Venturi's Voice: Technology | Leadership | Staffing | Career | Innovation

Oliver Cox is CTO and Chief Architect at EBI.AI An experienced and skilled technical leader with a proven track record in developing and implementing software solutions. Oliver has extensive experience of leading development teams in the delivery software projects and providing technical consultation on product development. Oliver is a supporter of cloud technologies, advocating the benefits of software and platform as a service and providing guidance on implementation. Focused in recent years on cognitive computing , machine learning and natural language processing Oliver helps businesses to design and build intelligent solutions. EBI.AI is a platform that makes AI and your job easier. You can buy and build your AI assistant with EBI.AI helping to steer it. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Oliver to discuss the realities of working for a startup that exists within a large corporation. As well as Olly's leadership style and the biggest learnings on his career journey.

Rich Cassidy is head of People and Delivery at Caution Your Blast Ltd Rich's ultimate goal is for all everybody he works with, both within Caution You Blast and our client teams, to come to work feeling excited and supported to get stuck in, to be able to do an effective day's work, have a fun time while doing so, and work on things that make a positive difference to people's lives. He has over ten years’ experience in design and tech consulting with a focus on public sector and non-profits. Having grown and supported teams in both the public and private sectors, he brings a deep understanding of how to create the conditions and culture that enables teams of designers, researchers, developers, and policymakers to work together and deliver incredible work and outcomes. Caution Your Blast is a leading digital products and services practice, creating some of the UK's most innovative digital solutions, then using these skills and experience to provide expert consultancy to clients. CYB is a team of only senior digital experts, each with specialist knowledge in specific areas of digital. Combined, this enables them to deliver some of the most exciting digital products and services, focussed on their main target of supporting social good in society. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Rich to discuss the impact a great culture can have on a business and how Rich and his team have nurtured their culture at Caution Your Blast to make a positive difference to people's lives, both inside and outside the business.

Mattia Campolese is Head of Software Engineering at Zopa. He's an Engineering Lead and Mobile Apps Development Evangelist with 10+ years of experience. He has been focusing on developing end-to-end solutions for multiple types of organisations across several industries that include finance, banking, media, travel, transport and manufacturing. After leading the Mobile Engineering community in HSBC across several locations to analyse, plan, develop and release apps consumed by 15+ million active users, he is now overseeing the Front End Engineering Stack in Zopa, helping the business in its scale growth. Zopa is a London-based digital bank fintech company, offering personal loans, car finance, credit cards, savings and peer-to-peer investments, all managed online. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Mattia to chat about Mattia's methods to scale the business, and some of the key learnings throughout his career that have helped him develop and form his leadership style.

Alex Brims is CTO at Lickd, the first commercial music licencing platform. Alex is a Development Team Leader, Coder, Software Architect, or System Admin. He has 15 years of wide ranging experience and a dedication to constantly improving his knowledge & skills. He has scaled systems to handle hundredfold increases in load, successfully modernised legacy codebases, architected and built large software systems from scratch, and built and led several highly successful teams His main interest is music and has always aimed for jobs in the music industry. Being involved in the use of technology to empower & provide services for musicians & songwriters is my key mission in his work. Lickd is a new and innovative tech startup that aims to disrupt the music licensing industry for good by creating the world’s first pre-cleared, commercial music licensing solution for online video creators. Before now, licensing music was for professionals and traditional media only. Production companies making tv shows and adverts hire a music supervisor and give them the length of the production to source and clear the music. Well, today, the whole world has a production company in their pocket and an incredibly generous commissioning editor in YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or perhaps, in the case of a brand or an agency, your very own website. By working with major and independent labels and publishers alike, Lickd will provide a simple, mobile friendly, one-stop shop for you to search and license your favourite music directly into your video, wherever you want it to be broadcast online. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Alex to discuss the changing world of online streaming and how this affects the technology space, and how Lickd have developed the firs commercial music licencing platform.

DCX is a modern-day acceleration agency. They exist to offer brands a versatile partner to tackle complex business, marketing, and digital challenges. DCX is part of the Paragon group. Paragon DCX has been around for over twenty years in different guises. They are the coming-together of globally-renowned creative, data, and customer communications powerhouses; digital experience specialists; marketing automation rock-stars; and mobile application, digital product and platform gurus. They have delivered award-winning work, and transformed marketing and business for brands such as Comic Relief, Coventry Building Society, Pepper Financial Services, Greene King, Goldman Sachs, Great Western Railway, Aviva, Bupa, as well as many more. As a digital native throughout his career, Keith has led digital infrastructure programmes across businesses in the public and private sectors. With the last 12 years spent building the highly successful agency ORM, Keith now leads our technology strategy, ensuring we are providing the most powerful platform solutions to our clients. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Keith to discuss his career journey in tech, the service ORM provides and how Keith has helped scaled up ORM from £500,000 turnover to £10million.

