Tech Events at St Nicholas Church, Bristol

with Daniel Duma (AI entrepreneur and engineer, ) · Emily Armstrong (Head of People, Culture and Operations, Aer Studios) · Joel Gibbard MBE (Co-founder and CEO, Open Bionics) + 4 more

Morning two of the Brazen Summit: what AI is doing to work, careers and infrastructure. Dr Daniel Duma opens with a keynote on what agentic AI can do today. A panel with Emily Armstrong (Aer Studios), Joel Gibbard MBE (Open Bionics) and Caelum Rosenkranz (Google Cloud) asks how the next generation of tech leaders gets experience if AI takes the entry-level tasks. Kirstine Dale (Met Office Chief AI Officer), Su Crighton (KPMG), Andrew Ward (nLighten) and Katie Gallagher OBE then cover what works beyond pilots. Dame Dawn Childs, CEO of nLighten, closes on sovereignty and compute. 09:30 to 12:30 at St Nicholas Church. Paid; no face price published. Why go: the Met Office and KPMG speakers talk about AI in production, and a closing session on UK compute capacity is rare in Bristol. Best for CTOs, heads of people and anyone planning AI hiring or spend.

with Satish Kumar (Peace walker, ecologist and founder, Schumacher College) · Andrew Garrad CBE (Chair, Severn Estuary Commission) · Janine Michael (Chief Executive, Centre for Sustainable Energy) + 3 more

Day 3 of the Brazen Summit looks at the West of England's energy future. A Switched On panel asks what Bristol has delivered as a green city and what the regional spatial plan must get right for clean power by 2046, with Andrew Garrad CBE, Janine Michael, Prof Phil Taylor, Ann Cousins and Hannah Spungin. A second panel covers community-owned energy: battery storage, flexibility, data and AI forecasting, with speakers from the South West Net Zero Hub, WECA, Retrofit West and National Grid. Satish Kumar closes with an on-stage interview. 09:30 to 12:30 at St Nicholas Church. Paid; no face price published.

with Tilly Lockey (Keynote, ) · Guy Singh-Watson (Founder, Riverford) · Gaynor Coley (, ) + 5 more

Day 4 of the Brazen Summit, aimed at founders, scale-up leaders and the people who back them: growing without diluting what the company is for, and getting ready to exit. Tilly Lockey opens with a keynote. Guy Singh-Watson, founder of Riverford, is then in conversation with Gaynor Coley on building an impact-led business on his own terms. Simon Davies, Chief Test Pilot at Vertical Aerospace, follows with what it takes to design, test and certify a new aircraft, and the scaling lessons that travel beyond aerospace. The morning closes on first-hand accounts of acquisitions, mergers and IPOs from Nick Sturge MBE, Heather Frankham MBE DL, George Sandilands and Lauren Crawley-Moore of the London Stock Exchange. Paid; no face price published. Why go: the closing panel is four people who have actually been through an exit, which Bristol rarely gets in one room. Best for founders past product-market fit and their investors.

with Liam Maxwell (Former UK Government Chief Technology Officer, ) · Ric Hill (, Ghyston) · Emily Hill (, Ghyston) + 5 more

The opening morning of the Brazen Summit: four sessions for senior technology and business leaders on where technology investment is paying off and where it is not. It starts with the launch of Ghyston's State of Tech Leadership Report 2027. Ric Hill and Emily Hill present the findings, then a panel chaired by Sam Deacon, with Sue Turner OBE, Richard Potter and Tom Heath, tests them against practice. The second half turns to execution: a fireside chat between Ric Hill and Mike Whitehead on modernising legacy systems without stopping the business, then Liam Maxwell, the UK government's first Chief Technology Officer, closing with a keynote on risk, regulation and resilience. 09:30 to 12:30 at St Nicholas Church. Paid; techSPARK has not published a face price. Why go: this is the CTO and board room of the festival, and Maxwell is a first-hand account of running technology at state scale. Best for technology leaders, CIOs and non-executives.