What to expect from Climb 23 innovation festival in Leeds: Bird Lovegod

Have a look at the website, the staged agendas range from Ai to Zoo tech, this is a seriously happening happening with a Global deck of speakers and presenters and if you’re in business in Yorkshire, you might find it a fascinating and opportunistic few days away from the office.

I’ve always found the most exciting thing about events such as this is the primordial soup randomness of it, the way that chance encounters give rise to unique opportunities that simply couldn’t be predicted, engineered, or even imagined.

It’s the brilliance of in person events, now gratefully back, that means the person sipping coffee next to you might be the one who opens the door to a transformative new journey.

It’s the mixing of the entire commercial ecosystem in one place that really enables this to happen.

From the newest greenest startup founders to the gnarliest most weather beaten, been there done that, thrice exited four times burned out grey beards all in the same venue, all with their antennae up willing to speak to anyone and everyone.

The usual social and commercial class systems are null and void in such places.

The guy in jeans and a woollen jumper isn’t a bum hoping for a free plate of vol au vents, he’s the wealthiest Angel investor in the room.

You never know who anyone is, until you rock up and say hi, and that’s the joy and fun and pleasure of these events.

The next conversation could be a new friend, a new investor, someone who wants to buy your company or hire you or introduces you to a whole new melange of opportunities.

Pre-pandemic these events were the highlight of the year and it’s fantastic to see them back, and at such a scale, and such a cool venue.

There’s also about 30 roundtable workshops to participate in, and a couple of fringe events, a no code hackathon, and a drinks and networking after party that closes at midnight.

I’m also an invited speaker, which shows the kind of event this is, bold enough to invite completely wild cards into the pack.

I don’t know what I’m going to be speaking about yet, or when, or who with, and this is the brilliance of it, the openness, the acceptance and actual diversity of people who together enable the game of business to be played as it should be played.

Seriously, with amusement, professionally, with ease and a sense of fun, we’re in it for the long haul, and events such as Climb23 are a celebration of the game itself as much as anything.

Hope to see you there, I’ll be one of the ones chatting to whoever about whatever, and loving being out of the office and out of the ordinary for a couple of days.

Bird Lovegod is MD of Ethical Much.

For more information about Climb 23 or to book tickets, visit https://www.climb23.com/