Tech events in Bristol & Bath for November

The low down on what’s on in Bristol and Bath for tech events and meet-ups for November.

There are some interesting things going on this month in Bristol, with our first Design / Build / Market event on Crowdfunding this Thursday and Social Media week from the 14th November.

Bath Ruby Hangout

Thursday 27th October 2016 – 6:30pm – Picnic Coffee, 9 Saracen Street, Bath, BA1 5BR

Bath Ruby Hangouts are run every two weeks and take place at Picnic Coffee shop in Bath. BYO laptop and pair up on a problem you’ve been having or come along to chat about Ruby, Rails or anything really with other local Ruby people.

Design / Build / Market – #1 – Crowdfunding

Thursday 27th October 2016 – 6:30pm to 10pm – Bristol Engine Shed @ Temple Meads, Bristol, BS1 6QH

The theme for this evening is Crowdfunding and features some great speakers:

CrowdReach: an advertising service providing targeted Facebook ads that put your crowdfunding project in front of a highly focused audience.
Fundsurfer: a hybrid crowdfunding platform and community that provides a range of funding options for projects and companies.
Kirsty Ranger: founder of Crowd10 and IdeaSquares, a support service for startups that offers tools and accelerator programmes to help them achieve funding.

Together, we will look at “How to design a successful crowdfunding campaign for different channels”, “What it takes to create and grow a crowdfunding platform”, and “How to successfully market your crowdfunding campaign”.

Below is a rough schedule of how the evening will run. There will be plenty of time to meet new people and for networking throughout the event.

6:30pm – Arrive at the venue with time for a chat whilst you wait for the evening to begin
7pm – Our first speaker (Design – CrowdReach)
7:30pm – Break for drinks/food
8pm – Next speaker (Build – Fundsurfer)
8:30pm – Another break
8:45pm – Last speaker for the evening (Market – Kirsty Ranger)
9:15pm – Wrap up with more time for networking

We want to focus on bringing people together to collaborate through combined knowledge.

By showcasing topics that are useful for everyone, Design / Build / Market aims to be an inclusive event that promotes discussion between disciplines to devise better solutions for all aspects of the creative process.

Whether you’re a professional, an entrepreneur, freelancer or student, there will be something for everyone – it’ll also be a great opportunity for you to meet new people and make connections. If you’d like to come along, please check out the Meetup page. We’d love to meet you.

Please note:

– If you’re a student, we’ll offer you free entry. Contact Nic at: nicolas@cookieshq.co.uk

JavaScript 101

Tuesday 1st November 2016 – 10am to 1pm – Beatroot Cafe, 20-21 Lower Park Row, Bristol, BS1 5BN

This meetup is about learning JavaScript together. Most members of this group have a basic knowledge of JavaScript, but if you are new to it, have a look at the Codecademy JS track and the first chapters of Eloquent JavaScript (Udacity also has a good JS basics course) and pop along.

ProductTank SW #4

Tuesday 1st November 2016 – 6:15pm – ADP, 10 Temple Back, Bristol, BS1 6FL

Line up confirmed 😀

Andrew Crump – CEO of tech startup Mitoo, Seedcamp mentor and Entrepreneur in Residence

Andrew will be talking about ‘Setting goals to set your business on fire’. He’s set up three businesses previously, and advises tech startups and knows all about the need to focus on the right thing. A lot of what he says is gold dust (depending on the amount of booze).

Bonny Colville-Hyde – Bonny is Product Manager for Sports at Immediate Media and comes from a strong UX background working with amazing brands such as eBay, Expedia, BBC, Peugeot and Mothercare.

Bonny will be talking about User Experience and approaches to prioritising requirements.

Storm Fagan – Head of Product at JustEat has managed and grown large multi disciplined Product teams

Storm will be talking about building truly collaborative teams and, with her knowledge and experience of doing exactly that, there are sure to some gems of information in this talk.

6.15pm: Doors open, bit of chat and a few drinks (i.e. networking)
7pm: Talks start
8pm: Talks finish and more drinking and chatter ensues
9pm: Join everyone for a trip to the pub 🙂

Bristol Content Group – The Great Big Skills Debate

Tuesday 1st November 2016 – 6pm to 8pm – The Real Adventure Unlimited, One Glass Wharf, Bristol, BS2 OEL

Come and join us at The Real Adventure Unlimited’s offices near Temple Meads for a fascinating Bristol Content Group meet up. Connect and learn from fellow content enthusiasts from around the city and beyond.

What content/writing skills do businesses need today – and how can we as an industry provide them?

These are exciting times for all of us involved in content. Never have so many words been needed by so many. And, as the digital universe expands, there’s no end in sight. Web copy, blogs, guides, case studies, research papers, scripts, tweets, updates, the shopping list of content that businesses need to serve their customers and communicate online goes on and on.

Against this backdrop of increased demand for content, the digital world is becoming more specialised and our industry is maturing.

How well do we understand each other?

