WISE Conference 2018

Stimulate, Debate and Elevate

Great Minds Don’t Think Alike!
The Power of Women and Innovation

Our biggest ever conference!

Leading speakers from Amazon Web Services, Arm, BAE Systems, DSTL, Morsons, Network Rail, Thales, Siemens and University of Salford

We were very proud that the biggest WISE conference yet was held in the North in 2018, Year of Engineering and 100 years since women first got the vote. Held at The Lowry, Salford on 9 May, close to the home of the Pankhursts, our theme was innovation. New analysis by WISE estimates that only 9% of patents filed in the have any women in the team, compared to a global average of 30%. WISE CEO Helen Wollaston began and ended the day by invoking the spirit of Emmeline Pankhurst and the suffragettes. Stating it is "Deeds not words" that are needed to move the dial if we are to achieve the ambition of making the UK the world’s most innovative economy, Helen's five actions are...

• Nominate for the WISE Awards 2018 - Nominations now open, including new categories WISE Innovation and WISE Technician
• Register as role models on People Like Me. We need more “entrepreneur” types to inspire girls to become inventors
• Review your recruitment processes, particularly in tech roles, using the language of innovation and drop the acronyms!
• Challenge bias which sees a young man as “promising” and a young woman as “inexperienced”. If you hear it, see it or know it's happening, CALL IT OUT!
• Spread the word about WISE. Join us - Follow us.

Huge thanks go to conference sponsors Amazon, Arm, Cirrus Logic, GSK, Le Fevre Media, Morson Group, Siemens and Thales, partners Network Rail, BBC and University of Salford and to all the speakers, exhibitors and delegates who attended, for making it such a massive success!

Relive the buzz and excitement of the day via #WISEConference2018, as over 500 posts were sent across social media, reaching over 775,000 accounts!

See the photos from the day! - Conference presentations - Read the Press Release