Tech events in birmingham

A free full day on Microsoft Fabric and AI at Millennium Point on Curzon Street, run by Joe Billingham and Lewis Prince. Six sessions from data platform specialists including Andy Cutler, Stepan Resl, Alex Whittles, Jake Duddy, Juliana Smith and Branden Millward, plus Fabric and AI clinics where you can bring your own problem to an expert, an AMA with the speakers, and exhibitors covering Power BI, data tooling and careers. Lunch and refreshments included. Doors 09:00, finishes 17:00. All tickets have been allocated. There is a waiting list and cancellations are reallocated first come, first served. Why go: the biggest free Microsoft data and AI day in the Midlands, and the clinics make it more useful than a talks-only conference. Best for data engineers, BI developers and analysts working in the Fabric stack.

A full day on penetration testing from CREST, the accreditation body for the technical security industry, at IET Birmingham: Austin Court on Cambridge Street. CREST Focus Group chair Boglarka Ronto hosts. The format is practitioner tech talks plus structured networking, pitched at both people early in an offensive security career and experienced testers. AI runs through the whole programme as a theme: where it is proving genuinely useful to incident response, SOC and pen test teams, where the limits are, and what that means day to day. Tickets were around 17 pounds and sales have now closed. Why go: one of the very few days in the Midlands where offensive security practitioners compare notes in a room rather than on a forum. Best for pen testers, red teamers and security engineers who want the tooling conversation first-hand.

Drinks and canapes at STEAMhouse on Belmont Row with the 2026 Innovation Awards finalists, past winners, judges and sponsors, hosted by The Technology Supply Chain C.I.C. Professor Hanifa Shah OBE gives a keynote on innovation and leadership, drawing on her book Orbit Shift: Break Free From the Leadership Patterns That Limit You. Around it the room is deliberately mixed: startup founders, manufacturers, research institutions and industry bodies from across the region, all shortlisted or involved in judging. Free, 17:30 to 20:30. Why go: the awards shortlist does the filtering for you, so the people in the room are the ones actually shipping something in the region. Best for founders and innovation leads who want introductions to Midlands manufacturing and research without a conference badge queue.

An evening on how women actually get into technology leadership, hosted by CGI and Women in Tech Birmingham at 2 Chamberlain Square. Claire Mironik, founder of WITBHAM, and Niamh Callaghan, Women in Tech Network Lead at CGI, open the night. Two CGI women who have moved into leadership roles then talk through their own routes: the opportunities they took, the barriers they hit and what they would do differently. The session closes on what CGI's Women in Tech Network runs and how to plug into it. Free, 17:30 to 20:00, and currently sold out. Why go: specific career mechanics from people one or two steps ahead, rather than a panel of abstractions. Best for women in West Midlands tech weighing up a first management move.

The UK's main independent conference for Amazon sellers, back at The Birmingham Conference & Events Centre on Hill Street for a full day. Doors at 09:00, programme from 09:30 to 17:00, then networking drinks until 20:00. Speakers include Neil Curtis, Oli Hills, Nadia Hussain, Dvir Cohen, Ben Donovan and Jess Howes, covering advertising, logistics, international expansion and the tooling around marketplace selling. One session from Or Shamosh works through how Amazon's automated enforcement reads listings, keywords and images, why suspensions land on sellers with no bad intent, and how to prevent them. Tickets around 71 pounds. Why go: the operational detail here is specific to running a marketplace business at scale, and the enforcement sessions are the kind of thing sellers usually learn the hard way. Best for ecommerce operators and marketplace founders.

The West Midlands' annual tech gathering returns for five days and 35+ events across the city — founders, investors, enterprise leaders and engineers, with a programme spanning AI adoption, advanced manufacturing, mobility, clean energy and regional investment. The anchor week in Birmingham's tech calendar; fringe events run all week alongside the main programme. This year's theme is FAST FORWARD. The ICC hosts the flagship days, with satellite and fringe events at venues across the city, and a dedicated networking platform opens to registered delegates a week beforehand. Why go: the one week a year when the region's investors, council, universities and engineering teams are all in the same few buildings, and the fringe is usually where the useful conversations happen. Best for anyone building or hiring in the West Midlands — pick the days that match your role rather than trying to do all five.

