Digital strategist Ela Kagel specialises in the intersection of art, culture and technology. Since the mid-1990s she has produced and designed media art exhibitions, networked performances, mobile and location-based applications, as well as temporary spaces for cultural exchange. She has been a long-time collaborator and researcher at the Public Art Lab in Berlin, and from 2009 to 2011 she was a program curator for the Transmediale Festival for Art and Digital Culture in Berlin. While at Transmediale Ela developed the Free Culture Incubator, a series of workshops and events based on free and open culture. Central to Ela’s practice is supporting bottom-up initiatives deeply rooted in particular communities of practice. From this perspective she also established and curated Upgrade! Berlin in 2006 and founded SUPERMARKT in 2012, a creative resource center in Berlin. Ela is co-author of a research study on the potentialities of the Sharing & Collaborative Economy in Berlin and co-initiator of the #Platformcoop Berlin meetups. Since 2016, Ela is also founding member of CZY WRK, a digital freelancer cooperative in Germany.