TechNExt 2026 - Festival Launch
Welcome - Ashmita Randhawa
TechNext 2026 kicked off with a video showing we are a region of inventors and problem solvers, the area is fantastic and full of live and a brilliant place to be. We are thinking about how things look in the future.
Ashmita Randhawa is hosting the event now in its fourth year, and is director of R&D and Sunderland Software City, have over 180 people in the room and can't wait to see what is happening this week and celebrate what is going on the North East's tech sector to show the ambition of the North East tech sector. This year are supporting the Dynamo Digital Inclusion Fund where can buy a pin badge where five pounds goes to this fund. The sessions celebrate what is going on with the North East Tech Scene with a selection of national and international speakers to share what is going on next, this programme gives a brilliant snapshot of the ecosystem which is increasingly becoming influential.
Rob Hamilton - Assistant Director Economic Strategy and Innovation North East Mayoral Strategic Authority
In terms of tech, this is the North East celebration of tech and all that is brilliant in the region, people will have opportunity to learn from each other and share their expertise and look forward to all the activity which will take place across the region. We have over 50,000 people working in the sector including AI and isn't just a region waiting for AI to happen, many businesses in this room are helping to make AI happen. They wanted to set out the strategic approach to the region and highlight some of the next steps and highlight the opportunity to work with them.
The authority set out plans for economy as a whole with local growth plan and digital and AI is one of the strategic sectors with a potential to grow being very important, want to collaborate around digital and skills and work with organisations to drive this and later today will be working on the 30,000,000 programme to help growth in the region, tech and AI is absolutely critical and getting those fundamentals is correct. There is an inspire fund with all the local universities to help local businesses, SMEs and startups to drive them forward.
Last month set out prospectus for AI growth zone, and highlight projects supporting their ambitions and in terms of strategy it is landing the infrastructure and data centres and had project for Cobalt and elsewhere for hyperscale projects. It is about scale, adoption and innovation and isn't just let by combined authority but working with small companies, big companies and impact across the region and appreciate feedback from the region.
London Tech Week has highlighted conversation about practical implementation of AI and skills and how to make sure are at vanguard not tail of these opportunities and there will be 200 million in the country and five in the North East, want to drive growth across the region and have a programme for make smarter to help AI growth and there is a 750,000 investment in AI skills and from combined authority is to help school children get on board with AI in a safe and efficient way.
Microsoft and Sage are launching an AI skills initiative to help provide skills to progress thought to a genuine job and use AI to create opportunities and open the door to skilled AI careers in their home region of the North East. We have the infrastructure, networks and opportunities to make this happen and need to unlock these opportunities and turn them into innovations and new products and to double the number of scale ups and startups and help drive the next ten years of growth in the North East. Looking at expertise to unlock and drive forward opportunities and bring forward a tech sector digital plan and turn these plans into projects to unlock these opportunities.
Are surrounded by tech, is there a favourite technology? Their guilty secret is their running watch, don't get obsessed and do what is best for you.
Fireside Chat hosted by Jamie Hardesty with Pete Cheyne - Founder, Rightbrain AI
Ashmita mentioned We all know tech is moving really fast and need to make sure it is done so to solve challenges and for people in the North East, seven AI adoption plans were announced last week including a early career and job alliance and one of the pilots is here in the region, the UK tech cluster group sat to finalise best practice report from regional tech boost programme. Thinking about scale ups with 1.1 billion for AI hardware.
Jamie mentioned they have different themes including a startup hub which is a day to meet people and fellow builders and see what it takes to build a company in this part of the world and speak to Pete about what the founder journey is like. Pete spoke about Right Brain which is the tech they wished they had in his previous companies which is looking at agent as a service and plug this into the services you already use and have been building this for the past couple of years. You're frustrated as grinding and you don't know it is going to work, people would say don't focus on the money focus on the work and the money will find you was hard to hear.
