#406 First Look: Voyagers launches UK healthtech festival 'THE FIX'

0:00Welcome to the Health Tech Podcast. Here we talk about everything healthcare and technology and I'm your host James Summeru. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Health Tech Podcast. This is another first look where we look at the brand new stuff in health tech. Today I have Joe Rowan and he is Chief of Staff at Voyagers which is a group you may or may not have heard of. it's like a secret illuminati of the best people in health tech on a whatsapp group basically um i've been a relatively late addition but um uh but yeah he's also head of stories basically he sorts the agenda for a new festival of health tech called the fix which is the main reason that we are here so joe tell us actually what voyages is and uh yeah we'll launch in and tell us all about The Fix.

0:55Hi everyone, Voyagers is an international community of about 4 ,000 entrepreneurs. We have local chapters in about 30 cities around the world where people meet up and we also do trips and we organize events such as this health tech festival The Fix and we also have a climate tech festival The Heat which is the day after The Fix. So tell us all about The Fix. So the idea for The Fix, I mean we've been involved with you guys like talking about it and putting some stuff together and blah blah blah but health tech festival it's a harwell science innovation campus in oxford but clearly you've wanted to do something different here so i guess why like how do you see like the health event space or just the event space broadly and why festival rather than conference or all the usual kind of stuff so i think there's a general frustration among a lot lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of investors that conferences aren't really satisfying their needs.

1:54They go there to network, to if you're, if you have a startup, you want to find investors and if you're an investor, you want to find some startups. It's pretty simple. But a lot of the time people are just stuck in rooms listening to endless talks rather than actually meeting people. And that's where the fix comes in, in that we want people to be able to network in a very relaxed environment and it is actually a festival so it's on the 18th of september at harwell campus as you said in oxfordshire it's just an hour from london and we are taking over the rugby pitches putting up some massive tents and bringing in some of the greatest minds in health tech innovation in our opinion and it's going to be really fun we're going to have we are going to have some keynotes but we're keeping it very short to the morning we're going to have workshops we're going to have an NHS reverse pitch which I can get into a bit more later but and we'll have music as well it's going to be from 10 a.m to 10 p.m so we as a full day festival and people will be able to just network and with without any bad coffee I think that's one of the takeaways it's really interesting so I went to um I went to Fern Cotton's Happy Place Festival which was in southwest London somewhere some like stately home grounds that kind of vibe and it's it sounds like a version of that almost I think that was an in that was an interesting one because they had a lot of health care stuff but it was kind of the b2c wellness space but it was the I guess what I would call the unregulated side of that rather than the side that we operate on in health tech which is far more computational biologists creating a fiber supplement not two random people fresh out of uni that have got absolutely no idea what they're like or not even got like yeah so very much a regulated space doing interesting stuff in a festival rather than the other but what i would say about phone cartons happy place one is that it definitely had that festival vibe it definitely had that yeah there's a reason that i'm here for work stuff like we were you know we represent an influencer and talent manager so we were there with him and like looking a load of a load of work stuff from that perspective but it felt very much a blend of the two and it's funny because when you think of health europe that's just happened or any of the other big conferences that happen around the world the business tends to get done in the things around the actual programming and so to actually put that stuff up front and go yeah there's music yeah there's art yeah there's stuff you can just go and hang out you're going to be stood next to people that also have that interest and you can talk about your interests and actually get to know them and build trust that way which is essentially what you're trying to do to get a deal done you're trying to build trust with each other and that kind of thing so it's a really interesting approach but I guess setting up an agenda for that can't be easy right because you've got to blend a mix of a load of stuff and frankly it hasn't really been done before so how do you go about setting up an agenda that has creative artistic experimental edgy all the stuff that you know all the words i'm picking out your website like how do you even go about setting up agenda like that so the main thing is we don't want people just sitting in a very bright room twiddling their thumbs and going on their phones essentially we want people to be genuinely engaged in what's going on and so that's why we call our participants festival goers because we want them to be part of everything so we have workshops we have a new thing called conversation circles which is where we have groups of about 20 to 30 people talking um in a moderated discussion led by an expert on a topic of their choosing for about 40 minutes and the idea is that it involves as many people from the audience as possible there's no audiences really everyone is getting involved and discussing really important themes in health tech.

