Ryan Aitken is the founder and Managing Director of CDCorp a Scottish based crypto consultancy which has been leading in the use of Non Fungible Tokens (NFTS) in the Whisky sector. Show Highlights: Ryan explains what blockchain is and how this technology underpins ideas like crypto currency, NFTs and DAOs.Explores the fundamental appeal and disruptive power of decentralised technologies like Blockchain.Addresses the debate around the ecological impacts of blockchain transactions.Describ...

Ken Gordon is the European Space Agency’s Business Ambassador for Scotland and Northern Ireland. Part of Ken’s mission is to promote and encourage people to apply for the European Space Agency’s funding programme. He talks to Dougal Perman about opportunities for people working in the creative industries across the Highlands and Islands. Ken is also a podcast producer and really interested in people and stories. We talk about the importance and value of storytelling and how he was drawn to wh...

Michael Rueger is Creative Director, Ravensburger Innovation Lab in Germany. We discuss what makes innovation distinctive from creativity, how Michael integrates this with a long-established brand and product set such as Ravensburger, the role of technology, the importance of characters, working with franchises, the approach they use and what a jigsaw might be like in 20 years! Date Recorded: 2021 Date Published: August 2021 Participants: Interviewee: Michael Rueger Host: Tim W...

Sadie Dixon-Spain is artistic director and founder of The Walking Theatre Company. Based in Argyll, Sadie founded The Walking Theatre Company based on a love of movement, storytelling, history and the environment. She talks to Dougal Perman about all of those things including her passion for and fascination with Scotland’s stories. They also discuss how Sadie grew her theatre company as a commercial concern without relying on funding, how the work her company makes responds to its situation a...

How do you take those golden moments when the sun breaks through the clouds in a muddy field while the beats keep the crowd’s feed stomping, to a beautiful bespoke new workspace in Inverness? Emma Neilson has been on that journey; having worked in music festival production for much of her career she is now in project management for Wasps. She spoke to Dougal Perman about her life in festivals, what she learned about remote working and collaboration and empathy, how the workplace is adapting a...

Museums are making ever more sophisticated use of digital technologies. This might be simply extending their reach, opening access to the collection, enhancing exhibits or harnessing the crowd to co curate. The Tank Museum is a world leading collection of armoured vehicles and has achieved a great deal through its innovative use of digital and translated the extended engagement they have achieved into a finance resource through their patronage project. Nick Wyness Head of Marketing & En...

Crowdsourcing is an increasingly important activity to a range of sectors, Disrupting and changing the way we consider creating value it is enabled through the availability of low cost high speed low friction communications. The creative Sector and heritage organizations are already actively embracing the advantages and opportunities that crowdsourcing can offer them from collective curation, project finance, to problem solving and content sourcing. Epi Ludvik is the founder and CEO of Crow...

In a series of posts on the topic of podcasting, there is nothing to beat a case study. And so here we have an award-winning case study no less! Stories of Scotland is exactly that, an award-winning podcast, create and hosted by Annie MacDonald and Jenny Johnstone who try to unravel the rich tapestry of Scotland’s culture, nature and heritage. Prepared to climb into caves, cairns and chaos, Annie and Jenny travel around Scotland and investigate how stories of the past can help us make sense o...

Record label manager, musician and promoter, Johnny Lynch runs the Lost Map record label from the Isle of Eigg. He also makes music as The Pictish Trail and promotes wonderful parties on and off the island. Johnny spoke to Dougal Perman about creating value for a community of fans, Johnny?s thoughts on how music streaming services could be overhauled to make them more equitable for independent artists and labels and his approach to running Lost Map. Show Highlights: Creativity in lockdownRun...

Following a short stint in the military, Reut Barak graduated as a trained Opera Singer from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, and then worked in Berlin, singing church music by Mozart, Haydn and Bach. While arranging concerts in the city and managing artists, she discovered her passion for business. She joined fellow entrepreneurs in the 2013-2014 class at the University of Oxford, with a scholarship to study business (MBA), where she found that creativity goes far beyond art. She ...

