Monthly Archives: October 2023

News, Tech, Tech Events, Technology

Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Prize Announces 2024 Laureates in Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences, and Mathematics

On 14 September 2023, the Breakthrough Prize announced its 2024 laureates. The Breakthrough Prize honours exceptional scientists and mathematicians who have made impactful discoveries in the fields of fundamental physics, life sciences, and mathematics.

Breakthrough Prize Co-Founder Yuri Milner says these laureates are at the forefront of “humanity’s collective intelligence,” which he calls “our most significant achievement.” Yuri Milner has also founded the Breakthrough Initiatives and the Breakthrough Junior Challenge.

$3 Million Prizes for Breakthrough Prize Laureates

The world’s largest set of scientific awards, the Breakthrough Prize aptly celebrates the work of the world’s greatest scientific minds. Each year, Breakthrough Prize laureates win enormous monetary prizes along with widespread recognition and prestige.

These are the 2024 winners of the Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics, and Mathematics. Between them, these 11 laureates have received 5 $3 million prizes.

2024 Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences

The 2024 Life Sciences laureates include researchers who have made vital advances in the fight against major diseases.

Ellen Sidransky, Andrew Singleton, and Thomas Gasser received a Breakthrough Prize for discovering the most common genetic causes of Parkinson’s disease.

Sabine Hadida, Fredrick Van Goor, and Paul Negulescu won a Breakthrough Prize for inventing the first medicines to effectively treat the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis.

Carl June and Michel Sadelain won a Life Sciences prize for developing a CAR-T therapy method to identify and destroy cancer cells. CAR-T therapy involves genetically engineering a type of white blood cell, called T cells, so these cells recognise individual patients’ cancer cells.

2024 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

John Cardy and Alexander Zamolodchikov won the 2024 Fundamental Physics prize for their decades of work on quantum field theories. Quantum field theories describe particle physics and various emergent phenomena, such as superconducting materials.

Cardy and Zamolodchikov’s contributions have transformed this field of study. Today, quantum field theories are a rich area of research in both physics and mathematics.

2024 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics

Simon Brendle won the 2024 Mathematics prize for his significant contributions to differential geometry. This field of maths uses the tools of calculus to study spaces, surfaces, and curves.

Brendle has helped the mathematical world make a series of remarkable leaps in differential geometry. In particular, his results have provided insights into manifolds in dimensions higher than the ones we experience every day and the shape of surfaces.

The Breakthrough Prize Honours Early-Career Researchers

In addition to recognising the groundbreaking work of established researchers, the Breakthrough Prize also awards prizes to early-career physicists and mathematicians.

This year, nine physicists won three New Horizons in Physics Prizes, and three mathematicians each won a New Horizons in Mathematics Prize. Each New Horizons prize is $100,000.

On top of this, three women mathematicians who have recently completed their PhDs received Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prizes, winning $50,000 each.

Learn more about the 2024 Breakthrough Prize laureates.

About Yuri Milner

Yuri Milner is a prolific science and technology investor and a Giving Pledge philanthropist. He is also the author of Eureka Manifesto.

Yuri Milner has co-founded the Breakthrough Prize, the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, the Breakthrough Initiatives, and Tech For Refugees.

The Breakthrough Junior Challenge is an annual science video competition for teenagers worldwide. Winners of the Breakthrough Junior Challenge receive life-changing prizes, including a scholarship for post-secondary education.

The Breakthrough Initiatives are a group of space science programmes investigating the big questions of life in the Universe. Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking announced the launch of the Breakthrough Initiatives in 2015.

AI, News, Tech, Tech Events, Technology

Global AI Safety Summit highlights Validate AI’s role in driving AI Assurance

The first-ever Global AI Safety Summit will take place tomorrow at historic Bletchley Park, renowned for its World War Two codebreaking achievements.

The Summit will bring together 100 global leaders, tech executives, academics, and AI researchers to discuss the emerging risks and opportunities of advanced AI.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has highlighted both the risks and the transformational power of AI and its potential to drive economic growth, enhance human capabilities, and address previously insurmountable challenges.

One of the summit’s key goals is the establishment of an international consensus on the nature of AI-related risks.

