Scarlett O’Hara has survived the Civil War, Reconstruction, Rhett Butler walking out the door, VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, Blu-ray and the indignity of streaming compression.

4K UHD Blu-ray was apparently the next hill to climb.

Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment will release Victor Fleming’s Gone With the Wind on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray for the first time on November 3, 2026, more than 86 years after the film’s Atlanta premiere. The new edition has been remastered in 4K with HDR and will be available as a standard release, limited SteelBook and Walmart-exclusive Collector’s Edition, with a new 4K digital version arriving the same day.

More importantly, this is not simply the old Blu-ray master wearing a new hat.

Gone With the Wind was photographed in 35mm three-strip Technicolor, making it exactly the kind of catalog title that can benefit from a careful modern restoration. Warner has confirmed a newly remastered 4K presentation, while subsequent disc information indicates Dolby Vision, a remastered DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack, and the original theatrical mono mix in DTS-HD Master Audio.

Frankly, my dear, that took long enough.

Why the 4K Restoration Matters

Three-strip Technicolor is one of the reasons Gone With the Wind still looks so distinctive.

The process recorded separate color information onto three black-and-white film elements, which were later combined to create the final image. Restoring that material requires careful alignment, color work and preservation of detail across multiple source elements.

Warner’s 2009 Blu-ray restoration was already considered excellent, so the UHD has a high bar to clear. The real opportunity here is not merely more resolution, but better color reproduction, expanded dynamic range and improved preservation of the movie’s elaborate production design, costumes, painted backgrounds and shadow detail.

Warner has not published a full technical restoration report detailing the scanning resolution or exact source elements used for the 2026 edition, so claims about a specific 8K workflow should be treated cautiously until the studio confirms them.

The feature is also being spread across two 4K UHD discs, rather than squeezing nearly four hours onto one. That should allow for a healthier video bitrate and fewer compromises.

Gone With the Wind 4K UHD Specifications

• Format: 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
• Resolution: 3840 x 2160
• Video codec: HEVC/H.265
• HDR: Dolby Vision
• Original photography: 35mm three-strip Technicolor
• Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
• Feature presentation: Two UHD discs
• English audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
• Original audio: Theatrical mono in DTS-HD Master Audio
• Commentary: Film historian Rudy Behlmer
• Subtitles: English SDH, French and Spanish
• U.S. release date: November 3, 2026
• Physical editions: Standard 4K UHD, SteelBook and Walmart-exclusive Collector’s Edition

The Original Mono Track Matters

Keeping the theatrical mono soundtrack may sound like an odd selling point in the Dolby Atmos era, but it is important for film preservation.

Gone With the Wind was not mixed for height channels, rear surrounds or six subwoofers buried beneath the sofa. The remastered 5.1 track offers a more expansive presentation, but including the mono mix gives viewers access to something much closer to the original theatrical experience.

That is exactly how catalog releases should be handled: improve the experience without erasing the original one.

New Bonus Features

Warner has prepared three new supplements:

• Gone with the Wind: The Influence that Endures examines the film’s impact on cinema and popular culture.
• Gone with the Wind: Restoring and Preserving an Epic focuses on the restoration process.
• Scarlett O’Hara: A Woman Ahead of Her Time looks at Vivien Leigh’s performance and the character’s enduring place in film history.

Some international editions include additional legacy material, but Warner has not confirmed that every supplement will appear on every U.S. configuration.

A Box Office Monster That Still Has No Real Equal

The commercial history is almost as extraordinary as the film itself.

Box Office Mojo records roughly $402 million in worldwide nominal theatrical grosses across tracked releases, but that figure tells only part of the story because Gone With the Wind has been reissued repeatedly since 1939.

Adjusted for inflation, the numbers become absurd.

Guinness World Records estimates that the film sold approximately 202 million tickets in the United States during its first three theatrical runs and generated the modern equivalent of roughly $4.5 billion worldwide.

For context, Avatar, the current worldwide box-office leader in unadjusted dollars, has earned about $2.9 billion.

