This year’s Talking Tech on 18th September, one of Norfolk Chambers flagship events, got off to a great start with over 160 business professionals attending at The Space, Norwich. We hosted 18 expert speakers who shared their, knowledge, experience, and key tips on the theme of ‘Myth Busting’ within the tech industry.
The conference was a platform to share; cost-effective, new innovative concepts, business initiatives, and current issues facing the business community with technology. As well as, dispelling the myths behind technology held in the workplace. The morning offered constructive solutions for all of us to take back to our teams and businesses.
Throughout the whole conference, Rebecca Osbourne document all the speakers with her fantastic live event graphic recording.
Tom Broome, Creative Director from Creative Quills, kicked off the event and was the first speaker of the morning. Tom highlighted some great points on how to use marketing to make ‘making the technical accessible.’ He emphasised how important it is to pitch your marketing message at the right level; when to use video, infographics, written content, and photography. All helping to strengthen your brand for the viewer, and client.
Juliana Meyer, founder and CEO of SupaPass followed with a glimpse into the key future trends that are emerging and happening online, and how as businesses, we can take control of our content, and data. She also discussed how we are consuming information; such the rise of the podcasts, which is up by 36%. Juliana also shared the four key digital trends surfacing, all of which are often consumed on our mobile phones through; apps-subscriptions, video consumption, subscriptions (which is a growing trend and not to be ignored), and podcasts.
Up next our Cyber Security panel including Kitty Rosser, Birketts LLP, Peter Cubbins, Cyberfen, Tash Hales, Ladies Hacking Society, discussed several questions from the audience. One of the first questions was ‘the idea it won’t be me as a data target.’ The panel gave several ways to tackle this issue of a data breach, for businesses of all scales, and an individual level too. One key point we should take from the panel discussion was; it is good to share these experiences if it happens to your business and to report the issue too. It is also important to consider training staff in clear procedures, as this can be a valuable use of time, investment, and help to reduce future breaches.
Paul Maskell, Dardan Security, then took us on a journey about our relationship and interaction with technology. Paul highlighted ways in which we can maintain a healthy sense of wellbeing with technology, how we can approach our daily narratives with tech in the workplace and our personal life’s. Paul, gave some very positive solutions for us all to find a happy equilibrium.
Taking the stage ahead of our break was Jim Palmer, Head of Digital, at Netmatters Ltd. Jim gave an interesting insight into the eight-year-long journey of how his company, have transformed their business to become paperless! (Yes, that’s no paper!) He gave several very useful tips of how to take the changes into our businesses, such as digital ‘to-do lists’ a clear inbox policy, dual screens, writing on digital tablets, dual-screen and requesting all invoices to be emailed- not a hard copy or posted.
Following the break Bradley Lawernce, Head of Sales at UBISEND, discussed the role chatbots have within our businesses, customer experience, how we use them, the business cases and myths surrounding the chatbot.
Brandley then joined our AI Panel (Artificial intelligence) – the second panel of the morning, to discuss the opportunities for small businesses to be using AI. James Russell, Co-founder and CEO, Brisk, Linford Bacon, Data Scientist and Senior manager at Aviva, Bradley Lawernce, Head of Sales at UBISEND, ( https://www.ubisend.com/ ) all shared several ways we can successfully use these technologies, with governance.
With the continuing developments of technology within Farming, Fiona Rust from Agri-Tech East then came on stage and demonstrated the innovation within this sector, the importance of engagement with the younger generation, and how the industry is tackling issues with a growing population.
When talking about the Games Industry there are often some misconceptions, however, Robin Milton, from Access Creative College and Norfolk Game developers gave a clear picture of how this industry is thriving and used within our everyday life’s. Do you know the UK is the 6th largest video game market, with a spend of £5.7bn in 2018 (Ukie), Wow!
The last keynote speaker of the morning was Kris Jones, CEO of Tech Velocity Ltd, who talked about ‘Plastic innovation’ and looked at how we can re-imagine ways in which you can be more ‘innovative’ in business in a true manner, helping build continues success.
Lightening talks– with only 3 minutes to talk about their topics focused on meetup and networking groups. Paul Grenyer, Naked Element kicked off the first talk about nor(DEV): who run events throughout the year, to support software development professionals, developers, and software business owners. Next up was Tom Haczewski, from The User Story, who talked about Hot Source a meetup group for ‘forward-thinking creatives.’ Co-organiser of Sync Norwich Sean Clark of Clark St James then took the stage. Sync Norwich is Norwich’s tech and start up community supporting and enabling tech business growth through a series of events, including Sync the City which is a 54 hour start up event taking place annually. Last up was Mark Williams-Cook from Candour, talking about Search Norwich this is a meetup for anyone interested in search marketing. All of these group offer a great opportunity for networking and building community in Norfolk.
The groups then remained on stage together to take part in a panel discussion focusing on the tech community of Norfolk. The main takeaway was the group encouraging all businesses, not just tech focused organisations, to come along to their groups to get involved in the thriving community we have in Norfolk.
After lunch, Mark Williams-Cook from Candour, ran a workshop focused on ‘why your website content is rubbish and you don’t rack in Google.’ Mark gave a practical survival for the audience to take away. This was the last speaker of the day and brought the event to a close.
A big thank you to our sponsors, without their support events like Talking Tech would not be possible. Thanks to Barclays Digital Eagles, Breakwater IT and Naked Element.
A big thanks to our exhibitor too; Breakwater IT, Naked Element, 101, Bigfork, CSS Cloud, Develop EBP, EIRA, Empresa, Omnis Software and VMIT.
Thanks to everyone who attended too, we look forward to 2020 Talking Tech!
