EVOLVE [26] Event Hosting & Moderating

Silicon Brighton, the community organisation behind Brighton and Hove's tech and innovation sector

Brighton Centre, Kings Road, Brighton

Role: Event Host, Innovators Stage (1 day)

The closing block of EVOLVE [26]'s Innovators Stage, on how founders and commercial leaders position, scale and fund what comes next.

The Context:

EVOLVE [26] was Silicon Brighton's biggest edition yet: 4,000+ attendees, six stages, 100+ speakers and 50+ talks, panels and workshops across a single day at the Brighton Centre. I hosted the closing block on the Innovators Stage, Position, Scale and Fund: What Comes Next, a run of two keynotes and a panel built for founders, operators and commercial leaders.

The Challenge:

This was a major step up in scale and ambition for Silicon Brighton, and the Innovators Stage needed a host who could do more than run the clock. Three quite different sessions, spanning AI-enabled brand execution, founder growth and investor readiness, had to connect into one clear story about growing with clarity and discipline. In a busy multi-stage venue that meant high energy stage management and tight timings, carrying the EVOLVE brand and key messages from the stage, and making every speaker feel looked after, while helping a mixed audience of founders, investors and operators see why each conversation mattered and how it fed the rest of their day.

The Work:

I hosted the block end to end: opening it, framing the Position, Scale and Fund narrative, introducing and setting up each session, facilitating the keynote Q&As, and closing with a call to action into the rest of the day and the wider Silicon Brighton community. I wove Silicon Brighton's key messages through from the stage, that growth is about clarity, focus and discipline rather than speed, and that AI is changing how businesses build, sell and raise while the fundamentals still matter.

Behind the scenes I ran the production side of hosting through my toolkit, so the organisers could stay focused on the wider event: a Notion host briefing page shared with speakers, a Tally form for organiser-level information, a session Google Sheet for speaker self-reporting, and a running script built for the day.

💡 Example of our hosting brief: https://discom.notion.site/Host-Briefing-Evolve-26-36ec6c7ce02981988c62d528e55b832f

“Elizabeth, thank you for your wonderful intro, outro and questions. You really made me feel at ease.”

Greg Lewis, Founder, Good Looking Design