“Smart” Community Talk Event

Kalaya Kovidvisith is Co-founder of FabCafe Bangkok and Managing Director of FABLAB Thailand. She holds Master degree in Design and Computation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her research interests focus on how digital fabrication and biotechnology reinforce the changing relationship in industry and create the new business model for the next design generation. Kalaya is Global Entrepreneur Summit Delegate of 2015 and Asia Pacific Weeks Berlin 2016.

Keiko is a Japanese-Papua New Guinean strategic consultant with a decade of experience working in the nonprofit, public and private sectors across +10 countries. Based in Tokyo, she works with Japanese and global brands, creating prototypes toward net positive futures. Alongside building communities focused on social impact across the Asia Pacific region (Social Innovation Japan, Pacific Island Society) her career has included growing teams at Google, developing trade for governments and researching security in civil society organisations. When she’s not being the CEO of side hustles, she can be found hunting rotenburo (outdoor hot springs) or pottering about forests.

Akiba is the Founder of FreakLabs, Wildlife and Environmental Conservation Technology. Freaklabs develops Arduino-based hardware for wildlife research, environmental conservation and basic infrastructure in rural and remote areas. Akiba has a background in electronics and product design and has been designing circuits for the past 25 years. His experience spans IC and FPGA, firmware, and hardware design to manufacturing. His specialty is in outdoor wireless sensor networks and has been working on it since 2002. His work has gravitated towards technology for environmental monitoring and is now working on wildlife conservation. 

Jacinta is a content and software developer specializing in web technologies. She’s also a published author, runs her own book and games publishing company, and has started her own magazine. She’s worked for Google, SCMP, Discovery Channel, Australian Centre for Moving Image (ACMI) and Special Broadcasting Services (SBS). She’s studying ecology and when not working on technology or publishing projects, plays the harp or DnD, and goes hiking or diving.

AZBY BROWN is a native of New Orleans, and has lived in Japan since 1985. He is a leading authority on Japanese architecture, design, and environmentalism, and the author of The Very Small Home (2005), Just Enough: Lessons in living green from traditional Japan (2010), and The Genius of Japanese Carpentry (2014). Since the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster in March 2011, Azby has been lead researcher for Safecast, a highly successful global volunteer-based citizen-science organization devoted to developing new technology platforms for crowdsourced environmental monitoring which promote open-source and open data principles. In his writing and media appearances, Azby offers a credible, critical, and independent voice to counter partisan talking points.