London Tech Week: Making the most out of the UK’s biggest tech event

London Tech Week 2024 is the UK's flagship technology event, bringing together the biggest names in the industry to discuss where tech will take us next. With representatives from over 90 countries, it's an incredible forum that champions global innovation. It also represents the perfect platform for tech-focused communications leaders to impress stakeholders and spokespeople by: 

• Drumming up brand awareness 
• Leveraging and building new journalist relationships 
• Scanning the horizon for emerging trends to aid thought leadership 
• Eyeing up the competition and finding the clear blue water needed to differentiate

However, London Tech Week can also be the source of many a headache for any seasoned comms pros because it is absolutely massive, making it difficult to navigate and execute plans that help you cut above the noise. 

Luckily, we’ve written down some top tips to help you and your comms team make the most out of London Tech Week. 

Sessions and keynotes

One of London Tech Week’s key highlights is the hundreds of strategic sessions and keynotes delivered by a range of speakers, from IBM executives to Deepak Chopra. To get the most out of these sessions, I recommend doing some pre-reading on the topics and speakers and then checking this against the official event agenda. 

This is all fairly obvious, but here’s the thing with London Tech Week, it extends beyond the official venue, Olympia in Hammersmith. In fact, you can find interesting forums, keynotes, and sessions across the city throughout the week. It’ll take a serious amount of planning to be able to tick off everything relevant to you throughout the week - so it’s important to get going! 

Finally, to ensure a smooth and productive experience make sure you download all the relevant apps - they do make it easier. If you’re coming from outside of London, something like Citymapper can also be a real lifesaver. 

Setting up media meets

Generating media coverage and strengthening journalist relationships is the end-goal for most of us at London Tech Week. However, securing meetings for your spokespeople is a pretty tough draw due to both the scale of the event and the limited number of tech journalists in attendance. 

Here’s how you can make the most out of setting up meetings: 

• Pitch early:
  • Get your teams to reach out to journalists well in advance of the event. Their schedules fill up quickly, so it’s important to pitch early.
• Tailor your pitch:
  • Ensure your pitch is tailored to the journalist’s interests and the hottest topics at London Tech Week.
  • Provide unique data, perspectives, or announcements.
  • Be very clear and specify locations and timings from the outset. 
• Be hot on social media:
  • Use social media to identify which journalists and influencers will be attending.
  • Join relevant LinkedIn and Twitter discussions and follow specific event hashtags. Here’s one to follow: #LTW
  • Switch up from emails and use social media to set up informal meetups or coffee chats.

Post-event communications 

After the event, it’s essential to have a communications-focused action plan. Here’s a simple framework:

• Media follow-up:
  • Reach out to journalists you, or your spokespeople, met to thank them and offer additional information or follow-up interviews. 
• Hot on the press:
  • Be hot on the news coming out of London Tech Week to ensure you’re able to interject your organisations messaging where possible - there’s ample opportunity for high-level coverage if you get this right. 
• Content creation:
  • Use the notes and recordings from the event to create valuable content such as blogs and social media posts. (Don’t forget to take good pictures)
• Evaluate and measure:
  • Figure out how the event went and use this to inform how you approach future events. Don’t forget to ask your spokespeople how they think your approach could improve. 

Big event, big opportunity

London Tech Week 2024 presents the opportunity for comms professionals to seriously impress stakeholders. In fact, at last year’s event, over 400 media outlets covered London Tech Week, amassing 39.9 billion views - so every comms pro worth their weight will be trying to get their share. By preparing strategically, you can maximise your presence and really highlight both your team’s value and your company’s message. The key to success here lies in ample preparation.