The digital team from Innovate UK are partnering with Engine Shed and Bristol Media to host a regional show-and-tell meetup event in Bristol on the 11 December. This is your chance to come meet local digital companies and get to know some of the Innovate UK team.
Innovate UK is designed to help fund, support and connect innovative businesses in the UK, and this event is part of a series of events being held around the country to try to get more digital companies from across the UK involved in their competitions and networks.
- You may like: Blog: Is an Innovate UK grant right for you?
Who’ll be there?
Attending from Innovate UK are people such as Matt Sansam and Kriss Baird from digital innovation programme IC tomorrow, Head of Digital Nick Appleyard and Head of Digital Economy Jon Kingsbury from the Knowledge Transfer Networks, and lead technologists in the fields of online commerce, data and internet technology.
They will be joined by expert guest speakers from various local digital and tech companies keen to show off their specialities. These include Tomas Rawlings from game tech incubator Bristol Games Hub, Dr Becky Sage from award-winning interactive Sci-Art crossover Danceroom Spectroscopy, Paul Archer from real-world social multiplayer game Daredevilproject, Mike Hawkyard from game studio Amuzo and Paul Appleby, Chair of Bristol Media.
You can see more info on the speakers at this afternoon event below:
Agenda
12noon – Networking, lunch and refreshments
1pm – Innovate UK: Overview of support and funding, Matt Sansam, Head of IC tomorrow
Matt Sansam has 18 years’ experience in the games industry and is a programme manager for the UK Government’s Innovate UK.
Matt specialises in full service deployment, project delivery and programme management and has worked with many organisations within games, film & TV, music and publishing on everything from small budget hand-held releases to large scale complex projects.
1.30pm – KTN: Horizon 2020 project
1.45pm – Engine Shed overview, Nick Sturge
Nick is SETsquared Centre Director (based at the Engine Shed), responsible for business incubation, at the University of Bristol.
The SETsquared Partnership is an enterprise collaboration of the universities of Bath, Bristol, Southampton and Surrey, with each University hosting a SETsquared Business Acceleration Centre. These centres accelerate early-stage high-tech companies with high growth potential. The Bristol Centre currently works with 40 high-tech start-ups of between 1 and 30 employees across sectors as diverse as semiconductor, renewable energy, web 2.0 and industrial instrumentation.
- You may like: Tech Incubator Profile: Engine Shed
2.00pm – Mike Hawkyard, Amuzo (@amuzogames)
Mike is the Managing Director of Amuzo, a BAFTA nominated casual game studio based in Bournemouth. Apps Amuzo have developed for global brands in the last two years alone have been played over half a billion times and reached #1 in 143 countries.
As a Board member of TIGA, a trade association for computer game companies, he helps British studios stay competitive in a global market place.
2.15pm – Tea break
2.30pm – Dr Becky Sage, From Danceroom Spectroscopy to the “nano-glovebox”, @becky_sage
As Education Producer at Interactive Scientific, Becky is leading an Innovate UK project to develop a new education resource product.
Her background is multi-disciplinary including research in Chemistry well as working as an actor and practitioner in theatre and film and a background in innovative business support and funding.
2.45pm – Paul Archer, Daredevilproject
Daredevil Project make mobile-social games for the real world. Founder Paul Archer, a double World Record holding Adventurer, came up with the concept high up on the Tibetan Plateau whilst driving an old London Black Cab around the world.
He believes your phone can be a force for mischief, a tool for more than tedious bird games and gastronomic photography: something that brings people together in the real world.
The company is based the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol, England.
3.00pm – Kev Kirkland, Data Unity, @data_unity
Kev Kirkland is the founder of Data Unity, an organisation that creates innovative Open Data tools to allow non-technical users to join the data revolution. The Data Unity software lets people investigate, visualise and share data to uncover insights and broadcast them to the world.
Previously Kev has spent over a decade creating data analysis tools for organisations like PayPal, BBC Worldwide, Tesco and Nationwide Building Society.
3.15pm – Dr Jon Shaw, DocCom
Jon is the CEO & founder of DocCom, a digital health company based in Bristol. Jon qualified as a surgeon and practised as a hospital doctor for 12 years.
DocCom is a SETSquared alumni and has received funding from Innovate UK, i4G and SBRI and have recently been awarded a £1M contract in association with NHS England. It has customers across the NHS using its clinical communication platform, CareflowConnect and is now deploying its first full scale roll-out.
CareflowConnect is a secure cloud, mobile and native social networking platform that integrates with traditional health information systems to provide intelligent alerting of patient events, digital workflow centred on the patient record and secure messaging for health teams.
3.30pm – Tomas Rawlings, Auroch Digital and Bristol Games Hub
Dr Tomas Rawlings is Design & Production Director at Auroch Digital and its acclaimed news-gaming project Gamethenews.net which produced the global talking-point, Endgame:Syria.
He has designed games from original titles to known IP such as Games Workshop’s Chainsaw Warrior, Star Wars:The Battle for Hoth and the multiple award winning Call of Cthulhu:The Wasted Land.
He also blogs at agreatbecoming.com, is a co-founder of the non-profit Bristol Games Hub and is named in Bristol’s Arts & Culture Power List.
- You may like: Workspace Profile: Bristol Games Hub
3.45pm – Close by Paul Appleby, Chair of Bristol Media
Paul has been a member of the Board since 2005, and took up the role of Chair in April 2009. He is the Director of VID, a media consultancy also set up in April 2009 after he left the BBC Natural History Unit (with a BAFTA award…).
Paul’s aim is simple – to help make Bristol a vibrant centre for all forms of media that’s recognized around the world for its innovation, lifestyle and creative buzz. His consultancy work portfolio includes BBC Future Media, SWRDA, Bristol Natural History Consortium and Media Trust, and follows 20 years as a series producer, working on multiplatform projects since 1999.
4.00pm – Finish
You can sign up for the Innovate UK – Creative and Digital Industries Meetup Bristol event here. If you want to have regular updates on Innovate UK contests, support, networking and events you can join its Connect innovation networking site.
