News story: Venturefest Bristol and Bath: exploring future cities innovation

Venturefest Bristol and Bath 2017 opened last week with a seminar on future cities. Leading businesses from the region discussed the technologies and challenges involved in developing cities that are fit for the future, in the first of a series of activities designed to help find solutions.

The Venturefest events help to identify fast-growth tech companies and start-ups within a region. They also provide a forum for organisations that are developing future cities technologies.

These might include communication networks and connectivity, seamless automation and robotics, as well as intelligent buildings, smart building bricks and in-home technology.

If you are an innovator based in Bristol or Bath over the next 9 months you can attend events that explore the themes from the opening seminar. The programme will include:

Smart city marketplace

Some of Bristol and Bath’s best future city-focussed start-ups and scale-ups exhibited at the launch event. They will be back in October to showcase new developments in their ideas. The marketplace will also see the launch of a crowdfunding bootcamp programme in association with CrowdCube.

Innovation showcase

The showcase will highlight the strengths of the region’s tech cluster, including solutions that are either in development or already in use, which are helping to meet the smart cities challenge.

Investor showcase

Delegates will have the chance to meet a select audience of angel investors and venture capitalists. The investor showcase is part of the Silicon Gorge Partnership, which includes SETsquared, Idea Squares, Invest Bristol & Bath, TechSPARK.

Thought leadership conference

The progress, productivity and promise of the region will be highlighted in the October conference. You can see first-hand what the future of urban living looks like in Bristol and Bath. The conference themes will include smart energy, intelligent transport and smart money.

About Venturefest Bristol and Bath 2017

Venturefest Bristol and Bath is one of a series of Venturefest events across the country, supported by Innovate UK. Ian Meikle, Director for Infrastructure Systems at Innovate UK, said:

Bristol & Bath is one of the UK’s most important technology clusters, playing a global role in the development of smart city technology.