Turing Fest unveils speaker and partner line-up ahead of 'hybrid' event at EICC

Turing Fest, which is billed as one of Europe’s top tech conferences for start-ups and scale-ups, has unveiled its speaker and partner line-up ahead of the event that takes place next month at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

Turing Fest is this year taking a “hybrid” format, with organisers expecting around 700 in-person delegates, with a similar number of attendees joining online. The event was fully online last year due to the pandemic.

The latest speaker line-up includes Hannah Fleishman, director of employer brand and internal comms, HubSpot; Nilan Peiris, vice-president of growth, Wise; Ashley Faus, content strategy lead, Altassian; Saille DaSilva, head of user experience, Cazoo; Chris Savage, co-founder and chief executive, Wistia; Varun Nair, co-founder or Two Big Ears and former head of augmented reality/virtual reality audio software at Facebook, and clinical psychologist Dr Suzanne Brown.

Former Turing Fest speaker Check Warner praises the event's efforts to provide a 'diverse and inclusive' experience. Picture: contributed.

A major theme at 2021’s Turing Fest – which takes place November 2 to 4 – is around diversity and inclusivity, and this year around half of speakers are female and 20 per cent are from minority ethnic groups.

Turing Fest chief executive Brian Corcoran said the conference “is a practical learning and networking event, primarily aimed at helping people build better start-ups and scale-ups, and it’s a win-win dynamic because the audience is keen to learn, the speakers are keen to teach, and everyone is generous in connecting and sharing”.

Former Turing Fest speaker Check Warner, partner at venture-capital fund Ada Ventures and co-founder of Diversity VC, said: “We started Ada Ventures with the key objective of investing in overlooked founders and markets, following years of not seeing anyone be truly proactive at making a difference in this space.

"This was also my key focus for co-founding the non-profit Diversity VC. So when I was asked to be a part of Turing Fest in both 2018 and 2020, I learned about its self-set targets and tactics to provide a diverse and inclusive experience for all. From the range of speakers, to ensuring underrepresented groups could get access easily – and free – to attend the conference, I knew I had to be a part of it.”

Turing Fest’s partners for 2021 are Current Health, FanDuel, Administrate, GearedApp, FreeAgent, Bureau, Avaloq, CodeClan, Baillie Gifford, Creative Informatics, Harper Macleod, Purpose HR, Turing Trust, Wistia, and the Freer Consultancy.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.