Tech events in birmingham

The fifth workshop in the Birmingham NatWest Accelerator's Funding Accelerator, at 2 St Philip's Place, 09:30 to 13:00, on the financial information funders expect to see. It covers the metrics that signal a business is fundable, how to organise financial information so a funder can read it quickly, and how to build or refine a cashflow forecast that holds up. There are practical exercises rather than a lecture. The wider Funding Accelerator is a twelve-week programme of six expert-led workshops, and you can attend individual sessions without committing to the whole thing. Free. Why go: most founders can describe the business and then fall apart on the numbers, and this is the session that fixes that. Best for early-stage founders preparing for a raise or a lending conversation.

Birmingham's business analysis community takes over 81 Colmore Row for a Halloween-themed evening on AI and the BA profession, 18:00 to 21:00. The costume framing is light; the discussion is not. The questions on the table are how BAs are using AI in their roles today, how they should be using it, what it opens up and what it threatens, and what the profession looks like as AI gets embedded in organisations and ways of working. It is a social rather than a talks night, so the format is open discussion and networking with plenty of time to mingle. Free. Why go: an honest practitioner conversation about a profession under real pressure, among people doing the same job. Best for business analysts, product owners and delivery leads in the region.

with Garima Khakurel (Co-organiser, Women In Tech Birmingham) · Julia Gray (Co-organiser, Women In Tech Birmingham)

An evening of short demos from women in Birmingham's tech community showing things they have built outside work - apps coded at weekends, hardware experiments, games, data projects, creative tools, and projects still half-finished. Women In Tech Birmingham run it at Griffiths Waite's Centre City office, hosted by Garima Khakurel and Julia Gray. Presenters cover why they started the project, what went wrong and what they learned, with time for questions afterwards. Speaking slots are still open - email the organisers a couple of lines about your project. Free, pizza and drinks provided, 18:00 to 20:00. All experience levels welcome, and coming purely to watch is fine. Why go: the demo-night format gets past polished conference talks to what people actually build when nobody is grading it. Best for anyone in Birmingham tech who wants a low-stakes first speaking slot.

with Peet Denny (Founder, Tekka) · Dr Anandhi Vivek Dhukaram (Co-organiser, BrumAI)

BrumAI's October meetup, hosted by University College Birmingham at Moss House and sponsored by Birmingham consultancy Griffiths Waite. Peet Denny, who started BrumAI in 2017 and now runs regulated fintech Tekka, talks through the agent harness he built himself - Claude, Grok and GPT wired into Cursor and Linear - covering how it is put together, what went well and what he got wrong. Dr Anandhi Vivek Dhukaram, BrumAI co-organiser and an EU AI Act compliance strategist, runs an interactive session after the break. Arrival 17:30, talks from 18:00, close 19:25. Free, with food and drinks. Reception checks everyone in by name, so the RSVP needs your first and last name. The event is currently on a waitlist. Why go: Peet's talk is a first-hand account of running real product work through AI agents, not a demo of them. Best for engineers and founders already shipping with agents.

Digital in Brum restarts its informal socials at The Lost and Found on Bennetts Hill, 18:00 to 21:00. No talks, no agenda and no pitches. It is drinks and conversation for Birmingham's digital crowd: marketers, creatives, strategists, social specialists, freelancers and agency people. The organisers frame it around the things actually making the job harder right now, which is to say shifting algorithms, squeezed budgets, AI changing how the work gets done, and proving ROI. Come and go as you like, and bring a colleague. Free. Why go: the city's agency and in-house digital people are hard to meet in one place, and this is the standing fixture where they turn up. Best for anyone working in digital in Birmingham who wants the unofficial version of what is going on.

A structured breakfast debate on whether AI is a genuine improvement for the built environment or whether the risks outrun the rewards, hosted by Constructing Excellence Midlands at PwC on Chamberlain Square and supported by the University of Wolverhampton. Registration with coffee at 08:00, Slido questions to the room at 08:30, then alternating five-minute cases: advocates on benefits and efficiency against speakers on governance, sustainability, ethics and risk. Barrie Diffin argues the risk side with The Next Excavator: Leadership in the Age of AI, with Alistair Wilson and Jessica Southworth also speaking. Open debate at 09:25, closing arguments, then an audience vote and networking. Ends 10:30. Tickets are 10 pounds for members, 20 for non-members. Why go: a format that forces both cases to be made properly, in a sector where AI claims usually go unchallenged. Best for construction, engineering and property technologists.

with Stephen Phipson (CEO, Make UK) · Katherine Bennett CBE (Speaker, High Value Manufacturing Catapult) · Simon Rose (Speaker, Airbus Defence & Space) + 3 more