Jamie mentioned when come to things it is very linear when you get your first job or get first startup so wanted to ask about believes. What are some of the moments that shaped them or underestimated at the time and left a real lasting impression. Pete mentioned with performance horizon where someone has DMed someone from Apple, where they were building an Adtech platform and they had been canvassing for this kind of platform They had a call with Apple with more people from them on the call that in their entire company, they spoke about their product and talked about going out in person and showing it in person, took a flight over to Cupertino, the core of the product is real, They walked into One Infinite loop where they turned up to the meeting which was in the Finding Nemo room and were a little bit early and were in silence and it hit them, “what are they doing” and this was in 2014 with their fellow founders and that moment of clarity which was they were Apple, they had coded this product in Gateshead and now they were at Apple, they had the meeting and it went well and are still a client to this day, imposter syndrome is a thing and everyone starts at zero but these people at big companies are just normal people they just happen to work at a massive organisation, feeling like you are winging it is feeling confidence from seeing your product out there and anyone can build a product on the world stage you just have to feel confident.
Jamie mentioned people say you just have to do this, but one thing they admire is those interactions so what are some of the bad advice and some things they have seen out there and thought maybe not? Pete mentioned If want to make a bad decision, ask everyone, there is so much bad advice, what if it goes wrong, what if it is too risky, but if doing a startup are doing something people are hardly doing, the paradox is to go with your gut. Jamie mentioned there will be people thinking about a company, but trusting your gut will resonate and people will make mistakes. Pete mentioned if you are going to fail, fail fast and it should be celebrated, you can be abnormal and expect normal results, you have to be comfortable looking into the unknown and at best looking at guaranteed failure.
Jamie mentioned there are a lot of roles and when small you are doing a lot of these, but when expanding then hiring can be hard so any incites on new hires. Pete mentioned thing they got wrong the most is hiring, as at the start you are doing everything and making small decisions for a long term role and can get suck in the short term, but they took hiring as a nuisance as time away for that is time away from doing the work, they had a need for an infrastructure person before they had their first decent chunk of funding so need to be decent, this was before the cloud so had to go along to freelancer websites and found someone based in Europe who had done this before and for a couple of years built this out in a couple of years and had this in a government cave with layers of security and started to grow and win big clients and as they grew started to get more technical people who asked about technical infrastructure and he started to get quiet and then came in and felt threaten and said they wanted 2 million pounds other wise they would shut everything down so got a private detective to track this person down, and turned out this government data centre was on top of a use car showroom in eastern Europe, they did a deal and managed to get the service over to something tangible and real but for that startup it was long-term thinking that as helped.
Jamie mentioned when at early stages and can overlap if can go back what would you optimise and really get right? Pete mentioned optimising yourself and specifically emotional reactions to stuff, you can make bad or rash decisions, and a startup is a constant list of things that can go wrong. They got a chance to organise a friends stag do, so ended up going to mountains in Poland and met this person who does feats of endurance so a week, almost spiritual retreat, with this amazing speak and one thing is said, the world is chaos and you cannot control what happens out in the world but what you can control is what happens within, the chaos you cannot control but you can control the chaos within. They were working with someone who questioned all their decisions and felt undermined and spoke to their Dad about it and said to put in a box, you can compartmentalise this as something out there which is chaotic and always causing problems and treat this as a constant and the emotion was gone and didn't let the triggers effect their decisions.
Jamie asked about anything they couldn't control, something to do with finance? Pete mentioned get a good accountant, they had gone through a raising journey and raised over 100,000,000 dollars and each time is different and with Right Brain have done this again and have had 48 calls and met their one on the 47th call. For their first startup wanted to do their own thing and had read the lean startup and on page three said surround yourself with winners who they worked with people who had one journey under their belt and is worthwhile in your first journey but if not find advisors as would be amazed who you can message, one of the dirty truths and main way to win is to survive and last longer than everyone else and opportunity will find you, you just have to keep believing.
