For the last 20 years David ran Daden Limited, helping organisations explore and exploit the social, eLearning and commercial potential of using conversational AI and virtual worlds, delivering over 100 projects for clients across the globe, including over two dozen projects for UK MOD. David now works as an independent consultant and researcher. David spoke at the inaugural TEDxBrum, on Digital Immortality, has authored over two dozen papers and book chapters, including co-authoring the book Virtual Humans and the Pedagogy for Virtual Reality eBook for the MOD. David has been a wargamer and wargame designer for around 50 years – although ironically not for the 10 years he spent in the British Army! David’s interests in wargaming and technology collided when asked to generate social media synthetic wraps for an MOD urban wargaming series. David started his part-time PhD on wargaming urban conflict in early 2022, under Dr John Curry at Bath Spa University. He is currently researching and designing games on the urban conflict, and has a particular interest in civilian representation in wargames, and the links to Just War Theory. Other recent work has included supporting Wolverhampton University is using virtual reality to explore science fiction literature (and also geopoetics), and using conversational AI to explore contemporary geopolitical issues through matrix games. David is an ex-Royal Signals officer, a Chartered European Engineer, and is also series co-editor for Taylor & Francis on their Metaverse Series of books, and co-author of both The Metaverse: A Critical Introduction, and The Military Metaverse.