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David Barker

David Barker was one of the UK’s first internet entrepreneurs in 1994 and spent ten years working with global corporations including Intel, Cisco and Microsoft. In 2004 he became a social entrepreneur to tackle some of the issues facing society such as social mobility, unemployment and poverty.

Since 2005 David has been innovating new social enterprise start-ups using Tech for Good. In 2015 he founded Techcentre, The Social Innovation Agency, to work in partnership with clients to innovate new tech-enabled social enterprise start-ups.

Sir Peter Rigby

Sir Peter Rigby left school and joined the computer industry working for NCR, Honeywell and the Diebold consultancy. In 1975 with £2,000 of his own money he launched SCR, a recruitment agency for IT staff. Seven years later he sold the company for £1 million. He ploughed the cash back into growing IT enterprises with his eye always on developing a large organisation. He has kept the company privately owned by his family in order to preserve the values he sees as vital in business.

Andrew Stott

Andrew is an international thought leader in open data. Most recently, between 2004 and 2010, as Deputy Chief Information Officer and then Director of Digital Engagement at the Cabinet Office, he delivered the globally leading data.gov.uk, in which a large number of government datasets were made available online for the first time. He has led UK Digital Engagement programmes, and is now an expert adviser, speaker and consultant on open data and e-government, both in the UK and worldwide.

Andy Ayim

Andy Ayim moves in the world of venture capital, tech start-ups, and product development. In 2010 Andy, along with his brother, Kwabz and a few friends set up Mixtape Madness, a passion project to create a central location online for people to listen to UK hip-hop and grime music.

He is currently Managing Director of the London Accelerator at Backstage Capital, that looks for investment opportunities with companies founded by those from under-represented groups, including women, people of colour, and the LGBT community.

In 2018 Andy was named in the Financial Times as one of the top ten most influential black and minority ethnic tech leaders in the UK.

John O’Connell

John O’Connell is a high-profile London-based technology entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist. He founded Staffware, one of the then leading software companies in the UK, which he sold in 2004. Since then he has personally invested in fourteen technology businesses, having chaired the vast majority of them. He also chaired and co-owned the professional rugby club then known as London Wasps. At present he is Chairman of Active Navigation, and he is the founder and Chairman of ScaleUp Group,

Professor Brian Randell

Brian has had a long and illustrious career in computing, starting work at English Electrics Atomic Power Division in 1957. Brian worked on various programming tasks, including the ALGOL 60 compiler for the KDF9 machine, which was the subject of his book, Algol 60 Implementation, along with Lawford Russell, one of the first books on compilers.  Brian then joined IBM Research at Yorktown Heights in 1964, where he worked on computer and systems design.  After five years at IBM, Brian became Professor of Computing Science at the Department of Computing Science at Newcastle University, where he has remained since.