West Suffolk College is hosting a series of esports days featuring a range of guest speakers from the industry.
Speakers will give talks on esports careers, the skills needed in the space and their own backgrounds and experiences to help inspire students at the college’s Bury St Edmunds campus.
Esports News UK has teamed up with West Suffolk College to help arrange the talks and run a few articles on their gaming activities and plans.
Talks will be given to Level 3 esports/computing students aged 16 to 24. Most are in-person and a few will be conducted remotely.
Speakers include those from the likes of team organisations like Guild Esports and G2 Esports, esports careers/jobs platform Hitmarker, university esports body and tournament provider NUEL, casters, PR/marketing agencies and more.
The full list of speakers is as follows:
- Ryan Barnett, Guild Esports senior operations manager
- Swipe Right PR founder and director Kirsty Endfield, junior account manager Courtney Raine and senior account executive Andrew Batu
- David Jackson, NUEL managing director
- Sara Leghari, Staffordshire University 3rd year student, Intel Futuregen 2022 cohort and esports industry volunteer
- Ceirnan ‘Excoundrel’ Lowe, esports caster and The Story Mob comms strategist
- Nathan Edmonds, head of community and marketing at Hitmarker
- Ellis ‘Ellibear’ Celia, head of content at Verdant and moderator for caster Joe ‘Munchables’ Fenny
- Rob Evans, Challengermode partner success manager
- Jake ‘JakeyBoyPro’ Murton, G2 Esports online events manager/producer
- Krzyś ‘Ducky’ Goodchild, CEO of Pendragon Esports and social media manager for UKEL/Fodels Forgers
- Dominic Sacco, Esports News UK editor and esports consultant
The talks will take place over the next couple of weeks.
Update: You can see some of the speakers in this Twitter thread here (click and scroll up to see them all).
Course director Ben Lewis said: “We think it’s great for students to have the opportunity to speak to people in the esports industry. Lots of the students are still unsure what area in esports they want to get into, and this gives them first-hand knowledge from professionals and the chance to ask them questions about their specific career in esports.”
The college also recently hosted an Esports Week to raise money for Red Nose Day.
You can follow West Suffolk College on Twitter here
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.