What we learned at The Lancashire Tech Summit at Highest Point 2023

Highest Point Festival’s idyllic greenery played host to The Lancashire Tech Summit. The summit brought together a number of tech experts from the county, and we gained lots of transferable insights that we can pass on to promoters.

The Dell stage was the setting for the summit, and as we walked down the pathway, a welcoming atmosphere greeted us. Conversations between attendees played out before things kicked off, soundtracked by a set from DJ Nick Dagger, whose warm deep house selection added to the relaxed vibe. 

After an intro from the hosts, it was time to kick off. Here, we heard a series of lightning talks from the many guests. These talks, ten minutes in length, gave each business a chance to showcase what they are doing and how they are going about it. 

We got to hear things about health tech, electric car charging, clean air and assisting the NHS. It’s clear that Lancashire’s tech network is thriving, with enthusiastic speakers in the area receiving a supportive reaction from the audience.

Josh Bailey from Relative Insight spoke about how the company uses AI to turn text into data, which can then be used to create reports and analyse customer feedback. 

So, if you’ve got event reviews from customers on your website, your Skiddle brand page or across social media, a tool like this could help you make better sense of what customers think of your event. 

Of course, it’s easy to understand how a customer feels from a review that’s clearly negative or positive. However, using a text-to-data tool will give you the feedback over a longer period, helping you to make better choices when trying to improve the experience for your customers. 

Next up? Insights from +24 Marketing’s Chris Holgate. Chris dubbed his talk ‘a free form jazz tech talk’, taking us into the history of ‘the internet of things’. Here, he spoke about how people from the creative industries used technology to make sensors and art installations with easy-to-access hardware.

After this, it was time to network. Once again, the atmosphere felt warm, in part thanks to Nick Dagger’s mid-tempo house selections and the enthusiastic nature of the attendees. People smiled, chatted and shared stories with each other. 

Then, it was time for the panel section of the summit. Speaking on the panel were Paul White and Conor Walsh from Patch, an app that connects people to window cleaners in their area. 

Now, we understand. Window cleaning and promotion are worlds apart, but there were a lot of transferable insights. Paul spoke about the challenges he’s faced with Patch, noting how Conor and he decided to recruit people they had good relationships with, putting the strength of the team before hard skills. 

The lesson for promoters? Hire enthusiastic people with potential who fit into your team, and spend the time training them so they can help you achieve success. 

Conor said, “Take anybody with you who wants to be there”. This was in the context of investment. Patch organised meet-ups with potential investors to create a local investment network. 

This could be helpful for promoters. If you’ve got office space, you could invite people interested in putting money into your brand and help them meet other people, strengthening the links in your area. This extends to smaller investments, too. You could set up a Paetron and give loyal customers exclusives every month. 

Joining Paul and Conor on the panel were Hannah Drake of Enerlytic and Christina Melling from Stipendium. Christina spoke about the importance of building a personal brand, giving people some context and story behind what the company does. It’s the same for event brands. If people can see the journey behind the success, they’ll be more inclined to get on board. So, create social content with the people on your team. Tell people about all the work that goes into what you do. 

We stopped for another short networking session, with Alice Ashcroft and Lee Chambers heading up a discussion about diversity in tech afterward. The biggest transferable insight here? Alice’s point about asking who is being listened to. 

Alice spoke about how it’s pointless to have a balanced gender number if the women and non-binary people in the room aren’t getting a fair say. It’s crucial to promote diverse events, but also make sure that your team is diverse, too. 

So, was the summit a success? We think it was. It brought together minds from Lancashire, giving them a space to promote their work, speak to like-minded people and have a good time. The summit felt like a real effort to create a community, and we felt like the organisers did just that. There were also lots of transferable insights for promoters, the positives were flowing for us.

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