The UK has experienced profound economic change over recent years which has brought challenges and new opportunities to the creative sector. As a result, many individuals have set out on the freelance and small business path for the first time.
Reasons include the natural result of redundancies due to the pandemic, new working relationships with employers following Covid-19 and a desire to achieve a better work/life balance.
Whatever the reason to go it alone, Bristol Creative Industries (BCI) is here to give freelancers, startups and small businesses the perfect platform to share skills and build connections.
There are many benefits of a BCI freelance membership. See what some members have to say below.
To meet fellow freelancers and companies that employ them, join our freelancer networking drinks on 23 November at the Square Club in Bristol. It’s free including a complimentary drink if you’re a member.
Heather Wright, co-chair of Bristol Creative Industries, said:
“The trend in the creative sector is to have small and agile agencies relying on a bank of specialist freelance talent. We have seen the freelance sector grow year on year in the last decade.
“The benefits are that, here in Bristol, we have a huge pool of freelancers covering a spectrum of creative disciplines, from coding, filmmaking, music composition, animation, illustration, copywriting to recording and directing podcasts, to name just a few. Name a niche creative service you need for your business and, chances are, there will be someone to help right here on your doorstep.
“And these freelancers and startups are key to Bristol’s vibrant creative community; it means small businesses can use a wide range of professional creative talent. Freelancers are providing the resource of a conglomerate for the SME and Bristol Creative Industries can really help with these connections.
“All individual, freelance and startup members get a profile in our online member directory where you can showcase your work. Freelancers can also take advantage of discounted tickets to BCI events, plus the opportunity to self-publish content on our newsfeed. And don’t forget the membership perks, including restaurant offers and money off business support. The real value however is in the business connections you can make.
“But don’t take my word for it, here are a few comments from our members on their experiences.”
“I’ve been a member of Bristol Creative Industries for a good number of years now. I joined mainly to be included in the directory, for which I think the cost as an individual is very affordable. It makes absolute sense to be listed in a directory where clients search for creatives, outside of their own sector or network.
“In terms of other benefits of membership, I have attended various events and they have been very good. These include evening drinks meet-ups and the members’ lunch.
“I’d say that as a creative freelancer in any field, joining BCI is a great thing to do if you have the chance. Additionally, the team at BCI have always been very friendly and supportive!”
“When I worked in an agency, we used the BCI member directory to find the best regional talent. I always felt that I could trust the freelancers we found there – they had an added credibility, took their specialism seriously, and added value to projects. So when I started out as a freelance copywriter I knew I had to be listed as a member myself!
“The events are also really insightful and enjoyable – members’ lunch, sketchnoting workshop, and the ‘simple tips, smart ideas’ talk with Erica Wolfe-Murray to name a few. Plus, still to this day it’s a lovely feeling to receive an email that starts with: ‘Hi Lara, I found your details via Bristol Creative Industries and…’.
“What would I say to freelancers thinking of joining BCI? To quote one of my favourite taglines: Just do it.”
“I joined Bristol Creative Industries many years ago looking for a list of potential new clients. In my first year I got two new clients, one a national charity. Every year I regularly get new jobs via the website and these mostly turn into long term relationships. I now work with many of the major agencies in Bristol who are also members and actively involved with BCI. The work I generate covers my BCI freelance membership costs so joining was a no-brainer.”
“I initially joined Bristol Creative Industries as a way to network and get to know other creatives in the Bristol area. Regular members’ lunches allow members to meet, providing a friendly, informal opportunity to connect. The team running BCI are passionate about helping to support the creative community; always friendly, and they have been a great help in connecting my business with potential creative partners and business contacts.
“I believe just being part of BCI has provided my animation studio with additional credibility.
“Overall, Bristol Creative Industries is extremely well run, positive and a joy to be a part of; the membership offers amazing value for money.”
“Within two weeks of signing up I had my first enquiry from a new client”
“I regularly get contacted by new clients thanks to my listing in BCI’s member directory. Freelance membership is great value for money!”
If you’re a freelancer or startup business owner based in Bristol or Bath and want to raise your profile and get the work you want, find out more about a individual and startup membership to Bristol Creative Industries
You have the option of paying a one-off annual fee of £45+VAT or a rolling subscription of £4.50+VAT per month. What are you waiting for? Sign up today and be a real part of Bristol’s creative network.
