Shawn co-founded a unique character design studio, Shawnimals—created with his wife over 10 years ago. Hundreds of characters inhabit those worlds and live through toys, murals, and videogames. The ninjas from Ninjatown transformed from handmade plush toys to vinyl creations, posters, stickers, calendars, keychains, and mobile apps. He grew up admiring Japanese and American pop-culture, with a passion that morphed from early doodles to characters like the Wee Ninja from Ninjatown, Moustachios, Pocket Pork Dumplings, and many, many more. His designer toys have seen success with Kidrobot and Rotofugi, apparel with Mimoco, David and Goliath, and Smash Transit. Shwan created original art for companies like MailChimp, Basecamp, LiveNation, Twisted Hyppo, Dark Matter Coffee, Cards Against Humanity, Revolution Brewing, and others—not to mention comics, and video games for Nintendo, iOS, and Android.

Rachael began her career in improvisation at Skidmore College, home of the National College Comedy Festival, with the Ad-Liberal Artists. After graduating with a degree in English Literature (concentrating on Shakespearean Studies) she moved to Chicago to study improv comedy with Del Close. Currently the head of Advanced Improvisation at The Second City, she created the Dramatic Improv programs as well as The History of Satire Series for The Second City Training Center. Rachael has performed musical improv with Baby Wants Candy at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, directed and performed at The Annoyance Theater, and she was Training Center Director at iO Theater for 8 years. She is part of the cast of The Second City Improv All-Stars and performs in The Boys, with Susan Messing.

Sandor Weisz is the founder of The Mystery League, a company of creative puzzlemakers who stage live games. He developed large scale puzzles and games at locations like the Chicago Art Institute, the Lincoln Park Zoo or the Harold Washington Library. A Northwestern University graduate, Sandor transitioned to working full time on the Mystery League from a career as a software and web developer. He currently focuses on creating tabletop puzzle games and shares a new puzzle every day on Twitter via his account @pzlr.

Lanny Fox (Pam Who?!) is a brilliant writer, actor, comedian, and drag performer exploring through comedy and satire controversial social themes. He has written and performed with The Second City, The Annoyance Theater, and The iO Comedy Network in Chicago. He is also a student of The New York University Tisch School of the Arts.

Ben is an artist focused on the cultural, social, and political effects of software. What do computers mean for human creativity? How does software design affect our behavior and ideas of friendship and relationship?

Faculty member at the University of Illinois, his artworks have been featured in The New Yorker, Wired, The Atlantic, and more. Ben's projects include Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter Demetricator. Would not seeing likes and retweets make a difference in your online experience?

His latest work is Order of Magnitude, a supercut that examines what Mark Zuckerberg focuses on by extracting a few words he says regularly.

The improviser from The Second City, the iO, and The Annoyance on how to navigate the unknown and your reality, moment by moment.

Mark Larson is a writer, interviewer, educator, and curator of many oral history projects like American Stories Continuum and Ensemble, Chicago collecting and sharing conversations about contemporary life in the United States. Professor at National-Louis University, Mark also published two books: 'Making Conversations' and 'Situations' (co-authored with Betty Jane Wagner). Inspired by Studs Terkel's work, Mr. Larson's interviews are intimate portraits of subjective experiences in our communities, shining a light (one voice at a time) on our shared social experience as human beings.

Melissa McEwen is a tech consultant and writer merging two passions and careers, publishing articles for Quartz, Submain, on Medium and more. You can check out her website and social media profiles by visiting melissamcewen.com.

Tim Kazurinsky is an actor, screenwriter, Saturday Night Live alumnus, and performer from the Police Academy series as Officer Sweetchuck. In the early 80s, Mr. Kazurinsky played iconic characters on SNL, like Jack Badofsky on Weekend Update, Mr Landlord, Gandhi, Hitler, and even a chimp's husband in "I Married a Monkey". As a two times Jefferson Awards nominee, Tim's experience on live stages started with the Second City in Chicago and goes on to these days as the Wizard of Oz in Wicked's itinerating company, and with the Broadway play An Act of God. He is the screenwriter of the movie About Last Night, and shared screen and stage with John Belushi, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Bill Murray, Sharon Stone, and more.

Scott Robbin, web developer and co-creator with Naz Hamid of Vapid, an intentionally simple content management system to create websites. Starting in the late 90s, Mr. Robbin founded different companies like Halobrite and Songza, and also worked as lead developer and director for Cards Agains Humanity, Blackbox, and more. You can check out his projects on srobbin.com and learn more about Vapid, his latest creation, on vapid.com.