One organisation already working on AI assurance and speaking at tomorrow’s fringe event aligned to the AI safety summit is Validate AI,  an independent community interest company formed by representatives from government, Imperial College, The University of Oxford, The OR Society, Office for Statistics Regulation, UCL, and The University of Nottingham Ningbo China.

Validate AI’s mission is to enhance the validation of AI systems, thereby building trust in AI and promoting a cross-sectoral approach involving academia, government, industry, and charitable sectors.

Shakeel Khan, Co-Founder and CEO of Validate AI, will take part in a panel discussion “Delivering on the UK AI Vision as a Global Leader for AI Assurance: An Expert Community-Driven Approach.” He will discuss Validate AI’s pioneering work in developing an AI Assurance Toolkit.

Shakeel Khan states, “AI safety is a global priority, and the central question is: How do we assure the trustworthiness of AI? Validate AI’s mission is to provide assurance to AI solutions. We are creating practitioner-centric standards for validating AI systems and driving innovation by facilitating collaboration between government, industry, and academia. We are researching and evaluating AI safety best practice and our goal is also to broaden education and increase the understanding of AI’s potential and opportunities, all while minimising risks.”

He will discuss how Validate AI promotes trusted AI via its three tenets of ensuring relevance to answering the problem, ethical alignment to societal values and being technically sound to ensure robustness.  These tenets or supports by a series of invaluable checks produced by practitioners to ensure the delivery of safe, trusted and responsible AI.

To enhance awareness and understanding of AI, The OR Society is partnering with Validate AI on a series of roadshows on AI safety and assurance at leading UK universities including Imperial College, The University of Edinburgh, and The University of Sheffield.

Seb Hargreaves, Executive Director of The OR Society, states, “The Global AI Safety Summit is a significant event uniting global leaders to address AI assurance and safety. We are pleased that our partner Validate AI will be discussing the pioneering work it is doing to bring new assurance standards to AI. Validate AI’s mission aligns with The OR Society’s commitment to solving complex challenges. Our roadshows are focused on spreading awareness and knowledge about AI safety and assurance that will help drive the safe and responsible use of AI.”

For more information on The OR Society, please visit www.theorsociety.com.

Cloud Providers, News, Tech, Technology

Alibaba Cloud Launches Tongyi Qianwen 2.0 and Industry-specific Models to Support Customers Reap Benefits of Generative AI

New AI Model Building Platform and a suite of innovative cloud products launched to cater for the surging demand among customers and developers

 Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, today announced the launch of Tongyi Qianwen 2.0, its latest large language model (LLM), along with new industry-specific models at its annual flagship tech event Apsara Conference. This release signifies significant progress in Alibaba Cloud’s pursuit of cutting-edge AI innovation and its ongoing commitment to fuelling digital transformation in businesses.

In response to the surging demand for powerful infrastructure supporting generative AI development, Alibaba Cloud also unveiled an AI model training platform and a series of innovative cloud products. New initiatives to bolster the open-source AI model community and global AI startups were also unveiled during the Conference. These resources are designed to enable customers, partners, developers, startups, and the wider community to fully harness the potential of generative AI.

“Currently, 80% of China’s technology companies and half of large model companies run on Alibaba Cloud. We aim to be the most open cloud in the era of AI. We hope that through this cloud, it will become easier and affordable for everyone to develop and use AI, so we can help, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, to turn AI into huge productivity,” said Joe Tsai, Chairman of Alibaba Group.

Tongyi Qianwen 2.0: A Leap Forward in LLMs

Tongyi Qianwen 2.0, a generic LLM with a few hundreds of billions of parameters, represents a substantial upgrade from its predecessor launched in April. The model successfully exceeds some leading LLMs in benchmarks across domains ranging from language understanding to arithmetic problem solving and question-answering.

With an expanded model size and improved alignment technique, Tongyi Qianwen 2.0 demonstrates remarkable capabilities in understanding complex instructions, copywriting, reasoning, memorising, and preventing hallucinations. The model is now accessible to the public via its website and mobile applications, and available for developers through APIs.

Industry-specific Models: AI for Enhanced Business Performance 

In addition, Alibaba Cloud also released new industry-specific models to help businesses unlock the transformative potential of generative AI across sectors for enhanced business performance. These sectors include customer support, legal counselling, healthcare, finance, documentation management, audio & video management, code development, and character creation.

