Two panel discussions at EVOLVE [25]

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 14:00:00 +0000

I had the honour of being part of first ever “EVOLVE [25]” a new premier tech conference for Brighton & Hove and Sussex. I was part of two panel discussions for the event.

I wrote a blog post about my perspectives and experiences at the event which you can read on the . The post has a particularly brilliant action shot of me, so is worth checking out to see that alone!

Panel 1 @ 2.30pm

Sustainable Development from the Inside Out: Driving Change Within Tech Teams

How tech teams and individuals, not just leadership, are embedding sustainability into their workflows, culture and everyday decisions.

Chair: Ed Chinn.
Fellow panellists: Mark Buss, Neil Clark, Catrina Baker-Bassett

I loved getting to know my fellow panellists, particularly our chair Ed Chinn whom I met for the first time. I look forward to future collaborations with these folks–forging new connection was core to the ethos of . It was such a special day!

Panel 2 @ 3.50pm

Building Sustainably as a Digital Product Team

As panel chair, in assembling the discussion I took inspiration from the new –“Minimise environmental impact”.

Chair: Fiona MacNeill
Panellists: Heidi Swigon - Content Strategist, Will Barnes - SEO, Oliver Winks - Developer, Eliana Zuluaga - UX, University of Brighton Student, Viraj Panickar - UX, University of Brighton Student, Louis Radtke - UX, University of Brighton Student, Vishnu Vijayan - UX, University of Brighton Student

I invited the panellists to think about

the entire product lifecycle
their place in that professionally or a role they aspire to in the future
what they can practically do in their role to make change
drawing on their past experiences, wither thrhough work or learning in their responses

You can check out the - including the full set of Ecómon cards.

Inspirations: Fantasy Football and Pokémon

Steve Rackley, one of the organisers, gave me the challenge of considering how students could be involved in the conference. As an ethusiastic alumni of University of Brighton, I was eager to take up this challenge and involve current students from the MSc User Experience Design I completed back in 2018. This was an amazing experience and allowed me to be in contact with students who had interviewed me about digital sustainability for one of their coursework projects.

As we had quite a large panel and needed to represent a number of specialisms, the challenge for me as chair was to make sure that folks had fairly distributed time ‘on air’ during the panel. My solutions to this problem were, to keep introductions to a minimum by co-creating Ecómon cards for each panellist, to take a fantasy football inpired approach as in what would each role in a ‘dream’ sustainable product team do? I also used a yellow card / red card system which fit this scenario - more on this below.

The Ecómon trading cards, shown above, gave us a shorthand and lighthearted way of introducing each speaker, including their specialisms they goals and for the students, their professional aspirations.

The yellow card / red card system was used to politely draw down particularly passionate speakers who were using too much air time (I am definitely guilty of this myself).

The panel went well and although we were right at the end of the day, we still had a great crowd.

I have taken learning from this panel into my professional work as an interim product manager for a startup. This also initiaed a passionate side quest to support the development of sustainable product teams throughout sussex through running and volunteering for . More on these aspects in future event posts and blog posts!

Will I see you EVOLVE [26]?

I sure hope so, and in 2026 they are scaling up by holding the event at Brighton Centre. Lets make EVOLVE [26] massive by coming together to celebrate the fantastic digital community that we have here in Sussex!

Product Teams | Fiona MacNeill | Macknowlogist

Two panel discussions at EVOLVE [25]

Panel 1 @ 2.30pm

Panel 2 @ 3.50pm

Inspirations: Fantasy Football and Pokémon

Will I see you EVOLVE [26]?