Last week, I made a pop reference in my “View from the Top”, as I mentioned the nineties boy band: East 17. This week, has got to be “The Final Countdown” by Europe (from the mid-eighties). Apologies if you now have this in your head for the rest of today.
In all seriousness, we are on the final countdown to the 2024 LCRIG Innovation & Learning Festival. Last year, we listened carefully to feedback from our event in Newark and whilst it was overwhelmingly successful, Susanne, Kerry and I couldn’t help but think something was missing. Innovation can come from learning something new, learning how to innovate, or observing innovations, which can inspire new ideas.
It was this thinking that has led to so many of the new changes we’ve introduced this year. It’s these new areas I want to write about, and all are important to me (and LCRIG colleagues). Firstly, are the technical training sessions. These are being held in the Technical Training Theatre, with over twenty suppliers delivering technical (not sales) insight into their products and services. These sessions will be exactly what any local authority, or others, will want to hear about, but the key will be that they give learning to attendees.
Secondly, the demonstrations this year cover both highways maintenance and transport technology, along with a vision for the future, to provoke discussion and ideas. This reflects the increasing blurring of lines between both highways and transport technology, and something Heads of Service, Engineers and Asset Managers, etc, are increasingly having to be conversant in. There will be a sense of the future from the autonomous pothole filling machine and the autonomous bus being brought by TfWM, through to highways maintenance being demonstrated in a collaborative way amongst suppliers.
Thirdly, we have the “Innovation Think Pavilion”. This new addition includes interactive and stripped back sessions. So, virtually no PowerPoint, and more of the original ted-talk style approach (without the big screens), and workshops that will all feed into future LCRIG work and the Innovation Report. This is an opportunity to feed into future LCRIG thinking, as we start to increase our capability to commission reports, insight, and research.
Fourthly, in line with more learning at the Festival (but from a different perspective), we have our partners Primary Engineer coming to exhibit, including their public exhibition for their national competition “If you were an Engineer what would you do?”. You can read about this in my previous “View from the Top”. We also have several Universities bringing their research and new areas of thinking, this is a deliberate move to encourage cross fertilisation from academia into public infrastructure.
Another new addition this year is the Start-up Zone, being funded by us as part of our CIC status. We have always been passionate about encouraging innovators and micro businesses into the sector. There will be twelve LCRIG-funded exhibition spaces to start-ups and micro businesses, bringing software ideas, robots, technology solutions and ideas that will solve problems around the infrastructure space we exist in.
I am incredibly proud of the hard work already put into the preparations by the whole team at LCRIG, and all those helping to make the 2024 Festival a success. We even have our new App ready for this year, which will make registration easier, allow delegates to view the day online and help to capture information.
Honestly, I can’t tell you how excited I am, and how I’m ticking off the days!!
Paula Claytonsmith, CEO