Speakers

Edward Opp

Edward Opp is an award winning American photojournalist, living in Moscow, Russia. He is a laureate of World Press Photo, and received Russia’s greatest photojournalistic honor, The Russian Golden Eye award. Edward worked as Director of photography at Russia’s leading business publishing house, Kommersant and most recently as COO at the TASS state photo agency.

Edward graduated with honors in Economics, with a second degree in French. After university he studied classical guitar in Paris, France, worked as a market researcher in New York City, as a computer programmer in Stockholm, Sweden.

Edward has lectured at the Moscow State School of Journalism, and presented at the Davis Center, Harvard University on Russian freedom of the press.

Edward speaks Russian, Swedish and French. His current hobby is Latin American salsa dancing.

Panorea Baka

Panorea Baka is a London based maths educator, creative learning enthusiast and the founder and director of Maths Dance.

She has developed knowledge and skills that cross a wide variety of disciplines including applied mathematics, biomedical engineering and education. Frustrated by the reality of the fragmented curriculum she decided to launch Maths Dance in January 2013. Her award winning company is built on the innovative idea of teaching and learning mathematics through movement and promotes a holistic educational approach. Panorea and her team have been training teachers on how to merge mathematics, dance and other subjects bringing creativity into learning. They also hold school workshops enriching the students’ whole educational experience.

As an educator her personal mission is to ‘create a dynamic and inclusive space where children can think, sense, understand, question and reshape the world’.

Stratis Andreadis

Was born in 1979 and grew up in Pangrati Athens. He finished high school in the suburb of Filothei and studied philosophy at 2 mediocre universities in Massachusetts. Without much direction, he worked for two years at a shipping firm , and later at a pleasure boats agency. The only fixed point in his life was sailboat racing which he participated in since he was three years old. At some point he decided that he wanted to help increase participation in sailing. So from 2011 he created around ten annual yacht races that, as of 2014, have contributed more than 3 million € to their local communities. At a sailing seminar he was teaching, before one of these events, he met a group of friends from Corfu and they fell madly in love with an idea. The idea is the manufacturing of world-class upcycled products in Greece that come from the sea, and share their unique and beautiful stories of life at sea. Q.E Salty Bag.

Philip Hyldgaard

Philip Hyldgaard is one of the prominent NGO leaders in the fight against human trafficking. At the age of 23, he moved to Greece to pioneer The A21 Campaign, and embarked on opening the organization’s first shelter; later he oversaw the launch of the national human trafficking hotline for Greece, 1109.

Today, Philip is the Global Operations Manager for A21, and the organization has grown to 10 offices in nine countries around the world, having assisted hundreds of survivors of human trafficking.

In 2012, Philip was declared a hero in the fight against human trafficking by Hilary Clinton and the US Department of State.

Philip’s story of using what is in your hand to make a difference will inspire you, and encourage you to do the same.

Lena Chaidouti

Lena Chaidouti was born in Larisa in the first day of autumn. She had the luck to grow up in a place, that today you can only find in fairytales. She was playing with her friends many traditional greek games and… theatre ! She was spending most of her time reading books, painting and playing puppet shows .

The years passed in a glimpse of an eye, Lena grew up and she thought that she could make her games a full time occupation. So she went to the University to study Theatrology. Since then she tells stories wherever she is. To young or old kids. True stories that are very close to fairytales, fake stories that make you scared, sad, hope and finally … live !

Yiorgos Nikoletakis

He says that his course was so random that he set out with his team to find the answer to the most important question a young person can have.

“What I would like to be in 5 years from now?”

Founder of the 100mentors application (which won the London Business School Founder Award and the Deloitte Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Prize in London), and of the National Hellenic Student Association (NHSA) of America, with 4000 members in 70 chapters throughout USA and Canada. He received scholarships from Fullbright Foundation, State Scholarships Foundation and 10 more foundations. Studied in Columbia University and OSU after he graduated from AUEB. Finally he has working experience in Mergers & Acquisitions for energy studies in USA, Spain, Great Britain, as well as in Finance and Logistics positions in USA, Greece and China.

Katerina Bakogianni

She studied Journalism in the USA, in order to record great historical moments that change the world; her professional route, however, soon led her to look for the people behind the events.

Since many years, she communicates, through her interviews, unique stories of ordinary people and confessions of famous personas both from Greece and from abroad.

She has worked for the newspapers and for television, in the free and in the political reportage, behind and in front of the cameras. Nowadays, she carries out one journalistic meeting every week at Kapa magazine of Kathimerini Sunday newspaper, and she has concluded that important changes in the society start with small individual steps.

Giannis Farsaris

Giannis Farsaris was born in Ierapetra in 1973 and today he lives more on the internet than in Herakleio. He studied Science of the Computers at University of Crete and Adult Education at the Hellenic Open University. He has founded the open library OPENBOOK and he takes part in the publishing team of Fractal magazine. . The collective e-book “Writing Sample” that he attended, came forward as the best Writing Piece at the Greek Internet Awards of 2011. He takes part in the organizing team of Digital Creation Students’ Festival, while for 4 years he has also been a member of the judging team of LogoTehnis narrative competition. He took part in “El Roy” creative team for the composition -at a cooperative wiki environment- of a black comedy,that has been staged by 5 drama teams. His next book is going to be published having successfully been funded through crowdfunding.

