The Manchester Tech Festival is a space for software engineers, start-ups and scaleups, investors and tech professionals to come together. The overall aim is to discover how Manchester can support the tech community through shared experiences and ambitions.
Hailed as an event for the tech community by the tech community, Manchester Tech Festival dedicates itself to helping tech people learn, create, and thrive. The conversations and ideas shared will shape Manchester’s tech scene in 2022 and beyond.
Throughout the week over 40 free-to-attend networking events, lectures, workshops, hackathons, meetups and debates will be held across the city.
On Monday 17 October, there will be three full-day conferences curated to support specific groups within Manchester’s tech sector. This includes a Leadership Conference at People’s History Museum, Pathways into Tech conference for those who would like a career in tech at Friends Meeting House and a Women in Tech conference at DiSH. Each of these events provides insight with tailored content, exciting speakers and unique networking opportunities.
On Wednesday 19 and Thursday 20, the core 2-day speaker-led exhibition will be held at Victoria Baths with talks and workshops which span all levels of the tech sector from advice for startups, leadership, recruitment, sustainability and of course, all things tech.
Friday 21 October will see the spotlight placed upon Cyber, Data and Cloud as well as Diversity and Inclusion.
Organisers hope the festivals will help individuals and organisations across Greater Manchester learn, create, thrive, and ultimately shape the city-region’s growing tech scene.
The team behind the event want Manchester Tech Festival to examine what the city-region’s tech community can achieve its goals through shared experiences. It will highlight successes and failures across the sector while showcasing what it’s like to be part of one of the UK’s most vibrant regional hotspots for tech.
There will also be opportunities to hear from and network among some of the city-region’s biggest and most innovative names within the sector.
Amy Newton Founder of Inclusivity Tech and Festival Director at Manchester Tech Festival says, “We’re now in this new hybrid way of working and there are an awful lot of people not getting those watercooler moments which can spark ideas or having those face-to-face conversations which make you think of something or help you realise where a project has gone wrong.
“More than ever there’s a need to come together as a community and share that while really building on what we’ve done before.
“Our mission is to establish an annual festival that represents Manchester’s true tech self. Manchester Tech Festival is the people’s festival. We want to give a voice to everyone in Greater Manchester’s vibrant tech scene, showcasing that it’s our time to reign.”
The Manchester Tech Festival falls in Digitober, the GMCA’s October initiative to celebrate and showcase the amazing work of Greater Manchester’s digital sector.
The month aims to outline the city-region’s vision to create a critical mass of digital talent, positioning Greater Manchester as the key place for businesses seeking a digitally-skilled workforce to invest in outside of London. Through various events across the city region, Digitober will showcase progress and opportunities in Greater Manchester’s tech sector.
Book tickets for the Manchester Tech Festival here.
Learn more about events across the city-region this Digitober, here.