To meet fellow freelancers and companies that employ them, join our freelancer networking drinks on 23 November at the Square Club in Bristol. It’s free including a complimentary drink if you’re a member.
In my experience, growth and success looks different for every digital agency owner – and this usually depends on where they are on their journey in business.
For some, success might be increasing headcount, opening new offices, working less and/or earning more. While for others who might be a little further down the track, their ultimate goal might be to exit the agency.
No matter what the goal is – when it comes to growing your agency one of the best first steps you can take is to understand your agency’s value.
Over the years, I’ve helped hundreds of agency owners analyse the value of their business in preparation for the next step. My Digital Agency Coach team and I use a handful of tactics and strategies to do this, including measuring the agency’s EBIT & profitability.
This segues us nicely into the purpose of this article – how to calculate your profitability & EBIT, why it’s important to do so and 2021 digital agency benchmarks to measure up against.
EBIT simply means Earnings Before Interest & Tax. EBIT is a method that is often used to find the profit generated by a digital agency (or any company for that matter). EBIT is synonymous with Operating Profit as it doesn’t consider things like tax and interest expenses.
For obvious reasons, your EBIT isn’t indicative of exactly how much profit you’re bringing home. However, it is a great indicator of the profitability potential of the business which is why it is such a great metric when it comes to measuring the value of your agency.
EBITDA is almost the same calculation as EBIT however, it also brings Depreciation and Amortization into the equation.
EBITDA is a more complex calculation that takes time and resource to produce, so it’s usually used to prepare your agency for sale. At Digital Agency Coach, we recommend keeping an eye on your EBIT as it is a much more manageable calculation that can be produced for regular reporting.
The short answer? No, EBIT and Net Profit are two different things. Your Net Income is what’s left of your Revenue once you subtract the total costs of doing business. This ‘total cost’ includes taxes, interest, depreciation and all your other expenses and deductions
While your EBIT can be a valuable tool for agency valuation, it’s also an important metric to keep an eye on to measure the success of your ongoing efforts.
In this recent Promo Republic webinar, I share industry secrets about what the high performing agencies are doing and what makes them better than the rest.
One of the key takeaways from the webinar is that high performing, successful and growing digital agencies have their finger on the pulse when it comes to their profitability and their EBIT.
Pre-pandemic, if your EBIT was greater than 20%, you were in a good position and would have been up there with fellow successful agency owners.
However since the pandemic began, (broadly speaking) digital agencies have become more profitable and have nudged the ‘Good EBIT’ score up to around 25%.
It’s important to note that while 25% is a good EBIT score, there’s still plenty of room for improvement – some high-performing agencies are boasting an EBIT between 35-44%!
Now you understand what EBIT is and what the benchmark looks like, how can you calculate the EBIT of your agency?
There are a couple of ways to calculate EBIT, and your accountant or finance team will be able to help you do so. But, in theory, you can just follow the formula below:
EBIT = Net Income – (Interest + Taxes)
Once you have your magic number, measure it against the diagram in this article and see where your agency’s EBIT ranks among the industry benchmarks.
If there’s some work to do (and remember, there’s always room for improvement) – start by reading this quick guide to profitability on purpose and address the six key steps to maximising your profitability.
Watch: Profit On Purpose (7min)
Of course, if you think you might benefit from a deeper level of support, Get In Touch with our team and chat about joining our Mastermind Groups or Coaching Programs to help you grow your digital agency and become a high performer.
When it comes to digital agencies, a high percentage of inbound leads come from prospects who are seeking a new partner after their current agency has let them down. As such, most of these ‘new’ clients are frustrated, let down and/or have had a poor experience with another agency that has underperformed and underdelivered.
The trouble with this is that as an agency owner, it can be easy to forget that your competitors do retain a ton of clients who are happy and content with their service, and as the competition, you only see and hear of the negative experiences.
And if you (and every other agency out there) only witness the bad experiences and negative sentiment, and you base your sales pitch off this, then you’re saying the exact same thing as everyone else…
So, in order to be successful in the pitch room, you need to be realistic about what clients *actually* want to be hearing from your sales pitch.
As a digital agency coach, I’ve worked with hundreds of digital marketing agencies and have witnessed thousands of pitches over the years, and when it comes to the pitch room, it seems most agencies seem to be saying the same thing.
Thanks to comments made by their competitions’ former clients, agency owners can have a warped and distorted view of what the market needs, wants and cares about when it comes to choosing a new agency partner.