In other words, Gone With the Wind was not merely popular. It operated on a scale that modern theatrical releases are unlikely to reproduce.

The film also won eight competitive Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress, while Hattie McDaniel became the first Black performer to win an Oscar.

The Complicated Part

Any modern release also has to acknowledge the film’s depiction of slavery and the Antebellum South.

Gone With the Wind romanticizes plantation life and minimizes the brutality of slavery, issues that were criticized even when the film was originally released. Warner has chosen to preserve the movie rather than alter it, while acknowledging the offensive and problematic elements of its portrayal.

That is the correct approach. Film preservation should not require pretending history was cleaner than it actually was.

The Bottom Line

Gone With the Wind does not need another release simply because somebody found a new anniversary to print on the box.

It does need a definitive 4K presentation.

The combination of three-strip Technicolor photography, Dolby Vision, two-disc UHD presentation and preservation of the original mono soundtrack gives Warner an opportunity to create one of the more important catalog releases of 2026.

The film remains both a major achievement of Golden Age Hollywood and a deeply flawed depiction of the American South. Preserving it properly allows audiences to confront both.

For a movie that has already earned the modern equivalent of several billion dollars, two UHD discs seems like the least Warner can do.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

Where to pre-order:

(Available November 3, 2026)

Related Reading:

Private and public sectors need to join efforts to make robotaxi deployment a smoother affair, says Geotab’s Edward Kulperger.

Over the past decade, self-driving cars have become a somewhat common sight across several major cities in the US, China and elsewhere. Cautious regulators now want robotaxis on European roads.

Across the region, a number of countries, including Germany, Spain and the UK are allowing companies to pilot the technology in urban areas.

The needle is moving here in Ireland as well, with the Irish Government having approved partially autonomous vehicles (AVs) – also called level 2 AVs – on the country’s roads earlier this year, and kick-starting a strategy towards level 4 autonomous technology, or fully autonomous vehicles.

Though it may be years before we see fleets of driverless taxis in the country.

The safety argument

The argument for robotaxis primarily hinges on safety, according to Edward Kulperger, the senior vice-president for the EMEA region at the Canadian fleet management company Geotab, who tells SiliconRepublic.com that AVs are safe today and would “for sure” be safer than human driving in the future.

Geotab has about 6.5m connected assets, including robotaxis and other logistics vehicles on its platform, Kulperger explains. These assets, that have collectively completed more than 300m miles of complete AV driving, produce approximately 100bn individual data points.

This includes GPS data, vehicle and energy performance, accident data and vital information on other maintenance issues, which are used to monitor vehicles in real time, as well as train future fleets. “That’s a massive baseline to draw from,” says Kulperger.

Waymo, which has more than 200m in AV miles, said that its data indicated that its robotaxis were better than humans at avoiding crashes that result in injuries.

Just days ago, the Estonian ride hailing company Bolt announced a plan to launch its European robotaxi services on 25,000 Lucid-made cars. The company said it would use its extensive existing European data to train up the driverless fleet with hopes of growing the number to 100,000 by 2035.

Kulperger argues that AVs mean no distracted, reckless or drunk driving. While still in its infancy, the fast-advancing technology – now boosted with new advances in AI – will “surpass [humans] from a safety perspective”, he says. It’s also more efficient, he adds. “I think it’s really paramount that we, as a society, dive into fixing this [issue of road deaths].”

Then there’s other problems too, such as road congestion and concentration of pollution in urban streets that Kulperger believes AVs could also help resolve.

Road deaths globally dropped 21pc between 2011 and 2025 according to the World Health Organization (WHO), despite the addition of more than 1bn vehicles within the period. Still, more than 1m lives were taken on roads across the world just last year.

Meanwhile, road fatalities dropped by 3pc on average in the EU last year, amounting to nearly 19,500 deaths. Romania continues to have one of the highest fatality rates in the bloc alongside Bulgaria and Croatia (Croatia’s capital Zagreb was tapped by Uber to launch its first robotaxi service in the continent just last month).

