Birmingham Tech Week 2020:
Opening Event

Rewatch the opening event as we discuss why the West Midlands is a fantastic region for Technology, Digital and Innovation and highlight some of the amazing opportunities for businesses and individuals across the region.

Wayra – 5G and the West Midlands

Bruno will focus on who Wayra UK are and what they do. He will also discuss the 5PRING programme, how it will create a dynamic local ecosystem, positioning the West Midlands at the centre of the UK’s 5G innovation.

How AI can transform your business and deliver powerful results

As MD of Group AI and Data Solutions at BT, Adrian Joseph knows a thing or two about artificial intelligence. In this chat, Adrian will help you better understand AI and how it can help deliver transformative results.

Making the most of your local tech ecosystem

This workshop will go over how to map out and access your tech ecosystem, who to reach out to and what conversations will be valuable. It is brought to you by Margaret Anne and Perdie, Co-Founders of Spice Startups.

The Road Ahead for Work – Identity, Community and Workplace Tribes

The transformations that have taken place in 2020 have realigned how we think about doing our jobs, but what will be the long-term implication of forging cohesive organisations if we’re trying to build affinity through our screens?

Why your people matter most – embracing cultural change

In this session, you’ll hear from Alex Arundale, Chief People Officer at Advanced. Alex is responsible for innovative strategies that help shape the culture of the company and keep their people engaged.

Digital Skills & Diversity: Planning for the future

Having diverse teams with the right digital skills is integral to the success of tech businesses. In this panel, we’ll discuss how best to improve digital literacy and how we can create a more diverse workforce.

Purpose – The secret weapon in Tech

The Purpose Collective wants to create a buzz about making work meaningful so that each person feels energised by what they do. We want to build a network of leaders who have conversations about making a difference.

Amazon’s culture of innovation & customer centricity

In this session, we’ll hear from Thomas Blood, Digital Innovation Leader at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform.

Secrets & Lies: The truth about fast-growing StartUps

In this session, we’ll hear from Jill Palmer, CEO of Click Travel, an organisation shaping the future of business travel with their corporate travel management and booking platform.

Amazon ScaleUp Stories

Join Amazon ScaleUp award winners, Dr Asha Patel and Avin Rabheru discussing their scaleup journeys and what they’ve learnt along the way. Between them, they’ll offer advice for organisations looking to achieve more and go faster.

Success factors for ScaleUps: The landscape, the future of growth capital and support for ScaleUps

The ScaleUp Institute is focused on making the UK the best place in the world to ScaleUp a business. Irene Graham, CEO of the ScaleUp Institute, will share insights from the work they do.

How to implement innovation effectively

In this session you’ll hear from Rohit Talwar, Steve Chown and from three Innovative Entrepreneurs pitch, learning why we should be constantly innovating.

Digital innovation, strategy and transformation at National Express

In this session, we’ll hear from Rob Muir, Chief Digital Officer at National Express Group. A leading transport provider operating in bus, coach and rail services.

Achieving Customer Success in Tech: Relationships, Revenue & Results

Having a great product/service isn’t the only part of making your business successful. On this panel, 3 experts will offer insight and knowledge into growing a business by putting customers at the heart of everything you do.

An Entrepreneurial Journey – The Power of Thinking Differently

Joseph Daniels will be covering how he’s overcome barriers personally and professionally, to be leading one of the most game-changing start-ups in the country, and how the power of thinking differently can lead to cutting-edge breakthroughs.

Why the West Midlands? Opportunities, Talent, Funding and Community

In this session, you’ll learn about the opportunities for tech innovation in the region around 5G and High-Speed rail, how to access funding streams, incubator and scale-up programmes, and what it’s really like to work in the West Midlands’ tech community.

Startup Stories

Join our informal panel discussion, with founders from 3 of Birmingham’s most exciting tech startups as they share their own stories in finding your first investment, hiring your first team members, and winning your first customers.

