01 // Invite me to speak
I talk about technology, the future, and the stories cultures tell themselves about both. I have been speaking about it on stages, lecture theatres and video calls since 2012.
Venues have included DevConnect (TR), Sonar+D (ES), Unsound Festival (PL), Human Entities (PT), Fiber Festival (NL), Theorizing the Web (US) and Transmediale (DE). I have taught at art schools and run seminars for The New Centre.
Landing complex ideas in a room is something I do well. I would rather leave an audience with one idea they can use than five they will forget on the way out.
If you would like me to speak at your thing, get in touch.
02 // Upcoming
What is in the diary.
2026
- Sep — Tectonic Storytelling: Warhammer 40,000 as a Techno-social System | Warhammer Conference 2026 — Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies |
03 // What I talk about
Solarpunk & hopeful futures
I have been an active voice in solarpunk since its earliest days and a co-admin of solarpunks.net since 2014. Talks range from the keynote-length argument for solarpunk as a memetic engine to workshops on narrative strategy.
Worlds & world running
Worlds are the 21st century’s newest medium. I talk about how fictional worlds are built, maintained and inhabited over time — mythmaking mechanisms, autonomous worlds, and the durational work of keeping a world going once the launch is over.
Stacks & infrastructure
Where #stacktivism started: making the infrastructure we depend on legible. Cloud politics, IOT agents in infrastructure space, and what it means to own digital things.
04 // Formats
Keynote
A single talk, twenty minutes to an hour, built for the room it is given in. Slides and speaker notes usually get published afterwards.
Workshop & teaching
Longer sessions and courses. I have taught on the Computational Arts BA at Camberwell College of Arts, run seminars for The New Centre, and lectured at Imperial College IDE and the University of Michigan.
Panel & conversation
I am comfortable on a panel and better in conversation than in monologue. Previous panels at Unsound Festival, Autonomous Worlds Assembly and Ars Electronica.
Remote & online
A large share of the archive below was delivered remotely, and has been since well before 2020. I am set up for it and happy to do it.
Slides and speaker notes for my keynote on solarpunk, given at Unsound Festival in Krakow in 2019. It is the talk I am asked for most often.
Solarpunk is a collective memetic engine: a cultural construct that powers the re-futuring our collective imagination needs.
06 // Selected recordings
Decentralised Narratives
A panel discussion with Venkatesh Rao, GVN and Kara Kittle on who gets to tell the story when a world has no single author.
Land As Platform — Coded Matter(s) #15
Land, and what happens to it once it is treated as a platform to be built on rather than ground to stand on.
Solarpunk: A Grand Dress Rehearsal
Part of Terra Fiction. An early outing for the argument that solarpunk is a rehearsal for a future we could actually inhabit.
Colonising the Clouds
One of the founding #stacktivism talks, on the politics of the infrastructure we had already started living inside.
07 // Talk archive
2025
- Mar — Durational behaviour of Agents in virtual worlds | OH-MY-DIY-AI — London, UK
- Jan — SLOP MACHINES | Points and Gestures — (Online/Remote)
2024
- Dec — TRANS CARBON HABITAT — Lisbon, PT (Remote)
- Sep — Ecogradia Podcast
- Jun — Solarpunk is Dreaming Green | Human Entities 2024 @CADA — Lisbon, PT
- Mar — Sites of Mythmaking in Autonomous Worlds | @Floating Croissant — London, UK
2023
- Nov — Decentralised Narratives (Panel Discussion w/Venkatesh Rao, GVN, Kara Kittle) | Autonomous Worlds Assembly — Istanbul, TR
- Nov — Mythmaking Mechanisms in Autonomous Worlds | Autonomous Worlds Assembly — Istanbul, TR
- Sep — On Fortune | #RSPM Webchat
- Sep — Solarpunk Design | U Michigan, USA — (Remote)
- Sep — Solarpunk | Musicville European Opera Project — (Remote)
- Aug — Writing the Impossible Object | The New Centre — (Remote)
- May — Worlds: A Walk-Though | @Autonomous Worlds Summit — Lisbon, PT
- Mar — Web3 Legacies | @IDE Imperial College London — London, UK
- Jan — Twenty-Two Years of Transcendental Time Machines | @0xSalon — Berlin, DE (Remote)
2022
- Aug – Dec — Daemon & Discord: Anatomy of the DAO | @The New Centre — NYC (Remote)
- Nov — Wind-Up Worlds | @Blockhack #40 — London, UK
- Oct — Patchlab Festival — Krakow, PL (Remote)
- Sep — Incredible Machines 2022 | @The New Centre — US (Remote)
