Well that went pretty well. Last night we opened the doors to the Tech for Good London Meetup and 150 people showed up. There’s been a lot of Tech for Evil news over the past few weeks so it was heartening to hear some stories of people doing useful things. As well as launching the next BGV call for ideas, we heard from five startups:
- Echo (previously Hackney Shares) — bringing businesses-to-business time banking to the UK to improve the links between companies and their local communities
- Winnow Solutions — measuring and minimising food waste
- Open Sensors (from Atomic Data Labs) — sensors in the home to help older people live independently for longer
- Speakset — tackling loneliness through simple video calling for older people
- Flip Yourself — helping young people show their skills by using their social networks
What was also interesting was how indistinguishable in business terms some of the pitches were from non-social startups. Winnow Solutions won Seedcamp last week with their pitch about resource efficiency and Speakset gave a very convincing argument about older people being the biggest business opportunity of the next 20 years.
At the end of the evening we opened it up for people to give plugs for funding schemes or events coming up and there were plenty of those too. It does feel like something is happening around this in London. Long may it continue.
Many thanks to Lily for making it all happen, Eze at Google Campus for hosting us, and our speakers for telling us about their ideas.
Related articles
- Tackling loneliness (paulmiller.org)
- Cleanweb gathering pace (paulmiller.org)
