2026 Tech South West Digital Conference

This a short video summary of the Tech South West Digital Conference that was hosted at the Firepool Centre for Digital Innovation. Just to give a flavour of who was there but I have also included some footage of what the speakers said.

Julie Hawker, from Cosmic, talked about the risk of future displacement of jobs by AI that will disproportionately affect women.

I particularly liked Caitlin Gould’s contribution, from TEC Girls, who was succinct and  forthright. She talked about the use of AI amongst schoolchildren, especially amongst girls. She gave very clear insights and statistics from their own AI Attitudes Report.

“We don’t want young people to outsource their intelligence to AI. We do not want them to lose the ability to have critical thinking. We need to teach them how to use AI well or they will all turn into idiots.”

So true.

Helen Wylde-Archibald, CEO of the Devon Chamber of Commerce, gave her thoughts on the digital opportunity and challenges for the South West. She also gave an insightful workshop wearing her SME-owner’s hat on the risks and the need of good governance around the use of AI in business. It should be enough to prompt any business that uses AI, particularly the staff and their shadow AI and tech, into action with the default starting point of understand what the hell you currently have. Without that knowledge, you won’t know what to do.

Helen gave some advice to the tech business who are trying to deliver AI services to the SME market. Don’t talk about machine learning, large language models and agentic AI, just talk to them about the benefits they will gain. Wear an SME hat to deal with SMEs, don’t blast them with terminology.