Lancaster University (
https://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/people/oliver-bates). My work is where people, tech, and just and sustainable futures meet. I'm part critical designer, part tech critic, part user researcher, part game maker. I made a card game called Meal Deal (
https://crankandfile.co.uk/meal-deal) that came from research and design workshops with gig economy couriers about their experiences of the platform and working on their bikes. I'm moving my work more into facilitating challenging conversations and building community that is on a shared journey to a future through decaying and collapsing systems, using games and creative activities:)
Kim invited me today after conversations we've been having about escaping big tech, capitalism and the work we want to be doing towards just and sustainable futures.
Looking forward to meeting you all soon.