UCL Decide

On 23 – 25 August UCL will be heading north to the Turing Festival in Edinburgh. Our student entrepreneurs, tech and app developers and corporate partners including the BBC, will be joining us to showcase some of the most exciting and cutting-edge new initiatives that will soon become available to small businesses and entrepreneurs on campus.

Running for the second time following a very successful festival last year, Turing is a major digital technology and innovation festival that runs alongside Edinburgh’s historic arts and entertainment fringe festival.

The Turing Festival is a must for businesses who are grappling with how to grow their market share using social media. Organised as part of the EU Open Innovation Project the festival moves beyond traditional tech conferences to explore the ways in which technology is affecting all aspects of culture and society, and will include big names in the social media and tech industry.

Don't miss Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, inc. deliver his first keynote speech in Scotland as this years’ headline. UCL Advances are organising four exciting events – we hope to see you there!

Billion Dollar Babies

10am - 1pm on Friday, 24th August 2012
The hype about Silicon Roundabout can overshadow the startup scene in Scotland, but brewing in the shadows are a range of Edinburgh startups that have ambitions to be global companies.

Billion Dollar Babies is ‘a state of the nation’ about the tech scene in Edinburgh with the founders and leading executives of some of Scotland’s biggest tech startups talking about their aspirations and how they address the problems and advantages of taking on the world from Scotland. In the selected audience will be funders, advisors, experts and policy makers chosen to contribute to this critical discussion about Scotland’s economic future.

Future Media: UCL and the BBC @ Turing

2pm - 5pm on Friday, 24 August 2012
MASHING UP THE BBC, SLICING AND DICING UCL with Bill Thompson (BBC), Timothy Barnes (UCL) and guests including small business leaders and global corporates.

Bill and Tim will introduce new resources that will be on offer to tech, media and digital companies to help them access public data such as BBC content and UCL research.

With the help of small businesses that have piloted these services, the panel will explore and discuss what SMEs can do to validate new technical and business ideas. The speakers will announce new services and a panel will discuss key topics including open data, near and distant future technical developments and how businesses and public bodies can do more for each other. An essential Turing session for small businesses, geeks, media-types, designers, investors and commentators.

Book your place

Discovery Mission @ Turing Festival

10am - 6pm on Saturday, 25 August 2012
Brought to you by UCL Advances and Launch.ed at the University of Edinburgh in partnership with:

• Salim Virani, who started Leancamp and does Customer Development for a number of startups and accelerators around Europe.
• Johanna Kollmann, a UX designer and researcher, co-founder of Design Jam, who currently is a product manager at Sidekick Studios.
• Rob Fitzpatrick, who's started too many startups to list - and is a Customer Development mentor for HackFWD.
• Franco Papeschi, a service design and UX expert, co-founder of Design Jam, who works with The Web Foundation, delivering startup support across Africa.

There's a problem with learning from customers - they're no good at telling you what they need. They give you whimsical features lists, tell you they'll use it and then don't, and basically send you on a wild goose chase - unless you know how to make those conversations useful.

This full-day, hands-on workshop in Customer Development will enable you to: learn how to talk to customers to get actionable information; learn how to ask questions to get answers based on fact; and overcome your fear of reaching out and talking to customers. Plus, you'll get to work with designers and researchers from BBC R&D, with access to exclusive BBC goodies normally reserved for people in labcoats or business suits!

Book your place

Bright Club @Turing

6.30pm – 11pm on Saturday, 25 August 2012
Join us for an evening of comedy on Saturday night at 6.30pm, after BBC mash-up.  Comedians and venue are still to be confirmed but we guarantee there will be a bar, laughter and a good crowd of people!

Bright Club started off as an experiment: what would happen if we got a bunch of interesting comedians and musicians, and combined them with all of the fascinating people who work for one of the UK’s best Universities?

And what would happen if we did that combining on a stage, in front of an attractive and intelligent public audience? And what if we didn’t worry about whether people were famous, or experienced, or had been on TV, and instead just picked people that we thought were brilliant at telling stories about what they know?

Book your place