The Guardian’s Paul Mason Curates Meaning 2016

New conference programme on alternative approaches to business and work has been announced, with speakers from Good Energy, Lush, The Empathy Museum, Fairmondo, Open Utility, Building Bridges for Peace and more

Meaning 2016 has announced its fifth conference programme. Taking place at the Brighton Corn Exchange on 17 November, Meaning is the annual gathering for people who believe business can and must be a force for positive change in our dynamic and volatile world.

This year’s guest director is provocative journalist and broadcaster Paul Mason, who, together with the Meaning team, has curated an international line up of speakers breaking new ground and making significant change happen. Paul will also deliver the opening keynote.

Well known for his radical leftist politics, journalism and recent book ‘PostCapitalism, A Guide To Our Future’, Paul will share why he believes capitalism will soon be replaced by new systems driven by the advent of abundant free information. Mason said: “For the first 30 years of the network revolution, the revolutionaries have been technologists and entrepreneurs. In the next 10 we have to see regulators nurture the real sharing economy – of platform co-ops, benefit corporations, non-state currencies and peer-to-peer exchanges.

“We need to remember that for about the first 20 years of the industrial revolution, a factory was a strange building in an isolated rural valley near a stream. Then the industrial city was born. I think that’s roughly where we are in the third industrial revolution. A takeoff point. At Meaning 2016 we’ll see some examples of pioneering organisations that are already starting to fly,” added Mason

Other speakers at Meaning include Juliet Davenport, who will make the case for her kind of real-world activism, following passions and moving from discussing the big issues to making bold moves that actively address them. She is founder and CEO of Good Energy one of the UK’s first pioneer companies to offer 100% renewable energy to the domestic marketplace.

Paul Green Jr, from US-based tomato-processing giants Morning Star, will share his journey as founder of the Morning Star Self-Management Institute. He will talk about his first-hand experience and academic research into self-management – the principle of dismantling organisational hierarchy and giving workers more autonomy. Morning Star has become a powerful example of innovation in organisation design.

Jo Berry will talk about her life following the 1984 IRA bomb that killed her father at the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Jo knew she had a choice – to harbour feelings of hatred and anger or to seek understanding and so bring peace back into her life. She chose peace and took the remarkable step of meeting her father’s killer. Ever since, she has dedicated her life to conflict transformation work through her charity ‘Building Bridges for Peace’.

Clare Patey is an artist and curator of the Empathy Museum and will invite everyone to walk a mile in the shoes of a stranger. She will share her belief in the power of empathy to create real, lasting and powerful change. Other speakers include Former banker and economic commentator Frances Coppola, social entrepreneur and beekeper Oliver Maxwell (of Bybi) and founder of Open Utility James Johnston. In addition to the founder of Fairmondo, Felix Weth, blockchain expert Dave Birch and ethics director at LUSH Cosmetics, Hilary Jones.

In addition to the speaker programme, interactive sessions and workshops will be running throughout the day including sessions from B Lab UK, COOK, The Life You Can Save, The Corporate Rebels, Here, Neo and Professor Katie Bailey from the University of Sussex. There will also be a special shared lunch where participants can connect with like-minded peers in an informal way.

The conference’s main themes for 2016 are organisational design and structure, workplace democratisation, conscious business, 21^st century leadership, the future of money, post-growth economics, moving beyond sustainability in business, and the future of work.

For more speaker and ticket information, please visit www.meaningconference.co.uk.