If the only inbound leads we receive are from the 1% of our competitor’s clients who are dissatisfied, disgruntled and traumatised by their past agency experience — our view on the world might be a little warped and we can be tempted to think that we should differentiate our agency based on this anecdotal insight.
In reality, it’s likely the other 99% of our competitors’ clients, and any prospective clients for that matter, aren’t tainted by a negative agency experience and couldn’t care less whether you’re a “trusted advisor” or “an award-winning agency” — they just want someone who knows their product and their industry and can help them grow their business.
With this in mind, you can appreciate that building your pitch around the negativity you hear about other agencies, isn’t going to appeal to the masses, and certainly won’t make you stand out from the crowd — despite your best intentions.
Bombarding your prospects with all the same ‘differentiators’ as your competitors like “we believe in partners, not clients” or “we’re platform agnostic” will get you lost in the wash, and any clients you do land, are more likely to be the notorious red-flag, difficult-to-please ones.
So, how can you beat this?
In order to be more successful in the pitch room and win more clients, start by changing your perception of what a prospective client actually wants from an agency. By doing this, you’ll be able to offer up genuine, impactful reasons for a client to work with you, rather than the same old reasons they hear from every other agency in the pitch.
To do this, start by concentrating on specialising. Niche down your offering and tightly define your market positioning and target audience. By doing this first, you’ll understand who you are really talking to, what their broader pain points are, and how you can connect with them by detailing genuine, meaningful differences between you and your competitor.
Then, build on this foundation and follow Doug Hall’s advice to redesign your sales pitch.
Hall advises agencies to ensure their pitch does three things: 1) Demonstrates an overt business benefit to the client, 2) Includes dramatic differentiators between the competition and 3) Includes proof that they’re qualified and experienced enough to deliver on the promise. Hall’s research of over 8000 propositions discovered that the high performing agencies who pitched with this approach had an average win rate of around 53%.
*I recently put together an article detailing Doug Hall’s three-step method to improving your sales pitch and winning more clients. READ: Increase Your Win Rate By Up To 40% With Doug Hall’s Advice
At Digital Agency Coach, my team and I have helped hundreds of digital agencies achieve stratospheric growth within their business by changing the manner in which they source and convert their inbound leads.
As agency owners, anecdotal feedback from your competitors’ disgruntled clients will distort your view on what your clients actually want and need from you. Instead of pitching the genuine uniquity and benefit of what you have to offer, you align yourself with everyone else in the pitch room and try to sell exactly the same thing as all the others.
Now I’ve shared the secret, it’s time for you to avoid this common pitfall, change your view on your client’s pain points and start to grow your agency — one successful pitch at a time.
If you need support or guidance growing your agency and would like personalised, 1:1 help achieving your goals, please Get In Touch — my team of dedicated coaches and consultants would be delighted to help.
One recent study* found that companies who oriented their services and operations around customers, employees, and partners experienced 6.5 times the profit growth compared to those that didn’t.
Despite this evidence for the power of customer centricity, we know that far too many companies are under-investing in customer experience.
That’s because being customer-centric is easy to say, but hard to put into practice, and even harder to know if you’re on the right track!
As a User-Centred Design company, we’re on a mission to help organisations thrive through employing better customer-centric practices.
That’s why we’re inviting companies that run scaled services for customers to join a study that we’re conducting in collaboration with Google, into how companies orient around their customers.
In exchange for contributing to the study, they will receive a benchmark of their customer-centricity score against the rest of the market, plus some unique insights into how to put together a programme of low-cost improvements, free of charge. All we ask is that companies commit to completing a survey by mid-November.
The deadline is the end October, so sign up to become a contributor here https://www.cxpartners.co.uk/customer-centricity-model
We’d love YOU to be part of the study because companies that deploy good user experiences that meet human needs know that improvements in loyalty, revenue and market share follow.
We work every day with organisations to execute programmes that embed User-Centred design into their operations. This takes time and care, but the results are not only impactful in the short term, but set organisations up for sustainable success, and an ability to ride-out storms that may occur in the future.
We’re working with Google to solve this. Through this unique study and campaign that we’ve devised, we’re looking to support organisations in investing in the initiatives that will help them become more customer-centric – and thrive.
By participating in this study as a contributor, you will be joining Europe’s top 200 brands including Farfetch, Europcar, Toolstation, giffgaff and Burberry.
