Scotland's tech scene prepares for Turing Festival

Edinburgh is gearing up to host Turing 2016, the international festival featuring key figures from the Scottish, UK and international tech scenes.

From left: CodeBase boss Jamie Coleman, Turing Festival director Brian Corcoran, Skyscanner product manager Hilary Roberts and Administrate chief executive John Peebles. Picture: Stewart Attwood

The event, now in its fifth year, runs from 18 to 19 August alongside the city’s world-famous arts festivals and is being supported by the Scottish Government’s Scotland Can Do initiative as well as homegrown tech talent including Administrate, Attacat, CodeBase, Craneware and FanDuel, along with Seattle-based marketing platform Moz.

Sessions will include talks from 20 senior executives and tech leaders from the likes of travel search site Skyscanner, venture capital seed fund and start-up accelerator 500 Startups, food delivery service Deliveroo and the Government Digital Service.

The official charity of the festival is the Turing Trust, an Edinburgh-based charity founded by the closest relatives of Alan Turing – the Enigma code-breaker regarded as the father of modern computer science.

Turing 2016 director Brian Corcoran said: “Turing is already established as one of the UK’s top tech events and we’re proud of how it brings together a unique mix of entrepreneurs, founders and creatives to chew over emerging trends, and to learn and improve together.

“For anyone in the UK building or scaling a technology business, there will be invaluable lessons to be had from both days at the festival. We’ve got big ambitions for growing the event and want to play our part in helping develop the internet economy in Scotland”.