“Large language models hold immense potential to revolutionise industries. We’re committed to using cutting-edge technologies, including generative AI, to help our customers capture the growth momentum forward,” said Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud. “To help businesses better reap the benefits of generative AI in a cost-effective way, we are launching a more powerful foundation model as well as industry-specific models to tackle domain-specific challenges. Through these initiatives, we hope that our proprietary models can deliver real value to our customers to improve operational efficiency and stay competitive.”

GenAI Service Platform: A Comprehensive AI Model Building Platform

To cater to the burgeoning demand for generative AI, Alibaba Cloud introduced GenAI Service Platform, an all-in-one AI model building platform aimed at streamlining the model development and application building process. The platform offers a comprehensive suite of tools for data management, model deployment and valuation, and prompt engineering, making it easier for enterprises of all sectors to develop their enterprise-specific AI models.

Innovative Cloud Products to Drive Generative AI Development

To support the increasing computing and data processing needs required in generative AI development, Alibaba Cloud has launched a series of innovative cloud products across machine learning, container and database.

  • To improve efficiency of LLM models training and inference, Alibaba Cloud has upgraded its Platform for Artificial Intelligence (PAI), featuring enhanced computing power, network, storage, computing, container, model training and inference capabilities. AI and metaverse technology firm Futureverse has been training its text-to-music generation model on PAI leveraging its high performance and easy-to-scale capabilities to enhance effectiveness and efficiency.
  • To expedite the process of building customised generative AI applications, Alibaba Cloud has enhanced its full range of database solutions – including cloud-native database PolarDB, cloud-native data warehouse AnalyticDB, and cloud-native multi-model database Lindorm – with its proprietary vector engine. It has also introduced LLM-powered database ecosystem tools, including the intelligent data analytics assistant Data Management Service (DMS) Data Copilot.
  • To enable a more scalable and efficient cloud infrastructure for application development, Alibaba Cloud unveiled Alibaba Cloud Container Compute Service (ACS),a pioneering serverless solution that integrates container services with its cloud computing resources. ACS enables businesses and developers to deploy the resources of Kubernetes, a container-centric management software, in a more cost-effective and user-friendly way.

Community Programs to Foster AI Development 

In a bid to support the broader AI community, Alibaba Cloud has pledged to contribute more to open-source communities, including ModelScope, the company-initiated AI community with over 100 million model downloads since its inception a year ago. The cloud pioneer plans to opensource its 72 billion-parameter version of Tongyi Qianwenlater this year.

Alibaba Cloud also announced the Alibaba Cloud Startup Catalyst Program, offering cloud computing resources, including cloud credit support of up to USD $120,000, free online learning memberships, and networking opportunities to promising global startups including AI companies.

—

About Alibaba Cloud 

Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud (www.alibabacloud.com) is the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group. It offers a complete suite of cloud services to customers worldwide, including elastic computing, database, storage, network virtualization services, large-scale computing, security, management and application services, big data analytics, a machine learning platform and IoT services. Alibaba maintained its position as the third leading public cloud IaaS service provider globally since 2018, according to IDC. Alibaba is the world’s third leading and Asia Pacific’s leading IaaS provider by revenue in U.S. dollars since 2018, according to Gartner.

Data & Analytics, Tech, Technology

Cohesity Launches Cohesity SmartFiles Integration on the Snowflake Data Cloud

Integration Maximises Data Insights with Flexibility for On-Premises and Cloud Analytics While Meeting Data Sovereignty and Compliance Requirements

Cohesity, a leader in AI-powered data security and management, today announced the launch of Cohesity SmartFiles on the Snowflake Data Cloud. This new integration enables businesses to derive analytical insights from their on-premises and cloud data while maintaining data sovereignty and meeting compliance requirements.

“Snowflake recognises the critical importance of providing customers with advanced data security and management while mining their data for strategic insights,” said Kit Beall, Chief Revenue Officer, Cohesity. “As a leader in AI-powered enterprise data security and management, we seek partners equally dedicated to the secure storage and management of customer data. That is why we are delighted to partner with Snowflake to continue delivering innovative and secure solutions that our customers can confidently rely on.”

