The Business Exchange Swindon & Wiltshire Edition 50: Aug/Sept 2020 | Page 6

BUSINESS NEWS Techies – it’s your last chance! Tech-first firms in Swindon and Wiltshire have one last chance to enter the Techies Awards 2020 before the competition closes on Tuesday 1st September. The award scheme celebrates the innovation and entrepreneurship of our local tech community and puts the spotlight on tech firms and those embracing technology in our area. Past winners include Appsbroker, Cardwave, Foregenix, Gel Studios, Infinity Nation, OJO Solutions, Render, and Purple Lime accountants. There are 12 categories to enter including Driven by Data and Most Innovative Tech Solution. The pandemic has forced us all to look at our operations to innovate to survive and you might have just come up with a solution that could win the techies 2020! If you think you might be in with a chance of winning visit the Techies Awards website to review the entry criteria. THE AWARD CATEGORIES ARE: 1. Flying the Flag for Swindon & Wiltshire 2. Best Tech Support Service 3. Future Tech Superstar 4. Social Impact Award 5. Best Tech Security 6. Best Tech Start-up 7. Most Innovative Tech Solution 8. Best User Experience 9. Using Tech to Transform Business 10. Driven by Data 11. The Cutting IT Award 12. Tech Team of the Year HOW TO ENTER: Business can enter online by visiting: www.the-techies-sw.co.uk The awards are only open to businesses in Swindon & Wiltshire. Read the full competition rules and eligibility online by visiting the entry section of the Techies website. A BIG THANK YOU TO THE TECHIES SPONSORS The date for the Techies Awards 2020 award ceremony will be announced at the end of September. We are waiting to see how Covid-19 restrictions pan out before we announce our new plans. We would love to host an in-person event rather than hosting this year’s awards purely online, and if we can hold the event in a physical venue as planned, we will ensure that the awards are also broadcast online for anyone who doesn’t feel safe attending a mass participation event. Follow the hashtag #TheWiltshireTechies on social media to be kept up to date. If you’ve come up with a tech solution to help your business survive and thrive through Covid-19, you could be in with a chance of winning! @TheTechiesUK Tech Swindon the information hub for all things tech in Swindon is celebrating a year since it’s official launch. Lucy Paine, Swindon’s Tech Connector tells us what’s been achieved so far. As the first Switch On To Swindon initiative, Tech Swindon wasn’t born fully formed. Although led by the very experienced Tech Spark team it was not a case of replicating that community in Swindon. We have a very different tech community and different needs, so our first job was to get to know the companies, see what was already there to support the community and look for gaps and opportunities. Swindon has some great tech meetups already, Data Swindon, UX Swindon, Swindon Connect and Agile Practitioners being just four you should check out, so we didn’t need to start up anything in those areas. But there was nothing for founders to get together and share experiences, challenges and make new connections. We ran our first Swindon Founders on a very wet and dark Thursday in November, kindly hosted by Matt at Desk CoWork in Old Town, it was a vegan spread and a great turn out. We kept a strict no sales rule, turned away consultants – all of who were lovely about it and understood that to build a founder community we had to keep it pure. Our first three Swindon Founders events were in person, and we spoke to BraveDog, Silicon Practise, Traced, Foregenix, Van Heroes and iKnow about running a business, managing people, raising money, losing money and keeping motivated. They all went well and I could see we were starting to build momentum. To support this work our website went live, a simple platform for events and tech community interviews and articles, finally something that could start to showcase our amazing tech cluster. And then Covid-19 happened! A new community had launched, to be locked down. Our founders were all in flux, as we all were – what to do next, how to pivot, how to survive. Swindon Founders felt more important than ever, but it didn’t seem right to ask our founders for time, and we also wanted to avoid the panic titled sessions that were cropping up, so we did something different, the communications trilogy. A series of three virtual events which attracted over 70 signups! We also hosted a summer social with The Techies Awards in July where our community met online and enjoyed a virtual beer, kindly sponsored by SETsquared. We are now working on our November summit, due to be a full day at Steam museum in Swindon. It has evolved into a week of events, mostly virtual but we hope that by then some roundtable in-person sessions might be viable. Watch this space to find out more. If you’re a tech founder or work for a tech company large or small we would love to hear from you. Please sign-up to receive our updates and to hear about future events. Find out more by visiting: www.tech-swindon.com or email [email protected] @SwindonTech For all your photocopier, printer, scanner and scan compliance needs. We are the largest independent print and document management solutions provider in the South West. Headquartered in Bath since 1984 0845 688 6868 info@1st www.1st 6 www.tbeswindonandwilts.co.uk