About the Show
Corporations will no longer be hiring in such numbers – wherever possible, they will be outsourcing tasks to robots and to artificial intelligence (AI). And to start-ups and independent businesses, which are far more flexible and responsive than in-house teams. Young people at school today need to start thinking in terms of a life spent running their own business rather than of a career in a corporation.
Edinburgh Business Show event has been designed to maximise the interface between individual business owners with a focus on business development. Workshops, panels and face-to-face discussions will be balanced to ensure that the day will be extremely practical and useful to any busy entrepreneur who takes the day out of their hectic schedule to learn and to network.
Have a look at the agenda & join us in November
Event Organisers:
Bartlomiej (Bart) Kowalczyk, PBLINK founder & director
Colin McKeand, Scotland’s Mister Networking
Entrepreneurial Nation
In the 18th century, the steam engine of the Scottish engineer James Watt drove the industrial revolution forward. In the 20th century, Poland’s Marie Curie revolutionised medicine by inventing X-ray equipment.
The drivers of the 21st century revolution are entrepreneurs and businesses. The heroes are names like yours.
Hosted by RBS at the RBS Exhibition Centre, Gogarburn, this event is to:
Show Details
- All-day event with 2 discussion panels, 4 workshops and networking
- Perfect for SMEs, freelancers working in new technologies, franchises, IT, AI etc.
- Standard ticket £14, inc lunch and refreshments all day, plus access to all workshops, etc.
- Exhibition and sponsor packages for businesses from only £99
Why Now?
Today’s big names are yesterday’s news. High-street brands like M&S, Tesco, ToysRus, New Look and more are shutting branches across the country.
It’s a time of change. By using the right tools, and above all, a new mindset, we believe it is possible to create more opportunities than ever. This is our time, the age of small businesses and sole traders.
We simply call this the Entrepreneurs’ Revolution.
Why Edinburgh?
Glasgow may have big industry and a gallus swagger, but Edinburgh wins on creative talent, energy and entrepreneurial spirit. It’s a unique and vibrant place to do business. With great access to universities, great flight connections, diverse communities, lots of networking organisations and growing population of young professionals, Scotland’s capital city stands out from the crowd. Edinburgh Business Show is for entrepreneurs interested in developing the big-name disruptive businesses of the future.Partners
Exhibitors
TC Young Solicitors
Royal Bank of Scotland
Gillespie Inverarity & Co
Agenda
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10:00 Registration
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10:30 Official Opening & Welcoming
-> Welcome from RBS-> Welcome from Organisers
-
10:45 – 11:30 Morning Discussion Panel in Auditorium
Technology as a driver for growth for Edinburgh-based business in a post-Brexit worldPanel Members:
-> David Sime, Oncor
-> Sara Robertson, Entrepreneurship Development Manager at The University of Edinburgh
-> Michal Sztanga, Chief Operating Officer at Future Processing
-> Matt Perkins FreeAgent
-> Russell Dalgleish, Scottish Business Network
-> Karen Yates, Business Growth Coach
-> Linda Odén, Happy MessageDiscussion Panel Moderator
Peter Wilson, Go2Market -
11:45 – 12:45 Morning Workshops
-> The Practical Applications of Emerging Tech in Business, David Sime, Oncor-> Accessing support and expertise for your business at The University of Edinburgh Sara Robertson
-> Outsourcing IT services – how to do it right? Best practices, common mistakes, lessons learned, Michal Sztanga, Future Processing
-> ‘After the sale’ a quick guide to getting paid and staying legal! Matt Perkins, FreeAgent
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12:45 – 13:30 Lunch
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13:30 – 14:15 Afternoon Discussion Panel in Auditorium
Digital Disruption in Retail & Trade – Growth Tactics & Customer InnovationPanel Members:
-> Stephen Ingledew, FinTech Scotland
-> Keith Harrhy, Robert Richards Associates
-> Alastair McKendrick, TC Young Solicitors
-> Mandy Bagot, Gillespie’s Accountants
-> Sara Roberts, Healthy Nibbles
-> Richard Lucas, CAMentrepreneursDiscussion Panel Moderator
Sudha Mani, Digital Technology Consultant -
14:30 – 15:30 Afternoon Workshops
-> How to demonstrate compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation? Alastair McKendrick, TC Young Solicitors-> Making Tax Digital – hate it or embrace it! Mandy Bagot, Gillespie’s Accountants
-> How Healthy Nibbles gained competitive advantage through innovation in a traditionally non tech sector? Sara Roberts, Healthy Nibbles
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15:30 Business Networking
-> Introduction and welcome by Colin McKeand-> Business Card Prize Draw
-> Informal Networking
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18:00 Close
Speakers
David Sime
Oncor
Based in London and Glasgow, David has been working in digital audio visual communication for nearly 20 years.He lectures on these subjects for Google, the University of Glasgow and the Chartered Institute of Marketing. He also writes on the practical applications of Virtual and Augmented Reality for several international peer-reviewed publications.