An hour at the NatWest Accelerator on St Philip's Place on why technically sound technology programmes still stall, hosted by John Heseltine as a Birmingham Tech Week fringe session. The argument is that the architecture is usually fine and the rollout is not: organisations spend heavily on the build and almost nothing on adoption, then wonder why the return never arrives. The session works through what has to be funded on the people side to get the value out, and what the warning signs look like before a programme goes quiet. Coffee from 11:00, session at 11:30, networking until 13:00. Free. Why go: the adoption gap is the most common and least discussed reason transformation budgets disappear, and this is a short, concrete take on it. Best for CTOs, programme leads and anyone selling change into a large organisation.

A Birmingham Tech Week afternoon at The REP built around what young people want from the organisations shaping technology, 13:00 to 16:00. It is deliberately not a conference or a careers fair. Young people and emerging talent are the ones on stage: sharing experiences, showing ideas, putting questions to industry and giving their view on skills, inclusion, wellbeing and access. Leaders from across the region's tech economy are in the room to listen and respond rather than present. Free. Why go: if you are hiring, designing apprenticeships or building early-career pipelines in the West Midlands, this is unmediated feedback from the people you are trying to reach. Best for employers, educators and anyone running talent programmes in the region.

CyberQ Group and Microsoft on turning Zero Trust from a framework diagram into something that actually runs, at Alpha Works on the 22nd floor of Suffolk Street Queensway. The session is about execution: the operational alignment it demands, the identity groundwork that has to come first, and the order in which organisations sequence the work so that it does not stall halfway. Two hours, 13:00 to 15:00, free, during Birmingham Tech Week. Why go: most Zero Trust content stops at the principles, and the hard part is everything after. Best for security architects, IT leads and CTOs who have the mandate and are working out where to start.

A Birmingham Tech Week session at The Exchange on building inclusive routes into AI and automation at work, 13:45 to 16:30. It builds on last year's Disability and Diversity in a Future of AI session. An expert panel makes the case for why investing in inclusion and diverse teams changes organisational resilience and what the technology actually delivers. Attendees then take part in an interactive exercise on AI adoption in their own workplaces, and the session shares early findings from the AI-empowered research project on how organisational approaches to AI are shaping the working lives of disabled people. Free, registration via the organiser's form. Why go: it moves past intent to the research and the practical decisions, and the session feeds back into live work. Best for people leaders, accessibility leads and anyone rolling AI tooling across a workforce.

A Birmingham Tech Week fringe session at the NatWest Accelerator on why websites that are technically sound still fail as business tools, hosted by Web Pulse Marketing. The argument is about handoffs. Developers own functionality, designers own presentation and usability, marketers own audience, messaging and lead generation, and the three are usually planned and delivered separately. The result is a site that works in one dimension and underperforms as a whole, or a marketing plan that cannot be built because the technical constraints arrived too late. The session puts developers, designers, marketers, agency people and founders in the same room to work through where the joins break. Free, 14:00 to 16:00. Why go: a specific, unglamorous problem that costs small companies real money, discussed by the three disciplines at once. Best for founders commissioning a site and the agencies building them.

Target Integration hosts a session at Alpha Works on what happens to the attack surface when industrial systems and OT environments get connected to cloud platforms, 15:00 to 17:00. The premise is that the efficiency gains of the digital factory arrive with new attack vectors attached, and that most manufacturers are further ahead on connectivity than on the security strategy to go with it. The session works through where those risks actually sit in a connected production environment and what a credible cyber strategy looks like alongside a transformation programme. Free, in person, on the 22nd floor of Alpha Tower during Birmingham Tech Week. Why go: OT security is badly under-covered in a region built on advanced manufacturing. Best for manufacturing IT and operations leads, and security people whose remit has just grown to include the factory floor.

A founders, investors and operators evening at The Alchemist on Colmore Row, hosted by The Sweat Equity Club with Superteam UK Birmingham and FrontierTechX, 17:30 to 21:30. The only programmed part is a set of founders from the first Sweat Equity Club cohort talking through what they are building: what is working, where they are winning and what they have not solved yet. Around that it is a deliberately mixed room of founders, investors, operators and specialist firms from Birmingham and beyond. The organisers ask people to come with what they are building and what they are looking for. Free. Why go: an unusually high ratio of people who can actually be useful to each other, and the founder updates give the conversation somewhere to start. Best for early-stage founders, angels and anyone selling into startups.

