The over the air is the annual geek fest to attend, where hundreds of hardcore hackers gather at “enigmatic” site where contribution of our predecessor Codebreakers at Bletchley Park directly resulted in shortening of the Axis war, invariably saving thousands of lives.
Their contribution in breaking the enigma code was of such importance that it remained secret for decades and the original codebreaking heros were kept underwrapped for even longer to general public for security reasons.
It is always a pleasure to visit the site; I can’t help feeling like “standing on the shoulder of giants” on my every visit. It is a national and a universal symbol of human values to treasure.
The ‘Over the air’ is an opportunity to mingle with our fellow geeks at a very appropriate settings and it gets massive thumbs up every year from the delegates. The event is large tribute to OTA organisers who work hard to keep the juices, the flow of energy and coffee going throughout the long 36hrs of concentrated efforts by the participants in the event.
This is the third hackaton event for the farming related Jatrobot, its 4th winning prize this year. It was a pleasure winning in two important categories at the OTA12; it raises the bar up little too high -next time we have to win 3 categories or more!
Jokes aside, clearly we are at a juncture, the age of digital disruption has arrived as old industries, methods and ideas are being turned on their heads. The possibilities to innovate have never been so bright. If we look back to the internet and penetration of mobiles over the past two decades, I think that we have not seen anything that significant yet.
There is still much to be done, with mobile and internet providing myriads of opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs to grapple with, there will be many new areas to explore. This is despite the economic downturn which is largely affecting through traditional investment and industries, quite rightly too. Furthermore, we are seeing a massive boom in tech sectors, not only the successful tech companies such as Google, Facebook or PayPal are active but also the old industries and business’s such as Cadburys, Pearson and Bloomberg’s are joining the fray as they feel the pinch.
This coupled with governmental incentives with UK currently in global lead in providing fantastic motivations for angel investors and various crowd-funding schemes expect that over the next 12 months this area is going to get even hotter with hundreds and thousands of new start-ups. And innovative ideas that would have an easier task of raising enough to produce a proof of concept than it was possible few years back.
There has never been a better moment to push forward with your new ideas than now, so let’s get on with it.
please check out Paul Tanner blog and official over the air blog for more details here
Thanks to 
for sponsoring a weather station to the project.
Two other disruptive startups to watch out for with members in our OTA12 winning teams were
and