By leveraging the Snowflake Data Cloud, Cohesity is joining Snowflake in mobilising the world’s data to help organisations reap the benefits of their analytics capabilities without having to move their data to the cloud for analysis. With Cohesity SmartFiles, joint customers can store their data locally in SmartFiles and leverage Snowflake’s analytics capabilities with the flexibility to keep data either on-premises or in the cloud. This integration provides customers with broader access and choice while allowing them to adhere to strict internal policies.

Cohesity SmartFiles augments customers’ cloud-native Snowflake Data Cloud to include on-premises repositories and extends secure access to sensitive local data records. Cohesity SmartFiles also provides a secure platform for consolidating application data that is designed to improve storage efficiency and reduce overall cost of ownership for local Snowflake repositories.

“Cohesity’s commitment to helping Snowflake mobilise the world’s data can be seen through the launch of the SmartFiles integration,” said Tarik Dwiek, Head of Technology Alliances, Snowflake. “We look forward to partnering with Cohesity to allow access to SmartFiles in the cloud or on-premises through Snowflake’s single, integrated platform.”

This collaboration with Snowflake and Cohesity enables joint customers to gain more value from their data while optimising cost, scale, and efficiency for their Snowflake data.

 

Image caption: Kit Beall, Chief Revenue Officer, Cohesity

Finance and Banking, Investment, Investment News, News

Industry-first Financial Guarantee Launches to Enable Confident Funding for Creative Projects

A brand new financial guarantee, designed exclusively for the film and media industry, will finally provide lenders across the globe with financial security when funding independent productions.

The Media Credit Guarantee is launched today by Kerry London Europe to coincide with the American Film Market. This unique financial guarantee is designed to make it easier for banks and other lenders to confidently offer funding to independent producers of film, tv series and animation.

Importantly, it’s the first product of its kind tailored specifically to the film and media industry and is offered exclusively by Kerry London Europe.

The new product offers a guarantee to banks and other lenders, ensuring contractual payments are made on time. If unforeseen circumstances such as insolvency prevent payments from distributors or incentives, the Media Credit Guarantee protects lenders from losses of up to £5 million per distributor or incentive contract.

“The American Film Market is the perfect springboard to launch our industry-first Media Credit Guarantee to the global film industry, banks and financiers,” explains Ansley Williams, Client Services Director at Kerry London Europe. “This guarantee will have an incredibly positive impact, bringing more productions to life with minimal negotiations with lenders.”

Independent film productions, particularly those with foreign distribution deals or no well-known talent attached, have previously been considered high-risk investments and ‘indie’ producers or production companies often lack the collateral needed to reassure lenders. The Media Credit Guarantee removes these barriers, enabling lenders to invest confidently in creative projects.

Kerry London Europe is now accepting Media Credit Guarantee applications for film and media projects. For more information visit our website.

Charity & CSR, Chester, Events, News

Chester Business Club Charity Ball Raises Nearly £20,000 for Local Good Causes

A CHARITY ball organised by the Chester Business Club (CBC) raised nearly £20,000 for good-causes across the region.

Hundreds of people attended the “Winter Wonderland Ball” at Chester’s Racecourse, as the city came together to help raise much-needed funds.

Three charities – Platform for Life, Stick ‘n Step and North West Cancer  Research – are now set to benefit from the funding.

Jan Chillery

Commenting on the event, Jan Chillery, Chair of the Chester Business Club, said: “The evening was so much fun for everyone, with a beautifully decorated room and lively music from an excellent band. It was wonderful to see the city come together to raise money for so many incredible charities.”

The event was organised by the CBC’s Executive Committee, who all work tirelessly to promote the City and its businesses on a voluntary basis.

Committee member Abi Smith oversaw the running of the event helping to secure sponsors for the event. Companies who supported the Ball included The Little Design Agency, City Framers, FB Sports Clothing, Boodles, Leonard Curtis and Haines Watts.

Representatives from those companies were among guests at the event on October 7, where attendees enjoyed a three-course meal and then danced the night away.

But before hitting the dance floor many dug deep for good causes raising money via a game of heads and tails, through a prize raffle and via a charity auction.