Jamie asked about present day and what up to this year, and assuming game has changed where before investors would say you seem credible they will take a punt, but now it is have you proven your business model. Pete mentioned this cam as a shock so have built a product and thirty five of those calls mentioned that to contact them when have a million pounds of annually recurring revenue. Your start can be about timing, at Bottlepay they raised their pre-seed of 11 million pounds and all they had was a PowerPoint which was in crypto which was a crazy thing back there. They approached a Texan billionaire who looked exactly how you would expect, gave them a pitch and they seemed they weren't in it, and afterwards was willing to put in a million pounds but told them if the deep state come knocking you don't know who I am.
Jamie asked about hiring people, what are they really looking for thematically, what makes a good person in a startup? Pete mentioned with all creative endeavours, believes we all have a sixth sense for authenticity, are you speaking to someone who is themselves or are they wearing the mask of a person you want to see. When Bottlepay got acquired, they were going to have a boss and the first time they met them, they were on a conference call on their back and holding their laptop up and was really eccentric but you were getting the real person and their mantra was embrace, the weird, embrace the crazy. It can be the purest form of meritocracy you are trusting the output and judged on your ability and be a good person and trust in what you do and you'll do fine.
Questions from Slido via Jenna include how does person grow a company in the North East and as an entrepreneur what makes you choose the North East? Pete is originally from the Shetlands, where they had two people in the school, no one does tech from Shetland and one of the only other people with notoriety in the tech sector was from a hacking group. They came here for University and this is home, the North East is unique as are much more collaborative, there is amazing universities, people and great quality of life. They get invited to businessey things in the North East, there is such a deep culture of people who have done well from the North East who want other people from the North East to do well, a genuine desire to see others succeed.
Jamie asked where will they be when they exit Right Brain, they love the game and work is their passion and one thing is to build the Geordie Shire for themselves.
Question via Jenna from Slide was what are most excited about in the future and best memory of building startups? There have been three big inventions, the internet which helped foster connections between humans, then the second was crypto and most of this is vapourware but fundamentally something like Bitcoin, where have tried to build trustless money so Bitcoin as a trustless money platform but this isn't going to be incorporated for a great deal of time as there are people with a vested interested in this not happening and then there is AI which is going to change us a s species and have an optimistic view of AI which will lead us to a period of super abundance, AI is going to take the effective cost of production and trend this to zero for everything, it is going to work out things which is exciting.
Jamie asked about the best memories, Pete mentioned it is quite an anticlimax as you get there and think what do you do, it is great and having the ability to be a bit more free is a great thing and in startup land everyone is like their startup is going to change the world, but there is nothing wrong with a business just to make money, there is a great quote desire is a contract with yourself until you get what you want. You want o get wealth and be free, and many people in the startup world have lost their identity so that perspective piece is something they bring themselves back to.
Question via Jenna from Sildo is how do you know when you are done? Pete mentioned people who have had a tonne of startups that haven't done well, so are goal oriented about how they are going, have a goal and aim towards this. AI wise what will be the best big breakthrough? Pete mentioned solving biology and curing so many things and starting to see this already and curing certain types of cancer and reducing Parkinsons fix tinnitus. They have a GP who uses an LLM that is part of their job today but are entering that sci-fi film which will become a reality.
Darren Curry - Chief Digital, Data and Technology Officer, NHS Business Services Authority
Ashmita welcomed everyone back from the break, with a fantastic programme yet to come, have spoken to a startup on skills platform and someone doing a Phd. Darren has significant experience and knowledge in digital services and is passionate about social mobility to increase this in the North East.
Darren Curry spoke about getting people in the tech industry. Who has heard of the NHS business services authority, may not have heard of them but will have used their services, a national organisation headquartered in the North East and employ 5,500 nationally with many roles with 750 roles in tech and some of the services they deliver have meaningful impact on people's lives and administer healthy start scheme for England to purchase healthy goods, they do deliver services that impact the health of the nation and do payroll for those employed in secondary care.
