Ask, Offer, Announce: The Open Mic Session That Closed Out Nature Tech Unconference 2026
Session Description
The last afternoon of the Unconference had originally been set aside to go through the week's feedback. Instead, with five days of sessions behind the room and energy still running high, the closing slot turned into an open mic: two minutes each for anyone with an ask, an offer, or an announcement they hadn't had the chance to make yet. What followed was a fast, unscripted snapshot of where the ecosystem’s energy is right now, spanning funding calls, new tools, upcoming events, and open collaborations.
Speakers
Gilad Goren, Executive Director, Nature Tech Collective
Watch the Session Recording
Key Takeaways
Open Reach, a British Telecom subsidiary, has 220 million kilometres of fibre already laid across the UK and is starting to repurpose it for nature tech, including a live water-leak detection project. They're open to partners for further applications, from bioacoustics to heat sensing.
Adria Tarrida, Impact Lead at Geovation, Ordnance Survey's geospatial accelerator in Farringdon, offered free support to anyone working with geospatial data, including tech clinics, proof-of-concept help, and event hosting.
Yannick Wurm, a programme director at ARIA, the UK's moonshot science agency, announced that applications for new programme directors open this autumn. Successful applicants are given stewardship of £50 to 80 million to fund high-risk, high-reward science.
Joe Huddart, from Okala, announced Investing in Nature, an event happening the following week in the Surrey Hills AONB, and offered a discount code for the community.
Dougal Fleming, a research fellow at Middlesex University and developer of the Business Habitat Calculator, pitched a plan to build clusters of nature-positive businesses at a catchment level, starting with the Surrey Hills and the River Wey, and is looking for a funder and a collaboration with Nature Tech Week to run it.
James Tiburcio, from SamaÚma, made the case for tree planting as reliable, immediate carbon sequestration, and invited attendees to fund tree planting in the Amazon and Brazil directly, starting from as little as 15 pence per tree.
Gilad Goren shared early plans for a Nature Tech Unconference presence at New York Climate Week in September, a half or full day built through a coalition of members pooling resources and networks rather than paying for individual speaking slots.
A speaker from RAIN highlighted that the metrics frontline and indigenous communities care about often differ sharply from standard business metrics, citing mercury levels in rivers as an example with legal significance. The ask was for funding to pilot low-cost, community-built sensors and a way of communicating that data to investors.
A speaker from the conservation tech space announced a new working group forming on data standards and interoperability, inviting the community to stay informed as it develops.
Noelia Jimenez Martinez, from Earth Genome, announced Earth Index, a free, open-source platform for tracking deforestation, illegal mining, and related activity, now live at earthindex.org.
A speaker from Land Scale at the Rainforest Alliance raised the challenge of making complex, multi-variable landscape data usable enough to build investor confidence and direct funding to local initiatives, and invited input from the community.
The session closed with a reflection on the week as a whole: five days, thirty-two Unconference sessions, roughly a dozen satellite events, and 350 people who stayed through to the end.