The opening night of Birmingham Tech Week, at BOX on Brindleyplace: the whole West Midlands tech community in one bar before the week's programme starts. No talks and no agenda. Live bandeoke, music, drinks and food, with founders, engineers, investors, public sector people and students all in the same room. Open to every Birmingham Tech Week attendee. The organisers run a badge stamp station that marks which of those groups you belong to, which makes opening a conversation less awkward than it usually is. Free, 18:00 to 23:30. Entry is by the delegate QR code issued when you register for Birmingham Tech Week; the same code covers the rest of the week. Why go: the cheapest way to meet half the people you would otherwise chase across five days of sessions. Best for anyone attending the week who would rather arrive already knowing a few faces.

A full Birmingham Tech Week day at The Eastside Rooms on whether emerging technology narrows inequality or widens it, 08:30 to 16:00. Isaac Harvey MBE and Suzie Branch-Haddow open with a fireside keynote at 10:00 on breaking barriers and building a more inclusive tech sector. A panel at 10:30 gets into what inclusive leadership looks like in practice: developing diverse talent, psychological safety, and the cultures that make either possible. A Women in Tech lightning talk follows at 11:35. The rest of the programme covers inclusive AI, accessibility, digital exclusion and ethical innovation, with community organisations, educators, accessibility advocates and policymakers in the room alongside technology leaders. Free. Why go: the agenda stays on design, deployment and governance decisions rather than sentiment. Best for employers, product teams and public sector technologists in the region.

Birmingham Tech Week's cyber security day at The Eastside Rooms, billed by the organiser as CyberVerse Unmasked, and pitched at security practitioners, CISOs and public sector teams rather than a general tech audience. Andy Hague of TechWM opens. Dave Palmer, partner at Ten Eleven Ventures and co-founder and chief product officer of Darktrace through its London listing, gives the morning keynote. Rod Latham, Director for Cyber Security and Digital Identity at DCMS, sets out government priorities, and Neil Howells of the West Midlands Regional Cyber Crime Unit walks through what actually happens on day zero of a major incident. Sessions cover AI-enabled threats, post-quantum security, critical infrastructure and digital sovereignty. Free. The organiser's page gives registration from 09:00 and the programme 09:30 to 16:00. Entry is by the delegate QR code issued when you register for Birmingham Tech Week. Why go: hearing the Darktrace operator view and the DCMS policy view in one morning is rare. Best for security leads and incident response teams.

The DCA's annual data centre conference at IET Birmingham: Austin Court on Cambridge Street, 10:00 to 17:00. The agenda is the physical infrastructure behind the AI buildout: power availability and constraints, cooling, and what it takes to transform and operate facilities under the current load growth. It is aimed squarely at people who own or operate data centres rather than at a general tech audience, and the DCA pulls operators, suppliers and engineers from across the UK industry. Free to attend, and currently showing as sold out. Why go: power and cooling are now the binding constraint on UK AI capacity, and this is the room where the operators discuss it. Best for infrastructure engineers, facilities leads and anyone whose compute plans depend on somewhere to put it.

Trowers and Hamlins hosts a formal debate on whether AI agents should hold legal personhood, run as a Birmingham Tech Week fringe event and convened by Amardeep Gill and Matt Whelan. The framing is a 2032 scenario in which an AI model has replaced a chief executive: it owns assets, signs contracts, employs staff and donates to political campaigns, and cannot be imprisoned. Two panels argue the motion, one for and one against, followed by audience questions, rebuttals and closing arguments. Attendees vote on the motion before and after to see whether the debate shifts anyone. Free, from 12:00. Why go: a genuinely adversarial format on a question most AI events treat as a footnote, with the lawyers who will have to answer it. Best for anyone deploying agentic systems and the people advising them.

