aql’s Professor Adam Beaumont Delivers DL100 Keynote
As a former winner of Digital Leaders 100 Founders Award and an alumnus of the DL100 Club, I was delighted to support the seventh Digital Leaders Impact Awards at Media City in Manchester. It was a pleasure to deliver the keynote remarks in conversation with event host and BBC presenter Nina Warhurst.
It was a terrific event buzzing with a room full of innovators and I was very pleased to offer enormous congratulations to George Kassab, co-founder of Bearth, when I presented the “Tech for the Planet” award.
Celebrating digital innovations that improve people’s lives, the values behind the Impact Awards chime with my own - those of using technology to better the world around us.
From left to right: Bearth co-founder and winner of the Tech for the Planet award George Kassab, Professor Adam Beaumont, BBC host Nina Warhurst.
As a passionate environmentalist, the founder of NorthInvest and sponsor of a longstanding award for planet-oriented innovation at the University of Leeds, I’m energised by hearing the vision and mission of other founders and promising future leaders who share a desire to change the world for the better, at pace.
The winner, Bearth, is a terrific example of that; an innovative app focused on reducing emissions. After connecting to your email, Bearth is able to accurately estimate your carbon footprint through receipt-tracking. By showing you a more detailed look at the impact of your choices, you are given the motivation to change your behaviour. The app also gives the option of contributing to carbon offset through donations to peatland and Amazonian conservation projects among others.
The environment, and technology’s role in protecting it, is important to so many of us and is also a core value for aql. Our infrastructure has been built with this in mind. Our efficient data centres have been built to be capable of heat capture and offload for future smart city schemes such as district heating. We also use existing buildings such as schools, chapels, and military sites for our needs so we don’t need to construct new purpose-built structures.
I am excited for the future when I meet digital leaders and I’m looking forward to seeing more incredible innovations at the Impact Awards in the years to come.
