If you’ve been following our Twitter feed (or indeed, anybody in the tech sector), you’d have noticed that the city was awash with all things tech last week, as London Tech Week took over the capital in a showcase of innovation, thought leadership and networking, across hundreds of events big and small. We followed the week with interest, attending several events and seminars and one thing is for sure, London is one of the most innovative and exciting cities in the world right now.
At the centre of the week’s events was the TechXLR8 conference at Excel. The hub presented 3 days of seminars and thought leadership from keynote speakers alongside what was billed as the largest tech company expo in Europe. The expo featured specialist zones focused on DevOps, AI, VR, Blockchain and more, giving even the most well versed techy something new to chew on. But for us, the real highlight here were the speakers. Keynotes were delivered by Matt Hancock MP, Jimmy Wales (Co-Founder, Wikipedia), Martha Lane Fox (Co-Founder, lastminute.com), William Ruh (CEO, GE Digital), Gavin Patterson (CEO, BT) and more. I particularly enjoyed hearing Martha Lane-Fox speak on the development of digital Britain and how to further develop diversity in the technology sector. (94% of developers globally are male, which links back to our women in tech feature from a few months back).
Alongside the central expo was a range of specialist seminars covering a broad range of topics. Our newly appointed Business Development Manager Peter Houghton headed over to the Tech UK seminar on selling within the Public Sector. With Reed Professional Services already having a strong portfolio in the public sector thanks to our work with the BBC and Defra, we threw Peter straight in the mix on his second day (sorry Peter). His key take away? Ensuring we are visible in the Public Sector and using the proper purchasing frameworks to register interest and demonstrate capability. Something we’ll be focusing more on in blogs over the coming weeks.
A key stop for our marketing team an event ran by the CIPR London group at Hotwire, a seminar on communicating innovation in the tech sector, something which for us was just as much about showcasing innovation to our client’s internal stakeholders as it is about us promoting our services externally. With our work seeing us taking ownership of complex digital transformation projects in leading organisations, communicating change this at every level of our client’s operations is key to our (and their) success.
Overall it was an incredibly inspiring (and exhausting!) week, and we’re already looking forward to more involvement next year. London continues to be at the hub of the global technology sector and we’re very excited to be based at the heart of this innovative city.
Visit the London Tech week site here:
