Closing Remarks by BSides Cheltenham Organizers

we're actually running on time this is almost unheard of when we've had this many talks we've done quite well today so there is one last thing before I wrap up so a couple months ago especially if you're local or pay attention to our socials I was like okay we're gonna do a bit of a b-sides community Meetup and we met at the Frog and Fiddle in town and um the handful of people I went okay what do you want to hear at b-sides and we got Tech talks but one thing that did get brought up was um The Golden Valley development so if you guys are not local you probably haven't heard of the big

giant cyber Innovation Park that is going in I right off the Golden Valley AKA next door right to very large donut building the is really going to be the center and new hub for innovation in Tech I'm not going to do it justice so what I will do is ask Jeremy to come up and he runs factoring is one of the partners in the project and let him do a bit of a talk um and then I will be back with a couple closing um statements and then we will all head up to um I'm not going to give you the floor yet so you have to stay um I know better um to the after party and then we will

all get to relax a little bit Jeremy [Applause] so thank you thanks for having me um I think first and foremost I know firsthand how difficult it is to organize these events so Ileana your team all the volunteers on behalf of me I think on behalf of everyone maybe we can give them a round of applause I'm one of the last of the day [Applause] so as Ileana mentioned she approached me um very recently actually and said look everyone wants to hear about an update about Golden Valley and I thought great I'm going to be the guy between all of you and the infamous after party so maybe I'll just put together a couple slides and and whiz through it and and

then I thought to myself like I have all of you gathered here today maybe I could put something together and we can engage a little bit I can uh position something to you I can give you a bit of history of the project and explain a little bit about why I'm so passionate about it why we're so passionate about it working on it so for those of you who know about it I apologize to go back in the history a little bit but I think it'll be good for context so I'll dive in uh I think elephant in the room you're probably looking at the last slide for those of you who maybe don't know what's

an innovation District what's this guy up here talking about this buzzword Innovation District it's like AI nowadays all these all the ecosystem all these buzzwords um about 2014 years ago I kept hearing this term again and again and again and again and I think I did what any somewhat techy nerdy obsessive guy would do and I headed to Google Trends so I looked at what was trending um at the time stranger things was a was a big show big conference you'll see the Peaks and the spikes with the two seasons of stranger things crypto cryptocurrency another big term big trending term looked at that and then I compared it to Innovation districts so I'll read out the the long

uh notable definition that Bruce Katz and Julie Wagner two researchers who launched a report with the Brookings Institute launched in 2014 um but you'll see it I mean compared to the other two it's like a slow and steady up into the right curve there are lots of people like me interested in this term just reading about it so let me scroll down to the more dense definition we have Innovation District Geographic areas where Leading Edge anchor institutions and companies cluster and connect with startups business incubators and accelerators they're also physically compact Transit accessible and technically wired and offer mixed-use housing office and Retail so we got the definitions out of the way a bit about me I'm an entrepreneur

I think many of you who know me that's kind of just a fancy word for wearing lots of hats I'm co-founder of a company called Factory I'm a director of hpdx factory which is the developer selected to build out the Golden Valley development and the key face as part of the development so I think some of you have seen me running around town but you'll see more of me and I do a lot of different activities and initiatives I'm really plugged into the European startup community so I wear lots of hats around Europe supporting startups and different communities so something that YOLO probably know very very well but um I think what we have here in

Cheltenham in the ecosystem is something very special we have the largest cluster of cyber tech companies outside of London if your logo is not up here please do shout to me I think this is something that what we really want to do is when we're going around internationally nationally and trying to explain to people what's Happening Here the density and the great companies and the mines coming out of Cheltenham uh it's always surprising to people who are talking about new things learning about new things about about the town and if you zoom in to West Cheltenham you'll see the Golden Valley development so again apologies if you guys know the project but I think for context this is

really important 2019 uh the Cheltenham Borough Council made a strategic decision to purchase two Parcels of land totaling 111 Acres um let me see if I get I get this this tongue twister right they then subsequently submitted a um Western Cheltenham strategic master plan SPD for the future phases of the development which essentially aligned the vision and the framework for the next phases um and so I think what's relevant here stepping back and where I come from digging back into this buzzwords is we have friends in Paris who run station F they claim it's the largest startup campus in the world the land mass here the 111 acre land mass just the land mass alone without

any buildings on it is 50 times the size of that so when you think about this project and what we're all working on here the scale of it is enormous the scale of it is so exciting and I think if you zoom in further this is really what it is today um some friends outside were just showing me beautiful photos of of taking runs in the fields and so we kind of asked ourselves what makes it different of course it's a very beautiful site but what makes this different to other Innovation districts in the world there are more urban Innovation districts that that maybe many talk about and I think besides the differences here locally you

also have Community admission so the community and Mission I think everyone's here on a Saturday everyone's here collaborating everyone's come in the community and mission of this town and the the sector and the ecosystem goes above and beyond a lot of others that I've seen around the world and I think this obviously historically has been laid by some of the neighbors that you see in the photo since the 1950s but it's palpable and the plan for us so I'm going to start sharing some of the designs we're going in for planning this summer um so we're we're pretty advanced in in our project in the design but the plan for us is to partner with

the ecosystem so we're really here to provide growth growth space for everything that's already happening here all the excitement that's happening so we all have a shared mission to innovate and make the UK the safest place to live and do business we see our role as just providing the physical space to actually partner with you guys to help you do that and I think there's there's sort of some fundamental aspects of what we're building um and what it's going to look like so the first thing is it's going to be an Innovative place so we're planning around a million square feet of innovative office space this is space for you guys to come in with your

startups with your smes with your businesses everything from a desk all the way to big Tech and Academia um we're providing the space for it next is a great place to live so I think what differentiates this this concept and this business uh from everything else is that we're not looking to build a business park we don't want to build just another business park we're looking to build something more iconic uh something more nationally significant and that also means that it should be a great place to live foreign we're looking to build a healthy place so uh sustainability and nature are at the heart of our plans we have uh We've really been working closely with

the landscape and some of our Concepts to get people out of their cars and onto more active forms of Transport throughout the development and at its heart obviously something very close to me being the co-founder of factory is what you all may recognize as what was referenced in the National cyber strategy as the national cyber Innovation Center which I'll get to in a minute so in summary we're building an iconic place an inspiring place a place of national significance and at its heart we'll have Factory telnum so some of you may recognize these views this is right when you come in off of Telstar way we're building a 160 000 square foot Innovation Center told startups government big Tech

Academia all Under One Roof I can tell you from building factories in places like Berlin and Lisbon this is really something different and this is really something exciting my four-year-olds over here causing trouble in the in the audience it's also why I'm a bit more nervous than normal but um this Project's kept me up you know numerous nights and arguably even more numerous nights than than my four-year-old and my family know so as you see this is really something different that we're trying to drive in uh it's right across the street from the donut and I think the Aesthetics of it we're also trying to be very Innovative we're not just trying to build a set of

glass cubes and put them on a field and call it a day this is something that should have a bit of Soul a bit of passion and it's really exciting to us so I think the the main takeaway from today for me and and for us I think is that I I mentioned it before we're here to partner with you guys we're here to partner with the ecosystem and so really our first building opens in 2026 we have a lot of time from now until then so I think it's more about thinking about what we can do together from now until then to build this National Asset that we're all hoping for I think it's more

about the ecosystem than it is about the buildings and so in in that regard um whether you're a startup and you're thinking about office space um you may be the folks from b-sides thinking about event formats you may run programs you may have a crazy idea that everyone told you that you couldn't do um I think we want this to be the place where you can try that out this is the playground for you guys to innovate whether it's within Factory or with it if it's within the The Wider site I think I've had so many conversations with people from town really working on some amazing technical ideas this could apply to prop Tech and buildings and

smart cities um so really come and have a chat I think this is something really exciting to say we're building an innovation Center and an innovation District but actually how can we be Innovative about it what can we do differently what could we test how could this become a test bed so I'm almost done here don't worry you'll get to your your after party soon um I think for us it's it's it's not just about getting anyone there it's about getting this early adopter crowd I think many of you are are here within the audience I I know many of you so it's about clustering the right people first um these people with a growth mindset

