London’s burgeoning tech industry can help drive the economic recovery with workers who have lost their jobs being retrained to tackle skills shortages, a boss said today.
The organisers of London Tech Week, which starts today, said they are expecting to reach their biggest audience ever, despite the pandemic forcing the event to go online-only. This year it will focus on retraining workers to fill roles in specialisms such as artificial intelligence.
Carolyn Dawson, managing director of organisers Informa Tech, said they believe the audience for the 11-day event will be 30 per cent bigger than usual. Half the 700 sessions are free to view online.
The digital move also appears to have attracted more big-name speakers, including Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. Former Google boss Eric Schmidt will hold a mentoring event for young entrepreneurs, while Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg is due to discuss the future of employment and flexible working.
The schedule also includes networking events for female founders, webinars on quantum computing, 5G and virtual reality, and a London borough tech spotlight to showcase the best local projects and innovators. Ms Dawson said: “The (virtual) content has enabled us to get some knockout speakers, perhaps more so than we might have done if we’d asked them all to come to a physical event.”
A report being released by the event organisers will say: “Against a backdrop of job losses in many sectors, the digital tech sector is starting to show signs of recovery and companies have gained confidence in the last few weeks, as demonstrated by a sharp uptick in jobs advertised online.” It will highlight the fact that three million people are now employed in the British sector.
Ms Dawson said: “Some of the start-ups I talk to in the AI space couldn’t grow at the rate of demand because they couldn’t get the workforce or the trained skills. Perhaps we can help reskill a nation, reskill a whole set of individuals that are going to find themselves out of work over the next few months. Tech needs to save the day for the economy and future workforces.”
But despite a boom in working via video calls, Ms Dawson said London’s tech sector was eager to get back into the office. She said: “People want to have the human touch and to see each other again.”
London Tech Week runs until September 11. For more information, go to londontechweek.com/events
