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Dear Reader,
Earlier this summer in June, I attended the London Tech Week 2024 event in London and it was impressive.
Across 3 days, over 25,000 attendees, and 400 speakers, from 115 countries descended on the fantastic open space at Olympia London centre to see the future of tech. Innovators, investors, startups, enterprises, students, policy makers and many more. The new Tech Nation report launched at the event showed that the UK tech sector is now worth $1.1 trillion.
There were different stages (e.g. Headline Keynote, Center Stage, Corporate Innovation Stage, Founders Stage, Pitch Stage, EQL: Lounge) for different themes during the event.
Similar to my previous review articles (on Web Summit 2022, Apple, Spotify, Monzo, and Nero’s Weekly), today I’ll be sharing my experience of London Tech Week, lessons learnt from the sessions I attended, and perspective on the UK Tech Sector.
Let’s dive in!
Table of Content
Session 1 - Africa – The Next Frontier for the Global Emerging Tech Sector?
Session 2 - Gaming - Introduction
Session 3 - Gaming - The Tech behind As Dusk Falls by Ron de Feijter
Session 4 - Gaming – Key Trends to Watch in the Games Market
Session 5 – Gaming – GDC Centre Stage Takeover: UK and Global Games Market Trends Fireside Chat.
Session 6 – Keynote - AI and the Future of Creativity and Work
Closing Thoughts – The UK Tech Outlook
Closing Thoughts – On London Tech Week 2024
Session 1 - Africa – The Next Frontier for the Global Emerging Tech Sector?
At the Pitch stage was the session on the African Tech sector. Coming from Africa, this was an opportunity for me to stay updated on the latest happening on the continent. Africa is very important to the world, as the next global growth market and source of talent.
The session was a Q&A panel including:
Moderator: Justina Oha, Government Relations and Partnership Consultant, Big Cabal Media
Yewande Odumosu, Managing Partner, HoaQ Ventures Fund,
Tomi Davies, Collaborator-in-Chief, TVC Labs,
Deepankar Rustagi, Founder and CEO, OmniRetail.
Q1 – Where is Africa now? Tomi Davies
Africa is defining the future of mobile and cloud. This was exemplified with the success of Mpesa. We have a useful population that has grown up on technology. Entrepreneurship is baked into the African mindset, and governments are rising up to support through startup acts.
Q2 – How are African innovators innovating? Yewande Odumosu
The current opportunity for African innovators is connecting to the diaspora, and to the West, towards powering cross border trade. A few Nigerian companies are now expanding into China and India.
We are also seeing a case in migration where Africa is exporting talent – remotely and physically to the rest of the world. Now African innovators are thinking of World-first, Africa-first, rather than being limited to their individual nations. Crypto adoption was so high in Africa because we didn’t have a choice for cross border transactions.
Nero: The point here was that African innovators were moving from just solving their own needs, to developing global solutions. Necessity forced them to be innovative, but they no longer needed to limit their solutions to the continent.
Q3 – What is driving optimism in tech in the continent? (Deepankar Rustagi)
The increase in internet penetration using mobile phones has driven optimism. When we started building solutions, in addition to our primary vision we had to solve other challenges and build infrastructure – e.g. payments and last mile delivery.
In my last startup (Weconnect), we had no payment solution, so initially we had to do cash collections. This was before Paystack was founded in 2016 (Paystack was acquired by Stripe for $200m).
Today we have developed the largest payment integrator wallet with 14 different financial solutions. African entrepreneurs are resilient, for example global inflation is at 8% compared to inflation in Nigeria which is currently at 35%. This builds resilience in Nigerian startup.
Nero: This goes back to the point on why African continent are beginning to think beyond their individual nations.
Q4 – What AI trends are you seeing on the continent? (Tomi Davies)
Africa is adopting AI, aggressively. We are seeing use cases in healthcare, drone delivery, agriculture, and crop maintenance.
Flutterwave (the fintech) is using AI for fraud detection, while Flexi (edtech) is using AI for personalized education. We are also seeing Energy companies using AI for Energy management.