The UK's biggest advanced manufacturing and engineering show — two days in Halls 3 and 3a at the NEC, with 400-plus exhibitors across aerospace, automotive, space, rail, maritime, energy and electronics. Free for qualified professionals, 18 and over. Six CPD forums run alongside the floor, including a dedicated AI, Digitalisation and Automation track plus R&D and design engineering, clean energy and net zero, and people and skills. Speakers include Stephen Phipson (CEO, Make UK), Katherine Bennett CBE (High Value Manufacturing Catapult), Simon Rose (Airbus Defence & Space), Fatin Emre Gunes (Jaguar Land Rover), Ed Bower (Aston Martin Lagonda) and James Passemard (McLaren Accelerator). UK Metals Expo and Lab Innovations are co-located. 9:00 to 17:00 on the 4th, 9:00 to 16:00 on the 5th. Why go: the digitalisation track is where Midlands manufacturers talk about what they have actually deployed rather than what they are evaluating. Best for anyone selling software or automation into industry, or running it inside one.

with Mal Stuthridge (Associate Director, )

A technical session on the unglamorous layer that AI building tools actually run on: the Building Energy Management System, and whether the data it collects is good enough to feed them. The argument is that AI platforms need more and better data than traditional mechanical, electrical and public health systems were ever commissioned to produce, and that the BEMS is what stands between an AI tool and a building it can usefully model. Comprehensive commissioning is the fix being proposed. Mal Stuthridge, an Associate Director, is speaking. It runs 16:30 to 18:00 at the AtkinsRéalis office on Chamberlain Square, and it is free. Note that the listing gives two different postcodes for the venue; the one in the venue field is B3 3AX. Why go: a rare Birmingham room where the AI conversation is about data quality and commissioning rather than models. Best for building services engineers, and for facilities and proptech people who have to make these integrations work.

with Ashley Warren (Speaker, Birmingham Power BI Meetup Group #PBIBRUM) · Juliana Smith (Speaker, Birmingham Power BI Meetup Group #PBIBRUM)

Two full sessions from Birmingham's Power BI community, hosted at Robert Walters' offices on the 9th floor of 11 Brindley Place. Ashley Warren takes the this-report-is-slow problem apart: finding and fixing unoptimised semantic models using DAX Studio and Tabular Editor, Best Practice Analyser, VertiPAQ Analyser and DAX traces, working through badly performing examples and redesigning them. Juliana Smith then covers WCAG compliance in Power BI, applying the POUR principles, using keyboard navigation, screen-reader support and alt text, and structuring reports so they survive an accessibility audit. Doors 17:45, intros 18:00, first session 18:15, free pizza and drinks 18:50, second session 19:10, finish 20:00. Free. Why go: two intermediate-level, demo-heavy sessions with takeaways you can apply the next morning, which is rarer than it should be. Best for Power BI developers and analysts, and for anyone who owns reporting that has to be accessible.

UKCharityCamp returns to thestudio on Cannon Street for a full day, 09:30 onwards, run by the digital agency dxw. It is an unconference, so there is no fixed programme: participants pitch sessions on the morning and the grid gets built in the room. The subject is how the third sector uses digital, data and technology to do more for the communities it serves, and the attendees are the people doing that work inside charities, foundations and the agencies that support them. It is not-for-profit, free to attend and open to anyone. Why go: the unconference format means the agenda is whatever charity digital teams are actually stuck on this year, which is more useful than a programme set six months ago. Best for charity digital and data leads, service designers and developers working in the sector.

The fifth workshop in the Birmingham NatWest Accelerator's Sales Accelerator, at 2 St Philip's Place from 09:30, on organising and using sales data. It covers why a CRM matters, how to structure one so it tracks leads, customers and performance rather than becoming a graveyard, and which metrics are worth measuring for your business. There are exercises to identify your own key numbers, real founder examples of where better data changed the sales outcome, and an Action Lab session to set up or improve your own CRM before you leave. The Sales Accelerator is a twelve-week programme of six workshops; individual sessions are open without joining the whole thing. Free. Why go: you leave having actually configured something rather than with notes about configuring it. Best for founders and early sales hires whose pipeline currently lives in a spreadsheet.

A long-running monthly meetup for Birmingham founders and people still at the idea stage, upstairs in the front room at 1000 Trades in the Jewellery Quarter. There is no set format: you turn up, introduce yourself and talk shop. Testing an idea on people who will be constructive about it, comparing notes on raising investment, swapping the practical details of starting something. Second Tuesday of the month, 18:30 to 20:30, free, hosted by Dave Evans. The group publishes a code of conduct and explicitly refuses sales pitches, crypto and MLM marketing, which is a large part of why it has stayed usable across 719 reviews. Why go: it is the least performative founder room in Birmingham, and the no-pitching rule is actually enforced. Best if you are early enough that you still want to say an idea out loud before committing to it.