Artificial Intelligence: How AI is transforming our world

AI is present in our everyday lives. It’s in the products we consume, the solutions we use and is changing the way we work. In this session, Bjoern Hirtenjohann will share how to use AI to improve your business.

West Midlands Amazon Small Business Accelerator

West Midlands Digital Skills Partnership: Proudly announce the Amazon Small Business Accelerator in partnership with Enterprise Nation. An incredible opportunity available to regional start-ups and SMEs, in response to the health crisis and economic lockdown.

‘Mutant Algorithms’ and the Challenges in Responsible Data Science

Join our panel of legal, policy and governance experts as they discuss the challenges of responsible data science and ‘life at the coal face’ of policy in a dynamic and fast-changing field.

6 ways Industry 4.0 Solutions Providers & Manufacturing Businesses can do business better

This plain-speaking example-heavy session is about developing a stronger relationship, more quickly, between Vendors and the Manufacturing clients they seek to serve.

Accessing the Jobs of the Future

This session will provide a practical discussion around how to access jobs of the future while highlighting emerging industry trends. We’ll be discussing how the jobs landscape has changed and the skills required to stay relevant and access the best jobs.

AI in Recruiting

An overview of the latest in recruiting and how AI has transformed the sector. Looking at all aspects of the recruitment process, everything you need to know to hire better using AI.

Build & Scale up a Tech Business without writing any code

This session will provide an overview of Catura®, how it can be applied to different problems that need tech solutions. It’ll also go through case studies like IE Hub, a business built on top of Catura®.

Birmingham Digital Gateways

This session will introduce WeiPoint and their work. The session will also focus on the ‘gateways’ element of their work – their foreign-language work that aims to improve the accessibility of Birmingham for international students and the wider international community.

Build an E-Commerce Eco System That Provides a Killer Customer Journey

The E-commerce Ecosystem is a method to bring all of your customer contact, all of your methods of promotion and all of your aftercare into one easy to follow structure that gives your customer a full experience.

Building and Nurturing Your Business within an Innovation Ecosystem

During this session, we’ll focus on the importance of the support network for your business, the innovation ecosystem you operate within. We’ll discuss the way in which innovation ecosystems create opportunity and success pathways for businesses.

Can a local digital currency support innovation and collaboration between entrepreneurs in Birmingham?

This event will provide an overview of alternative currencies, including Bitcoin, outlining their limitations in supporting local entrepreneurs. It will detail findings from the University project’s fieldwork in Italy that investigated how Sardex supports innovation and collaboration between local entrepreneurs.

Clearing the 5G Patent Forest

In this session, our expert panel will talk about the patents that cover 5G and give practical advice on how to engage with 5G patent owners.

CodeYourFuture – fighting inequality in the developer community and broader society

CodeYourFuture is a non-profit coding school for disadvantaged people including refugees, asylum seekers, ex-offenders, those living below the poverty line and others. They teach people to code, support their personal development and help them find jobs in tech.

D&I in Technology: a Journey to Inclusivity

This event will bring together representatives from a range of Birmingham-based companies to share and discuss their own learnings around building a diverse and inclusive culture, and how this has impacted their business.

Dark Web and Threat Actors

During this presentation, Chris and Michael will provide an overview of the Dark Web. They’ll demonstrate what the Dark Web is used for; COVID 19 scams, technical insights, threat intelligence on breaches and the positive side of the Dark Web.

DataOps with Azure

This session will be a journey through the Azure Data Services and the delivery of value through automated data pipelines in Azure. Looking at the whole data lifecycle and building a DataOps culture.

Digital Neuroscience 101 and the Importance of Empathy in Digital Experience Design

In this session, we’ll explore how digital device use can affect the brain. We’ll also discuss the importance of empathy in our systems, experience and cultural design.

