UK Trade Mission to San Francisco

Dashboard was pleased to send team members Piers Corfield and Dana Parkins to TC3  http://tc3.telecomcouncil.com/tc3/ held every year in Silicon Valley CA.

This event was part of a wider agenda that was put together by the Department for international Trade (UKDIT) and was part of an exciting Trade Mission from the UK to San Francisco.

TC3, or Telecom Council Carrier Connections, was a 2-day, working summit where the companies who build communications networks went to explore innovation with global telcos, vendors, VCs and startups from every corner of the ecosystem, with a heavy emphasis on the Internet of Things. Also included were members of Telecom Council’s ComTech , service providers and investment funds all of whom had just one objective in mind; drive more innovation to the market, faster.

This was a fantastic event to be part of and as such attracted a broad range of individuals and companies specifically involved in Industrial IOT.

The event was held in the Computer History Museum which was a fitting venue for a conference on a technology event attracting many companies at the cutting edge of innovation.

Day one of the four day mission was spent visiting various companies based in the Silicon Valley area that are pushing forward with IOT/smart cities technologies and proved that this area remains at the epicentre of innovation, design and applied sciences. Some of these companies who were kind enough to share their knowledge and current thinking on Industrial IOT, raising investment and use cases currently being deployed were Samsung, readwrite, and Verizon. The visit to the Verizon innovation Lab in San Francisco http://innovation.verizon.com/content/vic/en/innovation-labs.html/ which showcases some of the smart city solutions in which they are currently deploying was fascinating, the landscape insight provided (over lunch) by readwrite https://readwrite.com/ was incredibly insightful and the time spent with Samsung (who have a staff of over 4,000 in the Valley alone) provided a unique overview of the tech giant’s approach to component development, partnership and vision.

Days two and three were spent in the main arena holding a succession of formal and informal meetings and representing Dashboard and its capabilities on a stand and day five was a series of follow up meetings which will serve to build upon the relationships already created.