The annual UK conference for rehabilitation engineers, clinical scientists, clinical technologists and technicians, in its second year, at STEAMhouse. The 2026 theme is "Developing an assistive technology device, how?": the practical route from prototype to a device you can legally put on the UK market or into clinical use, with invited speakers on digital manufacturing and on applying the medical device regulations. Paul Hewett opens at 09:45 and Abigail Attwell follows at 10:00 on designing assistive technology for the future. There is an Innovation Space, an attendee-chosen hot-topic session, and an exhibition with around three and a half hours of contact time. Doors 08:00, sessions 10:00 to 16:00. Tickets GBP 50, no refunds, paid parking on site. Why go: assistive-technology regulation is where most NHS and university AT projects stall, and this is the one UK room where the engineers and the regulatory specialists are both present. Best for clinical engineers and medtech founders building hardware for care settings.

with Rosie Ginday MBE (Founder, Miss Macaroon)

Rosie Ginday MBE, founder and CEO of Miss Macaroon, in conversation at Aston's John Cadbury House on Corporation Street, 17:30 to 19:30. Professor Paula Whitehouse, Director of the Aston Centre for Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, hosts. Welcome drinks and networking from 17:30, the conversation itself from 18:00 to 18:45, audience questions until 19:00, then networking. Ginday built Miss Macaroon as a social enterprise, training young people out of work or care alongside running a commercial food business, and the session covers the business journey and what running a company with a social mission actually demands. Why go: a founder who has held a double bottom line together for years, in a format with real audience time rather than a stage interview. Best for social enterprise founders and anyone building a business with a mission attached.

fizzPOP, Birmingham's makerspace on Coventry Street, turns its second-Wednesday open night into a software and microelectronics social, 18:30 to 20:30. It is a working session rather than a talk: bring a home automation project, an empty breadboard, a coding problem you are stuck on, or turn up and see what other people are doing. Members work in Python, JavaScript, Go, Rust, C and 6502 assembly, and the hardware ranges from Raspberry Pis and Arduinos to ESP32s and robot vacuums. The space has a stocked electronics room and benches to work at. Beginners are welcome and you do not need to be a member. Free. Why go: one of the few places in the city where you can get unstuck on a hardware problem with someone looking over your shoulder. Best for hobbyist and professional embedded and electronics people.

The Birmingham .NET and MAUI user group runs a watch-and-discuss evening around .NET Conf 2026, the launch of .NET 11 and the latest .NET MAUI release. The group picks the session, live or recorded, once Microsoft publishes the full programme, and the room then works through what the changes mean in practice for C#, .NET and MAUI codebases. At Bluetel Solutions on Temple Row, next to Snow Hill station; ring the bell. Food and networking from 18:30, introductions 18:45, session and discussion from 19:00, close 20:30 and on to the pub. Free. Hosted by Dave Evans and Ryan Glenn Smith, with the venue from Bluetel and food from ParentPay. Why go: watching a release keynote alone tells you what shipped; watching it with the people who maintain .NET estates in Birmingham tells you what will actually bite. Best for C# and MAUI developers and anyone responsible for a .NET upgrade path.

A free half-day martech event at Edgbaston Stadium, 10:00 to 14:00, built around a format the organisers call 5inTwenty. Speakers are given twenty minutes and challenged to deliver five genuine strategic takeaways, with product promotion explicitly ruled out. Around the sessions is The Marketplace, set up as a consultation hub rather than an exhibition hall, where you can take a specific technical problem to vendors and specialists one to one. Framework Media expects more than 200 marketing professionals, mostly in-house teams from across the Midlands. Free. Why go: the time limit is the point, and it makes this denser than most free vendor-funded events. Best for in-house marketers with a concrete martech problem and half a day to solve it.

with Steve Wade (Platform engineering consultant, )

Steve Wade takes over the DevOps Society's Birmingham evening at AND Digital on Brindley Place, 18:00 to 21:00 - three acts rather than a speaker line-up. It opens with a 15-minute keynote on what is changing across Kubernetes, AI and platform engineering. The main talk, The Human API, asks why engineers who communicate fluently with machines struggle to explain an architectural decision to the person next to them; it is participatory, so you practise on the people around you. The last hour is a presenting workshop in small groups, closing with PowerPoint Karaoke. Wade founded Platform Fix, is a Kubernetes Ambassador, a former Flux maintainer and Istio contributor, and has trained over 6,000 engineers. Free. Why go: communication training for engineers is usually corporate and generic; this one is run by someone with 15 years in production infrastructure and KubeCon talks behind him. Best for DevOps, SRE and platform engineers.

A regional forum for freelancers and micro-businesses working in creative technology, at BOM on Dudley Street, 10:00 to 12:00. It is part of a series of four free gatherings across the West Midlands, run through the CreaTech Frontiers programme, delivered by the University of Warwick with sector lead Amy Dalton-Hardy. The organisers are clear about what it is not: no skills programme, no funding workshop, no application clinic. It is a room for people working independently in games, immersive tech, digital arts, creative AI, tech-enabled performance, motion capture and spatial design to meet each other and shape what the regional sector looks like. CreaTech Frontiers cohort members and everyone else equally welcome. Free. Why go: freelancers in this field rarely have anywhere to compare rates, clients and pipeline. Best for independent creative technologists anywhere in the West Midlands.