Public service is a real place to build a career, public service is seen as where cool tech doesn't happen but do deliver really interesting services with a purpose, and can grow a career in the organisation, data entry clerks, contact centre advisors, apprentice roles, project management, data science roles to deliver purpose with the data. From Data Entry to CIO, they joined as a data entry clerk and now a chief information officer in a career that has lasted twenty years. Their visible journey was entry level in 2000 as a data entry clerk, on prescription form there is a six digit number and their job was to key that six digit number of a piece of information with thousand of these done every hour, but the number pad was upside down so find the normal layout hard. They joined the organisation when there was a recruitment drive to work as a data entry clerk which was boring but gave them the money they needed to pay for their education and didn't expect to be there that long. No one sits keying those numbers as is extracted with huge scanning machines and digitally extracted from those forms.
You remember the people who opened doors, people who supported them and created opportunities, everyone in this room will remember someone who has championed and support them and hyping them from the sides to do well and move on, could just be words of encouragement, when they were moving to their first management role, they never had aspirations about being in IT and digital but their manager said if they had thought about doing project management and were given a project to work on which create an opportunity. Think about how you can create opportunities on how you can put yourselves forward and create those opportunities for other people.
From the outside it looks like progression, a clean line of promotions and neat arc from junior to senior, each step looks like a logical next step, each move looks confident, intentional and planned but this is the version that most see but the one that hides the most, it starts completely differently. Where they actually started was they were born in the 1980s where game controllers had one stick or one button and were born in Gateshead in Chopwell which had multi-generational unemployment and their Dad was made redundant in the early 80s and never worked again, grew up in social housing and went to a comprehensive school and grew up on free school meals, they had to spend their break queuing for a dinner ticket for lunch, 80% of the people they grew up with were in the same situation and more people queued up than were out during the break.
They were first person to get into any form of higher education and only person in their family or extended family to attain a degree, there were no one to ask for advice from such as the personal statement for the application form. They experienced access bias, which was real someone mentioned when they first met them they didn't think they were very intelligent which knocked them and the way you speak and way they talk that people will judge them, they speak in many places in London and are often still the only person with that accent in the room. Their background isn't rate, what is less common is the opportunity, more than one in for children in the North East face material deprivation, 29% vs 49% of pupils on free school meals progressive to higher education and 18% vs 43% of senior civil servants from working-class backgrounds compared with the most junior grades.
How many have the talent but not the sequence or opportunity to be able to move to an organisation and move up in an organisation? The entry level role, the first manager who notices, the stretch opportunity, the person with insider knowledge. What can we do as individuals, there are people who create opportunities and conditions every single day so it is deigning those routes for people to get in an organisation. Design the routes in and design routes on, job adverts are the qualifications essential is the language accessible without insider knowledge? What about individual who may have worked in an organisation who may have worked for ten years or didn't have the qualification or ran their own business then that person's application never gets past the first sift, so can have that qualification or equivalent experience. Stretch opportunities, who gets them, always those who are confident to ask, may have proximity bias with people sharing the same office, hwo are you creating opportunities for people you aren't seeing every day. They have been able to create entry routes into tech with interns and apprenticeships and ask that the biggest different they can make is those roles, so create those roles for people to get into those organisations and to a person that can make the biggest difference to an organisation or can offer real-world experience and if doing an internship then pay them for this and look at how easy you are making it, think about how much it costs, make decisions to create conditions to make things as broad as possible.
Confidence often comes after action, not before, your roles is to create conditions to have an open door policy, you can't just say it, you need to meet people, but if starting your career in an organisation, talk to people, seek out mentors and people who can offer careers advice as people will want to share time. Talent is everywhere, opportunity isn't? What doors can you open?
Ashmita asked about how to create maps for people stepping into these new spaces? Darren mentioned it is being open and honest about what you expect from individuals, what do you expect from people at an interview, how do you prepare for an interview so tell people what to expect, create the conditions where people can expect and have questions and be transparent, make those steps as transparent as possible.