Please sign up here, and we look forward to working with you
https://www.cxpartners.co.uk/customer-centricity-model
*https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/insights/interactive/business-of-experience
Gather Round’s second co-working space is now open at 15-16 Brunswick Square, St Pauls.
Purposefully designed for creatives by creatives, the new space supports up to 90 creative professionals; inspiring creative thinkers and doers to connect, collaborate and thrive.
Gather Round is a growing family of soulful, creative workspaces, designed to foster a positive community of like-minded creative people through an open and supportive culture. Gather Round’s flagship workspace, at the Cigar Factory, Southville, opened its doors in 2018 and has since become a hub for creative minds.
The newly renovated grade II listed building in Brunswick Square, St Pauls, looks to build upon their success and expand the creative network across Bristol. The new site will house freelancers, self-employed and micro-businesses, from the surrounding areas of St Pauls, Montpelier, Easton, St. George, Kingsdown, and beyond.
Nestled in the heart of the vibrant St Pauls, the neighbourhood is renowned for its heritage and cultural significance, as well as thriving community spirit. Founders Ben Steers and Jason Smith hope to mirror this ethos within Gather Round’s doors.
“Good culture comes from great people. We’re conscious about the kind of people and businesses that share our spaces; we look for ambitious individuals and companies that share our values of creativity, community, culture, character, kindness and integrity. – Jason Smith, Co-Founder of Gather Round.
The Georgian terrace has been carefully considered to work for the diverse needs of the creative community. It boasts flexible areas with fixed and casual desks, a private 5-6 person studio, meeting rooms, hang-out areas, communal kitchen tables and quiet areas for thinking. It also has a dedicated public event space with room for 50-60 person events.
Membership options are flexible and transparent, with no hidden extras or nasty surprises. Whilst none of the memberships have lengthy tie ins, signing up to a co-working space can feel daunting. This is why – for a limited time only, they’re offering the chance to check out the new space for yourself with a free day pass. Click here to get your free pass.
Andy Nairn, who has been named the UK’s number one brand strategist for the past three years, joined us for a fascinating and entertaining event to share insights from his new book, Go Luck Yourself: 40 ways to stack the odds in your brand’s favour.
In the book, Andy explains how the history of marketing and advertising is full of brands that stumbled across great ideas by accident or turned misfortunes into huge successes. During the event, the co-founder of advertising agency Lucky Generals highlighted some examples and outlined the lessons for creative companies. Dan Martin summarises his insights.
Opening his talk, Andy Nairn explained that we have a strange relationship with luck in the UK. “Other parts of the world find it completely natural to talk about luck and it’s a perfectly acceptable part of business conversation,” he said, “In the West, we’re a bit snooty about the whole thing. We think of it as a bit primitive and not to be trifled with.”
The negativity around luck was cemented in Victorian times, Andy said. The Industrial Revolution and the Protestant work ethic created the belief that if you were rich, you were successful because you had worked really hard for your money and God had smiled upon you, but if you were poor, it meant you hadn’t tried hard enough, you were work-shy and you should try harder.
That attitude around only hard work can generate good results still prevails, shown by the blurring of work and personal lives during the pandemic, Andy said.
“We can all think of situations where working an extra hour hasn’t given us a creative breakthrough and it can actually sometimes make it worse. Working hard means we’re stuck in the middle of it and what we really need is to get some fresh air and space around us.
“The book says yes, hard work is a good thing but you also need a bit of luck. The more you think about luck and the more you’re conscious of it, the more you can do to increase the chance of it coming your way. If you just deny that luck exists, it’s very hard for you to do that.”
There are 40 tips in Andy’s book that fit under the following four themes:
You might not realise it but you are highly likely to have assets in your business that you are not taking full advantage of. Andy used three non-business examples to illustrate his point:
Many businesses are guilty of not appreciating what they’ve got, Andy said. Brand history, heritage and provenance are often neglected by brands but talking about the history of your business, where it’s from and why it’s called what it is could be a valuable benefit to your marketing and other business activities.
Other examples include the data your business holds and the window display in your business’ offices.
And what about your logo? Could that be used in a different way?
Andy’s business, Lucky Generals, was asked to come up with an advertising campaign for Amazon that worked in multiple countries. The answer turned out to be a simple but very powerful one that was inspired by the company’s existing smile-shaped logo. As the Lucky Generals website says: “We hit upon the simple idea of heroing Amazon’s iconic packages and the epic journeys they make, to put a smile on the faces of people around the world.”
