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First speakers announced for Wired Retail together with Valtech

August 19, 2015

This article is a promotional announcement for our annual retail conference. For more details head to WIRED's events website.

The first ten speakers have been announced for WIRED Retail Together with Valtech, our second annual one-day summit exploring the future of retailing -- with those who are building it.

WIRED Retail Together with Valtech returns to London on November 23 at St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. With the sector undergoing a rapid, digital-led transformation, WIRED Retail will gather dynamic speakers who will lead the audience beyond the cutting edge of today.

The newly announced speakers are:

  • Jo Bertram, who leads Uber's UK, Ireland and Nordic operations and will speak on the lessons learned from the platform's staggering success.
  • Jessi Baker, founder of Provenance, who is building the future of consumer trust in brands. The Provenance platform is using blockchain technology to verify products and their manufacturing processes.
  • Cristian van Tienhoven of Amazon Merchant Services. With Amazon now not only in the checkout business but the check-in business too, van Tienhoven will explain how behaviour analysis can help build trust -- for consumers and retailers.
  • William D McMaster, head of VR at Visualise. He is pioneering 360-degree video and will speak on the future of VR, drawing on his work with the British Army, Thomas Cook and Mercedes Benz Formula 1.
  • James Allgrove, head of UK growth for Stripe, which is enabling a world where the phone is the transactional device. Allgrove will explore how that will change customer behaviour.
  • Stefan Siegel, founder and CEO of NOT JUST A LABEL, who creates extraordinary retail experiences, recently taking over an iconic department store in Berlin for online retailer Zalando, bringing pop-ups into the digital age.
  • Sebastian Siemiatkowski, cofounder and CEO of Klarna, which 50,000 merchants and 35 million consumers use. He will talk about micro-payments, and monetising customer loyalty.
  • Paul Clarke, director of technology at Ocado Technology, who is designing Ocado's next highly automated fulfilment centre -- with robotics and smart machines -- and moving the company's services into the cloud.
  • Ken Denman, president and CEO of Emotient, who explores how facial recognition and sentiment analysis could turbocharge customer service when fused with sales receipts, iBeacon technology and other data.
  • Si Brown, cofounder and CMO of skignz, a geolocation-based augmented reality (AR) platform, who will explain how AR could play a role in the future of retail.

More speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.

WIRED RETAIL will once again bring together startups, tech giants and established high-street players to explain and discuss the converging trends and technologies disrupting commerce today, and bringing retail into the digital age. It will offer a future-facing look at the emerging opportunities for smart retailers, disruptors, investors, marketers, designers, advertisers, buyers and policymakers.

WIRED Retail Together with Valtech returns to London on November 23 at St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. Last year's event sold out, so secure your place now with our Early Bird Offer: WIRED subscribers save 15 per cent, non-subscribers save 10 per cent by booking before September 11, 2015. We also have a limited number of half-price tickets available for retail sector startups. For more information visit: wiredevent.co.uk/wired-retail-2015