Engineering Insights: Hybrid vs Native Mobile Development

Is it better to develop apps using the language that the target device is built on? Or is it better to use another language so that the app can be used by multiple device platforms? What are the advantages? And are there any pitfalls to avoid?

Factory Planning- The Full Picture with Theorem XR

By using full-scale VR for your factory planning, you and the rest of your team can interactively review a factory layout through the immersive experience of VR technologies in real-time and provide documented feedback.

Future Communities: Building the society of tomorrow

Future Communities is about creating an integrated and sustainable society, where cross-sector collaborative technology creates a seamless experience across all aspects of life. Join this collaborative event where we’ll be exploring exactly what Future Communities means for all of us.

Home Assistant – The Swiss Army Knife of Home Automation

How to use Home Assistant and other open-source software to create a home automation system that runs on Raspberry Pi hardware on a local network, with minimal reliance on the cloud.

How to benefit from Birmingham’s multicultural tech talent

In this panel, Gaia Caruso will chair a conversation around how technology companies in Birmingham can connect with the city’s multicultural community to truly communicate equal opportunities and how to capitalise on the business benefits that come from inclusion.

How To Run A Successful Business (And Feel Like A Success)

This session will cover what you need to run a business, how you make time to work on your business and how you make time for anything else in your life.

Improving student careers engagement and decision making through technology

The session will talk about innovation in student engagement and the role of technology, providing the audience with a story they can draw inspiration and information.

IoT smart tech; behind the scenes

Dickon Ross will chair this panel discussion asking, what are the IoT trends, how do these trends impact software, robotics & machine development, and what’s the relationship between smart home tech and industrial IoT tech.

Kickstart The Green Recovery with Midlands Greentech

This session will outline how The Midlands Green Recovery can be delivered by low carbon technology innovation in local businesses. The talk will include the vision for a low carbon future using technologies like fuel cells, biofuels and hydrogen.

PR Power Up for Scale-Ups

This session will explore: why do tech companies need PR, what is PR, what you need to start, what not to do and how PR can be a valuable part of your growth strategy today.

Practical Domain-Driven Design; using domains to drive technology

Domain-Driven Design is an engineering paradigm that is geared towards delving deep into what your company’s goals are, to better understand your domains and then build software that maps directly to them. This event will demonstrate some of these modern developments and outline why this way of writing software has led to a higher quality of technology.

Practical Project Management Techniques to deliver Digital Transformation

This event is aimed at organisations/individuals who are looking for a practical approach, methodology and toolset to manage digital transformation projects.

Putting people at the heart of transformation

This session sheds light on the common reasons behind what drives successful, large scale business-critical projects and explains how to improve your chances of success.

Responding to the demand for TECH

This Healthcare Technologies Institute event will showcase new technologies that have contributed to the global effort to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the technologies the HTI are currently working on and how we will help to train the future innovation leaders in drug discovery and regenerative medicine through the development of bioengineered humanised 3D models, microfluidics, diagnostics and sensing platforms.

Student-Built Tech Startups: Starting From Scratch

Get closer insights into university tech startups and hear from three University of Birmingham entrepreneurs about their experiences starting a business from scratch.

The 3 Biggest Branding Mistakes Tech-Led Companies Make

This talk is perfect for tech companies at all stages from concept through to scaling. Your brand has to communicate exactly what you do in under 4 seconds. Can you afford to make any mistakes when you have such little time to engage?

The Digital Skills Gap – The Brum Muse 12 Months On

At Birmingham Tech Week 2019, Dan delivered a talk on How We Bridge The Digital Skills Gap in Birmingham, and that is how my journey started. 1 year on, a lot has happened, the noise has been made, actions and objectives hit and impact created. So how do we bridge the digital skills gap? The Brum Muse will tell you more.

The Future of Mobility in a Smart City

Transport and mobility sit at the heart of many debates: new technology use, tackling climate change and public sector investment to name a few. However, that agenda has altered significantly over recent months with COVID-19 upending traditional transportation patterns.

