Space for you - a whirlwind tour of Space industry

​Having been focusing on the low down on hands on space hacks for our last couple of events, on the 20 Nov we had a change of perspective - before we get back to hands on development and wrap up the year with "Making Interplanetary Internet": http://interplanetaryinternet.eventbrite.co.uk/). 

We, together with Satellite Applications Catapult, hosted an intensive whirlwind of 6 space companies telling us about their entrepreneurial stories - the market they saw and the business they've created. To get a well rounded flavour, our speakers are from upstream (spacecrafts) and downstream (businesses that uses satellite data) space sector.

We had ping pong table at the Rainmaking Loft, which was perfect for anyone needed a warm up before the talks commence or an exercise after the pizza! We also had bean bags to cater for those who needed to relax instead. 

Sam from Satellite Applications Catapult started the evening by providing an overview to the exciting growth of the space sector in the UK, followed up by Steph's quick intro to what you can do as citizen for space. In a series of lightening talks, we've cut the chase and dive straight into the exciting innovation and enablers from our speakers:

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• Dave from Geospatial Insight on using satellite data for the finance industry - now you didn't thought about that one, did you?
  
• Matt from Planet Labs on providing open access to satellite imagery data and the flocks of doves (satellite's code name) they are sending up to the skies to facilitate that. 
• Michael Johnson from Pocket Spacecraft on personal spacecraft that will impact the moon - and plans to go beyond, way beyond, the moon.
  
• Kim from GeoCento on the exciting growing market of satellite earth observation imagery.
• Graham from Avanti Communications on the wide range of example usages for satellite communications, from broadcast to tele-health. 
• Tim from Rezatec on the opportunity in analysing earth observation data for carbon and agriculture monitoring.  

It was a full house! It's always Citizen Inventor's aim to bring synergies between the speaker, the audience and the local community of the venue. With such a full house, hopefully you all have an interesting evening and went home with unexpected ideas, projects, new networks, synergies - possibly businesses that you are now talking to the Satellite Applications Catapult about! Feel free to let us know if that happened to you.

Just as we thought everything went smoothly, pizza arrived early. Swiftly we took a vote and went for the pizza. You'd have thought no one would sit down after pizza but, hey, we are all about trying new things. And believe it or not, it worked! After the pizza, we had a great panel Q&A - with all of our speakers on the stage. 

It was interesting to hear the story of how the panel entered the space industry. Citizen Inventor has been talking about bio-payload but Graham from Avanti is well ahead of us there - he already looked  at sending worms to space back at school! 

It was very generous for Satellite Applications Catapult and Rainmaking Loft to sponsor the pizza, beer and venue hosting. Special thanks goes to all those extra pairs of hands that have made a swift tidy up happen - so we can all go to the pub! In line with the usual Citizen Inventor style, we had our extended Q&A in the pub and some of us left the pub only when it kicked us out... 

Finally, for those of us who like toys - watch this space. We're about to get some Christmas presents from Michael from Pocket Spacecraft... stay tuned!