Connect Live 2024: Powering collaboration and innovation

Clue Connect Live 2024 brought together over 300 attendees from 100 organisations, marking the largest user conference in Clue’s history.

Covent Garden’s Grand Connaught Rooms provided the perfect backdrop for a vibrant event focused on empowering the intelligence and investigation communities, showcasing our latest technological advancements, and sharing best practices to tackle complex challenges in today’s landscape.

Keynote: Driving innovation and community growth

In the opening keynote, CEO Clare Elford and CCO Thomas Drohan set the tone, celebrating Clue’s expanding user base and the growth of the Connect community platform. They spotlighted the powerful role of data in driving effective investigations. Clare highlighted Clue’s commitment to helping users measure and demonstrate the success of their work, which is becoming a critical component in modern threat prevention.

“Data is really at the heart of everything you do,” she remarked, emphasising the need for seamless data integration across systems to unlock intelligence’s full potential. Clue’s enhanced API, a newly launched integrations hub, and a dedicated integrations team were introduced as key steps toward enabling powerful, secure interoperability.

AI-powered insights from intelligence

Thomas Drohan shared insights into Clue’s AI-driven innovations, discussing the foundations of Clue’s AI engine powered by advanced graph technology. With Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technology, Clue is providing rich, factually grounded insights – from linked entity suggestions to context-specific summaries – that add value to decision-making processes.

Thomas also introduced Clue’s AI guardrails, designed around principles of explainability, fairness, safety, and governance, reinforcing Clue’s commitment to responsible and transparent AI deployment.

Interactive breakout sessions: Exploring industry challenges

A series of nine parallel breakout sessions offered a spoil of hands-on workshops, allowing attendees to dive into specialised topics such as confidential reporting, tackling economic crime, and intelligence for prevention.

One standout session, led by Nic Thorn, Clue’s intelligence and investigations manager, placed attendees in a live intelligence scenario involving a cyber plot. Participants navigated complex decisions to prevent a high-stakes incident, showcasing the importance of intelligence skills and collaborative problem-solving.

Customer spotlights: Showcasing real-world impact

Customer stories highlighted how Clue supports a wide range of organisations in protecting society, from tackling NHS fraud to safeguarding horseracing and disrupting organised crime.

The NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) shared how they use Clue to track and measure the impact of their anti-fraud interventions across a vast, complex network, effectively bridging frontline efforts with executive insights. The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) demonstrated Clue’s role in their intelligence and investigations work, enabling coordination in cases like a lengthy disciplinary investigation that led to a trainer’s licence revocation. Finally, Lancashire Constabulary’s Serious and Organised Crime team detailed a two-year investigation into a large-scale drug operation, showcasing how Clue enabled secure data management, rapid link analysis, and cross-agency collaboration to produce a robust case file.

Attendees were also captivated by a session led by Alex Wood, a former fraudster, who provided a rare glimpse into the mindset of a social engineer. This thought-provoking talk deepened participants’ understanding of economic crime’s human impact and the complex motivations behind it. Watch his interview on our Joining the Dots podcast here.

Celebrating excellence: The Clue Awards

Clue Connect Live concluded with the highly anticipated Clue Awards, which recognise excellence in intelligence and investigations across five categories, including the Pioneer and Impact awards. This year’s awards celebrated the dedication and innovation of teams working to create safer communities, encouraging ongoing collaboration and growth within the Clue community.

With these inspiring moments, Clue Connect Live 2024 reinforced the power of collaboration and set a visionary course for the future of intelligence and investigations.

The event doesn’t stop there! Clue users can continue building valuable connections with other intelligence and investigation professionals on Clue Connect, our community platform. Keep the conversation going, exchange insights, and deepen your network. Why not share your biggest takeaway from Clue Connect Live 2024?