Mojeek, out and about

mojeek

12 December 2018

6 min

Company
Team

Mojeek team members attending events — *"Sam and Finn from Mojeek exhibiting at the Women in Tech event."*

It might surprise you, but we're not always behind a computer screen. We've been out and about, meeting others and learning from their stories, building networks and spreading the word of Mojeek. We would love to tell you all about where we've been and what we've been up to. Here's a selection of events we have enjoyed attending over the last few months.

Minibar 'Startup Everything'

Finn from Mojeek presenting at Minibar's Startup Everything event — *"Finn presenting at Minibar’s ‘Startup Everything’"*

MiniBar is the UK's biggest tech community with over 7000 members. Every now and then, social evenings are organised, bringing this community together to learn about innovative startups and to catch up on the latest tech news. Mojeek was fortunate enough to speak at Minibar's 'Startup Everything' event partnered with WeWork. Mojeek delivered a presentation focusing on the threat to our access to unbiased information and the need for genuine alternative search engines. We received some fantastic feedback and enjoyed learning about many other fascinating startups.

Haystack EU – The Search Relevance Conference

At Mojeek, we've of course always thought the world of search is fascinating. It's nice to know we're not the only ones. Haystack proved that search relevance is a tough egg to crack and there is no clear way to do it. But instead of crumbling under the challenges it presents, the community of developers and search engineers got together and discussed all the new tools and academic papers guiding their way, helping and learning from each other in the process.

Data Protection World Forum

As respecting the privacy of the people who use Mojeek is extremely important to us, we attended the Data Protection World Forum. Here we learned more about changes to data protection and privacy, following progressive regulations of global data protection laws that have been implemented recently. The event covered topics such as; GDPR, IoT, AI, cyber security and much more. It was especially worthwhile when meeting up with one of the speakers Pernille Tranberg from DataEthics (the Danish nonprofit ThinkTank), where we discussed the current digital climate and the need for alternative privacy tech and ethical driven data solutions.

London New Tech #42

The 42nd London New Tech meetup was good fun, where the mix of presentations we saw brought interesting new opportunities to the tech world. We also had the chance to present Mojeek, which was received well, people related to the lack of privacy on most search engines and the dangers presented by filter bubbles. We then spent the rest of the evening answering questions and engaging in interesting conversations about ethics in tech.

Good Tech Conference

We spent two days at Brighton's Good Tech Conference, bringing together technologists who are passionate about putting ethics at the forefront of their projects. It included hard hitting talks from speakers, such as Alex Fefegha on how he researched and challenged algorithmic bias in machine learning systems, to Alex Stephany's story on how he set up Beam, the crowdfunding platform that helps people from disadvantaged backgrounds receive training and employment opportunities. Not to mention great fun at the hackathon, coming up with projects where technology can be used for social good.

Tech Startup and New Ideas Night

The Tech Startup and New Ideas Night is an informal networking and presentation night in Shoreditch. After previously attending this monthly event as an audience member, we thought this time we would present Mojeek to the group of tech innovators and enthusiasts. Our talk focused on a general overview of Mojeek, introducing listeners to our story, details about our independent technology, how we respect privacy and our dedication to provide unbiased results.

Silicon Valley of South London - Women in Tech

Sussex Innovation Centre very kindly offered a spot for us to exhibit at their Women in Tech event. It was great to have some chats with the attendees who were supporting the much needed celebration for women in the UK tech sector and taking part in discussions around worrying statistics and social patterns limiting women in tech. It featured some great talks by Holly Leverson of Dotmailer, Dr Chloe Peacock of Sussex Innovation and Sarah Akwisombe, Instagram Influencer and Entrepreneur.