The charities benefiting from the money raised were also invited to attend the Ball and they provided inspirational presentations to those in attendance about the life-changing work they do.

Ms Chillery, a partner at Chester-based solicitors Aaron and Partners, added: “Many of our guests stayed until the very end, dancing and enjoying great company.

“I’m very proud that the CBC Charity Ball is so popular with the Chester business and social scene.  As a Club we are proud to support these wonderful charities.”

 

News, Pensions

Pension expert reacts to UK’s Global Pension Index ranking

The UK has retained a top 10 spot in the Mercer CFA Institute’s Global Pension Index.

The research includes 47 pension systems covering 64% of the world’s population and benchmarks each system using more than 50 indicators including sub-indices of adequacy, integrity and sustainability. The UK’s pension system has been ranked as the 10th best system in the world, while the Netherlands, Iceland and Denmark took the top three spots.

Stuart Price, Partner and Actuary at Quantum Advisory, says: “The UK has maintained its position in the top ten of the index. However, this ranking places it mid-table compared to pension systems in other developed countries.

“With an ageing population and a diminishing workforce, the UK is facing a ticking timebomb when it comes to funding retirement. As an industry, we need to work on getting people clued up about their pensions and the options available to them, or we risk a very uncertain future.

“The state pension, workplace and private pension arrangements are the main feeder for income in retirement. As the state pension can be changed by the government at any time, workplace and private pension saving is crucial to allow people to retire at a reasonable age with a decent level of income.

“However, savers are in a difficult situation. The decline in defined benefit pension schemes, usually the gold standard for individuals, is having a long-term impact on retirement savings and not enough is being saved in defined contribution pension schemes which have replaced defined benefit schemes.

“The UK could follow the example of other top 10 countries in the index and begin to embrace the collective defined contribution scheme which is prevalent in Denmark and is also in use in the Netherlands alongside a strong defined benefit pension system. The concept for the collective defined contribution scheme was introduced in the Pension Schemes Act 2021. It pools member and employer contributions together in a collective fund with shared investment and longevity risks, providing the potential to earn more than through traditional pension arrangements. As a good halfway house between defined benefit and defined contribution schemes, it has the potential to really help up our pensions game as a nation.”

Business, Cloud Providers, Hyperconvergence, News, Tech, Technology

Nutanix Hybrid Multicloud Platform Recognised as a Leader

Receives Among the Highest Scores in Current Offering Category and Highest in Strategy Category

Nutanix has announced it has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Hyperconverged Infrastructure, Q3 2023, published by Forrester Research, Inc. The report evaluated 11 HCI vendors on Current Offering, Market Presence, and Strategy, and Nutanix was positioned as a leader with the highest possible scores in the vision and innovation criteria. Nutanix also received the highest scores in the storage and data, and support and experience criteria. Nutanix believes these results show the company’s strength in helping organisations build a hybrid multicloud platform to run all apps and data anywhere – whether in the datacentre, in public cloud or at the edge.

“Most organisations are grappling with the messy, accidental multicloud reality of managing applications and data across multiple clouds and on-premises, resulting in operational complexity, increased costs and security risks,” said Thomas Cornely, SVP, Product Management at Nutanix. “Nutanix addresses these challenges with one platform to run applications and data anywhere. To us, this report underscores our leadership in this market and recognises our strong offering and vision to help customers simplify their hybrid multicloud environments.”

The Forrester Wave™ report ranked Nutanix as a leader and states, “Nutanix is known for simplifying infrastructure complexity and is applying that philosophy to hybrid cloud infrastructure as well.” It also notes, “The Nutanix vision focuses on building a hybrid and multicloud platform for business applications, easing adoption of cloud-native architecture.” Additionally, the report notes, “Nutanix puts customers at the heart of its innovation strategy, using its strong community ties to source new features for its roadmap.”

