#FuturePub London - International Women's Day 2024

#FuturePub London - International Women's Day

Food, drink, Lightning Talks, and ping pong tournaments - what's not to love?!

#FuturePub is back in London for our first event of 2024 and, by popular demand, we are thrilled to be hosting this at the awesome ping ping club Bounce in Farringdon once again!

The focus of this FuturePub is to create a platform for conversation around inclusion, from gender imbalance in research and tech to intersectional challenges faced by people across the world, and how a more diverse research workforce and tech designed with everyone in mind will ultimately lead us through some of the challenges we face as a global society and towards a better quality of life for all.

Speakers for the evening will be announced soon but we have reserved a couple of slots in case YOU or someone you know would like to join our line-up. If you're interested in speaking at this #FuturePub, or a future #FuturePub, let us know by filling out this short proposal form.

What is FuturePub and how does it work?

We've hosted over a dozen #FuturePub events, since our first back in January 2014, and quickly became known as "a staple of the London science tech/publishing scene" (thanks Eva!).

The evenings are designed to be fun and informal - we aim to give opportunities to those working on new ideas and innovations a chance to present and get feedback on their ideas. And did we mention the free food and drink?

In case this is your first time, here's how it works:

1. Five or six quick-fire talks cover a range of new and exciting developments in science and publishing technology
2. These all fit into a one-hour slot (from around 7 pm to 8 pm) to keep the evening fast-paced and fun. Arrive from 6 pm for pre-talk food and drinks and to play a few games of ping pong or shuffleboard
3. The rest of the evening is open for discussions and conversations over the remainder of the drinks and food. We get a great mixture of attendees from the research, tech, publishing and start-up communities, so there will be plenty of people to meet and chat with, especially around such an exciting topic.

Timings for the evening

Here's the confirmed schedule for 4th March:

• 6 pm – doors open, drinks available, and opportunities to play ping pong or shuffleboard
• 6:30 pm - food served (a selection of bite-sized starters and heaps of pizza, with vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options available)
• 7 pm – Lightning Talks start
• 8 pm – Lightning Talks end, remaining food to be consumed, ping ping duels to be thrown down
• 8:30 pm – food cleared, drinks still available for the continuing conversations
• 11 pm - that's a wrap! Though if you would like to continue conversations, you are welcome to find a nearby pub. Just let us know which one you're going to. Suze will have a whisky-ginger-generous squeeze of lime please.

Speakers & Talks

Dr Kate Devlin - King's College London - Navigating the AI 'Sea of Dudes'

In 2016, computer scientist Margaret Mitchell described AI as a "sea of dues". What has the discipline done in that time to improve things and make it fairer and more representative of the world? Hahaha. Nothing. This is 5 minutes on the lack of – and need for – women in AI. (Yes, we know and celebrate Ada Lovelace. No, that doesn't fix things.)

Joe Twyman - Deltapoll - Sex with Strangers: Why Data Context Matters

A research study from the 1970s became a definitive work on the differences in sexual behaviour between men and women. The study was so significant it inspired a dance hit in the 1990s that made the top ten across Europe. But all was not as it seems....

And more to be announced!

Don't forget to register!

Tickets are limited, so please don't forget to sign up, and feel free to share this event with your friends that would like to attend and possibly even speak at this or future events.

See you on 4th March at Bounce in Farringdon!