North East Business Conference

Both days held innovative, informative, discursive and entertaining sessions. Business Exchange North East covered topics that are prominent and relevant for the current business environment. The impressive speaker line up resulted in excellent and informative sessions, and included a range of inspirational entrepreneurs, business leaders, academics and leading practitioners.

Conference Features

Aubrey de Grey

Chief Science Officer, SENS Foundation

Dr Aubrey de Grey a biomedical gerontologist based in Cambridge joins Business Exchange North East to discuss the elimination of human aging as a cause of death. Provocatively proposing that the first human beings who will live to 1,000 years old may have already been born and that ageing can be addressed as effectively as medics address many diseases today.

Jonathan Firth

Virgin Galactic

The Sky is NOT the limit. Jonathan Firth Director of Projects and Operations at Virgin Galactic introduces tourism beyond the boundaries of the Earth's limit.

An intriguing insight into the developing industry of making commercially manned space travel a reality, inspiring the region's businesses with his ethos that nothing is impossible.

Mark Palmer

Mark Palmer Marketing

Esteemed Marketer Mark Palmer tells us of his successful marketing career in brand development with brands such as Hula Hoops, Burger King and more recently Green & Black's.

Green & Black's is widely acknowledged as one of the most entrepreneurial business success stories of recent years and has been voted the UK's "coolest food brand" by the Superbrands panel for the third year running and was nominated by Sainsbury’s customers as their favourite brand of the noughties – a business seminar not to be missed.

Durham Business School Leadership Lounge

A dedicated area of the Business Exchange North East was created for senior-level leadership and management training. Delivered by experts from one of Europe's leading business schools this was an opportunity to improve personal and organisational development focusing on business issues substantiated by practically applied academic theory.

The Durham Business School Leadership Lounge featured a wide range of topics relevant to anyone in a leadership or management position, including sessions on Innovation, Leadership Judgment and Trust.

Procurement Zone

Delegates can attend sessions in the Procurement Zone for personal, organisational, and sector specific development and for practical advice sessions.