 If you find a seat, we're about to get underway here. And to each and every one of you, a very warm welcome. I think you've already met me earlier this morning, but it's always a special privilege to be the first to welcome you to our gala evening, where we celebrate outstanding achievements in learning technology on a national scale. If you haven't found a seat yet, you're not sure whom to sit with, please join the table. There are some free seats at the front here. But before we get to dinner, we have a lot of very special things to announce. For those of you who've been to the awards evenings before, you know that this is the only peer awarded national award for learning technology, and we're now on our 11th year. I'm very excited about the winners tonight. I'm really looking forward to you helping us celebrate and give accolades to those of us who've really had an outstanding and amazing year. Now the awards and the winners are supported by our main award sponsor. And this evening we have someone with us whose first experience of the ALT conference started this morning, and who's really done a lot of homework finding out about all the finalists and finding out how that relates to the work that they do. So I hope you can put your hands together and give a very warm welcome to James Silcott. He's the sponsor this year's Technologies of the Year Awards. We enjoy the opportunity in helping you celebrate your excellent practice and work in promoting the intelligent use of learning technology on a national and international scale. This year's conference theme was about beyond islands. And as this country faces an uncertain future with unknown challenges, certainly around our place in the world, it is refreshing that we have a global fraternity here, sharing a common aim to improve the learning experience for every global citizen. There are no rules and there are no borders. Every year we have attended this conference. We have seen it grow and develop at an ever faster pace. In the last year, I have seen some excellent examples of digital transformation in learning technology. And this year's finalists are testing me to that. The focus this year on beyond islands of innovation, the finalists have all shown how they have supported their institution's use of technology to enable greater learning outcomes. In all cases, these outcomes have had a positive, some cases life changing impact on students, local and international communities. As my colleague Dave Kenworthy mentioned at the opening of the conference, the Bloom team at Coast Sector University of London have been many things to many people over the years. But we know one thing for certain, we exist to help the best possible learning technology from your institution. It is your VLE, your learning technology, your contribution. We are here to support you, the professionals, by providing the best platform and support to take your innovations to your institution. Our role is very much of an enabler to use the learning technologist. That allows you to deliver the best learning experiences to your stakeholders, the students, academics and the support staff. Digital learning is now so essential to every institution whether that be higher education, further education schools or NGOs. It allows greater access to a global audience and we understand that for any institution to excel at its digital learning, this has to be driven by the learning technologists. You are at the very heart of the institution's student experience. And there are many ways that Coast Sector can help from hosting, administration, development advice and more. We have been around for just under 50 years. We plan to be around for another 50. However, I believe with an exceptional rate of digital transformation, the next 50 years are just gonna be exciting for more than the first 50 years. This year's finalists show that this conference is very much a global conference with submissions from Africa, Australia and Europe. Being able to share experience on a global scale can only help everyone to learn, innovate and try new ways of teaching by working together. The experience, desire and drive for improving people's lives and the overall student experience is clearly seen from all the finalists. Finally, I would like to congratulate all the finalists and the winners. Thank you. For the big reveal, I have a little announcement this year because our learning technologists of the year awards are growing and expanding. As you know, we have an individual award and we have a team award and for the last few years voted for by you, we've also had a community favorite award. But through the consultation that Altis had with its members and the launch of our new strategy, one item, one area of learning technology that we feel we need to do more for, that we read to recognize more is research. We know that research can help inform policy, at least in a hopeful world. We know that research informs our practice and we know that there is a lot more challenges for us to meet. So together with the researchers in our community, we're going to be launching and drawing up a framework for a new award category that we'll be awarding for the very first time next year and that is going to be celebrating outstanding research achievement and in particular, early career researchers. So I'm very proud to announce that we'll be launching a new award starting next year and for those of you in the audience who do research or maybe at the start of your careers, please look out for the detail and enter next year. So I'm very excited. Next year, there'll be a bigger celebration with an emphasis on research. And earlier today at the AGM, at which you were all the room was entirely full, we also celebrated another outstanding individual and the honorary life membership of Altis here was awarded to Josie Fraser and Josie over there if you could get up. I think technologists of the year award, may I just mention that? So a stratospheric career, we're proud to help celebrate. But now without any further announcements, we're coming to the serious business, the individual awards. And joined, James, Helen and Pete, our co-chairs will help me present the awards. So if I could ask Pete to come up and announce the first individual awards and if you have won an award and we call out your name, please do come up on stage to receive it. This is better than the Oscars this, isn't it? Seriously? Okay, so in third place then for the individual awards, from Ulster University, it's Richard Beggs. And the runner-up is Ashwin Mehta from the Medical Research Council. Oops, which one is it, this one? Bill Suspenser. Now for the winner and the winner for the individual award is Chrissie Naranzee from the Tune University. With Chrissie winning. Just save for a moment. Right, and now after very stellar individual awards, we come to the team awards. And again, we're gonna share that out. So to announce the highly commended award, Pete. Sliced technical hitch. And the highly commended award, unfortunately they're not able to be here, but it was for Tabastock and Portman Tell Unit. And then the runner-up in this award is the learning technology team from the University of Northampton. And just join the others on the side. We'll do a quick picture together. Okay, I'm ready. All right, big. And it is a great pleasure that I give this award to an organization that have traveled a long way, they've come all the way from Australia. So the winners of the Manish College Central E-Learning Team of Australia. Congratulations, you nearly gave that away. But last but not least, there's another winner for this award. And that is the Technology Enhanced Learning Team from the University of Sheffield. There's one more award, fast to award, the last one of the evening, the one that's standing between you and dinner. And the one I hope that you've all been voting for. We've received hundreds of tweets and emails. But I think the worthy winner has had a very good campaign plan. With the most votes this award has ever received, we're very, very excited that it goes to Ashwin Metta. Please, Ashwin, come up. For all of our winners to come back on stage all together, I think we're going to have one more. If you want to all come up, if we get them all back on stage, your last job for the evening is to give the loudest cheer of the conference yet to all of our 2017 winners and finalists. Here they are to award you, and we wish you a very pleasant evening. Enjoy your dinner and let the University of Liverpool staff look after you. Don't forget, 9.30 in the morning, we're in for a treat with Pete Goodyear. So I hope to see you all in the morning and have a very good evening. Thank you all.