But do businesses know what content and writing skills to ask for, and do agencies and freelancers know what to provide? What skills do businesses really need today, and how can our industry provide what’s required?

We’ve pulled together a panel of people from startups, agencies, large corporate businesses and freelancers to discuss the big content skills question and debate what comes next.

Whether you’re an employer, content specialist, agency or freelance writer come along and contribute to this important discussion.

Join in the debate

Come along to The Real Adventure Unlimited’s stunning offices in Temple Quay (5 minutes from Temple Meads station) and join us for a great big debate. Everything starts at 6pm – refreshments provided. The debate will start promptly at 6.30pm, with time for networking and a chat afterwards until 8pm.

Bristol WordPress people – Special Guest Speaker: Gavin Strange from Aardman Animations

Tuesday 1st November 2016 – 6:30pm – Famous Royal Navy Volunteer, 17-18 King Street, Bristol, BS1 4EF

This month, Bristol WordPress people are presenting a very special guest speaker for their event – Gavin Strange

Gavin Strange – Senior Design for Aardman Animations by day, creative all-sort going under the name of JamFactory by night

Gavin has the best job in the world: working for the creative cathedral that is Aardman Animations, and within that holy place of characters, he’s worked on different projects and various departments. One of the most exciting and important projects he’s been involved in is the Gromit Unleashed and Shaun In The City art trails. Those projects saw hundreds of blanks statues of beloved characters customised by artists and then auctioned off for charity, raising money for the Bristol Children’s Hospital.

Gavin was involved in those wonderful projects on many different levels – from designing the website & the app to creating and painting sculptures themselves! So come along and listen to Gavin share the stories and learnings taken from such a touching and meaningful creative project.

Arrive around 6.30pm, with the talk starting at 7pm, where you’ll be greeted by the friendly volunteers running the group. You can follow this handy guide/video to find out exactly where the group meets at the Famous Royal Navy Volunteer.

SQL-Bristol Evening Session (November 2016)

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 – 6pm to 9pm – JUST EAT, 2nd Floor Broad Quay House, Prince Street, Bristol, BS1 4DJ

SQL Bristol are putting on a session featuring a couple of great speakers, held at the Just Eat offices in central Bristol, with free pizza being provided.

Stephanie Locke – Getting started with R Service in SQL Server 2016 (Advanced Analytics/Internet of Things)

Richard Douglas – Natural Born Killers: Performance Issues to Avoid (Database Administrator/Database Developer)

You need to have registered on Meetup.com so that the group can provide the venue security with details of who is attending. This event is free and open to all!

Threads – Attracting and Retaining the Best People

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 – 6:30pm to 8:30pm – Ashfords LLC, Tower Wharf, Cheese Lane, Bristol, BS2 0JJ

This month, the Threads group are exploring the considerations around getting the right people and skills into your business, and retaining them – draw on the shared experiences of others and look at specific issues that you face within your operation or industry domain.

Please note the slightly later start time, now meeting from 6pm for a 6:30pm start and 8:30pm finish.

Bristol Digital Analytics Meetup

Thursday 3rd November 2016 – 6pm to 8pm – JUST EAT, 2nd Floor Broad Quay House, Prince Street, Bristol, BS1 4DJ

Meet other analytics folks in Bristol and talks about Tagging, Tracking, Analysing & Optimising. There will be a short talk at 6:15 and then the opportunity to mingle. To tempt you more, there will be free beer and pizza…

South West Data – What’s In My Data: Emotion Recognition Text Analytics

Thursday 3rd November 2016 – 7pm – Pervasive Media Studio, The Watershed, 1 Canons Road, Harbourside, Bristol, BS1 5TX

Automating a system by ‘copying’ how humans do it is one of the major reasons why we do machine learning. Questions like “What algorithms should I use?, Should I do parameter sweeping?, Where and how can I get more and better quality data etc? are all important.

In this session, Chew-Yean Yam will explore what can be done to raw data to improve overall system performance before even touching the algorithms themselves. This session will be delivered as a talk format, by participants will be invited to share experiences along the way.

About Chew-Yean Yam: Microsoft Data Science: I first sampled Machine Learning, which was then termed as Pattern Recognition, at the turn of the century, exploring Human Gait as Biometric via Computer Vision as part of the pioneering Vision Group of the University of Southampton. Now, as a Data Scientist at Microsoft, my special interests are in machine learning, image analyses and text analyses.

SWUX – ‘UX: the heart of Digital Transformation’

Tuesday 8th November 2016 – 6:45pm to 8:30pm – Sift Digital, The Quorum, Bond Street, Bristol, BS1 3AE

Sift Digital invite you to their brand new offices in Old Market to talk about the disciplines of user-centred design and organisational change becoming intrinsically linked.

Speaker for the evening is Al Barker – Head of UX at Sift Digital. He’ll argue that it’s no longer enough to focus on just getting the end user experience right. Instead, we must look to educate and transform the people who communicate with those users, to create meaningful and relevant relationships as they constantly evolve.

Al believes that cultural adaptation is essential and organisations themselves should become truly user-centred, not just the products they make.