To illustrate this point, Andy highlighted a 10-year study into the nature of luck by Professor Richard Wiseman. As part of it, he gave a group of people a newspaper and asked them to count the number of photographs. The unlucky people took around two minutes whereas the lucky people took just three seconds. The reason was that on the second page of the newspaper was the message: “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.”
The study concluded that lucky people are good at constantly looking for opportunities beyond what they’re working on or the thing they’ve been told to do.
This can also be illustrated by the world of science, Andy said. Several important discoveries have been made accidentally and of the most famous is Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin after spotting some mould that had accidentally developed on a plate.
Diversity of teams is important here too. It’s easy to recruit people who are the same as you but that can mean you’ll just come up with the same ideas. However, if you take on people from different cultures, backgrounds and experiences, “it gives you a much better chance of striking it lucky” and spotting opportunities you might never have discovered.
There are many examples of businesses converting a bad experience into a good one. One brilliant one is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, an early character created by Walt Disney in 1927. It was popular but a contract dispute with his producer led to Disney quitting work on the cartoons. On the train home from a meeting, he came up with a new idea. It developed into Mickey Mouse, the most successful cartoon character of all time.
“We’ve all experienced our ideas being pulled, budgets being cut, timings being changed and clients changing their minds, but what we have to do is go again and come up with something that is even better, like Walt Disney did,” Andy said.
“The best companies don’t just deal with a bit of bad luck, it’s almost like they go running towards the bad luck. There’s a good energy that comes out of that.”
Steve Jobs was known for killing off his own products (the iMac killed the Macintosh and the iPhone killed the iPod) because, as Andy said, “his attitude was, if I don’t kill them off, someone else will.”
There are also some brands that take on taboos and talk about them directly. Bodyform and periods is an example.
Others take what could be seen as an annoying product flaw and turn it into a positive. Think of Guinness and “good things come to those who wait”.
When working with a big brand, Andy said he goes to the “darkest corners of social media” to find the negative conversation about that brand. “The jokes and nasty comments often have a truth and by acknowledging them, you can own the joke, turn it on its head and turn against those people.”
Andy’s last point is about deliberately building luck into your processes. He illustrated it with examples from music.
What similar techniques can you build into your business processes so you constantly generate ideas?
Be lucky!
The next Bristol Creative Industries online keynote is with Anne Thistleton, marketing veteran and former strategy lead for The Coca-Cola Company in South Africa. She will share easy and practical lessons from mind science to make sure your audience really hears you. BCI members get £15 off tickets. Book your place here for the event on 21 October.
Aardman Animations is the latest brand to join the speaker line up at the Digital Gaggle conference, taking place at Bristol’s Watershed Cinema on Thursday 28th October.
Gavin Strange, Director & Designer at Aardman Animations, will kickstart the conference with his session titled ‘Trying To Get Ahead Before We Get A Headstone’.
In this GIF-filled talk, Gavin will share his tips for finding the time, inspiration and energy for creativity. He’ll also move around quite vigorously and gesticulate wildly the whole time. It’ll be loud, silly and hopefully energising.
Gavin joins an already stellar lineup with speakers from brands including LinkedIn and Caring in Bristol on the bill for the digital marketing event.
This is the 12th Digital Gaggle conference, organised by digital marketing agency Noisy Little Monkey and supported by t&s creative communications, Somerset Design, and Launch Online.
The purpose of the event is to provide professional marketers with the skills and inspiration they need to improve their digital marketing strategy; fueling them with the knowledge and creative fire to make sure that their online activity has an impact on the bottom line of their business.
Sessions at the next event will cover a variety of topics, including: content strategy, SEO, crisis comms, conversion rate optimisation and creativity. The content of the talks at Digital Gaggle are best suited for marketers working in B2B, Professional Services or eCommerce industries. But all are welcome!
The conference is being run both in-person and online and ticket prices vary depending on how you choose to experience the event.
For more information about the conference and talks, visit the link below.
https://www.digitalgaggle.co.uk/conference/digital-gaggle-october-2021/
The Social Mobility Commission (SEC) has launched a new sector-specific toolkit to encourage socio-economic diversity and inclusion in the creative sector workforce.
It aims to widen access to the creative industries for people from working class backgrounds in an attempt to tackle a “class crisis” in the sector.