An afternoon on where UK and African tech ecosystems connect, hosted at Lloyds on Colmore Row as part of Birmingham Tech Week, 15:00 to 18:00. Arrival and informal networking from 15:00. Khalia Ismain, Social Sustainability Director at Lloyds, welcomes, with Richard Lowe of Tech West England Advocates and Ama Williams of Tech Ghana Advocates. Richard Lowe then opens on international tech communities, followed by Kenechi Okeleke of GSMA Intelligence on the growth and shape of African markets. The discussion covers how African founders are building globally, routes for UK-Africa commercial collaboration, and the finance available to businesses growing internationally. Tickets 10 pounds. Why go: concrete market intelligence and named contacts rather than a general diaspora panel. Best for founders eyeing African markets, investors and anyone building cross-border partnerships.

The West Midlands Growth Company's evening reception for the international delegations, trade intermediaries and overseas partners attending Birmingham Tech Week, at x+why on Colmore Row from 17:30 to 21:00. It is the one point in the week set aside specifically for connecting visiting delegates with regional stakeholders: investment intermediaries, trade bodies and West Midlands companies looking for overseas partners. Free to attend, hosted by the region's inward investment agency, and registration is currently showing as closed. Why go: the international visitors are only in the city for the week and this is where they are put in one room. Best for companies with export plans, and for anyone whose growth depends on partners outside the UK.

Barclays Eagle Labs and FundingHero on why fundraising goes wrong before the pitch deck does, at x+why Foundry on Brindley Place, 18:00 to 20:00. The premise is that founders burn months on the wrong investors, get no useful feedback and cannot tell whether the problem is the business or the pitch. Bradley Jones leads the session: an exited founder turned angel, a member of the Aligned Syndicate, and co-founder of ThatRound, a platform built to match founders with investors who actually back their stage and sector. He has run the process from both sides, and the session is pitched as an open conversation about what raising is really like rather than a framework. Free. Why go: targeting is the cheapest fix in fundraising and almost nobody teaches it. Best for first-time founders at or approaching a raise.

Aston's Centre for Entrepreneurship, Coaching and Innovation hosts a fishbowl session on what changes when AI agents start doing real work inside teams, at Aston Business School on Aston Express Way, 18:00 to 20:00. The framing goes past AI as a faster tool: agentic teams, where people work alongside systems that plan, execute and support decisions, change how organisations are structured. The discussion covers where human judgement, creativity and leadership still carry the work, where coordination breaks down, and what that means for innovation and entrepreneurship in both business and academic settings. The fishbowl format means the audience rotates into the conversation rather than listening to a panel. Free, during Birmingham Tech Week. Why go: an academic read on agentic working that still lets practitioners argue with it. Best for founders, engineering managers and researchers.

Birmingham Tech Week's flagship AI day at the ICC, on what practical AI implementation actually looks like once an organisation moves past experimentation. Keynote from Tom Loosemore, founder of Public Digital and one of the architects of GOV.UK, with a welcome from TechWM board chair Jo Birch. The programme runs across keynotes, case studies, interactive demonstrations and adoption labs, covering AI workflows and automation, organisational readiness, data quality, human-AI collaboration, governance and trust, and the future of work. Speakers are asked to be honest about what failed as well as what worked. Free. Registration and coffee from 08:30, programme 09:15 to 16:00. Why go: the regional calendar's biggest AI gathering, and it is pitched at the people doing the adopting rather than at the infrastructure vendors. Best for operators and decision-makers who already have pilots running and need them to land.

A deep tech and culture day at The ICC, 09:00 to 16:00, responding to Birmingham Tech Week's Fast Forward theme through provocations, demos and critical discussion rather than vendor talks. Lara Jeetley, a young researcher at the Alan Turing Institute and a TEDx speaker, opens with a keynote on what AI does to education and future careers. Four panels follow, each on a theme: Faster Brains on EdTech, Faster Defence on the overlap between gaming and defence, Faster Horse on innovation and place, and Faster Focus on designing for the attention economy. Creators, researchers, gamers and entrepreneurs make up the room. Free. Why go: the programme takes creative technology and defence seriously as the same conversation, which almost no regional conference does. Best for researchers, games and creative technologists, and founders working at the edges.

