About the seminar

Tom Abram will use examples of the collection to illustrate the how the experience, ideas and opinions of those in the industry illuminate key issues covering technology and personal breakthroughs. Historian Sam Blaxland will present his analysis of the people and factors that helped the industry to flourish post WW2, touching on areas such as economy, education and diversity. John Carrington will look forward with a panel / audience discussion on how those kinds of insights might help us shape the future. Our panel includes entrepreneurs building business now, the BCS President and experts on STEM policy and education, reflecting our anticipation that issues might include skills shortage / development, transformational technologies, the investment climate and policy.

AIT captures the past to inspire the future through our online collection of stories of people in the great British success that is our Tech industries. Our oral histories complement the historic devices on display in the physical museums. See archivesit.org.uk.

For further details visit archivesit.org.uk/learning-from-history-reflections-on-past-and-future-of-the-british-it-industry .

About the speakers

• Dr Sam Blaxland is Post Doctoral Fellow and Tutor in History at the University of Swansea see www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/arts-and-humanities/history/blaxland-s .
• John Carrington is Chair of Trustees at AIT and founded the cellular telephone network Cellnet (now O2) in 1983.
• Dr Tom Abram is Director at AIT and started his career in the early 70s at Manchester, in research on real time digital signal processing.

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