The Northern Ireland tech scene has some of the most remarkable individuals in tech, and throughout 2019 Sync NI endeavored to shine a spotlight on our local talent through interviews. We also experimented with new partnerships this year to increase the reach of local tech influencers and began hosting tech podcasts. We've showcased the fantastic WebTalks NI interviews, reproduced key interviews from Best of Belfast, and recently started hosting the Innovation Station Podcast by InterTradeIreland.
Interviews with people in tech always get good traffic on Sync NI, but there were three interviews this year that really grabbed people's attention. Below are the three top interviews of 2019 by page views. If your company is putting together a tech podcast that you'd like hosted at Sync NI or if you think your staff could benefit from an interview showcasing their role and skills in 2020, send us a message using our contact form.
#1 Kairos: Andrew Trimble and Gareth Quinn combine sport and tech
A little bit of celebrity never hurts, so it's no surprise that this year's most popular interview was about the new sports tech company Kairos run by retired Ireland and Ulster rugby star Andrew Trimble. The tech venture started when Andrew teamed up with Digital DNA founder Gareth Quinn and has been a real success story in the sports analytics scene, working out of the Ormeau Baths co-working space in Belfast.
In this interview, we caught up with Kairos’ VP of Product and Business Development, Daniel Fearon, and Sales & Marketing Executive, Emilie Simmons, to dig into the Kairos platform and how Andrew Trimble's sports experience has helped steer the company. Andrew’s experience as a professional athlete allowed him to identify the need for elite sports teams to engineer and own their medical, athletic and skill requirements, and the platform includes three main features: scheduling, performance and analytics.
This was our most popular interview on the site this year and was actually the first piece done by our newest tech journalist Niamh Campbell, who has been taking the local tech scene by storm since coming on board.
#2 Dip App's Francesca Morelli and Chloe Henning on disrupting the high street voucher industry
The Belfast Catalyst Fintech Hub is home to a wide range of innovative startups hoping to disrupt their corner of the financial industry with new technology. Back in April, we spoke to Chloe Henning and Francesca Morelli on their upcoming "Deals in Places" app that aimed to disrupt the high street voucher industry.
The app takes advantage of the location-based tech in your smartphone to highlight deals as you come near a store, hyper-targeting offers to those within range in a way that should prevent them from being overwhelmed by irrelevant advertising. DIP officially launched earlier this year on iOS and Android, and this interview has been one of our most popular this year.
#3 Best of Belfast: Sarah Mcbride on how AI is disrupting the fashion industry
This year we started a new partnership with Best of Belfast to reproduce some of their fantastic audio interviews and increase their reach, and this interview with Sarah Mcbride proved that it definitely works. In this interview, Sarah talked about early influences on her involvement in the tech industry, and how artificial intelligence is beginning to disrupt the world of fashion.
Find out more about Best of Belfast at https://bestofbelfast.org and follow Sarah on Twitter at @sararahmcb
