Virtual Umbrella wins at The Evening Standard Progress 1000 2017

What an incredible night!

We get invited to a lot of events during the year, from VR meetups to conferences so when I received an invitation to the Evening Standard’s Progress 1000 night I thought “Ah, this will be cool event, I’ve most likely been invited to fill out numbers”

How wrong I was.

The Progress 1000 is a list of London’s most influential people, normally they pick one person out of that list to highlight. This year they chose 12, the men and women who were heroes from the Grenfell tower fire and the London terrorist attacks this year.

Listening to their stories, it really hit me. These men and women put their lives on the line every day and keep going.

After meeting some of the heroes of the night we grabbed the Progress 1000 book and started heading out. We had a quick look through and I was in shock to see Virtual Umbrella printed. I was in shock, honoured to be amongst these incredible people. Listed in the Science & Technology section alongside Tim Peake, Brian Cox, Gavin Free & Daniel Crunchy, Helen Sharman and many more incredible names.

I am in awe of everyone listed in the Progress 1000 and feel so proud to have my name in there.

I met Sadiq Khan. He was the most welcoming and nicest man I have ever met. He didn’t have to spend time with me but he did and it was amazing. Great to give him an insight into our company, how we were doing and of course VR.

I want to dedicate this Progress 1000 to my amazing business partner Bertie who works 110% every day for this industry, my team, The Nerd Pirates, James & ALL our events staff. None of this is possible without you.