The massive drop in road deaths, though, is attributed to “safe road systems”, says the WHO. This recognises human error as unavoidable, and promotes safer roads, infrastructure, vehicles, speed limits and regulations to hopefully ensure that crash impacts remain within survivable levels. Smarter vehicles, of course, aid in driver safety.

Still, some experts point to a lack of sufficient independent data backing up the narrative that AVs are less crash-prone than humans. They argue that driverless vehicles face problems of an entirely different kind to what humans might experience on the road.

Earlier this year, Waymo recalled pulled 3,900 robotaxis from US streets over a software issue that let AVs enter and drive in closed freeway construction zones. Just a month earlier, the company recalled nearly 3,800 robotaxis from the US over a software issue that could allow vehicles to drive onto flooded roadways.

Meanwhile, last December, the Alphabet-owned company briefly suspended services in San Francisco after a massive outage stalled Waymos on roads, disrupting traffic and adding on to the gridlock.

Waymo’s Chinese competitor Baidu also faced a similar issue in Wuhan after more than 100 of its Apollo Go robotaxis abruptly stopped on the city’s roads in late March.

Bloomberg reported that Chinese authorities, as a result, suspended issuing new licences for level 4 AVs, preventing companies from adding new robotaxis to their fleet or expanding to new cities.

Both countries have seen grievous AV-related injuries in recent years as well.

But according to experts like Kulperger, the hope is that over time, and with enough data captured from different urban layouts globally, issues like these will eventually be fixed. “The rapid adoption and acceleration now is kind of unprecedented – it’s really doable,” he says.

“Our societies have invested a lot in trains and buses – I think we complement that,” Kulperger says when asked what role robotaxis would play in alleviating congestion-related issues. He envisions a mixed fleet of public transport alongside AVs to help people reach destinations safely.

“You take a train, and then maybe you move to an AV to get to your destination…I think the economic and societal benefits [of AVs], will be realised, you know, exponentially as it grows.”

Data is the answer

The robotaxi market is expected to grow to $168bn by 2035, with a global fleet size of 3.6m robotaxis, according to data from Counterpoint Research.

Waymo, Tesla and China’s Baidu Apollo Go, WeRide and Pony.ai are all expected to lead the market, supported by their technology, funding and aggressive roll-out strategies. Meanwhile, ride-hailing leaders, including the likes of Uber, Lyft, Bolt and Grab are continuing to partner with robotaxi builders, connecting companies with their wide customer-base.

In Europe, these businesses are targeting to deploy more than 100 AVs per city by 2030, Kulperger says. “That gives you a little bit of insight into the kind of timeline.

“The thought process is to focus on logistical corridors… so arteries, freightways and to integrate that with various fleets.”

Europe’s old roads and unruly weather – a particular cause for trouble in areas like Ireland – have made expanding into the region somewhat challenging for businesses. Though that hardly seems like a hurdle anymore.

“We work with the largest AV organisations today,” Kulperger says, including one with driverless fleets in the US and recently in Europe. “We’re just at the tipping point of it really starting to scale.

“I think [by] 2030, we’ll see increasingly in, you know, cities like Dublin, a mixed fleet on the road where you have personal vehicles that are completely autonomously driven alongside partially assisted vehicles.”

Regulations need to evolve with the technology, says Kulperger. The bloc has been known to be slow with regulations, but it is attempting to change that across the board in recent years. Earlier this June, 18 EU member states, including Ireland, signed a declaration to support large-scale cross-border testbeds for AVs.

“I think it’s incumbent upon [the] private and public sector to start to really work together at the state and city level to deploy this because the safety and efficiency is kind of demanding it,” Kulperger says.

“The cities that’ll be best positioned to lead this might not be the ones that are most advanced today on autonomous vehicle…[but would be] ones that can combine the technology with the right regulatory infrastructure and commercial environment.”

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First, we are eliminating 268 roles across Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and the XGS management and central functions layer.

Matt Booty put that in an email to Xbox staff on Tuesday morning. Microsoft published the memo in full on Xbox Wire the same day, under the title Continuing Our Reset.

