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Sync the City, University of East Anglia

Sync the City is a very successful pedagogical tool to teach students digital business, innovation and entrepreneurship before they graduate, working alongside participants from tech sector organisations. Students engage in an intense experience, learn new skills, and put into practice many of the theoretical concepts learned during their degrees.
Year
2020
Institution
University of East Anglia

Sync The City originated from discussions between Professor Fiona Lettice, UEA Pro Vice-Chancellor Research & Innovation, and John Fagan, Head of SyncNorwich (a local technology and startup community and meetup group). The aim of the 54 hour Sync the City event is to bring together Norfolk’s business community of entrepreneurs, product developers, software developers, designers and digital creatives with students and to facilitate them to create new technology solutions and business models and to form startups that are enabled by digital technologies.

Dr Alfonso Avila-Merino, as the academic teaching lead, coordinates, monitors and supports the UEA students before, during and after the event. Norwich Business School students predominantly focus on market analysis and help to develop the business strategy and financial models to take the initial pitch and idea to a viable business and to develop the final pitch for the judges. Computing Science students work with software developers in the team to design and code the minimum viable product and to build digital prototypes.

The event is organised by John Fagan, Sean Clark and Paul Cutting from SyncNorwich and Fiona Lettice and Julie Schofield from UEA. The team recruit and manage mentors, keynote speakers and judges for the final pitches, manage the technology throughout the event, organise the event logistics including venue hire, catering and seek participant feedback to improve Sync the City year-on-year. Tim Stephenson is the official Sync the City photographer and captures the spirit of the event in a photo-montage video. Sync The City is kindly sponsored by companies including: Barclays, Greater Anglia, Aviva, Norfolk County Council and many smaller local organisations in the region.

Sync the City has made a bold impact in the East Anglia region by:

  1. Developing innovative pedagogical methods to teach entrepreneurship to students in higher education and enable them to apply their learning, to develop new skills and to network with professionals
  2. Strengthening partnership and access to talent between UEA staff and students and organisations within the tech sector
  3. Building a stronger tech ecosystem and top 20 UK tech cluster through collaboration, networking and mutual support

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