This news comes on the heels of continued strong innovation and momentum from Nutanix, including:

  • The launch of Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box to simplify adoption of generative AI among enterprises. This full-stack software-defined AI-ready platform allows customers to easily procure AI-ready infrastructure to fine-tune and run generative pre-trained transformers (GPT), including LLMs at the edge or in their datacentre, while maintaining control of the data.
  • The global strategic partnership with Cisco® to accelerate hybrid multicloud deployments by offering the industry’s most complete hyperconverged solution for IT modernisation and business transformation. Cisco Compute Hyperconverged with Nutanix delivers best-in-class cloud operations, unparalleled flexibility, and industry-leading customer support and resiliency.
  • Strengthened cyber resilience with accelerated ransomware detection and recovery with new features in Nutanix Data Lens™ and Nutanix Unified Storage™. These new capabilities enable organisations to detect a threat, defend from further damage and begin a 1-click recovery process within 20 minutes of exposure. The features build on the strength of Nutanix Cloud Platform to protect and secure customers’ most sensitive data across clouds.
  • Expanded product capabilities delivered with the AOS 6.7 release. This release expands the hybrid multicloud featureset while enhancing existing capabilities. It includes new enterprise virtualisation features, denser storage configurations with greater storage performance, greater resiliency for deployments in the public cloud, and enhanced hybrid multicloud management.
  • Strong customer momentum including Micron Technology, which selected Nutanix Cloud Platform for its manufacturing facilities globally, and the Department for Work and Pensions, the UK’s largest central government organisation which standardised on Nutanix for their hybrid cloud environment.

 

For a copy of the Forrester Wave™ for Hyperconverged Infrastructure, please visit: here.

Charity & CSR, News, Thought Leadership

NEW: Can Charities Survive the Burden of the Cost-of-Living Crisis?

Expert Outlines Five Ways for Charities to Make Donors Money Go Further

CHARITIES will continue to face huge funding challenges next year due to the ongoing cost of living crisis, a leading expert has predicted.

Shameet Thakkar, the managing director of Unimed Procurement Services, said many charities could ultimately close due to growing financial pressures.

He said: “There is no doubt that charities, and smaller charities in particular, have been affected by the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. In 2022, 86% of charity leaders expressed concern regarding the impact of the crisis on those who depend on their services.

“And with 53% of donors having found it more difficult to give to charities in 2022, these concerns are justified, with charities experiencing both a decrease in income and a higher demand for services.

 

Outlining how the past year has been so far he continued: “2023 has seen those challenges continue, with a new Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) survey showing that the cost-of-living crisis has had an impact on the workforce of seven in 10 charities, and only 55% of charities surveyed were confident they could meet current overheads.

“What’s more, research indicates that the 2023 Spring Budget departmental budget increases have not flowed down to charity frontline services, ultimately creating a £1 billion public funding cut that could result in widespread charity closures.

“It’s clear that small and medium sized charities will ultimately have to do more with less in the current climate. But this isn’t an impossible feat, albeit a particularly difficult one.

“As a consequence of the cost-of-living crisis, charities need to make their funds go further. However, this should be something that is always kept at the forefront – everyone holds charities accountable for how their money is spent, which is an added layer of complexity in an already challenging situation. But there are specific ways charities can ensure their funds are used as effectively as possible.”

 

Here, Shameet outlines five ways charities can make their money go further:

 

Gaining and retaining donors’ trust

“Showing accountability and a transparent approach when handling taxpayers’ money is the best way to gain their trust. In turn, this can help charities receive continued donations from habitual donors, even in spite of the cost-of-living crisis.

“In this context, it’s also vital that charities don’t compromise on the quality of the commodity or the service itself. Cutting costs shouldn’t affect the quality of what the charity is providing or facilitating, which in most cases is something of vital importance to those receiving it.

“If charities are to retain consumers’ trust, keeping quality in mind is a necessity, as it will also improve the credibility of the organisation. Consumers tend to trust and respect charities that continue to support those that depend on them as best as they can in spite of the challenges – and communicating this to donors with transparency can go a long way.”

 

Employing the very best people

“Many are unaware of the costs that take to simply keep a charity alive, and the costs that ensue from hiring people run those all-important operations.

“Though only a small portion of taxpayers’ money goes into the charity’s running costs, such as its employees, charities have to invest in the best people to get the most value out of their funds.

“People are at the heart of businesses’ and organisations’ success, and charities are no different. Even one individual can make all the difference. Ultimately, charities should be run by business-minded individuals, allowing charities to more easily turn a profit for the security and welfare of the cause or the communities supported by the charity.”