really looking to do things differently and thinking about how we can scale that and lastly I think for us collaboration is innovation I talk without um with a lot of folks from ncsc about this that Innovation can be kind of a loaded word it's it's a bit of a buzzword but I think a lot of it is simply about collaborating and so if we're all looking to build this National Asset like I mentioned before what can we do to work together to build it we've already gotten started so we've been sort of slow and steady in the background doing a lot of different things I think people kind of underestimate the amount of work that

you need to go through to get building plans in there's a lot of work going in the background but we've managed to to work with amazing folks from the community I think we've done three international trips with cohorts to places like Berlin Lisbon Estonia to meet the startup Community see what's happening there see if we can build any Bridges between Cheltenham and the ecosystem here and what's happening over there we've hosted loads of meetups and events with great Partners like Hub 8 even you know the T the team over here at b-sides plexel ncsc and lots of international Partners too so I think if don't feel shy to come and grab me and say this event we like but we would like

these different formats this is we have a long time before this whole site's built out so I think really what I'm curious to tease out of everyone is what could we do between now and then what types of formats could we build what would be interesting for the community are there other places to connect in nationally internationally that might make sense and I'll leave on maybe a bit more of a a personal note and hopefully to tease out some of the discussions uh for the after party um if that's okay but I think for me personally this isn't just about building a world-class Innovation District if we go back to that Innovation District definition that's a great outcome if we

get there if we're labeled and partnered up with some of the most Innovative districts of people doing this around the world that's a huge achievement but I think everyone here in the room has a genuine interest to collaborate and work to protect the UK and our Global allies to work to support strengthening our digital capabilities in areas like cyber defense emerging Tech so I think we need to maybe think about how we can all work together and work on those aspects rather than just thinking about how to make a world-class Innovation District so thank you very much [Applause] so I was actually really personally lucky to be on he mentioned that there were um kind of those delegations that got to

go and I was lucky enough to go to Lisbon during um web Summit and view their building at um in Lisbon where they do a ton and they were holding like five night Summit events at the same time on their like opening weekend um so he really does mean when he wants events and wants like if you want a playground to do fun things I think his in the Lisbon Factory um like Instagram had like more followers as a building site than like your main one or something like that but um loves getting involved especially with Creative Tech so thank you Jeremy for speaking um it is a bit of a passion project for me because I do love

community and ecosystem probably wouldn't do this event um if I didn't and I really believe that cyber security and especially the ecosystem in the UK as a whole is really really special that's my Spiel um what I would say is I did want to give you kind of guys um a bit of an update of what b-sides will look like going forward through next year um a couple people have heard it today as we've gone along um so kind of the main things are we'll be splitting into three tracks so we will have um kind of copying another con you'll be able to figure it out uh we'll be doing a technical track a human

track and a foundations track so we will be here at the race course we'll be announcing um the date hopefully by I would say end of next week but always add a week with me because I've probably said that a little bit too soon so probably kind of by latest at the end of the month we will have it but it will be roughly this time again next year we will also be looking to bring on two new committee members I love it and I love my small team we're a bit too small um I can be in absolute pain to work with so ask Charlie if you want to know what it's like he's been there done that

and we'll give you all the details before you sign your name and uh have to do with me on a daily basis um and that is kind of where we're at we will be looking at a new format for sponsors we are dropping our highest tier what we really want to do is bring in more people more Community without barriers so please keep an eye out for that if you're interested at in getting involved whether it's to come be a goon whether it's about talking next year um please do come get in touch we're now going to head up to the fifth floor for the after party just after one more thing we do have some of the lovely

volunteers who have been with me here since about seven o'clock this morning can we please give a round of hand to the team that has literally made this run

[Applause] hold this thought

I realized I've worked with David all day and I actually never got his name because I haven't been in doing AV so a big thank you to Cooper who has been doing the recording all day most of those recordings are already starting to go up so if you did miss something that you want to see when do you think they'll be up by tomorrow I was like you're so fast I was like I was a little bit blown away yesterday um and he's come in and done that he is so good and David who is Major that this hasn't gone to any problems um can we please give them a hand because without Davie [Applause]

and with that let's go get drinks