Cambridge serial entrepreneur Pilgrim Beart described how success and accelerated growth has been achieved at his company AlertMe through channels to market involving leading retailers British Gas and Lowes in the US. He described three areas that he felt were killer apps for connected buildings technology.
"Probably your best event yet" said William Dale of About Time, a messaging software company.
Slides and detailed summary have been made available to delegates attending. Others will be able to access them in coming months.
"The highest value is in meeting other executives and nobbling the speakers directly, which is easy at your medium-sized conferences" said Natalie Carrick of Shirlaws.
Amid talks from large players Oracle, IBM (2 talks) and UK Power Networks, the DNO covering this region, there were humorous and pithy talks from DECC and Ofgem set out its vision for stakeholder beneficial regulation.
In the Cleanpower stream, "myth and reality" around shale gas fracturing potential in the UK were handled with gusto by Dr Tony Smith of SLR and science talks were given by the BP Institute's Lead Research Fellow and by Marieke Beckmann of the NPL on measurement of fugitive gases from the controversial process. The session brought a great deal of level headedness to the "fracking" debate, which was described as having been misrepresented widely in the media. Similarly in the energy pricing and competition discussion after lunch in the same stream, it was notable that non-Big-6 supplier Doug Stewart of Green Energy UK chose not to criticise the Big 6 for their pricing, saying that "most people would be delighted if milk were available on tap to the home at that price at all times all year round". He and others in the session went on to describe media coverage again as ill-informed, misrepresentative and shallow.
Day 1 of the conference was an excellent guru-led briefing on smart grids and power - much praised by delegates - and followed perhaps by the highlight of the conference, a lovely dinner at King's College attended only by delegates of Day 1 and key speakers, with a roundtable discussion that the facilitator Justin Hayward suggested "flew off like a helium balloon into the sky." "When you have a group of this quality," suggested one diner "it is very easy indeed for the facilitator."
"Although there is considerable effort and pain in the organisation, our conferences have been so good that one tends to forget the downsides and quickly looks forward to future meetings & project followups," said Dr Hayward of CIR, the independent Cambridge management consultancy.
CIR would like to thank AlertMe, Sentec, Arkessa, space-time Insight, Poyry, NPL, and HGI for their support of the conference in recent months and on the days.
This 6th Smart Grids & Cleanpower Conference is organised by CIR Strategy in association with AlertMe. The CIR Conferences Series has run since 2007. The upcoming Smart Systems Summit 2014 takes place Q4 2014 in London at the Institute of Directors: www.cir-strategy.com/events/register or 01223 303500.
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