Halina Rice - Artist, Halina Rice Music
Ashmita welcomes the next speaker, Halina Rice who is a music producer and AV artist who shows how cool immersive technology can be and hearing the impact her work can be, she works at intersection of art, music and technology and creates AV installations that envelop people, toured the world and this year was invited to compose for BBC symphony orchestra.
Halina Rice is an AV artist and creates immersive installations with brand and venue partners, immersive means they want to take their audience and take them out of their day to day life, they work extensively with spatial audio, 360 and large format videos and more recently with volumetric capture of dancers and talk about where things are going and how they use technologies in their practice.
They shared something from a show from a set of building as part of an immersive entertainment district in London, for them as an immersive artist it is really interesting to do high impact visuals in a plug and play environment as before they had to bring their own screens and projectors but these new breed of venues are already equipped with what they need. There is two ends of the spectrum and are inspired by art world and academic world of immersive visualisations, can have hyper real events that occur around you and can watch how people respond to those environments.
They also have be inspired by artists who have geometric real-live experiences and have also been inspired by other end of scale such as the sphere in Las Vegas with highest resolution LED screens in the world with spatial audio and can deploy things like scent and haptics under the seats. There are also the new style of DJ eventing for thousands and thousands of people with the commercial end of immersive experiences.
They were invited about CoSTAR ForesightLAB and commissioned to take part in this report on what creative will be like in the future and what will that mean on how venues will be equipped and what skills need to be taught to equip people in the future. People are looking for connection with event that heighten self-awareness, well-being and the spiritual and have the commercial scale as the audience expectation increases which can be very expensive.
Some of the immersive tech they use is spatial audio were they used spatial audio at a hackathon event at Abbey Road and was working with a visual artist and they were doing the audio and encountered L-Acoustics who are speaker manufacturer who deal with spatial audio and they were asked to reprogram their set and support of engineers in a few days to do this where they can deploy a sound around an audience.
Mono audio is one sound, stereo is a form of spatial for things moving from left to right for a spatial width and surround sound is not quite the same as spatial audio but goes along with home cinema setups but spatial audio is speaker neutral whether have five or 100 speakers and software will manage how the sound is deployed between speakers. Can take sounds and say where each of these sounds will be using as multi-speaker setup with ones sometimes above the audience, there are object based mixing tools such as Dolby Atmos where can have sound objects coordinates which translate to the speaker system available and will be calculated by the software based upon the setup present and universities and colleges have spatial audio rooms.
People find it difficult to describe what is going on with spatial audio, but people will say they have an experience of having sound around you and with audiophile music, sound installations and large events with spatial audio helps with good sound coverage. They used a setup with seventeen speakers including ones above audience and then have programme delivering the audio as needed and can have the sound sources represented in the software, you can retain the object based mixing to be used elsewhere, but it is expensive and requires a lot of maintenance and technology, with some installations which can be scaled accordingly. Some venues have taken an approach where can have an immersive experience with vinyl screens where the audience is in the middle with the artist in the centre.
Dolby Atmos is main format to be accepted for music platforms, engineers have said that 5.1 and 7.1 haven't taken off but there are car models with spatial audio and because the tech is speaker neutral and venues are using this so engineers are being pushed to release spatial audio which is a big change. The opportunities are flexible sound control, excellent sound coverage and heightened audience experience with accessible programming and binaural monitoring venues are investing in this but challenges are that in house systems are expensive and most people doing spatial audio are doing so uncooperatively and the coordinate system can be different so there is no easy access but are competitive.
They are primarily a visual designer with generative visuals and don't know what visuals will be output based on the rule-based coding and work with lidar scans and integrate these with other objects in space and moving into more three dimensionality. They did a show at boiler shop and met someone who was doing things at the time and had become interested in a tech called gaussian splat much like bullet time and can do this and move around which is relatively inexpensive to capture and there can also capture other elements.
Jenna via Slido asked about what creative will be like in the future and how important will digital access be for all? For them as an independent artist they had to beg, borrow and steal but have been lucky to get funding which have been life saving and be able to put on the events in the manner they would like to do. It is about reaching out, networking events and events like these are important to increase reach.
