Techscaler signed up as main partner of major tech event Turing Fest taking place at EICC this month

Tech showcase Turing Fest has announced Techscaler as its main partner for its annual conference this month at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre – adding to the event’s roster of high-profile supporters.

Techscaler, the Scottish Government’s tech start-up programme that is run by CodeBase, joins other conference partners including Baillie Gifford, Skyscanner, FanDuel, FreeAgent, Administrate, CodeClan, Streamba, Deloitte, Current Health, ClearScore, Amplitude, Podfather, and Pleo Technologies.

Turing Fest, which is billed as one of the UK’s leading tech conferences and has been running in the Scottish capital since 2016, takes place on June 28 and 29. More than 30 keynote speakers are lined up, including Shannon Vallor, Baillie Gifford chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute at University of Edinburgh; Salma de Graff, vice-president of people at Skyscanner; Bob Moesta, president and chief executive of The Prewired Group; and Paul Murphy, partner at Silicon Valley-headquartered Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The partnership with Turing Fest features a dedicated space at the conference for attendees to meet the Techscaler team and learn about support initiatives to support early-stage, start-up, and scale-up tech companies. Techscaler programme members beyond the Central Belt will be supported to attend the event, with free tickets being made available to “self-identified members of underrepresented groups”, and to those affected by layoffs in the tech sector. Turing Fest and Techscaler say they also intend to collaborate further post-conference, pooling complementary resources and networks.

Turing Fest boss Brian Corcoran said: “Through greater collaboration across the ecosystem, we can build an even stronger and more diverse tech scene here in Scotland, one that is much better connected to the rest of the world, an ethos that we share with Techscaler.”

Yasmin Sulaiman, vice-president of partnerships at CodeBase, said: “We are excited to bring people from across Scotland to this year’s Turing Fest, and we look forward to future collaborations between our teams. Techscaler focuses on supporting founders from every part of Scotland who have the ambition to build a start-up, support that continues at every stage of the journey. In this way, we are closely aligned with Turing Fest in building start-ups and the tech ecosystem itself.”

Revolutionise

It follows the news that Techscaler and Stac, Scotland’s Internet of Things (IoT) accelerator, have inked a partnership aimed at “revolutionising” Scotland’s software and IoT startup scene to enable companies to better compete in global markets.

Techscaler joins other Turing Fest conference partners including Baillie Gifford, Skyscanner, FanDuel, FreeAgent, Administrate, CodeClan, and Current Health. Picture: contributed.

Stac’s chief executive and co-founder Paul Wilson said: “Since we launched in 2021, Stac’s mission has been to create a centre of excellence, an IoT tech cluster here in Scotland. Techscaler has the resources that will help us achieve that mission more rapidly.”

Steven Drost, chief strategy officer at CodeBase, said: "I am excited about this partnership, because it signals a moment of maturity for the ecosystem… [It] brings together two different strands of start-up building – software and hardware. Combining those strands enables both to learn and build and grow faster – this can only be a good thing for Scottish tech."

Scotland’s chief entrepreneur Mark Logan also commented: “This exciting collaboration follows the same model as our recently announced Techscaler twinning arrangement with NHS Test Beds. The partnership between Techscaler and Stac also has the potential to have a transformative impact on Scotland’s IoT standing worldwide.”