Sam Talks Technology

Daniel Snell is the co-director of Arrival Education, a multi-award winning D&I talent & development consultancy helping businesses unlock the “Diversity Dividend”, whilst helping diverse talent achieve career success.

Having worked with many of the UK's leading exec teams, assuring investment confidence for businesses who want to recruit, retain and progress diverse talent, so they can unlock the collective power of all their people.

James Cridland is a radio futurologist and the publisher of podnews.net, a website along with a free daily news source about podcasting and on-demand audio.

James is an internationally recognised thought leader in this space and he is regularly asked to speak at conferences and attend strategy planning events.

He has been interviewed many times about radio's future by broadcasters like the BBC, CBC, NPR, and several UK commercial radio stations.

James is passionate about great radio and is driven by radio's excellence as a medium and the need to retain radio's relevance in a modern media landscape.

Nick Coleman, who describes himself as the ‘Duke of Pork’, is the wonderfully exuberant founder & CEO of Snaffling Pig, a pork scratching company that is taking on the £3.2 billion pork market, with an innovative, strategic and engaging brand with wit and purpose.

We’re not ones for big, gushy value statements, but we’ve got our three simple rules that we live each day by. Do great things. Have some fun. Don’t be a dick. - Nick Coleman

Today Snaffling Pig has sales in the millions and now produces gammon steaks, sauces and even beer - but all began in 2014 with a £500 bet.

Nick Coleman was working on a medical business when his co-founder Udhi Silva bet him he couldn't start a company from scratch with just £500.

Two years after launch, Nick and his team decided that they needed to boost the funding and awareness of Snaffling Pig. So they took part in the 14th Season of BBC2 Dragons Den. It went well, with the firm attracting a £70,000 investment from Moonpig founder Nick Jenkins. In 2017 he won The Virgin Foodpreneur Award.

The firm has since tapped into the crowdfunding market, offering up a 9.73% stake in the business to investors, aiming to raise £750,000.

We’re not looking for any old investors either. That’s why we’re not approaching any Venture Capitalists or Private Equity firms. We want to create an exclusive SWINE DINING CLUB of investors, all of whom get our brand, our culture and love our products. - Nick Coleman

It was hugely oversubscribed, eventually bringing in more than £1million from almost 1,500 investors.

In 2010 he also co-founded Medical Supermarket, an industry-leading healthcare supplier to the primary care and care sectors.

Julien Genestoux is the founder & CEO of Unlock. Unlock is an open source protocol that lets you easily lock and manage access to your content and monetize it through a decentralized, access control protocol. It’s also permissionless – there are no middlemen.

Prior to Unlock Julien was the Lead Engineer at Medium and a co-author of WebSub, a pushed based RSS discovery mechanism that was originally called Pubsubhubbub.

Stewart Townsend is my good friend and was often my partner in crime for many fun startup events which we organised together.

A chance meeting with Stewart, 15 years ago at one of the Open Coffee Club mornings I had organised in Waterstones, led to the start of a great friendship.

This podcast takes you through those early days of the London startup scene.

From Stewart's work with Sun Microsystems and working with Twitter developers. Through to events we did together such as Flowery Tweetups and Flowery Cinema; the one where we hired a Leicester Square cinema to watch the new Facebook film The Social Network and invited 250 of our Facebook friends to join us.

Find out how we had drinks with Henry 'The Fonz' Winkler and Mark Zuckerberg as well as a private dinner with Scott McNealy, then CEO of Sun Microsystems at Blenheim Palace, to name but a few events.

Together with Manoj Ranaweera, we helped start the first Techcelerate: The Original Tech Ecosystem in Manchester and we even attended its 11th-year commemoration this year.

Stewart also talked about his time with Zendesk, DataSift and Oracle through to his current project providing companies with a virtual sales channel (Channel as a Service - CAAS).

Tom Holder, co-founder & CTO Tap. They have built a wonderfully simple app on the blockchain called TapMyData which allows you to quickly and easily request companies (SAR*) to provide you with all the data they are holding on you.

Technology has driven a data explosion and vast fortunes have been made monetising your data. Respect for people’s privacy has been lost, and it’s time for a reckoning. Ask questions, take back your data, don’t sell yourself short! - Tom Holder

Get the Tap app and discover what personal data organisations hold about you. Tap provides secure storage and instant access to a master record of your personal data.

If you are a company you can register in their growing directory and automate these growing requests in a standardised format saving your organisation time and money whilst delivering a great consumer experience.

*Note:

A Subject Access Request, (known as a SAR or DSAR), is a request to a company or organisation asking for access to the personal data they may hold about you.

Hannah Power a Personal Branding Expert.

Branding is not about logos. It's not about pretty fonts and slogans. Branding is about your customer and communicating with YOUR customer. Showing the value you can bring to them and why they'd be mad not to work with you. It's about being #humancentred and empathetic. - Hannah Power.

She started her entrepreneur career by launching her own remote digital agency called POWERnomads while living in Bali, Indonesia.

She also set up Sederhana Jewellery while in Bali.

Charles Cadbury is the CEO of Say it Now, the winners of Amazon’s annual UK & European Alexa Cup for best new skill on the smart speaker. They ultimately came third in the global awards.

Over the last 5 years Charles has worked in AI/Natural Language Processing and the application of 'conversational interfaces' (voice assistants and chatbots).

I believe the future of communication between brand and customer is through natural conversation. The trick is to look at multiple channels and seize opportunities for a conversational element to reduce friction.

Back and forth communication through conversation is the most effective way to create a trusted relationship. - Charles Cadbury

Jamie Riddell is the CEO of Escaping Gravity. Jamie and his co-founder wife started Cheeze in 1999 and sold their first company for £10.5m and had it not been for GDPR, they may have sold their second company BirdSong Analytics for a similar return.

Birdsong Analytics is the World's largest 'Pay as you Go' Social Media Analytics platform. We provide on demand reports to clients in over 120 countries across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Our customers including IBM, The UN, Disney, KEA, Yamaha, Monsanto, Harvard and thousands more. - Jamie Riddell

Today Jamie is a board advisor, mentor to startups and an angel investor.

Dr Alan Watkins is the CEO of Complete 'a consultancy that specialises in developing enlightened leadership through individual and team development'.

Alan is recognised as an international expert on Leadership and Human Performance. He has a broad mix of commercial, academic, scientific and technological abilities.

Alan is a polymath, neuroscientist, TedTalk speaker and has written four books and is currently writing three more.

Coherence: The Secret Science of Brilliant Leadership

4D Leadership: Competitive Advantage Through Vertical Leadership Development

Wicked and Wise: How to Solve the World's Toughest Problems

Crowdocracy: The end of politics

Over the past 18 years he has been a coach to many of Europe’s top business leaders and has helped companies treble their share price, enter the FTSE 100, salvage difficult turnarounds and establish market leadership in their industry.

He advised the GB Olympic squad prior to London 2012 and Rio 2016. He has three degrees and is a neuroscientist by background.