Come and chat about organisational change, have a nose around the office, and share some beer and pizza!

Speaker Bio:

Al is a user experience expert, who instils the principles of a User-Centred Design process in all Sift Digital relationships. He leads a dynamic team of UX Consultants and Content/Digital Strategists. They collectively ensure the cohesive, consistent and high-quality delivery of simple, usable and highly creative digital solutions and strategies.

He has worked with many high profile clients including the United Nations, Natural History Museum, Orange, Action on Hearing Loss, Drink Aware and the BBC, among others.

South West Founders Meetup

Wednesday 9th November 2016 – 7pm – The Watershed, 1 Canons Road, Harbourside, Bristol, BS1 5TX

Join the monthly meet-up for start-up founders, old, new and aspiring, to talk about your business ideas. Entrepreneurs and tech investors are welcome, but freelancers, consultants, lawyers and other service providers are discouraged, as the meet-up is more about founding or mentoring start-up businesses. It’s a very casual evening, so there’s a strict ‘no selling’ policy.

Monday 14th to Friday 18th November 2016 – events taking place 7:30am to 10pm all week – Locations across Bristol

Global conference, Social Media Week is coming to Bristol for the first time. Hear from social media royalty at keynote lectures, attend knowledge building master classes and develop know-how at practical skill-up sessions.

Whatever your sector, you’ll find an event for you with content dedicated to tourism, financial services, start-up’s/SME’s, employee communications, b2b, food and drink, the third sector and a mini-conference dedicated to the power of mums and social media.

Twitter, Buzzfeed, Facebook and Glassdoor will be paying Bristol a visit. Sessions will be dedicated to YouTube, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Instagram. Aardman, Yogscast, Yahoo and Arthritis Research UK will share transformational case studies. Hot topics as broad as analytics, metrics, measurement, data science, strategy, storytelling, law, compliance and information security will be covered.

After all that learning, don’t forget to come and let your hair down at the closing party on Friday evening!

Tickets are from £5 to £35(+VAT) and Eventbrite fees per event. Get involved on Twitter (@Bristol_Media) with #SMWiBristol. You can also sign up to innovation platform, Solverboard where big questions raised in the week will be discussed.

Techie Brekkie – Health Tech: the next big tech opportunity?

Tuesday 15th November 2016 – 8:15am to 10am – Bristol Engine Shed @ Temple Meads, Bristol, BS1 6QH

TechSPARK are putting on another brekkie event this month discussing Health Tech as the next thing in digital transformation and of what business opportunities you can take advantage. Why not join the debate and hear from special guests and experts, Mike Jackson and Professor Lars Sundstrom?

Find out more about the digitisation of the NHS, the commercial realities of health tech and the worldwide market and, of course, get those burning questions answered. As always, brekkie and tea/coffee provided!

The speakers:

Mike Jackson – Mike founded Web Start in 2013, the tech start-up incubator which finds and funds the next big things in web-based technology.

Professor Lars Sundstrom – Lars is the Director of Enterprise West of England Academic Health Science Network who have been tasked with connecting Universities, innovators and the NHS.

Agenda

8:15am – 8:30am: Arrivals, coffee and sarnie-scoffing commences
8:30am – 9am – Introduction/talk from Mike and Lars
9am – 9:30am – Questions and discussion
9:30 – 10:00am – More coffee and networking

Bath Hacked – Learning Night: Tableau Public

Wednesday 16th November 2016 – 6pm – The Guild Coworking Hub, High Street, Bath, BA1 5EB

This session will be a gentle introduction to analysing data focusing on how to use Tableau – a tool that helps people see and understand data, letting you investigate and answer questions about your data.

If you’re interested in finding out what open data can tell us, or creating charts that show interesting insights using some local open data, then this session is definitely for you.

The session will be suited for beginners as well as those with some experience of open data, but are interested in learning about Tableau. (If you’re already an expert and just want to help others learn some new skills, then please still come along!)

There will be some hands-on exercises, so BYO laptop and follow along with the examples. You can download Tableau Public here.

CookiesHQ Open Desk Day

Wednesday 30th November 2016 – 9:30am to 5:30pm – CookiesHQ, 5 Beauley Road, Bristol, BS3 1PX

Hello!

Come along to our Open Desk Day where we invite local freelancers, remote and solo workers to work in our office for the day. We’re opening up our meeting room for the chance to spend a bit of time working alongside like-minded people, getting to know us here at CookiesHQ, with free wi-fi and the chance to use our device lab.

There’ll also be tea, coffee and water provided throughout the day. We tend to break for lunch together, so feel free to do so, if you’d like. North Street is a five minute walk away and has lots of places to grab a sandwich or something tasty.

If you’d like to join in, please to this event. There is a limit of 6 places for each month, but if you miss out on this one, we’ll add you to our list for next time.

Please leave a comment below, drop us a message on Meetup or send us a tweet if you’d like to know more.

Main image by Tech.Co

Jessica Gurr