6:07And I think that's quite attractive for a lot of entrepreneurs because you don't want to just be there kind of listening rather than getting involved. You want to say, actually, I don't agree with that. And you want to discuss how to take the next steps for your company as well. And we have, I can tell you, about 20 conversation circles for The Fix Confirmed. So there's going to be a conversation for everyone. For example, in the evening, we'll have music, we'll have drinks, the vibe will change, and it will become more like a traditional festival. But during the daytime, we're trying to stray from traditional conference formats as much as possible to involve festival goers as much as possible.

6:47Nice. I went to Cannes Lions a couple of weeks ago, which for people that don't know, probably don't know if you listen to this podcast, but that's a kind of festival of creative and marketing globally for people or from all around the world. people fly into can and you see the best of the best in creative and marketing and you can win awards called can lions which is why i have a little line over here it's not an award i'm sort of pretending that's an award for people watching on youtube it's like i just bought some merch basically uh sort of packaged like an award um but they had conversation circle type thing like how you've sort of described it they have very similar there so they had kind of 15 people in a circle and then maybe 20 more stood behind them and it was very much that the people that were global heads of marketing for brands or agencies or holding groups or creators that were in there as well and influencers and that kind of thing although they're moving away from the term influencer to creators but they had that that people would have a conversation in a circle But just as you've described, this notion that someone's opinion is greater than another person's opinion just because they were selected to be on the panel is kind of ludicrous.

8:06Because actually, if someone disagrees, there's disagreement. If they're from an audience, there's disagreement because that person hasn't been represented on the panel. And actually, you need that, I think. And I don't think it's done historically very well. I've certainly not seen it in health tech very often. um and i love that concept of just people in the room willing to have a debate and finding a way for that debate to happen i think is really important so yeah if the best in the if the best of the best that can lions are doing it then um yeah that's clearly something that's going to be useful and yeah looking forward to it but tell me about this nhs reverse pitch what's that so this is going to be one of the key things at the event we think so we're going to get some of the most important figures in in the nhs so a lot of people from nhs england coming along and essentially it's going to be a reverse dragon's den so the festival goers will come along the nhs the key people at the nhs will say listen we have this need this problem we want you guys to come to us and find a solution for it so it's potentially the the place where new startups can be built We have, just to name a couple of titles, we have the Deputy National Medical Director for Secondary Care, we have the NHS London Regional Director, and a few other big names coming along.

9:34And it's a really good way for festival goers to collaborate and see what is actually needed by the NHS, because I think it's very easy to organically come up with your own idea. but I think listening to the actual challenges people are facing in the NHS and the NHS has a lot of problems as we all know um but hearing from the top people um what is needed is the most useful thing you could possibly have yeah and chance to just chat to them about it as well because knowing what the problems actually are is really difficult because what people think their problem is often isn't what the problem actually is or certainly the way they think it should be solved is not the way that it actually is solved so there's discrepancy between how people frame the problem to the innovators but actually it's the other way around too because so often if you haven't lived and breathed a career inside the nhs or inside a hospital or inside the management department or inside theaters or inside all these things you can't possibly know all the and outs of the problem that needs solving because that was often i remember when i was running accelerators it was often the biggest problem that you could solve was just access to those type of people purely to get feedback on an idea or to help them design a solution with that person or with that group of people and actually access between the people who have the actual problems the people who have the actual budgets and the people that can actually design and build products and companies to solve those things those people rarely get the opportunity I think to genuinely have conversation and dialogue so yeah sounds like a plan when you run this have you run something similar for the heat you said yes yeah so we had the heat for the first time last year it was it was bigger than we expected so we were planning to have about 400 people come along we had about 600 on the day wow and we essentially took over the fields that whole well it was a really really good event we had another thing that we have at both festivals which i've not mentioned is the product demos so a lot of really forefront startups are coming and bringing their tech so rather than you can listen to something all day long and hear all the technicalities but sometimes you just want to see in front of you and see how it works and for example we'll have a lot of robots we'll have a lot of interesting product demos that people can really see in front of the visualize and and touch as well nice what does success look like for you like personally with this like what what are you going to feel proud of or happy with or any of that sort of stuff so our kpi is smiles on people's faces we want we want people to have a good time we want them to enjoy the day and we want them to network but our primary goal isn't networking our primary goal is for people to have a good time and networking then comes naturally from that i think we're bringing together an amazing group of people and then naturally because the atmosphere is going to be relaxed and lively and positive i think people are going to network meet each other and then whatever comes from that will happen and it's the same philosophy behind voyages everything we do is not for profit we do it at cost but our goal is for people to meet each other to bond and then whatever comes from that amazing if you get some investment if you co-found something whatever it may be is a kind of an offshoot of our main goal of people meeting and and getting to know each other how do you select the music for the evening do you do you take an assumption or is it a data-driven decision based on the demographics of people in health tech like or is it just hey i'm organizing so i get to choose how on earth do you decide what tunes are going to be played to a festival of health tech people genuinely curious well we actually have a festival band so we have oh nice band coming along and they're composed of members of the voyages community they oh cool yeah last time at the heat i think the drummer and the singer ended up going to co-found something together so and the sky is the limit um we have a an amazing curator of music nati nahai who's very experienced in this sort of thing and she's choosing all of the music i wouldn't i don't have the authority but i'll be interested to see what makes more money over the course of a lifetime like the band or the startup that the drummer and singer have done uh funny cool is there anything that i've missed mate do you want to um do you want to mention anything else that i haven't asked you about well a couple of extra things that i've not mentioned are we have a cold plunge on the day we have two actual plunges uh so one of our strands at the festival is longevity and we'll have the cold plunges will be part of that we're probably going to have a sauna there as well for people to to use we're also going to have vr is another important part of the festival we're going to have an immersive vr touch experience so you lie down in a bed you put on the vr goggles and then we have some actors coming along to make it a tactile interesting realistic experience um so more more on that on the day we have um heated bras and fitting for breast discomfort from Maver and Peach House.

