Speaking
I speak on creativity, startups, innovation, experimentation, inspiring the next generation with the possibilities of technology, and "sketching with code". I aim to be useful, relatable, light-hearted, honest, and above all jargon-free.
My presenting style is to have colourful, shareable, memorable, simple slides in plain English. I often talk at the rate of a slide a minute, sometimes more, so it feels high energy and engaging.
What my slides look like
What I talk about now
Each of these is a talk I have given recently and can give again, shaped for the room.
What is AI anyway? There is no robot. What it can’t do yet: hallucination, out-of-date information, limited context, prompt injection. And then: proprietary data plus the customer relationship is gold dust. Build an AI idea funnel. Start where you are, with what you have.
a telecoms operator in Greece, early 2024
No code is better than no code. Four hundred SaaS tools and thousands of Zapier zaps: the problem was complexity, too much stuff and not enough time to reason about it, with one Postgres database as a refuge of sanity. What a data consultancy did about it, and the 153-field Looker explore nobody could use.
Product Tank London, then Coalesce London with Thomas in’t Veld of Tasman Analytics, October 2022
Given as How to scale your data team
Keep version 1.0 embarrassingly simple. 250,000 visitors on day one, zero downtime. Team up with people unlike you. Don’t build everything yourself; rebuild before you need to.
Ably Summit, London, July 2022
Given as Bold creativity wins
Bold creativity wins. What happens to the ideas that don’t make it: feature-itis, infrastricture, grow what works. No-code to yes-code. Will what got you here also get you there?
Ably Summit, London, July 2022
Given as Bold creativity wins
Start where you are, use what you know, team up with people unlike you, try an experiment (and another). Small is good. Ride a trend. Nobody will steal your idea. Take just enough risk.
Deeptech Atelier and Central Saint Martins, April 2018
A prototype is worth a thousand meetings. Build things that reduce risk, test assumptions and increase understanding. Is there a QWERTY here? A/B the change you want to see in the world.
Rainmaking Summit and UX Brighton, 2016 to 2018
Given as Sketching out the future
The talk that scares you, with the deck shuffled on the day: have a messy house, make and program your own robots, make up stories, don’t forget to eat, write something. Constraint is your friend. Sometimes tomorrow becomes never.
The DO Lectures, Wales, and CreativeMornings London, 2014 and 2015
Given as Create Something Every Day, Colour
To book me, go through my Speakers' Corner profile, or email hi@stef.io.
Talks I have given
Talks with a recording or a page you can still open.
- How to scale your data team
With Thomas in’t Veld of Tasman Analytics, at dbt’s Coalesce London 2022: how On Deck pulled 400-plus SaaS tools into one data platform without a data team.
- Life, Time, Value Conference
Stef Lewandowski at LTVConf 2017.
- LTV Conf podcast, episode 5
After a life-changing illness at 19, Stef vowed to create something every day. He tried agency-life and the VC-world but it turned out working alongside his wife on her passion project was the way to finally to balance their family life with their work life.
- Sketching out the future
A talk at UX Brighton 2016 on sketching with code: making the thing to find out whether it should exist.
- Building early-stage startups
A talk on building early-stage startups, while building Makelight, at the London Startup Growth Meetup.
- The Ephemerald
How to get things done as a serial side-project maker, at RedMonk’s Monki Gras 2016.
- Colour
An improvised talk about creativity using my Deck Roulette format. A series of randomised slides based on a set of images and slide titles. Whatever the computer chooses next is what you have to talk about!
- Starting with a hack
Software developer Stef Lewandowski kicks off the session with a talk about starting new projects, gaining ownership over your own process and keeping your business playful.
- Teach Your Kids to Create as Well as Consume Games
A 20x20 Pecha Kucha lightning talk (I’d never used this format before!) including how to be a robot dad and how to play with Scratch.
- Create Something Every Day
What I’ve learnt having this as my general rule for living for half my life. I did the talk as a hack by making it randomly pick from a set of slides so I didn’t know what would come next!
- In conversation: Max Fraser, Stef Lewandowski and Christopher Raeburn
What a collaboration between a fashion designer and a creative technologist looks like, at Wearable Futures 2013.
- Hack, Play, Learn (Hacker News London)
What we’re learning by building play, failure and parallelism into the Makeshift process.
- Hack, Play, Learn (Tech Talkfest, Google Campus)
“Hack, Play, Learn” is the part of the Makeshift process that precedes the “Build, Measure, Learn” workflow that many people will be familiar with.