Unlocking Instagram for businesses

In this session, David Glenwright will explore how Instagram has evolved into an effective platform for businesses to present themselves, build audiences and sell products.

Virtual Reality and its use for most industries

During this session, you’ll learn how VR being used across different industries, what the benefits are of VR technologies for learning and how VR will help training in a post-COVID training environment.

Welcome to the New and More Rewarding Financial Era

Mike Bristow, CEO and Co-Founder of Birmingham-based CrowdProperty, will be talking about the dawn of technology-enabled ‘alternative’ finance, which the UK leads the world in and is not so ‘alternative’ any more.

What is needed to create more successful tech scale-ups in Birmingham?

This is an interactive session with Amanda Lowe, Chris Blackwell, Jay Ashcroft and Andrew Robins to discuss and explore what is needed to support the development of more successful Scale-ups in Birmingham.

Why 90% of pitches fail

This session takes a hard look at making a 5-minute presentation for your StartUp. What are the key things investors look for? How can you hit sweet spots in your pitch?

Why women in tech are being photoshopped rather than hired

Despite decades of progress towards workplace equality, women remain woefully underrepresented in the UK’s technology workforce. This panel discussion is facilitated by Debbie Assinder – Event Director of the Midlands Women in Tech Awards.

WM Digital Skills Partnership Present: Changing the face of digital skills delivery

The West Midlands Digital Skills Partnership is committed to supporting individuals and businesses to have access to the digital skills they need to thrive.

Lean IP Strategy

In this session, we’ll cover how IP can be agile too, what to do before you even start or before you launch and how to play the system.

People centric systems: Connecting people, processes and technology

Join Karl Nicholson, CIO of Synaptek, a digital innovation company, to learn how intelligent automation delivers the future of work. He’ll demonstrate how the right intelligent automation strategy improves connectivity, transforms productivity and fixes siloed working practices.

Silicon Canal: Start-up Stories

Who doesn’t love a good start-up story? Well, we have not one, but FOUR for you to sink your teeth into, all from Birmingham-based founders who will share the ugly truths and beautiful challenges they have encountered on their journeys so far.

Birmingham Open Hack: Launch Event

Birmingham Open Hack is a hackathon powered by STEAM Hacks running over the Birmingham Tech Week-end. It’s open to everyone and focuses on empowering the growing talent and tech enthusiasts alike while encouraging diversity and inclusion in the tech industry.

VR Birmingham – Discovering XR with STEAMHouse

This STEAMhouse session takes a look at the latest developments in contextualising an industry update in terms of technologists and developer exploring what is possible with the new platforms that have come out of Facebook and in the industry over the past year.

Blockchain technology and the future of gaming

Jake will be talking about his experience with blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and how they can be used to innovate the future of gaming.

Inspiring the first AI generation

Understand the strategic importance of AI and how Microsoft is supporting BCU students through our Azure AI Fundamentals curriculum, part of Microsoft’s Future Skills Initiative. Andrew will showcase the extensive free AI learning paths and modules available on the Microsoft Learn platform.

Discovering Digital Technology at CEBE

Find out more about opportunities and pathways in Computing and Digital Technology at Birmingham City University and how this decision can enable you to achieve things you never imagined you were capable of!

Changing Futures with Technology

In this talk, Mike Trevor will share how Cutter Group has evolved from humble beginnings to become one of the world’s leading experts in virtualised IT solutions and how they’ve been able to use innovative technologies to transform the operations of organisations.

Delivering IT-enabled projects for NHS during a pandemic

Jason, Paul and David will be sharing their experience delivering a myriad of IT-enabled projects for the NHS during a pandemic. They will also be talking about how the pandemic created the need for a surprising variety of new types of jobs and skills required across the NHS.

From problem to Invention

In this talk, we’ll be walking through a method of problem-solving followed by an overview of some extremely consumable technologies that enable rapid prototyping without the need to be an expert developer.