Nero: Its interesting seeing African applications targeted at solving ‘real’ problems in Education, Agriculture, Healthcare, Energy, and tracking climate change.
Q5 – What emerging technologies should we pay attention to? (Yewande Odumosu)
The difference between here [the West] and Africa is that on the continent there is no computing power for AI, but talented founders are currently trying to solve that.
Don’t let the challenges hold you back.
Nero: A few African AI companies are focused on smaller language models that don’t require significant computing power to train. It would be interesting to see the innovations that would come out from these resource constraints. MPesa and mobile payment could be a template.
I headed to the Centre stage next for the all-afternoon event on Gaming.
Session 2 - Gaming – Introduction
Gaming is a booming industry in the UK, generating over £5.7 billion annually, employing 76,000 people, and growing annually by 4.7%. As a technology, art, and business powerhouse, the UK is a natural hub for gaming development.
I attended London Tech Week this year to learn more about the latest trends in the UK gaming industry, with a particular focus on the potential impact of AI. The event featured a full day of gaming-related sessions, including a talk by Frostbite gaming company, a report on the industry, and a panel discussion with Ukie, the gaming industry's trade body.
Session 3 - Gaming - The Tech behind As Dusk Falls by Ron de Feijter
As Dusk Falls, a Bafta-nominated multiplayer game, stands out with its branching narrative and distinctive art style. Players make choices that shape the storyline, controlled intuitively through a phone app. Developed during the pandemic, this game is a testament to collaborative innovation.
I was eager to learn from Ron de Feijter, the game's technical director, about the unique development process. The team used a 'floating character' approach, based on actor performances. Starting with a simple mesh, they captured 15,000 images of the characters in various poses. The Unity game engine was then employed to bring these poses to life.
A bespoke pipeline project transformed these poses into Previs, a series of steps involving billboarding (creating 3D characters from 2D images), shooting (converting to photos), stylization (painting), and customization (polishing). This innovative process resulted in the immersive and visually striking experience of As Dusk Falls.
Innovations in Development
The As Dusk Falls development team employed several innovative techniques to streamline their workflow. A custom-built rig, integrated with the Unity Game Engine, allowed for efficient lighting adjustments with a single button press.
Automation tools were also key. A custom tool streamlined build processes and video recording. Additionally, a clever mini-map system encoded long filenames as barcodes, making them easily identifiable and accessible in Photoshop for Unity.
Quality assurance was a continuous process. The team used a companion app to test the game across different consoles, collecting data and identifying performance issues for optimization.
Following Ron de Feijter's presentation, the audience had the opportunity to ask questions about these innovative design choices.
Q1 – mine 😊 – How did you collaborate as a team to build this game during covid, what was the size of the team, and how long did it take?
The game was built in 5 years (2017 - 2022) in which the team grew from 25 to 45 members in addition to outsourced contractors. It was primarily built online with everyone communicating through slack.
Q2 - Where do you see GenAI your game development process?
In repetitive work such as editing of pictures.
Q3 - The art style was a new story style, if you had more budget would you change it?
No, we like the art style as it is different and unique.
You can learn more about the game’s development process here:
Session 4 - Gaming – Key Trends to Watch in the Games Market
In this session, George Jijiashvili, a Senior Principal Analyst at Omidia, provided a detailed overview of the gaming market. He delved into key trends across regions, devices, and demographics, particularly in light of recent industry challenges.
I was fortunate to obtain a copy of George's presentation and will be highlighting relevant sections below.
On the global video market
Consumers spent more on gaming ($174bn.) in 2023 than on online video ($128bn.) or music ($30.4bn.). This is why gaming is important as an entertainment medium.
Before the pandemic consumer spend was $142bn (2019), and by 2020 increased to $177bn. So, the industry started borrowing more and invested. Their expectation was that the industry would keep on growing. Instead in 2024 it was flat at $175bn.
That gaming spent consist of PC, Console, and Mobile, with mobile expected to grow over the next ten years, while the others decrease and largely stay flat.
