BAGS ARE PACKED! WE’RE HEADING TO WHERE BUSINESS GETS DONE 

The With team is on the road again!  Between now and Web Summit in November, we’ll be out and about meeting clients, journalists, founders, investors and the innovators building what’s next. We’ve got directors in Cannes, others at Infosecurity Europe and Money 20/20 while I’ve opted for Med-Tech Expo and then, as a London & Partners PR partner,  all of us will be at London Tech Week. 

London Tech Week has become a permanent fixture in the With events calendar for good reason. I’ve been to the event most years since it started and it remains one of the best showcases of innovation anywhere – from the earliest sparks of ideas to fully funded scale-ups preparing to change entire industries.

And despite all the conversations we now have online, there’s still nothing quite like being in the room. You can learn a huge amount from a founder’s pitch deck or LinkedIn profile, but events like this remind you how much faster trust, ideas and opportunities move when people meet face to face. Some of the most valuable conversations happen completely by accident – standing beside someone waiting for coffee, pausing at the same stand, or being introduced by someone you bumped into five minutes earlier.

That’s one of the reasons I always go early on the first morning. Before the crowds properly build, there’s a quieter window where you can actually move around the stands, spend time with the people behind the tech instead of just rushing between sessions. It’s slightly chaotic, but in the best way – the kind of atmosphere where discoveries happen naturally.

This year, as ever, I’ll be ricocheting around the health tech spaces, looking to connect with healthcare-focused innovators and the people tackling problems that have been underserved, underfunded or simply ignored for too long.

Thinking back to this time last year, Day 1 was all about discovery and chance conversations. I went in looking to connect with medtech and found some incredible people and innovations changing how we’ll all experience healthcare in the future.

I spent time learning more about the A.Catalyst Network that AstraZeneca has brought together, discovered the NHS Innovation Accelerator programme – something I realised I hadn’t known nearly enough about – and met founders building genuinely impactful devices and solutions.

Women’s health, in particular, dominated conversations and rightly stole the stage. Companies like Daye and Samphire Neuroscience were impossible to ignore, reshaping conversations around healthcare areas that historically haven’t received enough attention or investment.

And as always with events like this, some of the best insights came between sessions. There’s a lot to be learned standing in the coffee queue. One of my favourite conversations last year was a chance chat with an HR tech founder about the impact of AI on employee experience. 

I also remember walking past queues for free body scans from a preventative health-tech start up and deciding not to join them – a decision I slightly regret now that the same company reportedly has a six-month waiting list.

That’s what London Tech Week does well. It’s not just a showcase for ideas; it’s a place where business actually gets done. Partnerships begin there. Media relationships start there. Investors discover founders there. You get a glimpse of what’s coming before everyone else catches up.

So, bring on this year’s conversations, discoveries and unexpected introductions. I’m excited to see what innovations emerge this time around – especially in healthcare, where the next breakthrough often starts as a quick demo on a crowded stand or a conversation over bad conference coffee.