- Jul — Mat Dryhurst, Reza Negarestani and Jay Springett in Conversation | Impossible Object Books (Remote)
- May – Jun — Solarpunk + Narrative Strategy | Computational Arts BA, @Camberwell College of Arts — London, UK
- Mar —
Land As Platform @The Terraforming / Strelka Institute— Moscow, RUS (cancelled due to a war) - Feb — Solarpunk Discussion | @Unsee The Future — London, UK (Remote)
2021
- Nov — Chain Games | @Blockhack #31 — London, UK
- Sep — General Seminar #9 — Synthetic Media/Synthetic Brands | @Nearfuturelab — Worldwide (Remote)
- Sep — Branch Magazine Symposium: Solarpunk and Other Worlds (Panel Discussion) | @Ars Electronica — Austria (Remote)
- Sep — WHAT PUNK ARE YOU? Past, Present and Future Trends in Anti-capitalist Science Fiction (Panel Discussion) | @Futurecon 21 — Worldwide (Remote)
- Aug —
Land as Platform @Agri_Culture_Camp — Cornwall, UK(Unable to attend) - Aug — Solarpunk: A Narrative Strategy for a Broken Present, a Memetic Engine for a Better World | The Stoa — Online
- Jun — The Future Is a Vibe | @Intonal Festival — Malmo, Sweden (Remote)
- May — Solarpunk? (for power.film) | @Imagination Exchange Barbican — London, UK
- Apr — Eurocon Presents: Solarpunk (Panel Discussion) | @LuxCon 2021 — Luxembourg (Remote)
- Feb — After Covid? The Speculative Present | @Innovation Garden #2 — Japan (Remote)
2020
- Mar — Prayer, Meditation, and Ancestors (Paywalled) | @The Tea Room — #RSPM Webchat
- Mar — Food Forest Of Souls (Paywalled) | @Treadwells Bookshop — London
2019
- Oct — Interspecies Solidarity (Panel Discussion) | @Unsound Festival — Krakow
- Oct — Solarpunk: Life in the future beyond the rusted chrome of yestermorrow | @Unsound Festival — Krakow
- Aug — Location, Notation, Vocation. IOT Agents in Infrastructure Space | @Blockhack #15 — London
- Jul — New Internet (Panel Discussion) | @Sonar-D — Barcelona
- Jun — Solarpunk And The Great Unfolding: Building Keystones Of Continuity | @Border Sessions — The Hague
2018
- Oct — Beyond Cyberpunk (Panel Discussion) | @Unsound Festival — Krakow
- Oct — Public Discourse in the Age of Conspiratainment | @Unsound Festival — Krakow
- Sep — Solarpunk | Tolhuistuin Festival @Tolhuistuin — Amsterdam
- Sep — Land As Platform — Coded Matter(s) #15 | @Fiber Festival — Amsterdam
- Sep — Reality Hacking | New Frontiers World Building BA @Brakke Grond, Vlaams Cultuurhuis — Amsterdam
- Aug — Solarpunk as Civic Imaginary | @Citizen Sci-Fi Alliance — London
- Jul — New Age of Cults | @Acclerate Working Group #3 (#AWG3) — London
- Jun — Owning Digital Stuff Is Going to Get Weird | @Blockhack #4 — London
- May — Solarpunk: A Grand Dress Rehearsal | Terra Fiction @Het Nieuwe Instituut — Rotterdam
- May — Deep Sensing | 2p2 Web Berlin @Trust — Berlin
2017
- May — Squarial | @Debcon (Airstrip One) — London
2015
- Jun — Panel Respondent | Staying With The Trouble @The White Building — London
- Jan — #Stacktivism Mobilising Infrastructure Space Workshop | @Transmediale — HKW Berlin
2014
- Oct — (Dis)Assembling #stacktivism | @Goethe Institut — London
- Apr — Colonising the Clouds | @Theorizing the Web (#TTW14) — NYC
2013
- Aug — Not Dying (The Means Of) | @CRESC Annual Conference UCL — London
- Jul — Seeing The Stack — #Stacktivism Unconference | @Thought Menu #7 — London
- May — New Luddism — Immaterial Labour Isn’t Working | @Autoitalia — London
- Feb — Viewer Discretion Cannot Be Advised | PKLZBYOB @Limazulu — London
2012
- Jul — More Amps Less Angst | Thought Menu #2 @Limazulu — London
08 // Speaker bio & booking
Speaker bio
Jay Springett is a writer, speaker and strategist. He has been an active voice in the solarpunk movement since its earliest days and has co-run solarpunks.net since 2014. He makes the audio essay podcast Permanently Moved and the interview show Experience.Computer, and has spoken at Unsound Festival, Fiber Festival, Sonar+D, Transmediale, Theorizing the Web, Ars Electronica, Human Entities and the Autonomous Worlds Assembly. He teaches at art schools and runs seminars for The New Centre.
One line: Jay Springett is a writer and speaker on solarpunk, worlds and the infrastructure we live inside.
Booking
- Remote is easy and well practised — a good share of the archive was delivered that way.
- Travelling from London, and happy to come further for the right thing.
- Keynote, workshop, seminar or panel — whichever suits your programme.
- Fees vary with the event, and are negotiable for small and non-commercial ones.
- Ask early. Availability is the constraint far more often than interest is.