Northumbrian Water's Innovation Festival, which kicks off online from Monday 14 - Thursday 17 September, will see thousands of people from all over the world and from across a variety of industries and sectors, tuning in and connecting virtually to help solve some huge environmental and societal challenges.
They’ll be joined by the likes of confirmed partners UK Power Networks, Wood, Wipro, Aiimi, CGI, IBM, Isle Utilities, Microsoft, Ordnance Survey, O2 and Visa, who will head up their own unique, virtual workshops to seek out ideas to some of the biggest problems facing society.
The workshops will be going truly global this year, working around the clock by linking in with participants in North America and Australia to make the most of global knowledge with international partners Wood and South Australia Power Networks.
The theme for this year is ‘Build Back Better', incorporating more than 30 different activities, sprints and workshops at the digital festival, many in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, which has seen the world turned upside down. In particular, the festival will explore topics such as:
- Sprinting to carbon neutral
- Cross-utility health and safety
- Creation and leverage of digital twins
- How to best serve our customers and take customer service to the next level
- How workplace diversity in global utilities can be improved
- How 5G sensors can improve the way utility companies work
Nigel Watson, Northumbrian Water’s Information Services Director, said:
“COVID19 has completely changed peoples’ lives and caused businesses and organisations right across the globe to rethink how they do things.
“Going digital is how we’re doing our festival this year as we adapt and flex to the current situation, and the appetite to get involved with it has continued to be huge.
“We’re seeing real-life projects being delivered all the time, big changes and new ways of working that started out as the seed of an idea at our Innovation Festival and organisations want to get on board with that.
“Thanks to our partners and our sponsors, people from all across the world can get involved in the festival in a safe and accessible way and hopefully Innovation Festival 2020 can help us to collaboratively build back better.”
To find out more about Northumbrian Water's Innovation Festival, and to explore the opportunities to connect with partners from across the utility industry and beyond, visit www.innovationfestival.org
