Celebrating innovation at Demo Day 6
We were delighted to bring together our CivTech 6 Challenge Teams, Challenge Sponsors, Corporate Sponsors and Partners, and industry stakeholders for our 6th annual Demo Day on 8th February 2022, streamed live from the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh.
This event gave each of our brilliant Challenge Teams a platform to share the innovative solutions they have been developing throughout our 15-week Accelerator, with support from our Challenge Sponsors, Corporate Sponsors and Partners. As the full event was live-streamed, we were able to welcome innovators and industry stakeholders from around the world to see each of the solutions in action.
The event was chaired by Mr Ivan McKee, Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise. During his keynote speech, he announced a £6 million funding boost from the Scottish Government, to help scale Challenges for CivTech 7 and extend CivTech’s reach across Scotland. We’re so grateful for this support and can’t wait to get started on next year’s Challenges.
Alongside Minister Ivan McKee, we were thrilled to welcome Mark Elliott, Programme Director of CivTech, Alexandra Lima, Europe Public Sector Sustainability Lead at Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Jane Morrison-Ross, CEO of South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE), as keynote speakers. They shared insights from their own career journeys, discussed the impact that CivTech has had on their industries so far and stressed the importance of continuing to drive innovation across Scotland’s public sector. If you missed them, you can catch up on each of the keynote speeches here.
Furthering the discussion of public sector innovation on a global scale, Nicola Gallen, Business Development - Devolved Nations at AWS, led a fireside chat with Russell Dalgleish, Chair of Scottish Business Network, and Kim Clausen Agerskov, Partner at Netcompany. They covered perceptions of GovTech around the world, the importance of creating innovations that are deliverable to improve the everyday lives of citizens, and the immense value public sector initiatives can bring to private sector companies. Re-watch this interesting discussion here.
With the support of our wonderful Corporate Sponsors and Partners, Demo Day 6 was a huge success. We welcomed 400 people virtually on the day and people are continuing to watch recordings of the speeches and pitches over on our website. We’d like to extend a special thank you to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Sopra Steria, Harvey Nash, Scottish Business Network, Interface, Censis, South of Scotland Enterprise, MBM Commercial and Azets, without whom this event would not have been possible.
We’re so proud of how far our Challenge Teams have come over the last nine months. If you see an innovation you’d be interested in exploring, do feel free to reach out to the Teams. All details can be found here.
And remember - this time next year, this could be you on stage! You do not have to be an established company to put yourself forward. All we ask is that you have an innovative idea for a tech solution to solve one of our Challenges and the enthusiasm to turn it into a reality!