David has led Digital Video, Augmented and Virtual Reality projects across five countries and twenty-five distinct industries including construction, commercial property and renewable energy.
David is currently engaged in utilising VR and AR to reduce travel requirements and increase efficiencies in industry applications such as site inspection, training and international planning and development.
Alastair McKendrick
TC Young, Solicitors
Alastair is a Solicitor and Partner of TC Young, Solicitors, with offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow.Alastair is a Litigation lawyer who deals with contentious civil disputes, including debt recovery work, contract disputes and property related matters.
He also advises clients on all aspects of data protection issues, including compliance procedures, policies and procedures and contentious matters such as breaches of data protection legislation. He has advised numerous clients on their requirements as data controllers and processors following the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Russell Dalgleish
Serial Scottish Entrepreneur and Investor, Strategist and Innovator
Russell has enjoyed the benefits of a highly successful international career in the technology sector and now focuses his efforts on supporting owners and boards of companies to devise and implement growth strategies to create shareholder value. In his earlier career he has held boardleadership positions with International companies achieving turnover more than £200m.
Core areas of focus are Leadership, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategic thinking. He is a regular speaker at events on Leadership in business and has spoken at conferences from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi.
Russell is founding Managing Partner of the advisory group, Exolta Capital Partners, www.exolta.com and Founding Chairman Scottish Business Network, www.sbn.scot the global network supporting Scottish business leaders.
Sudha Mani
Business Technology Consultant
Sudha Mani inspires, influence and invigorates her clients with the combinedexpertise of both businesses, computer science and sheer enthusiasm to innovate
solutions to become the market leaders to Thrive in any Economy.
Sudha started as Tech Entrepreneur after finishing computer science degree while working full time as Oracle Database administrator in the year 1995. Then, she self-taught herself to develop web applications using Java – J2EE and other open source technologies. In the year 2000, she moved to the UK to work for British
Petroleum as Technical Architect. Since then she has been consulting within
Business Change and Transformation projects for investment banking, financial
services, private and public sectors.
Sudha now works with small and medium size businesses to go digital using right
strategies to innovate, disrupt and thrive in any economy using growth strategies.
She develops websites, web and mobile apps and chatbots for businesses. She
also programs in Python, PHP and open source technologies to build Blockchain
and artificial intelligence apps.
Sudha speaks on Business Technology subjects such as Agile Methodology,
Business Process Automation, DevOps and Software Development methodologies.
Sudha is passionate about empowering girls to get into STEM subjects, women
into leadership and business. She regularly speaks at events, schools and colleges
to empower young leaders to lead with integrity, zeal and vigour they possess.
Sudha co-ordinates the Youth Leadership Programmes to train youth in Public
Speaking, storytelling and presenting without notes to become confident
speakers and get work they deserve.
Karen Yates
Business Growth Coach
Karen Yates is a former NHS Director and Chief Executive and a serial entrepreneur who has run her own businesses since the age of 19. Over the last 30 years she has built a reputation for being a ‘fixer’ in the Public Sector, bringing her unique approach to organisational development and transformational change programmes in large, complex organisations.In 2015 Karen established a new company to share her expertise with start-up businesses and established businesses wanting to step-up and scale. Karen’s passion is working side by side with extra-ordinary, ordinary people to help them build their businesses. She is interested in the potential for entrepreneurship to act as a catalyst for personal growth.
Over the last three years Karen has created a range of online products, digital coaching programmes and events where she shares everything she has learnt about building a profitable online business, harnessing the power of Social Media platforms and building a success business that you love.
Keith Harrhy
Robert Richards Associates Limited
Based in Edinburgh, Keith has been working within the health and safety industry for 15 years, serving the whole of the UK and Ireland. He spent over 10 years as an operational firefighter. His experience continues to fuel his passion and commitment for helping business’ to achieve their duty of care and provide a safe working environment. He has had the honour of being assigned as health and safety advisor for such events as Edinburgh’s Torchlight Procession, Illuminight, the Botanic Lights and the Official Opening Ceremony of the Queensferry Crossing (attended by Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon). Keith has developed an interactive educational program for school leavers in order to assist them in gaining professional health and safety qualifications. This program uses the most modern technology available and is ultimately designed to help young people gain employment.
