Small Talks is all about exposing the stories of the things that people make. It’s about glimpses into their processes, the challenges they faced, the things they learnt, and how the end product was born.

Our aim is to find speakers who make and design things in a wide variety of industries - and our speakers this time round, in some ways, couldn’t have been more different.

We were thrilled to welcome James King of Science Practice who shared the story of how he and his team went about designing a £10 million challenge to solve the problem of global antibiotic resistance.

He spoke about how his team used design to illustrate problems and their solutions as a way of starting valuable, focused, conversations with over 100 scientists in fields as diverse as aeronautics, robotics, water processing, agriculture and medicine.

Our second speaker was Matthew Ogle, co-founder at This is my Jam. Matt has been working at the intersection of music and technology for a decade, and treated us to the previously untold story of Drinkify.

Drinkify started as a 24 hour hack between three friends, and went on to become a runaway success - clocking up 85 million page views.

His story was an entertaining look at how, sometimes, the silly things that we make, end up being among our most successful - and why that’s a hard thing to replicate.

Massive thanks to James and Matt, those that helped us get ready in the office, and everyone that joined us in the audience (and followed us to the pub afterwards).

Our next Small Talks will be in mid-January. If you’re interested in coming along, make sure you follow Small Talks on Twitter.