15:13So they're coming in essentially making sure that those problems are resolved in terms of breast fitting. Because I think there's often that done incorrectly and it's very important. And then we have headbands for menstrual pain and mood relief from Samphire Neuroscience. And we're also one of the weird and wonderful things we're doing is we're screening for health through the festival sewage. So we have a startup called Untap Health who can tell what illnesses are among a group of people just for the sewage. So there'll be a live screen telling us what like what the tests of the sewage are saying.

15:54Lots of random and crazy stuff. This is what I mean by the sky is the limit. So people can come along if people want to contact me as well with any ideas they have for the festival. We're very open. It's a festival, ultimately. so we're open to what it is and it's a festival of innovation ultimately it could be quite confronting couldn't it like seeing uh like leptospirosis pop up and you're like christ who's got that like good stuff man so for people that want to get involved i imagine you've i don't know if you've got spaces left for i don't know you probably don't call them exhibitors but for people to actually demo or to get involved or host circles or any of that stuff if you if you have space for that let us know like how would they get in touch with you but also if people want to people want to come what's the price point how do they buy tickets all of that sort of stuff so basically how does everyone get involved in this great question so there is still space to get involved we have spaces for our product demos if you'd like to apply for one you can email either me so joe at voyages.io or david at voyages.io and with your idea and we'll we'll get back to you and decide we also have so we're quite full on keynotes as you can imagine by now but we do have space another format we have is our six minute ideas so it's a very short as you can imagine quickfire provocation story or idea you just you'll have to buy a ticket for that but then you can we'll get you up on the website and confirmed and we also have an unconference so we have a very full agenda the unconference as i'm sure you know is a very open-ended format you can come along and talk for an hour or you can can dance if you want um whatever no essentially um it's you can do a workshop you can lead a conversation circle within that format so if you if there's not space for one of the other formats that is the place for it and will it will like the other formats be about 40 minutes groups of 20 to 30 and you sign up for that on the day so it's very spontaneous we'll have a whiteboard we're going old school there's too much ai and technology so we want to bring back the whiteboard and you sign up you write your name on the board and and that's it um but yeah tickets are cheap as i say we're doing it at cost we're not doing it to make a huge profit so we're keeping the price point as low as possible and if you're working in the nhs you can get your ticket at 50 off wow that's a special ticket just for nhs workers which is half price um the price point is around 200 roughly you can see more information on this on our on our website but uh we have our final price rise on july the 10th so not i'm not sure when this is going to go out but um if you're in before then i recommend getting your ticket before then but currently our all access ticket is 225 pounds plus fat very nice 18th of september harwell science and innovation campus oxfordshire yeah joe it's been a pleasure thanks for coming on and telling us all about it i am going to be there jessica's going to be there a load of other people the next gen community are going to be there from our side some other sommics are probably going to be there and yeah all the people that you've talked about and many more if you go to thefix.io so t-h-e-f-i-x dot i-o that's the website for the festival you can see everything going on there the speakers the agenda you can get tickets etc etc etc but yeah 18th of september sounds awesome man we'll see you all there look forward to seeing you there guys hey everyone thanks for listening at making it all the way to the end of this episode.

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