CW Unplugged is an initiative designed to inspire young entrepreneurs, engineers and technology leaders to come forward and share their insights informally.
We bring together innovative start-ups, impact investors, designers and engineers who won’t be scared to ask the tough questions and discuss solutions to enable tech for good.
CW Unplugged events are renowned for attracting passionate individuals from the tech scene – so they are well attended for the networking alone. They are also a great catalyst for ambitious initiatives. For example, CW launched a year-long Digital Inclusion campaign which seeks to explore issues or challenges surrounding gender equality and accessibility.
We want to be a network that appeals not just to industry leaders but also to the next generation of technology engineers and entrepreneurs. - Abhi Naha, CW
New in 2019:
Last year our programme of events took us through the four elements as we tackled the issues in CW Unplugged: Tech for the Environment
We carefully selected our audience to answer the challenges that were posed by the start up companies.
Thank you to our series sponsor Arm. Their technology is at the heart of a computing and connectivity revolution that is transforming the way people live and businesses operate. Our advanced, energy-efficient processor designs have enabled intelligent computing in more than 125 billion chips. Over 70 percent of the world’s population are using Arm technology, which is securely powering products from the sensor to the smartphone to the supercomputer. Arm is committed to ensuring our work helps meet the United Nations Global Goals. Through our international partner ecosystem and philanthropic collaborations, we’re enabling technology to deliver the 2030 Global Goals agenda.
We’re also very excited to have announced our collaboration with our event series partner UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC). They believe that there is a major opportunity for the biodiversity and tech sectors to work together to confront the challenges facing our world’s biodiversity. It is critical that we explore how we can harness technology and data to ensure that better decisions are made so we can have a positive and sustainable impact for both people and planet.
CW are proud to be making our contribution to work towards the Sustainable Development Goals through our events and partnerships with companies that will help deliver the 2030 Global Goals Agenda.
u-blox, a global leader in wireless communication and positioning, also supported the CW Unplugged series. Their products and services are used by billions of people every day, and they understand that with this great power comes great responsibility. This is why they are always looking for ways to ensure that every part of their operations is run as sustainably as possible. They take great care to maintain a sustainable business model that looks after the interests of our customers, shareholders, the environment and the communities they operate in. Underpinning this aim are their five pillars of corporate social responsibility.
CW Unplugged history:
Championed by CW Special Interest Group champions and key partners, it was agreed that CW Unplugged events would strive to:
- Attract young technologists and entrepreneurs under 35
- Take place after work to accommodate young professionals who struggle to take time off during the working day
- Be creative in their format
The first CW Unplugged event series focused on the highs and woes of start-up culture which was kindly hosted and sponsored by Mills & Reeve at their Cambridge and London office. Speakers included Stan Karpenko, Founder and CEO of Give Vision, the start–up whose game changing software enables smart glasses to act as eyes for blind people; Steve Marsh, Founder and CEO of GeoSpock Ltd, a leader in creating databases for handling extreme scale up data in real time; Vishal Chatrath, former Chief Business Officer of VocalIQ, the speech-based artificial intelligence start-up; and David Excell, Co-Founder and CTO of Featurespace, a world leader in Adaptive Behavioural Analytics for fraud and risk management. Find out more here.
In 2018, we ran the following event series looking at specific topics in the UN Sustainability Goals:
- FemTech - View event page or read the blog.
- Tech for Autism - View event page or read the blog.
- Tech for Water - View event page or read the blog.
- Megacities - View event page