A Chat with Tom Cuthell, Senior Director at London Tech Week

London Tech Week is the most influential tech event in the UK. It’s a huge celebration of tech as a force for good that connects the world’s most inspirational founders, corporate heavyweights, government leaders, investors, and the next generation of tech superstars.

In practical terms, London Tech Week is over 70 events that take place all over the city, built around a selection of world-class anchor events focused on everything from artificial intelligence to ClimateTech to HealthTech, the future of work, scaling start-ups and the raging battle for tech talent.

Big topics this year include Web3 and the decentralised future of the internet, exciting new opportunities in the metaverse, climate change and the battle to save our planet, tech transforming education, work, and play, getting tech regulation right, and making the benefits of tech more accessible to more people.

The drive to improve diversity and inclusion in tech is as powerful a force as it has ever been and commitment to deploying tech solutions to build a more inclusive and sustainable world has never been so strong. This is a strong unifying ambition within our community.
 
 

 

Why and how did London Tech Week originate?

 
London Tech Week was launched to provide the tech ecosystem with a broad platform from which to spark new connections, collaborate and work together to make magic happen and drive positive change. Very quickly the focus broadened from London to the whole of the UK, to UK tech on a global stage.

It’s now UK tech’s flagship event and is widely recognised as one of the world’s most influential gatherings of the tech and business communities.
 

How has London Tech Week evolved during the pandemic?

 
Unsurprisingly we embraced tech solutions and pivoted to virtual and hybrid events as in-person interaction became more difficult. This presented some challenges because while content consumption works very well online, it’s difficult to replicate the power of face-to-face exchanges – the excitement, the buzz, the serendipity.

However, we ran a very successful hybrid event programme and significantly broadened our global reach at the same time. People were able to access our content and network with one another from anywhere in the world.

In fact, we had a record-breaking 20,000 virtual and in-person attendees last year and managed to deliver some fantastic live moments such as sessions with Hilary Clinton, Former US Secretary of State and Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London.

Despite the Covid limitations, we managed to pull off successful events all over the city, from King’s Cross, to Westminster, to Southbank, to 10 Downing Street, to Newham and to Peckham. The team and I are very proud of that.
 

What can we hope to see from London Tech Week in the future?

 
A bold return to full-scale in-person events!

For 2022, we’re co-locating many of the London Tech Week anchor events at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster to really celebrate the return of face-to-face interaction.

That said, we have seen the power of virtual event components in terms of making the content and networking far more accessible, reaching new audiences, and delivering a truly global event so this will always now be an important part of our proposition.

Tech is increasingly impacting every aspect of people’s lives, business, and society. Tech solutions, digital transformation and innovation really do have the power to tackle many of the world’s most critical challenges. We and our community are very passionate about the potential of tech solutions to change the world for the better and we hope that London Tech Week will continue to accelerate that process.