We expect console spend to still increase, and this is thanks to how games are sold.
One off full game purchase is flat, what’s driving markets is in-game purchases/microtransactions, and also in-game advertising, and subscriptions (e.g. Xbox game pass).
On the ongoing layoffs in the games industry
In 2023 there were 10,000 known layoffs in the gaming industry, and 10,100 in 2024 (Jan-May) so far.
Nero:
There are many often cited reasons but my perception was that the cost of doing business was higher, because the cost of borrowing was higher, due to higher interest rates.
Secondly, during the earlier decade when capital was cheap, several companies had over hired, expecting the ‘good times’ to continue, but now have to reckon with the new macroeconomic realities. This was also seen in the wider global tech industry.
Developers’ current and future spending plans
The games tech market is worth $64bn and is set to grow to $90bn by 2028 and this is largely driven by advertising and cloud services.
Generative AI’s potential in games development
The development cost for the biggest games has rapidly increased. There is a sentiment that generative AI could contribute to reducing this cost, potentially improving game development.
More companies are offering generative AI tools for characters/dialog development, asset generation, animation, and Audio.
George concludes his excellent presentation with 3 big questions for generative AI in 2024 and beyond:
How quickly would high impact tools be brought into market?
How rapidly will adoption happen?
What will happen to development budgets?
Nero:
I suspect that high impact tools would come from companies working on big impact AAA games like Grand Theft Auto 6 ,or major technology providers like game engines e.g. Unity and Epic games.
Gaming platforms like Roblox that encourage user generated content(UGC) would also use GenAI to improve creation and the user experience.
So many opportunities.
Session 5 – Gaming – GDC Centre Stage Takeover: UK and Global Games Market Trends Fireside Chat.
The Gaming sessions concluded with a panel discussion featuring George Jijiashvili of Omdia and Nick Poole of Ukie. Ukie, the trade body for the UK games industry, represents over 2,000 gaming businesses and supports 73,000 jobs.
This session offered insights into global gaming market trends and included a Q&A segment where audience members could ask questions to both panellists.
Question 1 – Coming into the industry with fresh perspective, what is the industry doing not so well? (Nick Poole)
The gaming industry is operating below the radar, a lot of people don’t know the UK is a gaming leader.
We are a powerhouse. But we are hiding our light under a bushel, we have a Hollywood in the UK but are hiding it, through a defensive policy framework. A lot of industry participants are focused on the downside [the layoffs].
We have a skills crisis because we haven’t built a Just-in-time (JIT) skills pipeline. In addition to that our industry is not very diverse.
Question 2 – How do we build the JIT strategy? (Nick Poole)
We need a long term and a short-term strategy.
We are currently lobbying govt. to build a creative GCSE. This would create an environment of creativity.
We’ve had 30 years of success for the future, we now need to put long-term plans in place – education, supply chain, and finance – for the industry. We have gaming talent, hotbed of creativity, and progressive IP regulation.
Question 3 – How can the UK maintain its edge over other regions? (Nick Poole)
By celebrating the unique advantages and strengths of the UK gaming industry within the global space.
Question 4 – How do companies attract investment? (Nick Poole)
By growing investor confidence through real transparency. For the next big games, we should balance the trade-off between timelines and cost to build these games, while showing revenue growth.
We should also show different ways of making money rather than putting all your eggs in one basket e.g. we are going to release GTA 6 and do nothing else.
We need to diversify; look for other opportunities to not only sell games upfront. e.g other income could be GTA online – so we can show ongoing streams of revenue while still highlighting the creative aspects of game developments.
Question 5 – What’s happening in the mobile space?
George Jijiashvili:
There’s been only one way to download games through the App store, but because of the latest EU regulation there would now be multiple ways. We need to have many routes to the player.
Nick Poole:
Ukie is focused on creating a positive environment for the game industry. Our concern is overregulation, especially as games become more like social media network.
Question 6 – Do you have a strong view of AI in the games industry?
George Jijiashvili:
I would love to see games as experiments for AI. I would also love to see companies use AI to develop new games.