Jenna via Slido asked about advice about where to start? Halina had a job as a digital director for a retail organisation, they have had the technology before but it was really hard to get into but they joined a college in London which helped so having courses available and people understanding immersive arts as a category in of itself and an art in of itself, but you can pick it up on your own, you can download the software and play around with it, and you can work with anyone around the world, so have tools to meet like minded groups of people who want to work together.
Jenna via Slido asked about being in the intersection between art and tech so are there any unconventional ways to see how this technology could be used? It is all about experimentation, in the report they describe the movement being seen now and what doors AI will open or close but can't wait to see what is next.
Panel Session hosted by Ashmita Randhawa with Peter Wagett - IBM, Caroline Oswald - Adobe & George Windsor - UK Tech Cluster Group
Ashmita welcomes everyone back after lunch, with a fantastic panel about growing importance of North East tech sector. We have to explain ourselves less and less with an economy growing more and more and some of the largest investments but this is not the same as having a mature ecosystem and why businesses are interested in investing here. Peter Waggett from IBM, Geoge Windsor from UK Tech Cluster Group.
Peter originally came from South Sheilds and when went into aerospace and then to IBM, Caroline works for Adobe innovation team bringing AI and are from the North East and partner with education establishments to bring software to schools and have a creative background starting as a fashion designer and found their home with creative tech. George has spent last decade or so in research and a few things including in Tech Nation and represent the UK tech cluster group and help write startup and scaleup strategies in Africa.
Ashmita asked George what is a Test Cluster? They have always looked at things in numbers and when asked about the session they looked at the current state of the North East and there is over a billion of turn over but looking at wider context of UK it is about one trillion and UK ranks behind US and China on many factors, we aren't falling behind and the North East is part of a vital and thriving tech ecosystem, we can't all be the biggest ecosystem not do we need to be, it is not just a collection of firms, it is about systems of universities, investors, and more with lots of things that make these things work effectively.
Ashmita asked of Peter what does the North East look from outside? With IBM they have worked in over 60 countries but yet one of the things they are looking at is where is the best place to drive innovation, there a few things in its favour such as the people are good, the people cater with an environment that is changing quickly so flexibility is important. Most of the companies are collaborative and where don't have the facilities then can work together. We have manufacturing and production type of background which underpins what we do up here and a lot of this requires data and understanding that data is important are the things that make this a good place to work.
Caroline mentioned what an investor would think about the North East? Friendly but potentially post-industrial as had that reputation, it still has that code but seriously advanced manufacturing and a core of green energy but have growth potential. What is Adobe's work in the region? It starts earlier in Universities where Adobe Express is free for all schools to get creativity in from of children, but also partnering with institutions, and everyone has the same opportunity to get their hands on the technology and tools to have that skill set to be digitally and AI ready and have to be able to tell and good story and have a good argument and have creativity at the core.
Ashmita talked about talent retention which is important for an ecosystem to grow, tech companies are struggling to grow to find or keep the right talent so what can we do? George mentioned need to create really compelling jobs in order to stay in the region, it doesn't need to be a five days in office full-time basis, there are great examples in the North East of this already happening. Enabling people access to opportunities outside where they are based and show are part of a global workforce and can tap into the opportunity offered by this.
Ashmita spoke to Peter about ensuring roots and access into things, another passion he has got is trying to broaden pool of applicants going into higher education, one of the project they are proud of is to run between under graduate and post graduate and make sure have best and brightest into industry - they were first to apply to university and only did this as a teacher said for them to go and do this.
Ashmita mentioned about infrastructure investment on an unprecedented scale, so how do you translate that into tangible economic growth? Suggestions that funding will result in 5000 new jobs but how do we capture and retain those jobs, might be doing the best programmatic activity in the world but what you capture may just go elsewhere, we can't continue to think programmatically but ow it can all change, not just about 5000 jobs over next few years but thousands more over a longer period.