Booty is Xbox’s chief content officer. He wrote that he is deeply grateful for what colleagues have built, and knows how difficult the day will be for those leaving. His memo runs to three parts. The job cuts come first, then a reorganisation of the studios, then an update on the ones Microsoft is trying to sell.

Aaron Holmes had the cuts first. Hours before the memo went out, he reported for The Information that Xbox planned to lay off hundreds of staff. It would also consolidate several studios, he wrote, citing someone briefed on the plans.

268 is only the gaming figure

Microsoft cut more than that on Tuesday. Ashley Stewart put the company-wide figure at around 500 employees, writing in Business Insider. A small number of the roles sat outside gaming, in units such as cloud and AI.

Todd Bishop put it slightly higher. Microsoft described the total as fewer than 600 globally, he reported for GeekWire, with about 300 in Washington state. Cuts also landed in marketing and research.

Microsoft’s own memo gives only the 268.

Activision takes the next Halo

The reorganisation moves Xbox’s biggest franchise out of the studio built to make it.

Activision will develop the next Halo title, Booty wrote, using a new team that is separate from Call of Duty. Activision also picks up Rare, which makes Sea of Thieves, and World’s Edge, which looks after Age of Empires.

Halo Studios does not close. A small team stays to support the community and the games already on sale.

Rob Kostich, Activision’s president, set out the brief in a statement.

For Halo, our goal is clear: make the greatest Halo game ever, worthy of its universe and legacy, while staying true to what made players love it in the first place.

He said the team is already being assembled.

Halo has moved studios before

Halo launched in 2001 alongside the first Xbox, made by Bungie. Bungie left in 2007, after Halo 3. Cecilia D’Anastasio and Jason Schreier reported for Bloomberg that Microsoft then formed 343 Industries to carry the series on.

That studio was renamed Halo Studios. Its games have been expensive, irregular and hard to sell to fans, according to Bloomberg. The most recent release was Halo: Campaign Evolved, a remake of the original, which arrived in July.

Two analysts gave the BBC their read. Christopher Dring, editor-in-chief of The Game Business, said Halo was once Xbox’s crown jewel. It had not been one for more than a decade, he said.

Dring said putting the series under Activision makes sense. His caveat was that the company should be mindful not to lose what makes Halo unique.

Jez Corden of Windows Central called the change a dramatic move. Halo was once to Xbox what Mario is to Nintendo, he told the BBC, but years of mismanagement have eroded that.

Three more studios change hands

Bethesda absorbs Obsidian, the studio behind Fallout: New Vegas. Booty wrote that it keeps its current projects, including Grounded and a new Fallout game made with Bethesda Game Studios.

King, which makes Candy Crush, takes Microsoft Casual Games.

Playground and Turn 10 merge into a single studio for Forza and Fable. Booty described the two as creative and franchise partners for over a decade.

Ninja Theory faces closure

The third part of the memo covers the studios Microsoft is trying to sell.

Two separate agreements to sell Ninja Theory fell through. Microsoft will now open consultation with employees on a proposed closure, Booty wrote, while continuing to explore other paths forward.

The Cambridge studio made Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and won a Bafta for it. It was one of the five studios put up in June.

Arkane, in Lyon, is still in consultation, which Booty expects to run to the end of the year. French law obliged Microsoft to open that process first, Kris Holt noted in Engadget. Only then can it decide whether to sell, spin out or close the studio.

Three of the five got out. Compulsion and Double Fine went back to their management in August with their intellectual property, back catalogues and runway funding. Undead Labs has now done the same.

State of Decay 3 will launch day one on Game Pass under a new publisher.

Independence came at a price. Undead Labs said on LinkedIn that it meant saying goodbye to a significant number of colleagues, and declined to say how many.

There have been far too many announcements like this across the industry, and we hate adding to that list. These are people we’d hire again in a heartbeat, and we hope the industry takes notice.

Three quarters of the way through

Booty wrote that the actions completed since July, including the divestitures, bring Xbox roughly three-quarters of the way through the restructuring it announced this summer.

