KEYNOTES

Luiza Vasiliu

Building While Everything Collapses
Years spent carrying other people's suffering, then publishing what you found and watching, often, as nothing seems to change. The instinct is to lose hope. But change comes more slowly: in readers who write back transformed, in stories that reshape people's perspective. This talk follows an investigative journalist's path toward building something new in the worst possible moment. Because there's no better time to build than when everything falls apart.

Ange McMillan

Holding the Hope
As a teenager, Ange's life changed unexpectedly, and it took her three years to find people who truly believed in her. That belief is what she has spent her career passing on to teenagers, holding hope for them when they can't yet hold it themselves.

Shirish Kulkarni

Hope Is Not a Zero-Sum Game
What can the total absence of hope tell us about what hope actually means? Through experiencing that darkness, Shirish discovered hope isn't just a feeling. It isn't even something that's individual. In truth, hope grows in connection, community and care. That's why his work brings people together, to collectively shape what they need to build better lives. What he's learned is that hope doesn't have to be scarce. The more you create, the more there is - for everyone.

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KEYNOTES

Piero Zagami

The Hard Part Was Never The Drawing
A chart can make you feel something, or it can make you believe something that isn't true. Piero has spent his career on that line: designing data stories and editing the work of other designers for print. Now that a machine can produce a beautiful chart in seconds, he asks what the person is still for. His answer has to do with choosing, and with being answerable for the choice.

Jacopo Ottaviani

Counted, Therefore Real
A map of an invisible neighbourhood, a database of dead migrants, deforestation traced through investigative journalism, satellites tracking mines across the Congo Basin and the Amazon: what these projects really produced was proof that someone was paying attention. Jacopo will explain how that proof outlasts the story, how communities can convene around data journalism projects and what it changes for the people it is about.

Ruxandra Gîdei

Are We All Reading Now?
At 18, Ruxandra began sharing her love of books online, simply hoping to connect with other readers. Today, as BookTok, Bookstagram, and the growing visibility of books in pop culture seem to have made reading “sexy” again, she explores what this enthusiasm can (and cannot) change. Her talk reflects on promoting reading in Romania, where individual ambassadors and platform algorithms must fill the gaps left by shrinking public cultural infrastructure.

Chris Jones

The Highs and Lows of Radical Honesty
Chris Jones will explore the lessons of his new memoir, Legs Hearts Minds: Loss and Its Remedies. He had to rebuild his life after a series of calamities, and he learned how important it is to be radically honest about who you are and who you would rather be. That honesty sometimes has its costs—it can be hard to admit your mistakes—but they pale next to the rewards that come with corrections. Hope is a choice, and Chris is glad he made it.