As more of our business, personal and creatives lives move on line so to does the demand for digital resources. Building websites, creating advertising and marketing campaigns to rounding out any creative project requires a variety of digital skills and products. This could be code, audio, video, photos , templates and expertise. You may need to access any or all of this to complete your project. At the same time, this burgeoning marketplace provides creatives with a tremendous opportunity to...

Dealing with information overload is a challenge. Feedly is a tool that helps manage information and news by acting as an aggregator and utilising AI to enhance the feeds accuracy. Catalina de Leon is a Product designer at Feedly. An Expert in UI/UX design she eamplins how the design process works at Feedly, her personal story as a designer and what makes a good UX/UI designer. Show Highlights: What Feedly does and why it is helpful, and how it integrated with other tools.The AI tool LeoDes...

Sandra Murray a unique couturier and artist based in Inverness, who for over 40 years has built a bespoke personal design service offering unique designs for a private client world-wide. Show Highlights: Inspiration of growing up in the Highland and Islands to making unique garments for the Queen.Recognising the skills required to make the whole garment and not just designing it.How Sandra works with her exclusive clients and the bespoke service she offers.Sandra’s life in Paris and the US...

Chagall is a singer-songwriter, performer and electronic music producer based in Amsterdam. Her performances incorporate gesture based music making using the cutting-edge MI.MU gloves and a custom-made full body sensor suit. She also works in virtual reality and has created a suite of avatars which feature in her performances. She is part of the MI.MU development team. In this episode of the XpoNorth Podcast Chagall speaks to Dougal Perman about how she approaches making music, how gesture-ba...

Giles Perring is a musician, composer and producer who runs the Sound of Jura studio based on the Isle of Jura off the coast of Argyll. Giles is a musical maverick who has involved creative collaboration in his music through remote participation technology, mostly using the humble telephone. Giles’s ever-evolving piece The Exchange was the feature of an XpoNorth Spotlight in April 2020. That performance was the highlight of the launch event for the Cultural, Heritage and Arts Assembly of Argy...

Jo Feeley is the Founder of Trend Bible, the lifestyle trend prediction agency, working with global brands, helping them understand what the consumer will think, see and do. Trend prediction is a fascinating mix bringing together influences from art, culture, music, consumer behaviour and psychology impacting on the everyday life at home. Jo Talks about how Trend Bible began, how the Trend Bible team gather information that influence trends and how they are handling the pandemic. Show Highli...

It is not everyone that can say they first got into photography on their first tour to the US, but John Maher can. As drummer with the Buzzcocks he did exactly that back in 1979. What was at first a hobby is now a serious business as John has catalogued and captured extraordinary views of the western isles and the uniqueness of life there. These skills have led to other striking and high profile commissions. John takes time to explain how he got started, how he manages to create such remarka...

What makes an illustrator distinct form an artist? How can you take creativity from small formats like book illustration to the scale of decorating houses or entire streets? Astrid Jaekel knows the answers to these things. As an illustrator, lecturer and noted artist in residence she has the insight and experience of facing all of these challenges. In a fascinating conversation, Astrid explains how she became an illustrator, how delivering large scale installations needs a team, and what in...

Harriet Smart is both an author and co-founder of a software company. As a writer Harriet is known for her historical fiction notably the Northminster Series. The software company she co founded with her husband is called Anthemion and has two writer specific products namely Writers Cafe, which is a writers project management and writing tool, and Jutoh which makes it easy to turn a manuscript into a published ebook format. Harriet talks about becoming a writer, her thoughts and appro...

Tom Welsh is a Scottish Fantasy author known for his Metiks Fade Trilogy. He is also known for his work in writing for games and we wanted to understand how Tom developed his skills as a writer and how he took them from pure fiction into the world of games and journalism. Show Highlights: • Becoming a writer • The origins of Metiks Fade • The role of a writer in the world of gaming • Advice for budding writers Participants: Interviewee: Thomas Welsh Host: Tim Wright: Tim Wright is co found...