The fourth annual Housing Technology conference took place at the end of February at the Q Hotels’ Oxford Belfry, with an all-time high of more than 350 participants, over 45 exclusive presentations, and 19 exhibitors and sponsors.
We were delighted to welcome Sir Clive Woodward OBE, World Cup Winner and Team GB’s Director of Sport for the London Olympics, and John Bird, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Big Issue, to give the keynote presentations.
Clive’s presentation to a packed room extolled his mantra that ‘talent alone isn’t enough’, how great teams are made of great individuals, and that whoever wins in IT wins in business, citing his emphasis on using the latest technology when training his teams and athletes.
John Bird’s equally well-attended presentations during both the pre-event evening drinks reception and the opening of the conference were typically forthright and uncompromising, emphasising the need to move to a culture of ‘hand up, not handout’ when it comes to helping the homeless and the vulnerable.
There were too many speakers and presentations to mention individually, but they covered the spectrum of housing’s hot topics, such as universal credit and welfare reform, digital inclusion, bring your own device and mobile working, social media, cloud computing, value for money, and performance management.
The conference was supported by a number of IT suppliers and consultancies dedicated to serving the housing sector: 1st Touch, Aareon, AccuServ, Advanced 365, BT, Ciber, Cisco, CloudXL, ConvergeOne, Equanet, JMC IT, MET, ONI, Orchard, PCMS, SAP, South View Solutions, Sovereign Business Integration Group and Visual Metrics.
We have already started the initial planning for the 2014 conference. The next conference will feature some striking changes from the four previous ones as we strive to make each event better than the last. This will include changes to how we schedule the presentations, the length and timing of the event, more keynote speakers and presenters from other market sectors, the provision of a bigger exhibition area and more opportunities for networking with peers from other housing providers. We will announce details of the 2014 conference in the May issue.
Housing Technology would like to thank all of the speakers, sponsors, exhibitors and delegates who all combined to make the 2013 event such a success.
