WCIT MONITOR Issue 63 Nov 2014 | Page 5

FELLOWSHIP THE WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGISTS Royal Signals Gordon’s Cup competition for military Contributed by Court skills at Blandford Assistant, Dr Stefan Fafinski A were involved throughout the day. We were incredibly impressed and humbled by the professionalism, dedication and teamwork shown by all the participants and rightly proud of the WCIT’s support. The aim of this competition is to provide soldiers from the Regiment an exciting and challenging military skills exercise, to enhance their leadership, teamwork, physical robustness and confidence. It consists of a number of different and demanding military skills events, including a march and shoot, stretcher racing, assault course, rapid replenishment, casualty evacuation and bayonet course. Over 400 personnel ©Mike Williams ©Mike Williams WCIT Celebrates Stars of IT at Enterprise Awards 2014 The award for Emerging Entrepreneur was given to Sanjit Atwal and Leo Hawkins, co-founders of Squawka, a web application that delivers real-time data visualisations of live football matches, while Darren Westlake, CEO of Crowdcube, the equity crowdfunding platform, won the inaugural Innovation of the Year Award. Jim and David Driver of mobile surveying technology and CRM platform provider, eTech, brought home the WCIT Enterprise Award for 2014, while Paddy MccGwire, managing partner of Cobalt Corporate Finance, was named Mentor of the Year and Anthony Impey, CEO of technology service provider, Optimity, won the Social Enterprise Award. ©Mike Williams O n the 12th June the WCIT Entrepreneur Panel announced the winners of the 4th Annual WCIT Enterprise Awards. The highlight was the success of Vin Murria, founder of Advanced Computer Software Group, the healthcare and business management software and IT services provider, in becoming the first ever CEO of a publicly listed company to win a WCIT award. Chairman of the WCIT Enterprise Awards Panel, Liveryman John O’Connell said: “Once again, we have seen ample evidence that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well across the UK technology sector. We are well on the way to meeting the goals I set out when we launched the awards three years ago: to establish truly independent awards for rising technology entrepreneurs in the UK and to harness the experience, The awards, which celebrated the achievements of the connections and knowledge of our Livery Company members to country’s most successful IT entrepreneurs, were presented at a create new technology world champions from the UK.” gala dinner at the Plaisterers’ Hall in London. Murria received the Judges’ Award, a discretionary award given to an For the first time, the awards were held entrepreneur who in the opinion of the judges is a role model to in association with techUK and the others. evening was sponsored by Cobalt Another major accolade, Young Entrepreneur (under 30), was won jointly by Dominic Joseph and Adam Ludwin of digital advertising technology company, Captify. Tony Pepper, and Neil Larkins, founders of market-leading encryption services provider, Egress Software Technologies, picked up the award for Developing Entrepreneur. Corporate Finance, GFT, Investec and Smith & Williamson. Contributed by The Whiteoaks Consultancy www.whiteoaks.co.uk Page 5 photographybymikewilliams.co.uk s part of our links with the Royal Corps of Signals, the WCIT supports the Gordon’s Cup: a bi-annual military skills competition for the young ‘Phase 2’ soldiers of 11 Signal Regiment, held at Blandford. I was very pleased to represent WCIT and to present some prizes at the Gordon’s Cup in October, accompanied by my wife Emily.