I’m coordinator of Semiofest’s series of informal online “sessions.” These events are intended not only to share best practices among, but to nurture collegiality and friendship within the global semio community.

Coming up on 31st October (at 2 pm UK time)…

CASE FILES

In the regular course of our research and analysis, we commercial semioticians tend to discover all sorts of things — whether amazing, amusing, or tragic — that challenge our assumptions, make us sit up and say “Wow!”… but that don’t necessarily mesh well with the client’s brief or business objective. I have invited semio colleagues from China, Portugal, Argentina, Sweden, Mexico, and Italy to share their stories of serendipitous discoveries… and to reveal how these were received by their clients. 

Get tickets (suggested donations only) at the link above.

Our sessionists:

• PETER GLASSEN is a Switzerland-based brand consultant and semiotician. Focusing on cultural codes and signs, he advises and supports companies and organisations in the strategic development of their brands. He is founder of the Swiss expert network for applied semiotics Semiotics.ch; and he is a university lecturer for image theory.
• STEFANIA GOGNA is an Italian semiotician and cultural analyst, qualitative researcher, and professor of Philosophy and Human Sciences. She specializes in Research Methodology, Semiotics, and Human Behavior Research, and is a freelance consultant to many brands and agencies worldwide.
• WILLIAM LIU is director and semiotician at Inner Chapter Shanghai. He is also a stage performer as tenor singer of Shanghai’s Rainbow Chamber Choir. These roles make him very passionate about revealing subtle human subconsciousness shifts, and then transforming opportunities into brand innovation ideas.
• SÓNIA MARQUES is a Lisbon-based commercial semiotician. She is the founder of Indiz, a pioneering market research company that applies insights from semiotics, cognitive linguistics, narratology, discourse analysis, and anthropology. A guest lecturer at Porto Business School, she was co-organizer of Semiofest Porto 2024. 
• XIMENA TOBI co-founded Semiotica Studio in 2010 with Gabriela Pedranti. She lectures on the Semiotics of Mediatization at the University of Buenos Aires—Argentina; and she works as a sustainability consultant. She is cuurently training to become a reading mediator, having recently founded Semillas (Seeds), a small educational center in a Buenos Aires slum.
• ALFREDO TRONCOSO is director of the semiotics division at de la Riva, one of the top quant & qual research companies working from Mexico. Alfredo has taught Greek philosophy, rhetoric and semiotics at universities including UNAM, Tec de Monterrey, and Universidad de Querétaro. His 2025 publication for Penguin-Aguilar, México Rifado 2.0, was co-authored with Gabriela de la Riva.

Session host: JOSH GLENN is cofounder of the consultancy Semiovox, editor of the websites HILOBROW and SEMIOVOX, founding editor of the MIT Press’s RADIUM AGE sci-fi reissue series, and organizer of Semiofest Sessions. His latest book is Before Superman: Superhumans of the Radium Age.

SEMIOFEST SESSIONS: R/D/E | BINARIES | SEMIOTICS & UX | BODY SEMIOTICS | AI & SEMIOTICS | SEMIOTICS & CINEMA | FICTIONAL DECODERS | ON COLOUR | & more.

Also see these global semio series: MAKING SENSE (Q&As) | SEMIOFEST SESSIONS (monthly mini-conferences) | COVID CODES | SEMIO OBJECTS | COLOR CODEX | DECODER (fictional semioticians) | CASE FILE | PHOTO OP | MEDIA DIET.