<a href="https://www.fenews.co.uk/education/first-ever-newcastle-startup-day-inspires-the-next-generation/" target="_blank">FIRST EVER NEWCASTLE STARTUP DAY INSPIRES THE NEXT GENERATION – FE News</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<font color="#6f6f6f">FE News</font>

FIRST EVER NEWCASTLE STARTUP DAY INSPIRES THE NEXT GENERATION – FE News - FE News

<a href="https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiYWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZlbmV3cy5jby51ay9lZHVjYXRpb24vZmlyc3QtZXZlci1uZXdjYXN0bGUtc3RhcnR1cC1kYXktaW5zcGlyZXMtdGhlLW5leHQtZ2VuZXJhdGlvbi_SAQA?oc=5" target="_blank">FIRST EVER NEWCASTLE STARTUP DAY INSPIRES THE NEXT GENERATION</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<font color="#6f6f6f">FE News</font>

FIRST EVER NEWCASTLE STARTUP DAY INSPIRES THE NEXT GENERATION - FE News

University of Leeds

Ryton Comprehensive School

Plan Digital  -  Newcastle Startup Week  -  Founders' Friday  -  TRYBES

PLATFORM is a new, monthly event for 2024 from the organisers of the popular Newcastle Startup Week / UK Startup Week festivals & Founders' Friday events.

Come along to be inspired, learn about the latest opportunities to start or grow your business in the North East of England, meet & connect with entrepreneurs, business owners, funders, investors, potential collaborators & more.

PLATFORM

Founder, Event Producer & Growth Consultant

Building networks, empowering people & growing businesses.

Start & grow your business with our monthly PLATFORM events, annual Startup Week festival, weekly blogs, videos, podcasts, 1-2-1 coaching / mentoring programmes & consultancy services.

UK Startup Week

Established in 1994 with the aim of encouraging and supporting entrepreneurship, the North East BIC has created a unique community which fosters business success and inspires the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Their unique package of workspace, business support, events and a community spirit that champions business success has been at the heart of their ethos from day one and continues to be the golden thread that weaves their services together.

And it doesn’t stop there. As a not-for-profit social enterprise, they continually reinvest the money they make into launching new services and facilities to ensure the region’s businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs have the tools they need to succeed.

As a Business Adviser at the North East BIC, my role involves:

- providing advice, mentoring and hands on business planning to individuals in the Sunderland City Council area looking to start a business, those new to trading and in their first years of development
- providing advice, guidance and support to the North East BIC's tenants including brokerage and referrals to other business support and professionals
- helping to manage a startup and established business grant for businesses until March 2025

North East BIC

Business Adviser

In this role, my focus is on helping tech businesses in the North East of England & Yorkshire find the talent, funding / investment & connections they need to accelerate their growth.

Nigel Wright Recruitment

Senior Consultant - Tech Lead

Nigel Wright is the largest, multi-discipline regional recruitment business specialising in the North of England. It’s also Europe’s number one consumer sector & FMCG recruitment agency providing talent search across the UK & Europe.

Senior Consultant - IT / Tech

The Digital Advisory Board has been set up to enable a unique level of employer engagement & input into the design & delivery of Newcastle College’s digital qualifications, to help ensure it provides excellent education for students which fully meets the future employment needs of the local Digital business community.  The DAB comprises a representative cross section of small, medium & large local digital employers, along with senior staff from Newcastle College University Centre management team & digital delivery team.

Newcastle College

Digital Advisory Board Member

Helping to 'Grow the North East tech economy through collaboration, innovation, skills & noise' - my role was to help the Dynamo & Innovation SuperNetwork teams grow various sub-sector specialisms including Cyber, Digital Construction & Service Delivery Centres. This involved raising the profile of & encouraging more collaboration between Dynamo members, 1-2-1 business advice/support for SMEs & developing innovative new products or services for the region.

Dynamo North East

Engagement Manager

A collaborative space to enable social & structural change to advance issues of gender (& other categories of social difference) within entrepreneurship.

Gender and Entrepreneurship North East (GENE)

Advisory Board Member

ANGELFYSH was a loose collective of great people that really know brand because we’ve been there, done that & truly understand what it is to lead, develop & transform brands. A complete solution consultancy - we each played to our strengths with my particular passion being people-centred brand experiences & destinations.

