Last night, IT Pro was joined by sister site Alphr and selected industry guests to celebrate our respective birthdays.
IT Pro is 10 next month, while Alphr has just celebrated its first birthday. And what a party it was (You can see all the pictures from the event here). Thank you very much to HP for sponsoring what was an amazing celebratory event.
"In the UK, every 13 weeks or so, every office absorbs around 400,000 office printers. Of which, probably 50 per cent of those are using technology that consumes so much energy. We have technology that uses one sixth of the energy and is 10 times as fast," said Phil Oakley, HP's counry manager for Print.
"The important thing here is not the picture of the product, but what you can do with it. And how you can reinvest the money you've saved and the energy you haven't consumed. That's a transformation."
He continued: "That's what, for me, is a start-up mentality. It's about how you take something, re-invent it and address things in a completely different way. We hope you will think about HP in a different way [in the future] in terms of how we innovate with print technology and technology."
The event it wasn't just about celebrating our own achievements. We also wanted to celebrate what the industry has achieved.
A decade is a long time in any industry. No more so than in the often blink-and-you'll-miss-it world of technology. And so much has happened since IT Pro's launch that we're honoured to showcase some of those events in issue zero of our 1/10/100 magazine, which has been jointly and lovingly co-created with Alphr. You can find an online version of IT Pro's content here while Alphr's brilliant articles can be found here.
It's our best content and it was great to look back with fondness at some of the articles we published about new fangled devices that people thought would never take off in business such as the iPhone. How wrong we all were!
"So much has happened in the 10 years since our launch and we can't wait for the next 10 years and what they will bring. We're passionate about everything we cover, but we're particularly looking forward to ramping up our coverage of diversity in tech/business issues and start-ups and innovation," said Maggie Holland, group editor of Cloud Pro and IT Pro and editorial director, B2B, at Dennis Publishing.
"Talking of innovation, I want to thank HP - perhaps the world's largest start-up - for being our sponsor for this event and our special magazine and helping to turn our celebratory vision into a reality.
"Like HP - which celebrated 40 and 50 years of Labs innovation in 2006 and 2016 respectively - IT Pro has evolved over the years to ensure it remains relevant to its readership and changing industry demands. And we'll continue to do just that, fueled by a thirst for knowledge and the excitement of not always knowing just what direction the tech world may take next. "
Celebrating other successes
The 1/10/100 event was also an opportunity to recognise the great achievements of the industry. In particular, start-ups and diversity.
Firstly, we wanted to acknowledge innovation by giving an award to our favourite start-up.
That honour went to SAM Labs, which is doing amazing things to get kids (and adults too) more interested in technology by making it as easy to code as it is to build something out of Lego.
We all know that innovation is the lifeblood of any organisation and vital to current and future success. The competition to crown our start-up award winner was incredibly tough. The UK has a really vibrant and rich start-up scene and it's a shame we couldn't give everyone an award.
But SAM Labs ultimately won because it's a fantastic London-based start-up that just recently secured additional funding to help take its vision of empowering everyone to play their role in the IoT to the next level.
To quote directly from SAM Labs' website: "Our mission is to give everyone the tools and skills to build and shape the future of the Internet of Things. Yes, that includes you! We want inventors of all ages to discover what is possible when given the powers of engineering, electronics, coding and making in a way that is fun, easy to understand and powerful."
Joachim Horn, CEO and founder of SAM Labs was at the event to collect the award.
"The first event I ever presented the prototypes of SAM at was an HP event with a hardware club. I was just starting the KickStarter campaign based on the weird idea I'd had for a prototype that I though no-one would actually want. But the reception I got at this event was so tremendous that I decided to carry on with the campaign. We were looking for 50,000 in funding and we actually got 125,000.
"I'm very happy to win this award. Before we [became a company] I had all these months where I was just this normal person doing these weird things that no one understood. Even my parents were asking me why I wasn't getting a job at a proper' company but I just carried on. So winning awards is nice as it allows you to have more people on your journey and shows you that people actually understand what you're doing. That validation means more than you think it does. It's very important."
Read more of our extensive coverage of innovation and start-ups.
Shining a light on diversity
A diverse workplace is a successful workplace. Every one of us is different but we are also united in our uniqueness. That's why it remains incredibly important to champion diversity in not just the tech industry, but any industry.
There are many great minds doing equally great work here, yet still there's still room for us all to do our bit. We fully acknowledge some of the amazing people, however, we wanted to recognise someone we've identified as a rising star shining a light on diversity and its importance for us all;
Kayleigh Bateman, from Wearethecity is part of so many steering groups and advisory boards relating to women and diversity in tech, we have no idea where she finds the time! But find it she does and we wanted to show our appreciation for her historic contributions and spur her on to continue to ask the right questions, champion the right causes and seek out the best solutions.;
"I am overwhelmed to have been chosen for this award. I feel so honoured to have been recognised for driving diversity within the tech industry," Kayleigh said.
"It has been a pleasure highlighting so many wonderful individuals in the sector and working with so many passionate companies that all share the same mission to close the IT skills gap. Through the tireless work and efforts of many the dial on gender is beginning to move, but we still have a long way to go."
Read more of our extensive coverage of diversity here.