- Hacking an Island
About my hacker residency on the island of Eigg.
- 2022How to scale your data team With Thomas in’t Veld of Tasman Analytics, at dbt’s Coalesce London 2022: how On Deck pulled 400-plus SaaS tools into one data platform without a data team.
- 2022Bold creativity wins Creativity in practice: bringing an idea to fruition. The online school built in six days, and what happens to the ideas that don’t make it.
- ≤ 2021Unlocking Potential (keynote) He was provocative and challenging at the same time as being positive and inspiring. He fulfilled his brief completely and was very flexible in the lead up to his keynote- flexing the content and checking with me that he was getting the messaging right.
- 2017Life, Time, Value Conference Stef Lewandowski at LTVConf 2017.
- 2017LTV Conf podcast, episode 5 After a life-changing illness at 19, Stef vowed to create something every day. He tried agency-life and the VC-world but it turned out working alongside his wife on her passion project was the way to finally to balance their family life with their work life.
- 2016Sketching out the future A talk at UX Brighton 2016 on sketching with code: making the thing to find out whether it should exist.
- 2016Building early-stage startups A talk on building early-stage startups, while building Makelight, at the London Startup Growth Meetup.
- 2016The Ephemerald How to get things done as a serial side-project maker, at RedMonk’s Monki Gras 2016.
- 2015Hack, play, learn. A hack-first approach to prototyping ideas in parallel to find the ones that work.
- 2015The Gender Setting: Flexible Technology, Narrow Sexuality A FutureFest 2015 discussion session, billed with Stef Lewandowski as “Technologist, Artist and Startup Founder”.
- 2015Colour An improvised talk about creativity using my Deck Roulette format. A series of randomised slides based on a set of images and slide titles. Whatever the computer chooses next is what you have to talk about!
- ≤ 2015Accenture (speaking engagement) Stef was great and delivered a great presentation and the audience found it very engaging. he recieved high praise and was a very approachable guy.
- 2015Starting with a hack Software developer Stef Lewandowski kicks off the session with a talk about starting new projects, gaining ownership over your own process and keeping your business playful.
- 2014Sketching with Data A 15 minute talk about the “hackableness” and malleability of data, and some of the sketchy, playful hacks I’ve been doing in my spare time that perhaps point towards an opportunity to improve how playful we can be with data.
- 2014Teach Your Kids to Create as Well as Consume Games A 20x20 Pecha Kucha lightning talk (I’d never used this format before!) including how to be a robot dad and how to play with Scratch.
- 2014Leancamp London 3 Stef Lewandowski spoke at Leancamp London 3.
- 2014Create Something Every Day What I’ve learnt having this as my general rule for living for half my life. I did the talk as a hack by making it randomly pick from a set of slides so I didn’t know what would come next!
- 2013In conversation: Max Fraser, Stef Lewandowski and Christopher Raeburn What a collaboration between a fashion designer and a creative technologist looks like, at Wearable Futures 2013.
- 2013Hack, Play, Learn (Hacker News London) What we’re learning by building play, failure and parallelism into the Makeshift process.
- 2013Hack, Make, Shift An overview of our stage-gate process for evaluating new ideas.
- 2013A Morning with Makeshift Stef Lewandowski spoke at Digital Shoreditch Festival 2013.
- 2013Hack, Play, Learn (Tech Talkfest, Google Campus) “Hack, Play, Learn” is the part of the Makeshift process that precedes the “Build, Measure, Learn” workflow that many people will be familiar with.
- 2012Hacking an Island About my hacker residency on the island of Eigg.
- 2012Find Better Problems I gave a short talk at the first Find Better Problems event.
- 2011media140 Frontiers: Barcelona Stef Lewandowski spoke at media140 Frontiers: Barcelona.
- 2009Now Try Failing A graduation ceremony talk about allowing yourself to fail so that you can succeed.
- 2008Common Purpose — The Entrepreneur’s Game Yesterday I was playing a ‘dragon in the den’ at a Common Purpose event as part of their Navigator Programme on leadership development.
- 2007Authenticity of Place I was one of a handful of speakers at the initiation event around the next ten years of regeneration of the city of Birmingham. My word was “Authenticity”, which is something easily lost in a project of this kind.
- 2005Museums on the Web conference (V&A Arts and Crafts) Presented at Museums on the Web conference.