ANGELFYSH.

Senior Consultant

The Helix Arts organisation works with artists, in partnership with other organisations, to create opportunities for people to participate in ambitious arts activity. It works across a range of art forms including visual arts, film-making, creative writing, graphic design, animation, street dance, music & DJing as well as photography, drama & textiles. It works with people of all abilities, of all ages.

Helix Arts

Board Trustee

Working across the North of England to encourage greater collaboration both within & between the 7 major tech cluster cities of Newcastle, Sunderland, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield & Hull, this role involved networking with & matchmaking talent, marketing & promoting the region to help attract greater inward investment & funding opportunities. Finally, I also distributed small amounts of seed funding to support innovative new events & programmes across the North of England.

Tech North

Community Engagement & Partnerships Manager

This role was focused on Sage Group plc's cloud-based accounting & payroll software for startups, small & micro businesses, Sage One. My role was to raise awareness, make connections & deepen engagement with new & existing customers in the UK & Ireland through a wide range of Inbound Marketing activities (social media, blogs, guides, videos, events & PR). As a key figure in the Sage One marketing team, I helped grow the number of paying subscriptions from 6,000 in 2012 to 100,000 by the end of 2015.

As part of my Sage One marketing activities I organised Sage's headline sponsorship of the Thinking Digital Conference in Gateshead for 3yrs in a row (2013, 2014 & 2015), MADE Festival 2014 in Sheffield, Makegood Festival for Creative Entrepreneurs 2014 in London & Sage's headline sponsorship of the Campus North co-working & event space in Newcastle when it opened its doors in 2014 which was renewed every year until it closed in 2018.

Sage

Inbound Marketing & Social Media Specialist

Shell LiveWIRE is a Shell Social Investment Programme that was recognised as ‘the UK’s biggest online community for young entrepreneurs aged 16-30’. My role there was hugely varied & involved:

•	Planning & overseeing all new content creation on the website
•	Writing & publishing news articles, business guides, blog posts & email newsletters
•	Acting as ‘Community Manager’ for the Shell LiveWIRE Discussion Forum & Social Network
•	Managing & analysing social media activity on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn & YouTube
•	Interviewing entrepreneurs like Wayne Hemingway & Michael Acton Smith (Moshi Monsters)
•	Making regular improvements to the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of the website
•	Weekly analysis & reporting using Google Analytics & Google Webmaster Tools
•	Managing new website developments & liaising with third party developers
•	Dealing with telephone & email enquiries from Shell LiveWIRE members & the media
•	Representing Shell LiveWIRE at external meetings & events throughout the UK
•	Giving regular presentations to audiences of young entrepreneurs & startups

Shell LiveWIRE

Web Development Executive

The aim of this website was to help promote training & skills development within the voluntary & community sector of the North East & Cumbria. With a searchable database of training courses & training providers, plus up-to-date news, events, case studies & useful resources, my role was that of web editor, marketing manager, researcher & line manager to another staff member. In 2008 we won the title of ‘Best Voluntary Sector Website’ at the North East Digital Awards 07/08 & I was a finalist in the Ward Hadaway / Community Foundation ‘Voluntary Sector Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2008’.

PNE Group

voluntaryskills.com Project Manager

During this time, Generator was a not-for-profit music development agency for Newcastle & the North of England. My role was to help organise & promote free music industry training, workshops, seminars, conferences & live events throughout the year, handle telephone/email enquiries, update websites & develop links with other music workers, businesses & organisations across the UK. During this time I was also working as a semi-professional DJ/producer, club promoter & record label owner with my critically-acclaimed music productions & remixes signed to several UK & US based dance music labels.

Generator North East

Project Worker

After teaching myself basic web design in my spare time, I joined British Airways as a graduate trainee Web Developer providing daily maintenance & updates of the ba.com website & testing of any externally designed pages before publishing them live. During this time I received extensive training in HTML, Photoshop, Javascript, Java, XML, Perl & CGI & was part of a small team sent to work at a top London design agency to help them redesign & build the new-look ba.com website.

Paul Lancaster