We had a blast bringing the seventeenth instalment of Silicon Milkroundabout to the Old Truman Brewery on 27-28 April 2019. Many thanks to the more than 3,000 of you who joined us, chatted to some innovative tech companies, grabbed a free coffee or beer, networked with some talented like-minded tech folk (then challenged them at street fighter), tried the best falafel in London courtesy of Imad’s Syrian Kitchen, were inspired by the speakers at our opening talks, and hopefully got some great leads on some exciting job opportunities!
We’ve pulled together some of our favourite moments from the event and some key stats so you can look back fondly or catch up on all the fun you missed! 🤙
Each day at SMRapril19 was kicked off in fine fashion, with hundreds of you joining us before the doors opened for a discussion with some of our coolest companies. We learnt the stories behind a great mix of teams and products, and got some great advice on taking the next step in your career within the tech industry.
Doors to the main event opened straight after the discussion ended and it wasn’t long before talented tech people were meeting with some neat companies. 2,621 different job roles were listed with us before the event so there was a lot of talking to be done!
From content marketers to data engineers, and UX designers to iOS devs, a grand total of 3,199 awesome tech professionals attended SMRapril19 across both days. In terms of seniority, as with previous events, we had a great mix of people at different stages of their career:
- 35% of attendees were in senior or C-Level positions and looking for a new challenge;
- the majority of the crowd, at 41%, was made up of those in mid-level roles ready to take the next step; and
- the remaining 24% of attendees were either in junior positions or just starting out in their careers.
A big shoutout to all the amazing companies who joined us across the weekend. They met potential new team members, demo’d some cool new products, and chatted until they lost their voices! 🙌
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In between chats, attendees and team members alike enjoyed some well-deserved downtime in our free bar and coffee areas.
And big love to our super enthusiastic bar team:
In total 3,270 delicious beers, courtesy of Stiegl and Ska Brewing Co, were drunk, as well as many mocktails and cocktails provided by Punchy and Sipsmith Gin.
Alongside our increased number of water refill stations, we were very proud to be able to serve sustainable, fully recyclable water cartons from our new pals at One Water, drastically reducing the amount of plastic waste produced at SMR in the process. Every pack sold contributes to clean water projects around the world, and we got through just over 2,600 of them (and thanks to all the refilling – we have loads left for next time)!
Food was served to attendees and companies by the team from Imad’s Syrian Kitchen. Imad’s popup restaurant in Carnaby Street earlier this year had earned him the reputation of serving London’s favourite falafel and he did not disappoint! We loved working with Imad’s team and are happy to support his work with the charity Choose Love. By the end of the weekend the team had fried and served up 7,266 individual falafels to lots of happy customers.
As always we had a few extra surprises up our sleeves to keep things interesting! Tucked away in T2 we had the weird and wonderful flavours from Lick Me I’m Delicious’ Nitro Sorbet pod! This tasty contraption changed flavours every few scoops and produced hundreds of delectable free cones for SMRapril19 attendees.
And what about the incredible displays from our resident handstand artist, Victoria Skillen?! Her acrobatic displays brought the bar to a standstill on more than one occasion (and provided us with some great publicity shots!)
There was exciting news for Team SMR as we were finally able to let you know about our two new sister events taking place later this year in the US! The Round will bring everything you love about SMR to both New York and Austin in October 2019. Check out theround.com and keep up-to-date with our feeds over on twitter and instagram.
Watch this space and stay tuned for news on The Round and SMRnov19.
To get in touch with the SMR team drop us an email at [email protected] or find us in the usual places online.
We’ll leave you with some of our favourite four-legged friends from SMRapril19.
See you next time!
Team @ Silicon Milkroundabout