John Thackara is a writer, speaker, and event producer. He is English, but lives in France with his wife Kristi van Riet. His daughter Kate is an art student in England. John is the author of In the bubble: designing in a complex world (MIT Press) among thirteen books, and of a widely-read blog at Design Observer. As founder and director of Doors of Perception (Doors), John organises festivals around the world, at a city-region scale, in which communities imagine sustainable futures - and take practical steps to realise them.John studied philosophy, trained as a journalist, worked as London bus driver, and later was a book publisher and magazine editor in London and Sydney. He was director of research at the Royal College of Art in London, and then from 1993-2000 was Director of the Netherlands Design Institute in Amsterdam. John produced seven Doors conferences in Amsterdam, and then three (so far) in India. In 2007, he was programme director of Designs of the time (Dott), the social innovation biennial in England. In 2008 he was Commissioner at Cité du Design, the main French design biennial.He is a fellow of The Young Foundation in London; sits on the advisory boards of the Pixelache Festival in Helsinki and the Pecha Kucha Foundation in Tokyo; and is a member of the UK Parliament's Standing Commission on Design. John Thackara lives in France.