That programme covers 3,200 jobs and five studios, about a fifth of the division.

Asha Sharma, Xbox’s chief executive, told staff in July that the business was not healthy. Xbox was running at margins three to 10 times lower than comparable businesses, she wrote, according to Bloomberg. We must reset Xbox, she added.

The warning signs were already on the record. Microsoft was considering a spin-off in June, when the division’s margins hit 3%. It had raised console prices three times in 13 months. In July it admitted that cloud gaming had not worked yet.

Booty ended the memo with a date. Xbox holds a town hall on 6 October, where he says the team will look ahead to one of the strongest line-ups in its history.

Alongside its Android 17 announcement, Google has introduced Googlebook – its newest laptop series.

Designed for Gemini Intelligence, Googlebook promises to bring together Chrome, Google Play and a modern OS into a range of laptops that are all built with premium materials. Googlebook looks like a natural successor to Google’s 15 year old Chromebook series, and claims to be more of an “intelligence system” rather than merely an operating system.

If you want a deeper dive into Googlebook, make sure you visit our Googlebook vs Chromebook and Googlebook vs Windows 11 guides. If you’re not sold on a Googlebook then our list of the best laptops and best budget laptops should have you covered.

When will Googlebooks launch?

Google has recently unveiled the first wave of Googlebooks, and you can see a full list of models in our Googlebook launch guide. At the time of writing, there are five official Googlebooks including:

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• Acer Googlebook 14
• Dell XPS Googlebook
• Asus Googlebook 14
• Lenovo Googlebook 15
• HP Googlebook 14

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While they’re not currently available to order just yet, we expect availability to begin from October 2026 in the UK and US.

How much will a Googlebook cost?

When Google first announced Googlebook, we hoped that the laptop range would be as affordable as Chromebooks which can be found for as low as £249/$179. Plus, Chromebooks can be found on our best budget laptops and best student laptops guides, meaning they’re not only cheap but also offer solid performance too. However, unfortunately as RAM prices are still climbing and availability is scarce, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Googlebooks aren’t quite as cheap and cheerful as we dared to hope.

The cheapest Googlebook, the Acer Googlebook 14, starts at $899/£999 while the priciest models from Asus and HP will set you back around the $1199 to $1299 (£1099 to £1199) mark.

Which brands will launch Googlebooks?

Google has stated that Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo will be the first brands to launch their own GAcer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo are the first brands to launch their own Googlebooks.

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Google has explained that all Googlebooks, regardless of the manufacturer, will be identifiable by a glowbar that acts as an at-a-glance indicator of your battery, a G Key and authentication methods to keep your Googlebook secure and private. Those methods include a fingerprint sensor and, for some models, face authentication too.

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In addition, every Googlebook promises to be built with “premium craftsmanship and materials” like aluminium and magnesium, will be fitted with at least 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD storage and will see a minimum of 14 hours battery.

A Chinese-speaking threat actor has been exploiting vulnerabilities in ZyXEL GS1900 Smart Managed Switches and WordPress to steal sensitive data from 996 devices and more than 18,500 records stored in backend databases.

The adversary targeted multiple technologies, including PAN-OS Global Protect, FlowiseAI, Nuclio, Proxmox, Ubiquity, with exploits for known security issues.

Scans and attacks attributed to the adversary originate from the same IP address and have been recorded since early June 2026, and have been attributed to a threat actor related to the Red Heron group, linked to exploiting a critical flaw in the Gitea self-hosted Git service.

The activity was detected by threat intelligence company GreyNoise through its Global Observation Grid (GOG) network of sensors.

According to the researchers, the threat actor leveraged the wp2shell vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-63030 and CVE-2026-60137) in the WordPress Core component to breach at least 49 organizations in 29 countries.

Public exploits for wp2shell became available in mid-July, and active exploitation was observed a few days later. The campaign GreyNoise observed started around the same time, targeting high-value entities.

While many targets were in the small business and government sectors, one intrusion at an unnamed Western government organization stands out.