Sara Roberts
Healthy Nibbles
Healthy Nibbles was started in 2014 after its Founder, Sara Roberts, discovered how difficult it was finding healthy and nutritious snacks in city offices and travel hubs throughout the UK.Outside of Healthy Nibbles, but intrinsically linked, Sara is committed to supporting others. In her spare time, she is a Director of Vision Ministries, a Scottish charity working
in Africa to equip through education, support through work initiatives and bring relief to those in extreme poverty through food, accommodation and medical assistance. In addition to this Sara is keen to give back and support others and provides mentorship to early stage local businesses. Sara is an Ambassador to Women’s Enterprise Scotland and a Global Nourishment Advisor to the International WELL Building Institute.
Matt Perkins
Senior Partnerships Manager, FreeAgent
Matthew has a sound background in sales and marketing developed over 25 years in both retail and manufacturing sectors and has a wealth of practical experience through running his own distribution business. He is a qualified business advisor and a mentor for the Government’s Growth Accelerator scheme.
During four years as an advisor at Business Link in London, he worked directly with companies across many sectors – from kitchen table startups up to established £24m turnover businesses on all aspects of management and development. He was also a member of the Business Link National PR panel, regularly involved in commenting on business related news stories and attending TV and radio interviews.
Following the closure of the Business Link Service, Matthew spent time at PayPal UK – where he was employed to plan and oversee the implementation their UK SME engagement strategy. Today Matthew is Senior Partnerships Manager at FreeAgent– one of the ‘big four’ cloud accounting software providers in the UK – where he works on diverse projects from negotiating large commercial deals to educational workshops for small and micro business owners.
Peter Wilson
Go 2 Market
Peter is an experienced company director. who set up his own company in 1992 (SolCom Systems) and successfully sold it after 8 years to a NASDAQ listed company. Over the last 18 years Peter has been helping other companies as a business angel, consultant, coach and mentor. Peter has served in both executive and non-executive director capacities, including Chairman in various companies. Peter says “My strengths lie in early stage and start up companies, specifically in the IT and high tech sector”. Over the years Peter has helped companies raise finance, carry out strategic planning, and improved their marketing and selling skills.I spent 6 years in the Army as a Telecomunications Engineer, followed by 2 years as a network engineer at Edinburgh University and then 2 years with a networking company, SEEL, as technical support and training manager.
In 1992 I, and a partner, founded SolCom Systems Limited, a high-tech product development company in the field of network management. In 2000 we sold the company, which by then had grown to 45 people, to a US listed NASDAQ Company, Micro Frame Inc. and we created a new entity, ION Networks Inc.
SolCom Systems developed distributed remote network monitoring products targeted at large scale distributed networks. As well as developing the initial concept I took responsibility for marketing, sales and customer support. My partner took responsibility for engineering and product development. We sold our network management products all over the world through a combination of direct and channel sales. We also licensed our products to other companies including a long term deal with Hewlett Packard (now Compaq). Additionally I set up a US office and lived for 18 months just outside of Washington DC. This greatly broadened my personal and business outlook.
After the sale of SolCom Systems I worked for ION Networks until March 2001 as Executive V.P. of Marketing. I was responsible for the strategic direction for the merged companies.
Since leaving ION Networks I have served as a non-exec director on various start-up and early stage companies, both high and low tech. Over the last 10 years I have been helping smaller companies as a business mentor, coach and Consultant
Linda Odén
Happy Message
Mandy Bagot
Gillespie’s Chartered Accountants
Mandy Bagot Mandy Bagot is a Certified Chartered Accountant and Director at Gillespie’s Chartered Accountants, with offices in Scotland and London.Mandy’s interest has always been in technology and accounting systems and has won awards for her Cloud Bookkeeping franchise that she founded in 2010, so she breathes, eats and sleeps cloud software! She regularly meets up with software companies’ management teams to offer insights and is often asked to be part of focus groups and beta tests new software versions.
Stephen Ingledew
Chief Executive of FinTech Scotland
Stephen Ingledew is the Chief Executive of FinTech Scotland, the enterprise established by the Scottish Government, The University of Edinburgh and the private sector to drive economic growth in Scotland’s financial services through innovation, collaboration and inclusion.Fintech Scotland’s ambition is to create an integrated and thriving economic environment through the provision of funding, connections, infrastructure and talent that recognises and responds to the needs of all stakeholders and connects Scotland to other global Fintech centres.
