Do you fancy hearing from the man who built one of the UK’s leading enterprise app developers in the space of five years? Are you curious to find out more about making machines and devices truly ‘intelligent’?
Or does the prospect of learning how to build a billion-dollar tech business without managers pique your interest? If you have an enquiring mind and an interest in high-tech, creative or digital innovation, then OpenCo Bristol & Bath is for you.
Taking place on October 2, the San Francisco-inspired innovation festival will showcase 14 of the most innovative businesses from Bristol and Bath – and it is free to attend.
The line-up includes: leading app developer Mubaloo, founded by serial-entrepreneur Mark Mason in 2009; The Yogscast, the social video company behind the largest gaming YouTube channel globally; and XMOS, which supplies the silicon chips, software and design tools for the building of next generation products spanning markets such as robotics, digital audio and the Internet of Things.
Irfon Watkins, founder and CEO of Coull, the Bristol-born data-driven video advertising technology firm that has expanded to New York, Santa Barbara and London, said: “OpenCo is a fantastic concept, light-years removed from the dull, anodyne conferences that make up the majority of the event calendar. Open collaboration and transparent communication are part of Coull’s culture so we’re proud to open our doors and represent Bristol’s booming innovation scene.”
OpenCo Bristol & Bath is part of OpenCo UK, which is seeing the OpenCo movement (known as NewCo outside the UK) taken nationwide for the first time, with the backing of Tech City UK.
A diverse array of leading business incubator hubs will be involved in hosting OpenCo Bristol & Bath sessions including: Bristol & Bath Science Park; Pervasive Media Studio, Engine Shed and Bristol Games Hub.
Bristol & Bath Science Park, a thriving community of science and technology businesses, will host a series of sessions by companies including ideas accelerator Wildseed Studios; Zynstra, a pioneer in cloud-managed server appliances for SMEs; Genius Digital, the audience analytics experts; and modelling and simulation centre CFMS.
Wildseed Studios’ film, Hungerford, a sci-fi horror movie co-created, directed by and starring 19-year-old Drew Casson, was created for £22k and had its world premiere at the National Film Theatre, London, making Drew the youngest director on record to have a film shown at the venue.
Zynstra promises to share insight into ‘how to build a global tech company in a Roman Spa’, having recently announced the completion of an $8.4m Series B funding round, bringing the total amount raised in its first year since public launch to just over $12.5m.
With its projects spanning gaming, projections, music, connected objects, robotics, digital displays and more, the Pervasive Media Studio will embrace topics as wide-ranging as personal space travel and the future of musical instruments during its OpenCo session.
And five innovative games developers from Bristol Games Hub, which is the largest independent co-working hub for games developers and is being used as a model to open other such hubs in London, Brighton, Manchester and Leeds, will also share their secrets at OpenCo Bristol & Bath.
The OpenCo event will kick off with an opening drinks reception held at Bristol & Bath Science Park on the evening of October 1, before the main festival gets underway on October 2. A closing reception, sponsored by inward investment agency Invest Bristol & Bath, will be held at the Engine Shed, Bristol, on the evening of October 2. Engine Shed is home to businesses in areas as diverse as crowd-funding, microwave breast scanning, next generation Wifi (WiGig), network-enabled pest control and peer-challenge gaming.
Bristol and Bath’s high tech hub was highlighted recently in an influential report by Centre for Cities/McKinsey & Co as the only “globally-significant”, “high-growth” UK cluster of its kind outside of London. As well as being a world leader in media and digital entertainment, the region is at the heart of Europe’s largest aerospace cluster, built on a rich heritage of advanced engineering.
The full list of the 14 companies and organisations based in Bristol and Bath that will be involved in OpenCo is as follows: Zynstra; Genius Digital; CFMS Services Ltd; Wildseed Studios; XMOS; Coull; Bristol Games Hub; Pervasive Media Studio; Sift; Money Hub; Mubaloo; Yogscast; Toshiba; Engine Shed.
The festival is described by founders as a mashup of an open studio tour and a tech conference, with the vibe of a music festival. The event is broken down into one-hour segments, where participants share the stories behind their business, their vision as well as any new projects or developments they are working on.