The socio-economic diversity and inclusion: toolkit for the creative industries, developed by the Social Mobility Commission in partnership with creative industries businesses, offers practical support and guidance to creative employers on how to identify and remove invisible barriers that arise at every stage of the employee journey.
According to new research, just 27% of the creative industries workforce comes from a working class background, compared with 39% of the wider UK workforce. For the advertising and marketing and music and performing arts sub-sectors, the percentage of the workforce from a working class background falls to just 23%.
The SEC said that “the unique structures of the creative industries workforce are driving this imbalance, with factors including the high numbers of ‘professional’ jobs within the sector, an entrenched reliance on freelance workers as well as an abundance of unpaid internships creating additional barriers to entry for those from low socio-economic backgrounds.
“Disproportionate numbers of those in senior roles who attended private school or Oxbridge may also have served to perpetuate understandings of cultural ‘fit’ and accepted behavioural codes within the creative industries, presenting an additional barrier to those from low socio-economic backgrounds.”
Those who have contributed or endorsed the toolkit include the BBC, BFI, UK Screen Alliance, Youth Music British Fashion Council, Museums Association, British Institute of Interior Design and the Publishers Association.
Culture secretary Nadine Dorries said:
“A working class background should never be a barrier to a successful career in the creative Industries. We want to increase access to opportunities across the board as part of our plan to level up. This new toolkit will help support creative firms become more inclusive and give people the chance to forge a successful career in these exciting sectors.”
Caroline Norbury, CEO at Creative Industries Federation, said:
“If creativity is to shape a better future for all, then it has to reflect the diversity and breadth of experience found across the country. Ensuring opportunities exist for creative individuals to thrive, no matter their background, is an important step towards achieving this. The Social Mobility Commission’s toolkit is a critical resource for addressing the unacceptable imbalance of socio-economic backgrounds found in the UK’s creative industries.”
Farrah Storr, social mobility commissioner and editor-in-chief at Elle UK, said:
“It’s been great to see so many within the industry collaborate on the development of this toolkit. For the whole creative sector to remain vibrant, it is vital that we tap into the full potential of the whole population, not just a privileged few.
“The creative industries create the culture of the nation, which in turn necessitates full participation from the entire nation. As organisations adopt the actions set out within this toolkit to make socio-economic inclusion a reality, we will become an industry that is both rich in diverse viewpoints, experiences and stories as well as an industry that is built to last.”
Heather Carey from the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and Work Advance said:
“As we rebuild following the Covid-19 pandemic, it is vital that we widen access to opportunities created in high-growth, high-skill parts of the UK economy, like the Creative Industries. Our research provides definitive evidence on the causes of class imbalances and sets out an ambitious and wide-ranging programme of change to enhance social mobility into the Creative Economy. Government and Industry must seize this moment, as we emerge from an unprecedented crisis, to address the long-standing inequalities in the Creative sector and to grasp the potential offered by diverse talent in the UK to cement our creative excellence and competitive advantage, globally.”
The Social Mobility Commission is hosting a public launch event on Monday 11 October, chaired by Farrah Storr, SMC commissioner and editor-in-chief of Elle, and featuring a discussion with industry insiders: Jamie Gill, CEO of ROKSANDA and executive board, British Fashion Council; Della Hill, creative lead at Literature Wales and Emily Jones, senior producer at Sage Gateshead. Register for the event at SocialMobilityWorks.org
Heather Carey will present the findings of PEC’s new research report: Social mobility in the creative economy: Rebuilding and levelling up?
Bristol Technology Festival (BTF) has unveiled a packed schedule for its tech showcase event, taking place during the week of October 11-15.
Now into its third edition, BTF is an annual celebration designed to bring together events, people and communities to share, learn and explore technology developments in the southwest region. Events will encompass a range of sectors from green and sustainable technology to legal and finance.
This year’s schedule includes a number of highly anticipated events, of which there are more than 50 spread across five packed days.
The theme which wraps around many of the events through the week is ‘changing the face of tech’, with the emphasis on taking tangible action beyond simply talking about a lack of diversity and inclusion. As well as demonstrating the best of what the area’s tech space has to offer, BTF 2021 aims to bring together like-minded organisations ready to inspire wide-reaching change.
It is not too late to get involved. For individuals and organisations interested in attending or hosting an event, there is still time to book tickets and submit proposals.