Stephen has a proven track record and reputation for implementing customer focused, technology enabled profitable initiatives in a wide range of financial services organisations. This has included senior executive roles with large institutions such as Standard Life and Barclays as well as small innovative enterprises.
Throughout his career, Stephen has been an influential advocate of making financial services more open, creative and inclusive to all through new innovative technologies, encouraging diversity and progressive ways of working as well as improved collaboration across stakeholders and participants.
Sara Robertson
Entrepreneurship Development Manager, The University of Edinburgh
Sara Robertson
Entrepreneurship Development Manager, The University of Edinburgh
Richard Lucas
CAMentrepreneurs
Michal Sztanga
Future Processing
In the IT industry for over 12 years, at the beginning as software engineer and quality assurance specialist creating software. Later on leadership positions designing, growing and running business functions like quality assurance, HR, sales and account management making them ready to handle increased scale of operations and elevating their maturity level in order to improve delivered business outcomes.
Today managing Future Processing Gliwice business unit, where we focus on bringing the best out of software technology to our clients, keeping in mind that our clients’ business strategy and objectives come first. We help to optimize business processes, shorten time required to implement new solutions and be on top of IT investment risks.
In my work I base my ability to deliver results on being attentive to people, as to me it has always proven to be a vital factor of a success.
Workshops
Making Tax Digital – hate it or embrace it!
Mandy Bagot
Gillespie’s Chartered Accountants
It’s creating a feeling of dread amongst small business owners. From 1 April 2019 HMRC’s initiative is that every VAT registered business above the threshold of £85K will be required to keep digital records and submit VAT returns using compatible software. Maintaining paper records will cease to meet legal requirements in tax legislation.
If you think you’re OK if you’re not vat registered…think again…if your business generates income above £10k you will need to starting planning for the implications of MTD that will come into force on 1 April 2020 at the earliest.
We will work through examples of ways to prepare for MTD that are cost effective and easy to follow from best fit software, to streamlined accounting systems to liaising with your accountant.
The Practical Applications of Emerging Tech in Business
David Sime
Oncor
With the emerging technology of VR, AR, Laser Scanning and 3D Printing, we can transfer real objects into the digital world, and make digital objects solid with equal ease. We can not only model and view products and projects on a screen, but enter into immersive, interactive worlds with them.
This is a whole other level of audio-visual communication, which looks set to completely blur the lines between conventional and digital realities – eliminating distance and time barriers and truly revolutionising all aspects of our world – especially in business and industry.
So what are the opportunities for business in this new world? Where can smaller organisations use their smaller size and greater agility to pro-actively prepare and benefit from these changes.
In this presentation we will look at ways where small and medium sized UK businesses can use this period of change to take advantage of a levelled playing field.
An environment where the inertia and slower responses of larger organisations will create valuable space for smaller, faster businesses to gain a foothold in the markets of the future.
How to deal with Data Protection issues as a SME?
Alastair McKendrick
TC Young Solicitors
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came in to force on 25 May 2018 and overhauled existing Data Protection legislation. The GDPR imposes greater onus on those who process, store and handle individual personal details.
This workshop examines the requirements on SMEs and other organisation who process, store and handle individuals’ personal information and looks at what steps organisations should undertake to ensure compliance with the terms of the GDPR.
How Healthy Nibbles gained competitive advantage through innovation in a traditionally non tech sector?
Sara Roberts
Healthy Nibbles
In this session, I will share our journey, the steps we took to create initial competitive advantage and how we maintain our status as a leading brand within vending. The workshop will allow time for Q&A, enabling the attendee to take insight away that is relevant to their business and stage of growth.
Accessing support and expertise for your business at The University of Edinburgh
Sara Robertson
Entrepreneurship Development Manager at The University of Edinburgh
Outsourcing IT services – how to do it right? Best practices, common mistakes, lessons learned
Michal Sztanga
Future Processing
Participating in the workshop will give you tips on how the process of collaboration with an IT service provider may look like, knowledge on how to reduce the final cost of the development and insights into current outsourcing trends. All attendees will also receive a set of documents, templates and tools useful during the IT outsourcing process.
‘After the sale’ a quick guide to getting paid and staying legal!
Matt Perkins
FreeAgent
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Got a Question?
Bart
bart.k@pblink.co.uk
Colin
colin@colinmckeand.co.uk