The KTP Associate Conference 2015

The KTP Associates Conference has been hosted successfully at the University of Brighton for a number of years, providing a great opportunity to celebrate the successes of KTP and provide networking and presentation opportunities for Associates.

This year’s 2015 Conference marked the beginning of a new era for the event which has been handed over to the KTP community and will be hosted by a different UK university each year.

This year, the Conference was hosted by the West of Scotland KTP Centre, at the University of Strathclyde’s newly opened Technology and Innovation Centre.

Sue Fleming and the five University of Brighton Associates who travelled to Glasgow to attend the event

Around 130 people registered to attend, including 20 oral presentations and 35 poster presentations. The quality and variety of both presentations and posters was impressive and inspiring, really demonstrating that KTP delivers fantastic outcomes for all three partners – the companies, the universities, and of course, the Associates.

We were particularly delighted that one of the University of Brighton’s Associates, Andrew Black, was awarded the best poster prize, against stiff competition from over 35 other posters presented at the event. Andrew’s KTP is with Hove-based Class Of Their Own – one of the UK’s largest out of school care provider – on a 2 year strategic marketing project in which knowledge from a team from the Brighton Business School, led by Senior Lecturer Jane Priddis, will be transferred to guide research to underpin the growth of the business by developing additional complementary services and expanding into new geographical areas.

Tanya Petherick, Director at Class Of Their Own says “We are delighted that Andrew won the recent poster competition.  Andrew worked extremely hard to create an eye-catching, easy to understand poster and developed an engaging short presentation about the project.  So far we have been extremely impressed with the entire KTP process.  In Andrew, we have an Associate who is the perfect fit for our company – he is bursting with enthusiasm yet not afraid to spend time gathering data for our internal marketing audit.  We have had incredible support from the University of Brighton and KTP Adviser.  All in all, we’re very happy not only to win the poster competition but to be part of the KTP process.”

Andrew Black receiving his prize for Best PosterAndrew Black - KTP Associates Conference Poster Winner 2015

Andrew Black receiving his award for Best Poster presentation.

Andrew said: “The conference was a fun opportunity to meet new ‘KTP-ers’ from all over the country, as well as catching up with friends from my KTP residential training modules.  It was really useful with some really interesting presentations; especially showing just how diverse the different kinds of KTP projects are! Winning the poster competition was great! I find my KTP really exciting and it’s nice to know other people do too!”

Sue Fleming joined the five Associates from the University of Brighton who travelled up to Scotland to attend and support the event, and who between them, delivered one oral presentation and four poster presentations.

The 2016 Conference will be hosted by Coventry University and we look forward to seeing the Conference grow from strength to strength, and to celebrating more KTP Associate successes.

Audience KTPAC2015 1 FBarari poster (2)   Image by Guy Hinks. St George Square