Caroline mentioned they used to sell into the Nordics and if selling into this was really difficult and if someone nearby did this even if it was similar they would do it in the Nordics, are we looking at all the right places to buy in the local economy which would make a big difference if we considered it. There's a marketing campaign to be done here, they still live in the North East but travel back to London a few days, so are a poor example of what we can do, but how to keep us here - is there government infrastructure to ensure local government is speaking loud and clear and wants to say live in Newcastle and work for Adobe.
Ashmita said how do you tell those stories and make it feel real? Peter mentioned one of the big programmes is a centre for digital innovation and an unexpected bonus was running a series of regional hubs including Newcastle and what this was about was to provide a platform to get support in a local environment, this wasn't a place for small things, they wanted those big challenges and each of the regions in terms of the hub came up with different propositions, tuned into the local economy and is the longest running and most interesting and exciting programme they have been involved with. Some of the biggest challenges were coming from the North East, for them it has been a great program they have done with the North East hub.
George mentioned things can be abstract but things they work on as part of a growth engine for the UK, there are some things about digital inclusion and companies adopting digital technologies enables an inclusive environment, huge amount of businesses are adopting AI, they see the North East as a challenge oriented test bed which offers an immense challenge due to issues that need to be overcome.
Ashmita asked from a North East where could it lead in AI? Peter is quite cynical as a lot of what is described as AI is not AI and the rest is no good, a lot of the stuff is cut right though so it has to be what is good, there's no hiding when base things on numbers that are easily provable. Caroline mentioned from a regional perspective is how do we create AI responsibly, it is key to make sure it is safe and responsible, in organisations there is a fear and reticence but are looking at how it works and where it works and need to look at democratisation and will be a fascinating model at looking at this, the workforce is inherently afraid of being replaces by AI and what they talk about at Adobe as there is demand for personalised information, to get a one-to-one conversation with customer is way beyond human scale for a business so how do you enable your workforce to create beyond a human scale is do to more with less, cost of assets and creation where AI can help create additional content without reducing headcount. George mentioned that far fewer companies than we think are adopting AI, are we being led to believe to adopt AI because the big tech companies are doing, is it cheap labour or is it truly transformative so look at AI on how it can fundamentally change the way we live and work, not one we are being undermined or substituted for.
Ashmita asked in 2030 the North East Tech Cluster has paid off what has happened? George mentioned we have embrace creativity and connected with others, engaged and differentiated with other places and made best of UK tech and are increasingly thinking about world. Caroline will be that Adobe will have opened a North East office or can go into a group of investors and are renowned for producing world class tech and then Peter will have come back here.
Henrietta Newble - Founder, AnFiTest
Ashmita mentioned they are in biotechnology, Henrietta has been entrepreneurial from a young age and working on rapid field based tests and building data sets for future of farming and building real world solutions.
Henrietta spoke about founding AnFiTest and is a mechanical engineer at Newcastle University. They have done a couple of things including SptLabTech, interned and done things like Army Cadets and wanted to go into a bioengineering company. They have always loved doing stuff. They have built a point of cate diagnosis and machine learning data analytics to prevent equine and livestock diseases that are linked to pasture grass where all samples are lab based and need to wait weeks for it to come back and started working on this four years ago and their final year took the step. You can put sample into system and in ten minutes get results can also feed into data for machine learning about what to do next.
Vet fees are high and people turn to factually inaccurate Facebook groups, but can develop their company to be leader in animal health and have made a deal with an insurance company in North East where will get one of their devices. They formed a company and were funded through North East fund backed my Mercia and hope do grow beyond the region. People think building a startup is easy, and what does the entrepreneurial lifestyle look like, but they are travelling around getting funding. Building a startup quick is a myth, biotechnology is not like this and had conversation about things. Biotechnology does not care about your timeliness, everything takes longer than you think. Hardware startups still take as long as they used to take and there's a lot more involved.
