Steve “Buzz” Pearce keynote speaker

Steve has the mind of an engineer, and the heart of an artist. Since the dawn of the internet, he’s lovingly crafted digital products and services, that people actually use and enjoy on a daily basis. Steve is Global Head of Design at Skyscanner and Former Principal Design Director at Skype. His friends call him Buzz, but that's another story altogether. In total he's been in the game for over 17 years.
He joined Skype in 2008. During his time there, he's been responsible for designing Skype's flagship products from the livingroom (Xbox/TV) to the boardroom (Lync Room Systems). Also bringing the Skype brand to the masses, as well as highly successful global marketing campaigns on tv, skype.com and print.Prior to Skype he was Design Director at Poke. He joined them right at the beginning, and helped build a world leading design team over those 7 years. He worked closely with world leading companies, designing solutions that made substantial benefits to their businesses. This culminated in being world number 1 creative digital agency for 2 years running just prior to his departure to Skype.
During that time he won a shelf full of metal; 6 Webby awards, a BAFTA, handful of One Shows and BIMAs, plus D&AD and various marketing awards; In total making him one of the most awarded designers in the UK today. And although these tokens of recognition are nice, his real passion is to make good things that people actually use and enjoy.
Before Poke he ran his own small collective of designers, and before that he was a senior designer at Deepend, where he did lots more interesting interactive things for other lovely clients. He loves talking design and telling stories.
He lectures at many universities and has spoken at leading conferences to audiences over 4000.