Kanti Panagiota

Kanti Panagiota was born and grew up in Giannitsa. She graduated from the Department of Physics of the University of Ioannina and she received her PhD diploma in Theoretical Physics at the same institution.

She worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis of the United States of America, at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy and at the international laboratory CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Subsequently, she became a staff member of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the University of Oxford and of the Department of Mathematical Sciences of the University of Durham in United Kingdom. In 2007 she was appointed Associate Professor at the Physics Department of the University of Ioannina where she remains until today

Her scientific research activity aims at unveiling the secrets of gravity, cosmology, wormholes, black holes and particle physics.

Pera Dothe

"Pera-Dothe" was born in September of 2008. Experimental & Amateur, said the doctor. The first steps made in 2009 by "The Snowman & the girl" of E.Triviza. In the early paintings, in 2010, Pera-Dothe, portrayed the "Colors of Death." (Mom said it reminded her of the "Killing Game" by Ionesco and dad "my nationality is the color of the wind" by M.Visniec). To 2011, Pera-Dothe said "I count to ten, then it's your turn ..". So said and played seek and hide. In 2012, Pera-Doth felt the first nights, memories, fears and loves. "Plural", as always. In 2013, Pera-Dothe read the first story and concluded "They lived well, and we lived in reverse." In 2014, Pera-Dothe travelled to "Camino Real". Never went to school.Pera-Dothe, Runs, hits and falls, stands up, sings and spits. Laughs. Cries. Tastes, smells, touches, sees, hears, feels and imagines ..And don't forget..Pera-Doth enjoys playing outdoors.

Trio Alenti

Songs and dances that passed through the neighbourhood, new instrumentations and compositions emerging, creating one music, one sound.

The band formed in 2012 and from then it has performed at Lyra meetup in Kasos(12/12), at Perugiasisi Festival in Italy (2/13), at Corinthians Municipality Festival (6/13), at Kilkis Festival (7/13), at music village “Agios Laurentios” (8/13) as well as at many stages in and out of Thessaloniki. So far it has to recorded demos.

Alenti Trio is formed by Alexandros Rizopoulos: percussion and vocals, Vasilis Zigkeridis: qanun and vocals, Pantelis Agkistriwtis lyra and vocals.

Christos Malliarakis

Can we learn Computer Programming by playing a game?

Christos Malliarakis is undergoing his PhD research in Game Based Learning and Game Design in the Department of Applied Informatics in the University of Macedonia. He has developed CMX, an educational Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) for learning and teaching Computer Programming. The game won the 2nd Educational Game Competition in the category of the install-based games that was held in the 8th European Conference in Game-based Learning (ECGBL 2014).

He has worked in Primary and Secondary education for 4 years in Mandoulides Schools, a large private school located in Thessaloniki, Greece. He has also tutored many students for National Competitions and Balkan Olympiads in Informatics with many distinctions. In 2012 he was co-leader of the Greek National Team that participated in Junior Balkan Olympiad in Informatics (JBOI 2012) held in FYROM.

Christos Simardanis

Christos Simardanis was born in Alexandria of Egypt in 1956. He came to Greece in 1962, with his first stop being Vyronas in Attica. Then he moved to London and after that to many –maybe too many- places, most of which were unfortunately outside of Greece.

He made several academic attempts, mainly looking for his talents and his soul, none of which he has indentified exactly yet. Should he had been more studious when he needed to, he might have ended up being an archeologist or an historian. Now, he is trying to fill in the gaps by being a theatre actor. And in the last year he is doing so in quite a constructive way at the National Theatre of Northern Greece. It looks like everything found its way on its own. After all, as he believes, things happen when they want to.

He is considered graceful and smart by his friends and lazy, dilatory and impulsive by more careful observers. He is curiously anticipating to grow old –or older- and die, hoping to discover something. The only criticism he particularly appreciated, and still remembers, is that he is a living example of what it means to have a sense of humor and not just kid around.

EKMEK

Honouring the best elements of the greek repertoire and at the same time influenced by their other love latin and ethnic music ΕΚΜΕΚ soon gained the audience's love and attention. A year after their formation they released their first album “Glykainei kai den paxainei (Sweet but not fatening)” (Lyra). A little later they collaborated with greek female singer Eleni Tsaligopoulou in their song “I didn’t forgive you not even a little (De se sygxoresa oute ligo)” . During this period they have a strong presence in live scenes all over Greece. In 2013 their song “O trapezitis(the banker)” becomes the soundtrack of a Deutsche Welle documentary about the crisis in Greece, while in the same year they publish a few singles including “Strange Angel (Aggelos Xenos)”. EKMEK are Alekos Spanidis (drums), Sakis Raptopoulos (accordion), Stergios Giannos (bass), George Avramidis (trumpet), Argiris Krommydas (electric guitar) and Alkis Kanidis (vocals, classical guitar).