On 20th October 2017, TKM Consultants attended Bath Digital Festival alongside Neil Donald, founder of Hotwire Consulting Ltd, having been invited by Deep Blue Sky, one of the festival sponsors alongside NatWest, Dyson and ojo solutions, amongst others.
Bath Digital Festival is an annual event with the aim of bringing people and technology together with its central focus on how tech can work for everyone.
First impressions: an event with real personality
After a fairly busy Friday at the Bath festival, both presenting and hosting a roundtable, Anil and Neil’s immediate thoughts after returning to their “day jobs” was that the festival had been an overwhelming success for everyone involved. A fantastic well-organised friendly event with a real personal touch. The sense of community, the diverse audience and the coming together of people passionate about technology and its role in business, education and society in general, resonated around the beautiful city of Bath.
The day began with Anil and Neil delivering a presentation alongside Umair Janjua, CEO and co-founder of YM Tech. The focus of the presentation was on the evolution of digital start-up accelerators. The discussion included an evaluation of the current issues associated with accelerators, headlining the fact that many start-ups are stuck in “survival mode” and that a “zombie epidemic” had taken hold in the start-up community. Following a review of the importance of MarTech, Neil and Anil turned their attention to their proposed solution to combat the ongoing challenges associated with revenue generation for start-ups…branded “SLING-SHOT”.
SLING-SHOT accelerates start-up sales by leveraging pre-existing Agency and Brand relationships within a mutually beneficial Agency Accelerator program. YM Tech, an exciting, ethically sound fintech platform start-up was also introduced, as a start-up wrestling with how best to generate revenue whilst raising finance and developing their product (to read more about YM Tech, click here).
This presentation was followed by a “Survival of the Fittest Roundtable”; an evening of discussion and networking with forward-thinking companies who share a belief that together we can help shape a positive digital future. The roundtable, hosted by Anil and Neil, focussed on the concept of digital for good with participants on the table coming from a wide range of backgrounds including software development, marketing, healthcare and local government. The challenge for each table was to agree and suggest ways that digital could be used to help deal with the issue of homelessness. There will be more to follow on Anil and Neil’s table’s winning idea over the coming months!