Talk delivered at the Cardiff Digital Festival on September 18th 2017.

1. An internet of things
economy.
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino
alex@designswarm.com
@iotwatch

2. First UK distributor of Arduino.
Consultant at designswarm.
Founder of Good Night Lamp.
Organiser of the London Internet of Things meetup
since 2011.
Writing a book on smart homes.
Steering a bottom-up internet of things certification
mark.
About me

3. 1. How to develop the internet of things
into positive local economic force
for your community.
What I’ll talk about today

4. 2. International conversations to
contribute to.
What I’ll talk about today

5. What is the internet of things?
Embedding connectivity & electronics
where there was none.
In new products & existing ones.

6. What is the internet of things?
Don’t think about devices (anything with
a screen), industrial applications or cars.
They’re already pretty high-tech.

7. Think about baby bottles, bracelets
shelves, keys.
What is the internet of things?

8. Isn’t it all ‘gadgets’?
Why does it matter?

9. Some things are more important, less
wasteful, and more relevant than others.
It’s the same with #iot.
Why does it matter?

11. Using products creates enough ‘small data’
to help make better decisions.
What do they have in common?

12. These are all UK startups less than
5 years old.
What do they have in common?

13. Men & women between 35-45
Sometimes a tech background, often not.
People with a community around them.
Who are they?

14. A community of peers happy to help
formally & informally.
Some mentor, some become co-founders.
They may be involved in manufacturing, supply chain,
retail, hardware, software, marketing, finance.
What kind of community?

15. A community with face to face contact.
Meetups are a good mechanism for this.
Cardiff doesn’t have one!
meetup.com/iotlondon
iot.london
Why not start your own community.

16. Oxford, Cambridge, Thames Valley,
Reading, London, Brighton, Leeds.
Globally over 2K meetups.
Other meetups in the UK?

17. What happens when you start an #iot meetup.
Academics, investors, entrepreneurs
and employed people come to the table.
Ideas are shared, a local vision is shaped.

18. What happens when you start an #iot meetup.
An ecology of support & finance starts to
emerge.

19. What happens when you start an #iot meetup.
In London we have 10+ maker spaces.
3-4 #iot incubators/accelerators
A growing awareness in the investment
community.
Businesses supporting startups in
crowdfunding.

20. What happens when you start an #iot meetup.
Wales is ideally positioned to grow
its own community, ecology and solutions.

21. Build a new breed of local businesses
who want to be successful with new tools.
What does this do to an economy?

22. Support new business opportunities for
local manufacturing & cottage industries.
What does this do to an economy?

23. It’s a new type of career.
How do we build a path for it?
How do we get young people excited?
Challenges ahead.

24. Argument for a local STEAM-based
curriculum that’s better than others
elsewhere.
What does this do to an economy?

25. Help train more technologically-engaged
designers & more people-focused &
ethically-aware technologists.
Help them become local entrepreneurs.
What does this do to an economy?

26. Encourage local government to revisit
the impact on GDP of manufacturing &
the creative sector.
In #iot they are intertwined.
What does this do to an economy?

27. Power multi-disciplinary
research in difficult areas of the internet
of things.
You can become world-leaders in ethical
#iot design research for eg.
What does this do to an economy?

28. We are asking some big questions.
iotmark.wordpress.com
Difficult questions we should be asking.

29. How is data handled by a
hardware & software company?
Thinking beyond GDPR.
Difficult questions we should be asking.

30. How do we encourage entrpreneurs
to make secure choices across
hardware, firmware & cloud?
What conversations should we foster?

31. How do we encourage open source
practices when a company goes bust
or is acqui-hired?
Nest’s bricking of its sensor platform.
What conversations should we foster?

32. How is a product made when
manufacturing is so accessible but most
companies still fail?
Design for disassembly / Cradle to Cradle
What conversations should we foster?

33. .
What does success look like?
Fantastic products made in a
community who find local support
and don’t leave for Silicon Valley.

34. .
What does success look like?
Because your community will have
challenges that Silicon Valley
doesn’t have.

35. Create a fund dedicated to help
early stage internet of things
ideas develop and find an audience.
How to do it?

36. Give £150K at a time.
Enough to get started.
How to do it?

37. Connect your financial support to
other forms of local/national financial
support.
How to do it?

38. Don’t send people to crowdfunding
unless you don’t want to grow
businesses but ideas.
How to do it?

39. Champion those ideas in your local
media (the international press coverage
is grim). Help your community get behind
an entrepreneur and beta test.
How to do it?

40. Focus on free training programs
to give people the support they need
to have a good idea in the first place.
People need to be given permission to be inventors. Engineer is a dirty word
in many parts of the UK.
How to do it?

41. This is as much about a supportive
culture of local invention as it is about
design, engineering & making.
If we can value it in food, we can do it
in #iot.
How to do it?

42. Start a meetup.
Find out what makes a Welsh #iot landscape.
Help your young people see it as a career path.
Finance it properly if you can.
Help an international community of practice grow.
Take part in a global conversation.
To recap

43. Diolch.
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino
alex@designswarm.com
@iotwatch
designswarm.com
goodnightlamp.com
know-cards.com
iot.london
iotmark.wordpress.com