The attacker used a custom wp2shell exploit and performed extensive Windows and security reconnaissance, checking Microsoft Defender, AMSI, available services, listening ports, local accounts, application restrictions, and database configuration.

Over 36 minutes, the threat actor tried 17 scripts to bypass AMSI, escalate privileges through token impersonation or theft, create a local administrator, and extract registry data, GreyNoise says.

After locating credentials for a backend SQL database, the attackers used them in a password-spraying attack that gave them access to an internal SQL server, from which they stole at least 18,566 records.

According to the researchers, the data contained accounts, plaintext passwords, and personally identifiable information (PII) connected to government and law-enforcement agencies.

The same attacker breached a Russian state organization in occupied Ukraine, which the researchers described as a “red-on-red” compromise.

Exploiting multiple flaws

On August 17, the threat actor started to exploit a high-severity flaw (CVE-2026-7273) in ZyXEL GS1900 Smart Managed Switches and compromised 996 devives in 48 countries to extract device configurations, network information, and hashed root-level credentials.

Additionally, the hackers attempted to chain the Ubiquiti UniFi OS vulnerabilities tracked as CVE-2026-34908, CVE-2026-34909, and CVE-2026-34910 to obtain root-level remote code execution.

CISA has flagged the three Ubiquiti flaws as actively exploited since late June 2026.

GreyNoise also confirmed targeting of PAN-OS GlobalProtect, FlowiseAI (CVE-2026-56271), the Linux kernel’s Dirty Pipe flaw (CVE-2022-0847), Gitea (CVE-2026-60004), Nuclio (CVE-2026-79756), SENAITE LIMS (CVE-2026-54569) and Proxmox VE (CVE-2023-54391).

The researchers highlight that not all security issues leveraged in attacks linked to this threat cluster have been added to CISA’s catalog of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV).

GreyNoise has provided a set of indicators of compromise (IoCs) connected to the observed activity, which include hashes for backdoors and command-and-control (C2) infrastructure.

Join Mikko Hyppönen and security leaders from the NFL, CHANEL, and Atlassian for a two-hour digital summit on what AI-speed attacks change, what defenders should stop doing, and how to validate, decide, fix, and re-validate at machine speed.

Save your seat

Amgen’s Christine O’Sullivan and Angela Jenkins discuss the impact a strong network can have when forging a career.

According to Christine O’Sullivan, an operations transformation senior manager at Amgen, networking is key to building relationships, particularly in larger organisations, as no one should work in isolation. 

O’Sullivan told SiliconRepublic.com: “We rely on people across different functions who share different expertise, experience and perspectives. Building those relationships helps us understand more about the wider business, but it also makes it much easier to collaborate and to get things done when we need to.

“And that’s probably the simplest way I’d describe the value of networking, very few of us are going to achieve anything meaningful entirely on our own.”

For Angela Jenkins, a senior manager for quality and compliance, said that at its core, networking – while it sounds very formal – is really just about making connections. 

She said: “If you’re an introvert it can be daunting, but it’s about striking up a conversation when you’re in the queue for a sandwich at the canteen or engaging with a colleague over coffee to find out what’s going on in their part of the business.

“This is an effective way to get to know different people across the business. Those small interactions are often how relationships start. Having a good network is essential to accessing expertise. You may not have the answer to a technical question, but you might know someone who knows someone else who has the answer. 

“You build these connections across your working life, and then you can tap into that network for advice and guidance. Sometimes, it provides the answer to a question and on other occasions, it opens a door to a new opportunity.”

Who typically benefits from work-based networking initiatives?

O’Sullivan: Everyone benefits from networking, but it can be particularly valuable if you don’t have an established network, maybe you’re early in your career, new to the company, or have moved function or location. As you progress, those relationships will help you navigate and work across different parts of the business.

And importantly, networking is a two-way street. We all bring different experiences and perspectives. A digital native and someone with 20 years’ industry experience will learn different things from each other. That applies to leaders too, networking gives them direct access to emerging talent and fresh perspectives on topics like AI and new ways of working.