You can't keep a normal work life balance so have to do things at random times, they love their startup and spending time is the hardest part in first few years. The science is hard and the rest is harder and all of it can sink you like how long risk assessments take, they initially didn't realise what needed to go where and now have an R&D director who deals with this. Startups are not a thing that happens over night in biotechnology, it takes time thought and manual hands on, you have to wait hours or days for experiments and you can't just speed them up so it important the manual physical stuff can't avoided.
Myth is people instantly understand the problems half the job is translation, they save animals lives as what you do is intricate and intimate that most people won't understand what you are doing, investors won't understand what you are doing they don't have time to specialise. There isn't a market they put in for an innovation grant and were told this and in the UK alone it is worth over 9 billion. What they took away is they didn't explain it well enough, it is so niche that they sometimes don't understand what people are doing in biotechnology.
Money helps but it also makes it real, funding doesn't remove pressure it concentrates it, deadlines that are no longer yours alone expections to deliver not just to try, a team whose livelihoods depend on you. This can come with a lot of pressure for a founder. Why do it? It feels like a roller coaster, you will feel good but want to quit but doing an R&D startup is worth it and is adding value to the planet and is a very important thing to freely. Two takeaways are build around a problem you genuinely care about and when it gets hard and it will, that is the only thing that keeps you going. You need to have some kind of connection to the problem, you have to dedicate and focus on idea. It is not easy but it is worth it and it is journey you will want to go on.
We are going through one of the most exciting times for tech - embrace it! If they would do it again they would just do things slightly differently
Taya Reynolds - Dynamo Advisory Board
Taya is passionate about tech and recently left their role as CTO. Recently they have been thinking about how they and others use AI. We like to think we are in control of own decisions and creatively. May be relying too much on technology and not just doing things faster but think less. Is AI making us think better or less. Thinking is now available on demand. Now have more access that ever before to knowledge, insight and capability and don't need to be experts to produce something really high quality. We can take multiple approaches and challenge assumptions as a thinking partner. How many times have you wanted to take notes into a presentation, can be done.
Have you ever felt as enriched in a topic before have you a set of decisions and now you can think in different directions and access to information is incredible and anyone can take an idea into reality by taking that creativity and curiosity further. For them personally they have always loved makeup and had an idea to better manage this and have came up with a solution they want to take to market. Another example of how AI is helping us think better, they have taken their data to help with decisions with sleep exercise and food and it has helped transform them and been a positive example with deep thinking amplified.
Risk of cognitive debt where are outsourcing your thinking, when was last time you started with a blank page. Developers can start, create code and optimise but less time to understand how something is working or why is it broken. Thanking is easily outsourced. Recommendations can be trusted from Amazon or Netflix means there's no depth to selections, are in a era where overloaded with information and then can put this into AI, are you understanding the content deeply do you only rely on headlines, this overreliance will make us stop learn deeply and if can make something easier your brain will choose that route.
The more a tool thinks for you the less the brain needs to think. If convenience takes over then do we lose out. If we optimise for speed do we lose depth. Every era questions its tools. Soctrates worried that writing things down will make us forgetful. The way we are thinking less isn't a new risk but a natural shift in evolution and how we have adapted to technology before. How we can best use AI in the North East is to build capability, create a shared opportunity, connect networks and drive shard value and our responsibility is to ensure that no one is left behind. Give people the platform to thrive and stay here, ensure benefits reach where they are needed, everyone likes to club together in region and need to foster the right networks. We need to lean into experiences of others and think about the opportunity and make sure access to AI expands beyond the tech sector which will be shaped by everyone and what role will you play in this.
The risk is not the technology, AI cannot have hard conversations in workplace with friends under pressure, male the judgement call when facts are unclear and stakes are high. Lead through change. Are you choosing not to think?
Close - Ashmita Randhawa
We have had quite a journey today and heard about strengths but also address how we can do it and understand what it takes to be a startup and scale up in the North East. There are four hubs alongside other events which will tackle various issues and conversations raised today.