Nick Poole:
You would not lose your job to AI; you would lose your job to the person who is good at AI.
The UK’s strength is IP and telling stories, and I am yet to see an AI that would create that.
What the industry needs is a skilled and diverse talent base, we need policy framework that is for games and by games, we need to do everything we can to tell the story of what the UK video games industry is about; people don’t know the games from the UK.
We are trying to grow the UK gaming industry by putting more public money in. We are engaging with the govt. for bigger investments for enabling the gaming industry.
Session 6 – Keynote - AI and the Future of Creativity and Work
Cameron Adams, Co-Founder and CPO of Canva, took the Keynote stage at London Tech Week to discuss the transformative potential impact AI could have on creativity and work.
His key message was that AI would enhance human creative work and not replace it.
He emphasized that AI can serve as a catalyst for creative ideas, assisting in tasks like content generation, visual design, and even music composition. However, he was quick to point out that human creativity remains indispensable, providing the unique perspectives and taste that AI cannot replicate.
“Embracing AI will allow creatives to bring their visions to life faster, enabling them to achieve higher levels of innovation and artistry”
He also addressed the concerns surrounding AI adoption, such as data privacy and the fear of job displacement. He stressed that ethical development and implementation are paramount to ensure AI benefits society optimally, without compromising human values.
I liked his comment that despite what AI can do, we still need to bring context. Cameron asked an interesting question: is society ready for the change that AI brings?
Canva has been a pioneer in integrating AI into its platform. It launched a suite of AI features called Magic Studio in October 2023, to empower users, which have been used 6.5 billion times. These advancements have begun to contribute significantly to Canva's user growth, solidifying its position as a leading design platform.
In conclusion, AI presents a promising future for creativity and work, but its successful integration will depend on striking a delicate balance between technology and human values.
As Adams noted, “AI will enhance, and not replace human creativity”.
Closing Thoughts – The UK Tech Outlook
The UK tech industry possesses immense potential, with strengths in fintech, biotech, healthcare, entertainment, and creativity. To fully capitalize on these strengths, the government should prioritize making the UK the most attractive destination for building tech products, startups, and businesses.
This involves creating a supportive environment for talent acquisition and reducing barriers to building and scaling businesses (read more here), listing on the London stock exchange, and providing a progressive regulatory framework, particularly for AI.
Beyond London, the UK boasts thriving innovation clusters in various regions. Fintech hubs are concentrated in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol, and Leeds, while semiconductor clusters are found in South Wales, Cambridge, and the Central Belt of Scotland. The Golden Triangle, encompassing London, Oxford, and Cambridge, is a renowned biotech hub.
By leveraging these regional strengths and fostering a conducive environment for innovation, the UK can provide equitable growth across the region, add another $1 trillion to the value of its tech industry, and solidify its position as a global tech leader.
It can be done.
Closing Thoughts – On London Tech Week 2024
My experience at London Tech Week 2024 was incredibly enriching. The event was a hub of learning, pitching, and networking. I particularly enjoyed the sessions I attended on Africa, Gaming, and Canva, which all showcased the transformative power of AI.
Beyond these, the event covered a wide range of topics, from healthcare to entrepreneurship, sports, fintech, and funding. Workshops on storytelling and personal branding provided valuable insights for attendees.
The companion app was a useful tool for navigation and networking. I received several connection requests during the event. The only improvement I would recommend to the organizers is to record the sessions and make them accessible via YouTube or the app. Additionally, more resources and opportunities for students and those seeking tech jobs could have been facilitated. Given the presence of both corporations and startups, creating dedicated career networking spaces or workshops could have fostered stronger connections between talent and potential employers.
If you're interested in technology, I highly recommend attending London Tech Week next year. To make the most of your time, carefully review the schedule beforehand and identify specific sessions and individuals you would want to engage with. Given the event's scale, selectivity and efficiency are key.
Good luck!
There you have it.
If you enjoyed this article I have written other career articles, product articles, and book reviews.
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Thanks for reading and bye for now.
Nero
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