Godel recently hosted the final virtual event of 2021 and were pleased to be joined again by Feel Good Grape’s Mike Turner for a festive wine tasting experience.

Joining the event for the evening were some of the UK’s tech leaders who shared their insights of the current tech scene. The event covered topics including a summary of 2021, industry trends and tech predictions for 2022.

Wine Tasting 101

The event’s wine tasting sessions were facilitated by Mike Turner, Co-Founder of Feel Good Grapes. Feel Good Grapes believe sustainability is paramount and support this mission by pledging to plant a tree for every bottle of wine they sell to offset the carbon footprint with an average bottle of wine giving off 1.2 kilos of carbon. Godel is proud to support such an important initiative. The event started with the first wine tasting of the evening, attendees were treated to a tasting experience whilst expanding their wine knowledge.

2021 Wine Down

The first session of the evening was a group discussion about “what we have learnt from 2021” ran by Sarah Foster and Matthew Strachan, Client Directors at Godel. This year has seen unprecedented challenges from the pandemic. We are in a position now where some businesses are still working fully remotely; some have returned to their daily commute, and some have adapted the best of both worlds and entered the hybrid working world.

But as mentioned during the session, the shift to remote working proves it can work for businesses and has opened more doors to the possibility of outsourcing. The last 6 months has seen a large salary inflation, but not every business can afford to increase their salaries overnight. This has caused a lot of competition on salary, with a lot of consultancies losing staff. It was argued that the ‘loyal staff’ may fall behind as they will be the ones less likely to leave for a higher salary.

It wouldn’t be a 2021 recap if the topic skills gap wasn’t discussed. The UK tech skills gap has been hugely impacted during the pandemic and the race to hire skilled people in every region has become more challenging than ever. It was argued that old waterfall businesses need to outsource to stay ahead of the game.

Sarah asked the group on their opinion on the north/south tech divide, putting emphasis on Northshoring. Whilst cities like Newcastle isn’t renowned as a ‘tech hub’, northern cities are able to hire remotely which has opened up so much opportunity for who businesses can recruit outside the northern region. It was agreed this concept is bridging the north/south divide, but is remote working here to stay as we enter 2022?

Tech Days of Christmas

Before the final wine tasting of the evening, everyone took part in the ‘Tech Days of Christmas Quiz’, hosted by our quizmaster for the evening, Matthew. The quiz was an engaging virtual activity and the perfect activity to test people’s tech general knowledge.

2022 Tech Predictions: Reaching Cloud Wine

The last session of the evening was an open conversation to gather some insight into tech predictions, goals for the upcoming year and 2021 challenges looking to be resolved.

The discussions covered topics around what to expect from 2022 and how this year has had an impact on the coming year. The main theme was around outsourcing and how lockdown number 1 lead more businesses to outsource. The group shared their experiences of outsourcing partners and is agreed that a good partnership is all about the culture and treating them as a person and not a supplier. It is important to engage the partner into your culture to become part of the team and seeing them as part of your organisation.

An idea was put amongst the group, about whether we’re going to see more emphasis being put on tech skills, and less on degrees as a way to help solve the post-pandemic attrition challenge in the UK. It was widely concluded amongst attendees that 2022 will see the working practices of 2021 continue into the new year with new hybrid workforce tools predicted to emerge.

The evening of festivities concluded after a successful event filled with insightful conversation and wine. Speaking after the event, Allan Farrell, CTO at Mandata said:

The wine tasting evening was so much fun. I got to meet a fantastic bunch of CTO’s, CPO’s and technology leaders in a relaxed setting. Being able to share our challenges and experiences was invaluable and I’ve made some really good connections. The 3 bottles of high-quality wine we were each sent, and the fantastic hosting skills of Mike from Feel Good Grapes just made for a surprisingly excellent evening.

To find out about the upcoming Godel events in 2022, then please get in touch using the enquiry form.