So, as we’re now back in the Roller office, we thought we would highlight some of the topics we found the most exciting on our trip.
This year, organisers of London Tech Week focused the event around one key theme, ‘Change Makers’; promoting the idea that London, and the wider UK tech scene, is bustling with confident change makers, who are ready to create world class technology to create ‘tangible difference to business and society’.
Sadik Khan opened the headlining event by encouraging young Londoners to be ‘bold, brave and confident enough to try new things’, a battle cry for the youth of today to get involved with entrepreneurship specifically in the technology industry. The theme of talent, change and improving existing technological developments ran throughout the entire event, from the stalls in the exhibition hall to the talks across the city.
Diversity and Inclusion ‘Pioneer Party, Champion Diversity, Be a Changemaker’
A topic that the entire Roller team feels passionate about is diversity and inclusion in the technology industry. As a significant feature on their headlining Main Stage was the Inclusive Innovation track on Wednesday afternoon, running talks and panel discussions focusing on how organisations can rethink their current take on inclusivity. Various industry leaders of diverse backgrounds were gathered to speak on why it is so important to encourage a diverse workforce, not only for workplace culture but also for the success of businesses.
One of the most interesting talks we heard was from Gary Stewart, the Director of Wayra UK and Telefónica Open Future_ (UK), who passionately shared that the fight for workplace diversity needs to be more than just gender. He continued his emotive and personal talk by commenting on how inclusivity drives need to focus on intersectionality and inviting everyone, not only white middle class women, to join in on the conversation.
We also attended the Diversity in Tech event on Thursday evening, as put together by Handle Recruitment and Kobalt Music, in their new impressive head offices, to experience their panel talk on diversity and inclusivity in recruitment. A mixture of networking, impassioned Q&A sessions and panel discussions from representatives from not just Handle and Kobalt, but BAME recruitment as well, the event was a stand out for us. Exploring questions such as ‘why don’t we have diversity in recruitment’, ‘how can we hire diversely without excluding the majority’ and ‘what can we do to encourage further diversity in our hiring process’, the speakers and audience alike were full of answers and inspiring remarks on every angle of diversity.
Another exciting element of tech week was the opportunity to hear from people who are using mixed realities technologies, i.e. Augmented Reality (AR), Augmented Virtuality (AV) and Virtual Reality (VR), in new and exciting ways. Education, training and gaming still seem to be the top uses of these emerging technologies, yet the mood music when speaking with companies using these technologies is that as advances are made in the hardware, the cost will come down. This means that mixed reality technologies will become increasingly popular as businesses will be able to invest in developing complementary software products.
Never forgetting the ethical considerations, we also heard from academics, business people and creatives about how to care for users and their safety in a virtual environment and how product developers need to consider building in safety measures as standard. We even got the chance to explore how the emergency services is beginning to explore connections with VR and AR technologies, through immersive training programmes and positive user friendly devices.
Artificial Intelligence - What is All The Fuss About?
As we discovered throughout Tech Week, integrating elements of AI within technology will mean that technology solutions can provide us with data that enables proactive rather than reactive decision making alongside generating prescriptive data outcomes. We heard from many businesses that AI will start to be included in analytics applications as standard over the next 3 - 5 years. Using AI within the sales and marketing fields will become a lot more commonplace, given that marketers are looking for more intelligent and data-driven ways to engage with customers and buyers.
One of the most fun and entertaining uses of AI we discovered was a facial recognition AI system called TasteFace that could tell if you were a lover or a hater of Marmite, from the creative agency AnalogFolk. Several members of our team got the chance to conduct their own taste test, exploring just how engaging and effective AI marketing campaigns could be. The TasteFace stand was located alongside an impressive Microsoft x Great Ormond Street Hospital stand, which highlighted multiple technologies utilising gaming and data science to benefit patient experience and outcomes, including the Great Ormond Street Hospital made within Minecraft.
We really enjoyed our time at London Tech Week 2018, and we have so many new insights and avenues to explore when it comes to innovative technologies in London right now.
In even more exciting news, following on from the success of our Christmas Retail Trends project, we’ve decided to undertake a summer Technology Trends document this year! We want to share the Roller take on the technological advances we’ve seen, and are yet to seen, exploring how how companies can look to become pioneers of their industry through the development of innovative and future thinking technology. To get involved with our Technology Trends document, or to find out more about our time at Tech Week, drop us an email at [email protected].
