Open Tech Calendar

N.B. As we are co-hosting this event with Product Forge and Shelter Scotland, space at the venue will be limited. If you can't make it, please remember to amend your RSVP accordingly.

EVENT DETAILS

The theme of this Meetup will be smart city technology, social housing, and homelessness. We'll explore how the IoT is being used to make social housing smarter and more efficient for tenants, and how it could be used to help reduce homelessness by offering assistance to those in need.

It's important to remember that people from all walks of life can experience difficulties with meeting costs associated with putting a roof over their heads. Anyone can suddenly be affected, often as a result of circumstances that are beyond their control.

Charities such as Shelter help millions of people every year who are struggling with bad housing or homelessness through offering advice, support and legal services. The organisation also campaigns relentlessly to achieve their vision of a safe, secure, affordable home for everyone. One of the many ways Shelter helps those in need is by offering advice about social housing.

Social housing is normally provided by councils and not-for-profit organisations (such as housing associations). A key function of social housing is to provide accommodation that is affordable to people on low incomes. Limits, set by law, are placed on rent increases so that rents are kept affordable. In Scotland qualifying tenants can obtain a Scottish secure tenancy agreement (SST) or a Short Scottish secure tenancy agreement (SSST) that offers rights to Scottish tenants.

Sponsors for this event are Shelter (Scotland), Product Forge, Codebase, and Nautilus Beam.


18:00 REGISTRATION

18:15 - 18:20 WELCOME

18:20 - 18:25 Simon Montford (WEB3//IOT)

Open Forum; members are invited to make announcements, share news, seek project collaborators, recruit talent, promote their IoT events, and request topics for future Meetups.

18:25 - 18:30 Allan Lloyds (Product Forge)

Product Forge will be operating a hackathon that will start immediately after the IoT Meetup. Allan will explain how it will bring together student designers, developers, makers and marketers as well as graduates, freelancers and entrepreneurs. The hackathon theme will be homelessness in partnership with Shelter Scotland.

18.30 - 18:50 Adam Lang (Shelter Scotland)

Shelter Scotland is a charity that works to alleviate the distress caused by homelessness and bad housing. Adam will talk about all the great work they do, and will share their plans for the upcoming homelessness campaign.

18:50 - 19:10 Cyril Dyer (IDE International)

A brief description of this talk will be added soon.

19:10 - 19:30 Simon Scerri Taylor (Arqiva)

Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) is a type of wireless network designed to allow long range communications at a low bit rate, designed for machine-to-machine (M2M) networking environments. The deployment of LPWANs is enabling all kinds of connected devices, even those located in remote locations, to send and receive data. Simon will discuss the pros and cons of different LPWAN technologies, and will talk about their suitability for connecting devices for IoT applications. Arqiva is deploying the SIGFOX network in the UK, and will provide use cases in the context of Smart Cities and Social Housing.

19:30 - 19:50 DISCUSSION & Q&A


19:50 - 21:00 NETWORKING & DRINKS

Code of Conduct:
Be nice.