Octopus Energy Tech Summit

Yesterday we had a long but enjoyable day out to Evolution London for the Octopus Energy Tech Summit.

I was one of those selected from customers who had applied to go and was able to take Dawn along too. We left home just after 5am to catch the first train from Bury St Edmunds towards Stowmarket where we changed onto a train for Liverpool St. Halfway round the circle line to Sloane Square and a walk of nearly 1 1/2 miles got us there about 8:25 to join the queue to get in. It took a while as there were 3000 people there.

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Favourite talks included :

• Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield on Global Cooperation with some great pictures of his space missions.
• The discussion on energy infrastructure resilience and how Ukraine is developing it, and the announcement of the RISE partnership between Octopus and the Ukranian Company DTEK.
• The panel on Smart Home Tech.
• The interview of Brian Cox by Natasha Kaplinsky.
• The announcement of the all-inclusive BYD car and charging bundle with free EV charging, introduced by Damon Hill driving a BYD car onto the stage with Quentin Wilson. Damon is a fan of EVs and claims to be the first EV driver to get a speeding ticket while on a test drive in 2008.
• The presentation by Hannah Fry on The Future, and some whacky research topics iuncluding teaching pigeons to identify cancerous samples.
• The discussion on developing renewables in Emerging Market, specifically Africa.
• The interview with the founders of Octopus on how the company began.
• The closing Keynote by Rory Sutherland on the human side of energy transition and why perception behaviour and emotion matter.

See a video of the highlights here.

Not all the content seemed targeted at the topic of Energy Tech, but the day was very entertaining. We enjoyed the drinks and canapes at the end along with a live band before heading for home via the 19:39 train to Cambridge from Kings Cross, getting us home at about 9:35pm. And we now have an Octopus tote bag and pink octopus plushie each.

Here are a couple of my photos.

A great day out.