green growth

 
We've been busy this week filling great jobs in the fastest growing high tech companies and showcasing the cleantech which will manage the renewable power grids of the future.

The first session on Friday was more like a careers fair than a meeting, with a bell occasionally chiming as a different company stood up to tell people all about their great job opportunities. Café Networking for recruitment saw presentations from ARM, Cambridge Silicon Radio, PA Consulting,  RealVNC, Red Gate, TTP, and Velocix. The audience was mostly technology job-seekers but other hi-techs chatting and handing out cards included Adder, Cambridge Broadband, Wellcome Trust and our kind event sponsors ECM Selection. We saw a lot of post-docs from the Universities of Anglia Ruskin and Cambridge popping over, as well as people coming in for the day from Cranfield, East Anglia, Open University, and Loughborough. Quite a lot of folks just turned up on the door and wrote themselves a ticket, which was fine for this session since we quite understand that people may not want to be visibly interested in their next opportunity! The good news is that there is plenty of work to go around with over 900 jobs up on the website, of which over 450 are directly from company members who are all keen to hire people and get on with growing their high-technology exports.

On Monday we hosted a very different crowd to talk about Smart Grid, the cleantech needed to manage our energy grids better as renewal sources of energy like solar, tide and wind start being used and homes and devices get better at scavenging energy from the environment around them.

AlertMe, ARM, Rockport Capital, TTP presented with pitches from Amiho, Energy Reducing Products, Sentec. ARM reflected on the success of their ubiquitous microchip designs in introducing ever more devices into consumer homes, and the need to improve those devices efficiency as well as the network to meet carbon reduction challenges like the European 20-20-20 targets. Consumer home (30%) and personal transport (17%) add up to almost half of energy use in the UK, as AlertMe pointed out, and connecting the microcontrollers around the home allows us to understand the true cost of our habits, as their system can pick out the characteristic "signatures" of the washing machine, fridge etc and track usage. Rockport Capital invited ideas by September 30th for the Ecomagination challenge they are helping GE run, but pointed out that consumer backlash as accurate modern meters correctly assign costs can actually damage a company even if the technology works. There is amazing amount of old equipment out there in the energy grid, and plenty of evidence that it is not going to go away. TTP pointed out that much of the investment was actually going into grid management a long way from the consumer, as the United States struggles to maintain an ageing and failure-prone grid.

We had people flying in from the United States and Holland specifically to participate, so clearly this is an area where people think Cambridge ideas are likely to change the world.

Both these meetings brought together over 100 people, many new to the network. It's great to be helping people grow in Cambridge.

Photograph by Howard Guest

Comments

[Glenn Hoy]

One of the best networking events I have ever attended and at my age that's a lot!. Concise, dynamic and relevant. The bar has been set for other Cafe Networking events- I'll be there. Glenn, Just Jobs Cambridgeshire

[Moncler Outlet]

While there are a number of issues with Righthaven's business model, two in particular are worth mentioning. First, Righthaven's suits appear to ignore substantial fair use defenses (and other defenses) that many of its targets have to the re-posting of news articles. Second, Righthaven's complaints typically include a demand for not only proper copyright remedies (such as damages and injunctive relief), but also a demand that the defendant's Internet domain be seized and given to Righthaven. This claim is not authorized by the Copyright Act and raises serious First Amendment issues. Righthaven's attempt to claim the defendant's Internet domain solely because of an allegedly infringing posting is plainly a terror tactic designed to force a settlement that is unjustified in many cases.