Tech Storm 2019

26 March 2019

We’re bringing together some of the world’s biggest and brightest technology organisations under one roof. This is a rare opportunity to learn about world-leading current and future technology from world-class organisations, such as AWS, Cray, CACI and of course, the Met Office.

TechStorm 2019 is an environment for those of you taking on challenges at the extreme end of disruptive technology. You may be surprised to hear how we’re taking advantage of machine learning and artificial intelligence. You can also find out how we and our guests are using new technology to innovate and turn ideas into new products and services. Are you keen to hear how other organisations use our weather and climate data to innovate and build their business? 

Together, we’ll explore how new approaches are helping deliver value to the UK economy – whether that’s contributing to growth, productivity, skills development, regional development or other areas of focus in the Government’s Industrial Strategy. From theoretical models to real-world supply chains, the Met Office Technology Conference is a chance to collaborate to realise the potential and applications of technology. TechStorm is a space where technology and business can interact for the benefit of society and economy.

To book your place please email us [email protected]

Speakers include:

 Chris   Hayman       

Chris Hayman, joins us to deliver one of two keynote speeches. Chris Hayman leads the UK and Ireland Public Sector Sales division at AWS. He began his 17-year career in IT and engineering, and joined AWS as the principal solutions architect for the public sector. 

Per Nyberg 

Per Nyberg will deliver a keynote speech at Tech Storm. Per is the VP of Market Development , AI and Cloud at Cray.

 

 Mark Gale

CACI - Mark Gale, CTO, and Nick Barnes, Tech Lead of Space Weather development team, join us from CACI Information Intelligence Group.

 

 Terry   Makewell 

Terry Makewell is a senior civil servant and is the Chief Technology Officer at the UK Hydrographic office.  Terry will be talking about the importance of the oceans in all our lives; how innovation is central to how the UKHO operates; how UKHO are using Data Science to change the way they work; and about the Geospatial commission and working across government.

 

Jon Alderson

Jono Alderson - Jono is from 'Special Ops' at Yoast. Jono explains that the ways in which consumers research and make decisions is changing, and increasingly being 'outsourced' external agents. This trend will grow exponentially with the rise of intelligent personal/digital assistants (Alexa, Google Home, etc), and brands will need to radically re-think how they reach and engage with audiences.

 

 Penny   Endersby

Met Office - Our Chairman, Rob Woodward, and Chief Executive, Penny Endersby, will be opening Tech Storm. Hear more about how the role and purpose of the Met Office and how our world-class technology underpins our world-leading Science.

 

 Simon   Norris

Nomensa – Simon Norris is the founder and CEO at Nomensa. They’re an independent strategic UX design agency that combines expertise in psychology, user-centred design and accessibility to transform digital experiences. Humans are at the heart of every endeavour, working alongside the agency’s clients to generate sustainable and powerful technology creations that drive commercial with customer experience at the core. Now one of Europe’s leading UX agencies operating internationally across London, Bristol and Amsterdam, Nomensa blends state-of-the-art thinking, innovation and creativity to build experiences that delight and engage.

 

 Rob   Woodward

Met Office - Our Chairman, Rob Woodward, and Chief Executive, Penny Endersby, will be opening Tech Storm. Hear more about how the role and purpose of the Met Office and how our world-class technology underpins our world-leading Science.

 

 Austin   Donnolly

​​​​​Microsoft - Hear from Austin Donnelly, Principal Research Lead the Pelican programme. who will talk about how the amount of data stored is growing at a huge rate, but not all of it is “hot,” i.e. frequently accessed. There is little reason to store cold data in the same high-performance, high-cost systems as hot data. Their goal was to design a storage system—called Pelican—specifically to take advantage of the needs of cold data workload. Pelican aims to store infrequently accessed (cold) data as inexpensively as possible.

 

 Jacob       Tomlinson

Met Office - Straight from our own Informatics Lab, Jacob will share how to perform large scale distributed data analysis on any cloud platform with Pangeo. Pangeo is a suite of open source tools created and curated by the geoscience community to make big scale scientific analysis possible on any cloud platform. It uses Kubernetes to bring consistency to the workflow and it brings popular scientific python libraries together to work interoperably. 

 

 Mona   Lukha

ITV - Mona is the Head of ITV Weather and is returning to the Met office to present at Tech Storm. Mona will be explaining how ITV currently work with the Met Office and to what extent they use our weather data and information.

 

 Nick Reed

Bosch - Trends of connectivity, automation, electrification and the sharing economy promise to deliver radical changes in the way mobility will be achieved. At the same time, issues of congestion, air quality, inactivity and inequality are huge concerns for our city authorities. In this talk, Nick Reed will discuss how data will help us to navigate this landscape successfully, discussing some of Bosch’s activities in this space and with particular reference to the ConVEx project, an Innovate UK supported initiative to create a connected vehicle data exchange platform.

 

 Mark   Stileman

Ordnance Survey - As data becomes increasingly central to operations and decision making across all domains and sectors, there are growing challenges around how to find, access and exploit data in neutral and scalable ways. Mark Stileman will outline the role of geography and geospatial frameworks in enabling both commercial and public good interests in the context of the fourth industrial revolution, illustrating examples from OS’s innovation projects across key themes of infrastructure, connectivity and mobility.

 

 Sean   Donnelly

Econsultancy – Seán Donnelly is a Senior Analyst at Econsultancy who offer research, analysis and data on the latest thinking in marketing and ecommerce. Seán advises clients via industry-leading research and briefings covering marketing, innovation and technology.

 

 Nik Tozer

Nurture - Nik Tozer is the National Gritting Manager at Nuture who manage the winter maintenance division of Nurture Landscapes Ltd, a £70m Grounds Maintenance company. Nick will talk about the direct impact of daily forecasts in managing the gritting of 3,500 sites across the whole UK.

 

 Nic   Bellingham

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Met Office – Nic Bellingham will be leading a panel discussion on the topic of, “How do people need to be different in their skills and behaviours over the next ten years in our sector?”

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Agenda