Maths-Whizz in Birmingham!

The God of Whizz needs a slap on the wrist. Whizz went to Birmingham’s NEC at the beginning of the month to show off Maths-Whizz to thousands of teachers and administrators who attended the Education Show 2010 and here, belatedly, is a brief round-up of the proceedings.

Whizz was shortlisted in two categories for the Education Show Awards (ERA Awards) – Supplier of the Year and Exporter of the Year. The show was another great opportunity to mix it amongst teachers and administrators who know and love Maths-Whizz, and those have yet to see the light (for shame!).

To correct the latter, Customer Service manager Natalie M, Product Manager Natalie S, and Sales Wizard Liam showed up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to spread the word. The Nats had already done sterling work organising our presence at the show and managing our award entries.

Liam, Nat, and Nat!

Read on…!

Whizz Education was exhibiting at the ‘BETT Boulevard‘, a showcase of BETT-show veterans at its Birmingham equivalent, and our corner stand was well-placed to bring in the punters.

Anecdotal feedback from the Birmingham show so far is extremely positive –
visitors were motivated to hear about what we had to offer, more oriented towards education (rather than business, as we found at BETT) and happy to chat about Maths-Whizz after the show.

To illustrate the point, here’s Liam in his element – surrounded by future fans of online maths tutoring.

He does requests...

...see!

Towards the end of the show the Nats got into their glad rags and headed to the awards ceremony.

Look! It's Whizz!

Whizz Education will be exhibiting at stand S8E (floorplan) from the 4th-6th March. The fair Natalies will be on hand to guide visitors through the delights of Maths-Whizz Tutoring and Teachers’ Resource tools, fresh from our awards shortlisting at BETT 2010.

To get a sense of what we’ll be up to, you can check out our Whizz Education exhibitor page or stroll down the ‘Education Show BETT Boulevard‘.

If you’re not sure what The ‘BETT Boulevard’ is (and I wasn’t), the AV Interactive blog helpfully explains:

A selection of exhibitors from the BETT show have been chosen to showcase their products at the Education Show 2010, which runs from 4-6 March at the NEC, Birmingham.
Due to growth in exhibitor demand, BETT Boulevard has been expanded and is now located in the For Your School area. Some of the exhibitors featured in BETT Boulevard include NumberGym Software Rentnote, Whizz Education, Rapid English Consultants and Spysure.

The Education Show 2010 is free to attend and is the UK’s largest exhibition of educational resources, regularly attracting over 15,000 visitors.

UPDATE: Read our belated report on the Birmingham Education Show 2010.

(BETT Show 2010 Maths Whizz team)

The Show

BETT got a hammering from Mother Nature this year with thick snow and icy conditions for the first half of the run and torrential winter rain for its final – busiest – day. Despite this we’re pretty pleased with how we fared at our little 6×1m gallery stand, overlooking some considerably larger marketing budgets and teams of rictus-grinned reps in the main hall below.

The team picture above shows the stand in all its mend-and-make-do glory, but omits three Whizz VIPs – Natalie (who organised our presence at the show), Manesh (master of Teachers’ Resource and many others) and Nic (fantastically overworked Systems Architect).

Having living and breathing product, customer service, curriculum, design and sales experts on the stand was something of a change from some of our larger competitors’ stands – together we know more about our products than anyone else. It would be nice to think we got that interest and expertise across to the hundreds of passersby we mugged for Maths-Whizz.

We had to improvise a little to make the most of our narrow spot with the excellent view – spray painting company letters in an abandoned stand up the corridor, frantically cutting and glueing on the carpet on Tuesday and Wednesday. But we proudly showed off our BETT Award nominations and mounted them alongside product images and charts demonstrating the efficacy of our online maths tutor.

A highlight of the show was the presence of the gloriously-coiffed Whizz Prof (below, accosting Product Manager Nat). Some of our international guests even demanded photos from the man himself. We’re wondering how best to monetize him for BETT 2011 – win a date with the Prof?

(The Maths-Whizz Prof at BETT Show 2010)

The Awards

London’s Park Lane Hilton was the venue for Wednesday’s BETT awards ceremony. The God of Whizz admits he was a bit impressed at the array of fine DJs and dresses for what is, basically, a trade show jolly – albeit one with a great reputation.

We had a table all to ourselves and we had dragged along two guests to join in the fun – Pat Workman of Hackney LEA and Anna Evans of Harvington School.

(Maths-Whizz Team at the BETT Awards table)

The show kicked off with some fantastically dull introductory words from the BETT organiser and one of the show’s sponsors. It can be difficult to jazz up an educational technology awards show, I’ll admit, but the thumping dance music that accompanied the speakers to the podium – and drained the will to live during the (excellent) meal – only served to make them seem less interesting.

Even so, wine was poured, drunk, poured again, re-ordered with the financial director’s credit card, and poured again for good measure. A good time was had by all.

The comedian-host managed to split the difference between sarcastic flippancy about an industry awards gig and sincerity about the achievements of which we were all – justly – proud, and he rattled through the categories in good time.

(Maths-Whizzers Natalie, Richard, Natalie and Ray)

Whizz Education was nominated in two categories – ICT Exporter of the Year, and ICT Education Partnership – an achievement matched by just one other company, I believe.

We failed to take home a gong in either case, but we were extremely happy to be there, and to have been recognised for the work we’ve done selling Maths-Whizz into the UAE, USA and India (Exporter of the year) and the development work with Worksop college and John Turner. We can only applaud Learning Possibilities and Manic Monkey, winners in the Partnership and Exporter categories, respectively, for their successes.

(The Proud BETT Awards 2010 winners)

The awards finished with an exhortation to get dancing in a narrow area below the stage set aside for such shindiggery. Whizzers mostly avoided cutting a rug, but promised to return to BETT 2011 with something to dance about…

The awards for which Whizz is a finalist are:

This is fab news, but for those of you not fully au fait with the world of educational technology, some background might be in order. The BETT awards accompany the annual British Educational Training and Technology show, held at London Olympia.

The BETT show is generally held to be Europe’s largest educational technology event, and is a huge draw for forward-thinking educators and industry from the rest of the world.

It’s therefore an honour to be shortlisted alongside companies like Encyclopedia Britannica and Promethean.

We’ll keep you posted on how we get on. Keep your fingers crossed!

UPDATE: Visit us at Stand R34 from the 13th to the 16th January 2009.

UPDATE (20/01/10): Get the report from the BETT Show 2010 and our showing at Wednesday’s awards ceremony, with pics!

 We are exhibiting at the R-E-M area – Stand F46 – armed with an interactive whiteboard, special offers and competitions. We’re close to the coffee stand, on the ground floor. Check the map here.

 BETT is free to visit – so come along and meet the Whizz team and see what’s happening in the world of education technology. We look forward to meeting you!

UPDATE (2010) – See how Whizz Education fared two years later at BETT Show 2010