Jenkins: Work-based initiatives are beneficial because they provide structure and complement informal networking. You know that if you attend an event, you’ll meet leadership or colleagues from a different department or function. Participating in these structured events helps to light the sparks that ignite relationships and allow colleagues to connect informally. 

For example, if you are transitioning into a new role, you might know about the role itself, but if you have previously met a colleague who works in this function at a work-based initiative, they could provide the information that you need. Having a network gives you the benefit of people who you can reach out to for the tacit knowledge and context about how the teams connect and who have expertise. You wouldn’t be able to get this kind of information without building those relationships.

How can companies create an environment in which networking is fully integrated? 

O’Sullivan: Networking works best when there’s a mix of formal and informal opportunities. At Amgen, we also have a mentorship programme and I’ve found this particularly valuable when you connect with someone from a different part of the business who can bring a completely different perspective. So, while formal networking events are great for making connections, the informal side, the conversations and relationships you build over time, is just as important.

Jenkins: Networking works when it becomes part of everyday working life rather than something you only do at a networking event. It’s important for new joiners to take part in the non-work related activities that are part of everyday life at Amgen, as well as taking part in cross-functional projects which are brilliant for self-development.

When we view networking as being integrated into everything that we do, it means that colleagues are comfortable saying: “I’m really interested in what I heard you say in that meeting, can we have a chat about it?” People are willing to have those conversations regardless of organisation or level, and that openness is ultimately what drives our workplace culture.

How might networking events encourage less experienced employees to develop crucial future skills?

O’Sullivan: Networking events are a great way for junior colleagues to meet senior leaders. Regardless of whether the events are virtual or in-person, they also provide opportunities for junior employees to introduce themselves and to hear perspectives from across the business. 

Jenkins: Amgen offers numerous pathways for young professionals to develop soft skills like communication and public speaking. For example, our networking events provide an opportunity for junior colleagues to practice their personal ‘elevator pitch’ to senior leaders; where they explain their role, and that of their team, in the context of the impact to the business.

In-person meetings have an added benefit for junior colleagues: it allows them to see how successful presenters and leaders deliver their messages, they can see the eye contact across the table and the nodding in the room. 

What advice do you have for an individual who might find networking to be challenging?

O’Sullivan: Be authentic. I see that a lot of people network very naturally without realising it, so just being yourself is the best approach. You don’t have to walk into a room thinking, “I need to talk to 20 people”. Start with one good conversation. Be curious, ask what someone is working on, how they got involved or what they’ve learned along the way. That takes some of the pressure off and makes networking feel much more natural.

Jenkins: Be curious. Ask someone about their role, how they got there or what they’re working on. And don’t underestimate what you bring to the conversation either. If you have knowledge or expertise in a particular area, share it.

For example, if there’s a piece of technology you know a lot about, tell people. This is an effective way of networking because your colleagues will let other people know about your expertise. It’s also important to be consistent, spend a few minutes at the start of a meeting to introduce yourself to a colleague and then send them a follow-up note afterwards. Closing the loop is an underrated networking skill and it can spark the beginning of a productive two-way relationship.

How might you gauge how successful or unsuccessful a networking event has been?

O’Sullivan: It’s not just about how many people show up but the relationships that are forged. If you come away having made two meaningful new connections, gained a different perspective or learned something new, that’s valuable. The real measure is what happens afterwards, whether you continue those conversations and build on the relationships you’ve made.

Jenkins: It depends where you are on your professional journey. Our events tend to have a wide range of attendees, encompassing every career stage from executive directors to graduates. If you are a new hire, these initiatives are a great way to make valuable connections and to learn about key career development, influencing and communication skills. Similarly, attending an event can make graduates feel comfortable and give them the confidence they need at the start of their careers.

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£42 is a hefty amount to save on a security camera that never needs a cable run or a monthly bill.

That saving belongs to the Reolink Argus PT Ultra plus Solar Panel, a 4K battery security camera that has fallen from £139.99 to £97.99, which you can now get with a 30% discount that matches its lowest price in three months.