 

Ensuring effective planning strategies are in place

“It can be helpful to look at a charity as a business, which means that within their planning strategies, they should focus on costs, procurement, and the value of what they’re buying to make sure that they are getting the right product for the right price.

“Often, charities will need to buy products in an ad hoc way. However, if they plan their procurement cycles correctly, properly plan for when their projects are going to come in, and know exactly what they’re going to be buying and when, then they will likely be able to obtain better value for them.

“The element of foresight and proper planning should never be cast aside, particularly at times when funds are limited – charities simply can’t afford to rely on guesswork.”

 

Adopting a business mentality

“Again, having a business mentality when running a charity has its benefits.

“Many think that charity leaders are paid too much. But if we think of them as business leaders, they should receive the money that they need to be at the helm of their organisation, which involves many of the same elements of business leadership: hiring quality employees, putting the right processes and systems in place, managing finances effectively, setting goals, measuring performance and much more.

“Overall, charities need the very best people to operate effectively whether in times of crisis or not, just like a business would. But for charities, it’s even more essential that there are people guiding it that are truly capable of delivering the very best work.”

 

Outsourcing procurement to ensure better control

“Procurement is a large part of charities’ activities. Having professionals at one’s disposal who can effectively take care of this function can be a huge help, especially when it comes to saving on costs.

“Instead of having a full-time employee dedicated to procurement, which of course comes with its additional financial burden, outsourcing procurement allows charities to only pay for these services when they are needed.

“Smaller charities in particular don’t need procurement individuals, as they can outsource to organisations such as Unimed, paying a one-time fee as opposed to a yearly salary, which works in their favour when it comes to the costs.

“And the benefits are not just financial. Funds can often be misused if they’re not controlled by procurement professionals. By outsourcing this function, charities are also outsourcing that responsibility – but they are outsourcing to experts who know exactly how to handle this burden.”

 

Car News, Sustainability, Training

BMW Opens New Training Centre in Debrecen Powered Solely by Green Energy

The BMW Group has inaugurated its Training Center at the newly established Debrecen plant in Hungary. With an investment surpassing one billion euros, the facility will commence production of the first all-electric model from the Neue Klasse line in 2025. Training competent professionals is a top priority for BMW.

The Neue Klasse represents BMW’s future, blending electrification, digitization, and sustainability.

This Training Center’s unveiling in Debrecen signifies a step closer to the 2025 production launch of the Neue Klasse.

Spanning over 6,500 square meters and backed by nearly 20 million euros, this facility boasts advanced infrastructure. Here, employees, apprentices, and dual-education students will hone their skills for producing the upcoming BMW models.

Ilka Horstmeier, a board member of BMW AG, during the opening ceremony, remarked, “Neue Klasse reshapes our vision of mobility and teamwork. Our transformation is molded by our workforce. With the Training Center’s launch in Debrecen and the initiation of our first batch of 100 students, we underscore the significance of education in shaping our company’s future.”

By 2025, the apprentice count will escalate to 300, making it Hungary’s premier apprentice program.

The collaboration with the Debrecen Vocational Training Center enables students to embark on a three-year journey mastering mechatronics, electronics, automotive mechatronics, and IT. Every successful graduate is presented with a job offer by BMW or the choice to pursue further studies.

Hans-Peter Kemser, the President and CEO of BMW Group Plant Debrecen, commented, “At this Training Center, we’ll immerse apprentices in BMW’s methodologies and values. We thrive on teamwork and value every member’s input.”

Beyond offering educational and job opportunities, BMW also collaborates with local universities on art and culture projects, reinforcing its commitment to community engagement.

Foreign and Trade Minister Péter Szijjártó expressed his enthusiasm at the event, “BMW’s choice to bring cutting-edge technology and produce their newest electric model in Debrecen fosters stronger Hungary-Germany relations. This center promises bright prospects for our youth.”

Currently, the Training Center is among the first operational structures on the vast 400-hectare Debrecen site, with the Communication Center soon to follow.

Uniquely, the Debrecen plant, envisioned as an iFACTORY, will be the world’s first to run solely on clean energy, with significant power sourced from a 50-hectare solar array within the premises. The facility aims to produce 150,000 units annually.

 

Image: BMW Group