Christoph Neuhaus is the Founder at Wertfaktor, based in Hamburg. Before this, Christoph was a senior associate at Corporate Finance partners CFP and Founders Investments. He bears a masters degree in business administration and a degree in media communications. Wertfaktor was developed by Dr. Alexander Ey and Christoph in Hamburg - with the aim of helping real estate owners in their third phase of life to achieve more financial freedom. As an innovative financial service provider, it enables owners to convert part of their real estate assets into cash assets. They do not have to give up the further use of their residential property, retain full control over their property and even benefit from a future increase in value During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Christoph to discuss the story of how the business was founded, the challenges Christoph faces when hiring, and the future of Wertfaktor Immobilien.

Cameron Millard is Lead Software Developer at Shopblocks. Shopblocks is a website platform enabling businesses of all sizes to create bespoke websites and online shops without the limitations of templates or the expense of developers. Shopblocks gives you the tools to manage and make changes to your website, without the need to code. Cameron's passion for technology spawned from an early age to building websites at school, and becoming a developer straight out of university, and since then has developed his own leadership style, leading his team of engineers at Shopblocks. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Cameron to discuss recent developments in technology and if they're always the best option for engineers, they also spoke about the dunning-kruger effect in leadership, and how to continue to learn from new developers coming into the industry to help you as a leader and developer.

James Gosling is Engineering Manager at McLaren Applied. James is an experienced Software & Analytics Engineering Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. Skilled in Agile Delivery, Requirements Analysis, Testing, Technical Project Leadership and Application Architecture. Strong software delivery professional with a Master of Engineering (MEng) focused in Computer Software Engineering from The University of Sheffield. For over 30 years McLaren Applied have led the digital transformation of motorsport through electronics and data systems, and now also develop innovative technologies that drive positive, sustainable change in automotive, transport, and beyond. During this Podcast episode, Ben sits down with James to discuss leadership styles and how James has adapted to leading teams of teams. They also spoke about some of the challenges that McLaren Applied has faced when applying their Formula 1/Automotive technology to real-world situations.

Federico Cicchi is Head of Software Development at XYZ Reality and responsible for dedicated engineering teams, driving complex milestone deliveries and dynamic technical solutions for the world's first engineering grade AR device Federico is a highly qualified Software Engineer with 22 years of software development experience, covering system architecture design, robotics, artificial intelligence, AAA games and augmented reality. He has become an expert in translating system requirements into concrete design and anticipating and resolving performance issues. XYZ Reality is the UK start-up behind HoloSite and The Atom, the world’s first Engineering-Grade Augmented Reality company. On a mission to eliminate 2D in its entirety and bring an industry in decline back to life, XYZ Reality is enabling construction workers around the world to build from holograms and it’s making a huge dent on the 77% of megaprojects that overrun globally. Construction workers can now view and position design models on site to 5mm accuracy and make real-time decisions in the field. The ground-breaking technology also significantly eliminates errors out of tolerance and reduces the time taken from set-out to build. Named the UK's 3rd hottest start-up and one of the Top 3 construction technology firms, XYZ Reality is focused on making the lives of all construction workers easier by democratising the skill-set, boosting productivity and closing a skills-gap. During this Podcast episode, Ben sits down with Federico to discuss his career in technology, how Federico's approach to leadership and communication differs across different cultures. They also spoke about some of the ground-breaking technological advancements XYZ Reality is working on - bringing digitalization into the traditional construction industry and truly disrupting this space.

Doug McConchie is Head of Data and Analytics at HSO. Doug is a highly experienced management consultant specialising in the transformation of data into business insights and value. He works within the IOT, Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management community. He helps organisations better acquire, manage, measure, report & analyse their data, leveraging insights to improve their performance. His cutting edge work with well known businesses and public sector institutions equips him with a wealth of experience. He has advised and worked with some of the world’s best known organisations including: BP, Credit Agricole, Deutsche Telecom, ExxonMobil, Gartner, Hitachi, Mars, Ministry of Defence, NHS, RBS, RSA, SAB Miller, Sony, and Shell, among many others. His 20+ years consulting expertise is rooted in the practicalities of making solutions work at the operational level and developing new ways of harnessing data for commercial advantage. His engagements currently cover the development of improved Operating Models and building Analytics Centres of Excellence. He is also working on the development of IOT data strategies. Additionally, he is guiding a number of clients on their current Business Intelligence capabilities and impacts on business success. His book: “Data Strategy - Selling the Value” was published in May 2021. You can purchase the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B095JS79P9/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_TJ0AZ8NWQ2VA6X7QRJE8 During this Podcast episode, Ben sits down with Doug to discuss how to extract the true value of data, how the world of data has changed over time, how Doug keeps up with developments and what resources he relies on; and of course, Doug's new book!