OK, we didn’t quite make September for the eleventh event in this year’s #CyberFest but better late than never. We had started talking about putting on a cyber 101 boot camp way back in the spring yet dates didn’t work for us and the Digital Catapult until the end of November. It has been and gone now.
It took a fair amount of organising, finding suitable delegates and mentors who could commit the time, finding a location in Newcastle and bringing it all together. I was quite nervous about how it would turn out but I should not have worried. It was an excellent event, one which will give me a few blogs and one which we will definitely put on again next year.
I had originally planned to go along to welcome everyone and then leave them to it but then I thought about CyberNorth and where we are with the cluster. The event was for early stage companies and that is exactly where we are. CyberNorth is a startup business and so I attended the whole day to learn about how to develop and grow.
I’ll talk about the format of the day in later blogs but for now will settle with talking about the elevator pitch. Katie, who lead the event, asked us all to introduce ourselves with a short pitch about our business. Our homework during lunch was to refine it, make it more punchy and positieve. The afternoon session got underway with us introducing ourselves with our all new elevator pitch.
Here is mine:
Every threat is an opportunity. Cyber security is a global threat and an enormous opportunity. It’s a $5 trillion annual spend opportunity and we are well placed to take advantage. We want a piece of that action.
CyberNorth is the cyber security cluster for the North East. We are working to grow the industry across the region to position it as a great place to do cyber security business. We are working to grow jobs, highly skilled, well paid and interesting jobs.
We’re doing this in three ways:
- Make a lot of noise to raise awareness and build belief. We do this through events culminating in #CyberFest, the North East’ biggest cyber festival during September
- Develop a mechanism to help existing business to grow in a collaborative yet competitive framework, like an online retail park
- Create new businesses by developing a cyber innovation centre across the region along the lines of LORCA.
Get on board, be part of CyberNorth!
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 