Softcat headlines busy BTF 2021
BTF 2021 would like to thank Headline Partner Softcat for its indispensable support of BTF 2021.
Looking ahead to the event, Rob Parkinson, CIO at Softcat, commented: “We are delighted to be involved in the 2021 Bristol Technology Festival. Bringing together local technology communities and shining a light on all the innovation the region has to showcase is an important way to drive collaboration and industry growth.
“The last 18 months have been tough for many industries, but technology has come through as an enabler and has made many re-think how they interact and do business. As the impact of technology continues to grow, forums like the Bristol Technology Festival have never been more important and we are pleased to be supporting it.”
Event organisers are also grateful to Deloitte for sponsoring the Bristol Technology Festival Launch Event, on Thursday October 7 which will be held at Engine Shed.
Here, the exclusive launch evening will be a chance for senior leaders and technology influencers from across the region to network, share ideas and see each other in person, with speaker contributions coming from the likes of Moneyhub, Deloitte and Softcat.
Changing the face of tech
Among the many highlights of this year’s festival is a fireside keynote chat with Antonia Forster.
Antonia is a Unity/C# games and software developer, specialising in immersive experiences such as AR, VR and XR. In 2017, her record-breaking TEDxBristol talk was delivered to a live audience of 2,000 people and has since gained over 92,000 views online.
A year later, Antonia was nominated and shortlisted for Nature’s John Maddox Prize, in recognition of her work as an LGBTQ+ speaker and activist. She has also been named one of Bristol’s Top Nine “Women to Watch” in STEM, and has appeared in numerous magazine, radio and television features.
The talk with Antonia is scheduled for Monday October 11th, 12:00-14:00, at Engine Shed.
It is expected to be one of many events held throughout the week that inspire both more women to pursue careers in the tech sector, and organisations to provide greater opportunities and promote diversity.
What else to expect at BTF 2021
Diversity is the name of the game when it comes to the group of volunteers helping to coordinate the festival.
Among them are representatives from Hargreaves Lansdown, Newicon, TechSPARK, and Engine Shed, with events throughout BTF being crowdsourced from organisations across the city of Bristol.
These include tech companies, public bodies, schools, community interest groups and charities, with events open to a huge variety of guests – from tech professionals and businesses to individuals wanting to know more about the area’s digital industries.
Between them, a huge variety of discussions and other activities will be open to attendees:
This year’s Bristol Technology Festival will also witness the launch of the Festival Community Partner initiative. Here, businesses have the opportunity to become one of 50 community partners, with all funds invested helping to secure the long-term future of the festival.
For more information and to view the schedule for BTF 2021, visit www.bristoltechfest.org
To submit an event proposal, complete the form here.
Join us on Thursday 21st October for a lunchtime Keynote with marketing veteran Anne Thistleton.
We all know that our mind governs the way we see, understand and interact with the world. But until recently we didn’t know how we actually processed all of the incoming data to make sense of the world. Instead, we learned to accept the fact that sometimes we made useful connections and sometimes not.
With the invention of brain scanners in the 1980s and their extensive use for that past several decades, experts have now gained insight into how our mind truly works, how we process information and how we make decisions. Consequently, new marketing concepts from Neuroscience, Behavioural Economics, Neuromarketing, etc. are becoming plentiful. And books, articles, videos, talks, blogs, even neuromarketing consulting and research companies abound. But very few are explaining the basics in simple terms, and very few are clear on the implications for us. What should I do tomorrow to apply this new knowledge to deliver better impact and results for my clients?
Tickets are priced at £30+VAT for BCI members and £45+VAT for non-members.
Anne Thistleton is the Founding Partner of LIGHT Consulting and has spent over twenty years as a Marketing Practitioner in the field of Mind Science. While leading strategy for The Coca-Cola Company in South Africa, she pioneered this work to first re-vitalise relationships (and the business) in the South Africa townships then to provide the foundation to the Open Happiness campaign. Since then, she has worked across the world and across industries, developing specific marketing-focused Mind Science applications, and then testing and improving them with multi-national companies, advertising agencies, foundations, even political parties.
Over the years, Anne has worked with many of the world’s leading cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists and behavioural economists all focused on what does it mean to marketers and creatives, and how can we apply it now. By using her expansive marketing experience, she has been able to identify and make practical the most relevant and valuable aspects of Mind Science for consumer and B2B marketers.