Birmingham Tech Week's international day at The Exchange Assembly Rooms, 09:00 to 17:00, built around how regions and companies stay globally competitive as technology, geopolitics and investment all shift at once. The format is fast showcases and lightning talks rather than long keynotes, with international ecosystem takeovers, investor engagement sessions and strategic roundtables. Sector coverage runs across advanced manufacturing, mobility, health innovation, creative technology, AI, deep tech including robotics and synthetic biology, and quantum. There are focused discussions on defence, sovereign capability and international collaboration. Investors, universities, founders, trade organisations and policymakers are all in the room. Free. Why go: the densest concentration of overseas investors and trade partners the city gets all year. Best for founders with export or international fundraising plans, and for anyone working on inward investment.

A working session on investment readiness for technology businesses, at The Ivy on Temple Row, 13:00 to 15:00, hosted by the Birmingham NatWest Accelerator as a Birmingham Tech Week fringe event. Corporate finance specialists Darren Hodson and Tom Joy from PKF Smith Cooper are joined by the team from Beech Tree Private Equity. The argument is that a good product is not the thing investors buy: they want a clear growth strategy, financial foundations that stand up to diligence, and a story about future value. The session covers what investors are looking for in the current market, how to position a business, and the practical steps that improve valuation before a process starts. Free. Why go: advisers and an actual PE house in the same room, talking about the diligence you will face. Best for tech founders twelve months out from a raise or a sale.

with Husayn Kassai (Co-founder & CEO, Onfido)

A Birmingham Tech Week fringe session in two halves: a 30-minute panel on what it takes to build an AI-capable workforce, then a live build in which the room watches an AI agent assembled around a real workplace problem. The panel features Husayn Kassai, co-founder and CEO of Onfido, the British identity-verification company acquired in a reported $650 million deal, alongside other leaders working on AI, skills and workforce transformation. ollo then runs the build, and attendees leave with access to the agent to explore and test in a secure environment. Hosted by the AI Work & Skills Forum with ollo. 15:00 to 17:30. Free. Registration required, and the exact city-centre address is shared with registrants rather than published. Why go: one of the few Tech Week rooms where you hear from a founder who went all the way to an exit and then build something yourself instead of watching slides. Best for operators and team leads who have run AI pilots and now need results.

Digital Glue runs a live debate at 10X by Spacemade on Brindley Place about what AI is actually doing to search visibility, 16:00 to 18:00. It opens with a ten-minute reality check on what AI can and cannot do for a marketing function, then sets an AI optimist against a strategic traditionalist in a structured format, with a show of hands on what is working in the room. It closes with three practical actions to stay visible across Google, AI search and whatever comes next, and direct access to the panel. The organisers are explicit about leaving out the jargon and the game-changing promises. Free. Why go: organic search is being rewritten right now and most of the commentary is vendor noise. Best for in-house marketers, agency strategists and founders who depend on inbound.

A ProductTank double bill at x+why Foundry on Brindley Place, 18:30 to 21:30, run as a Birmingham Tech Week fringe event. Martin Eriksson gives the first talk, Welcome to the Software Renaissance. Your Strategy Isn't Ready: when anyone can build anything, the advantage moves from building to knowing what to build and why, and asking how to do the same work faster is the wrong question. The second talk covers hard lessons from shipping AI features to twenty million active users. There is a giveaway of Eriksson's book The Decision Stack, then drinks and networking with the city's product community. Free. Why go: Eriksson founded ProductTank and Mind the Product, so this is a rare chance to hear him in Birmingham rather than at a paid conference. Best for product managers, founders and designers.

Network One's AI and machine learning edition of its Birmingham networking evening, at The Cocktail Club on Temple Street, 19:00 to 22:00. No speakers and no pitching: the organisers describe it as a deliberately laid-back room for anyone building, researching, investing in or just curious about AI. Expect a mix of AI founders, machine learning engineers, data scientists, students, marketers and product people from other industries. Numbers are capped to keep conversations workable, so booking ahead matters. Tickets are 30 pounds, despite some listings showing it as free. Why go: Birmingham's AI community is scattered across company and university lines, and this is one of the few rooms that mixes them without an agenda. Best for people who want conversations rather than a talk, and who do not mind paying for a curated guest list.

Medilink Midlands brings its Innovation Day to STEAMhouse, 09:00 to 17:00, with this year's programme on the skills and workforce behind health and life sciences growth. Registration, networking and an exhibition open at 09:00, with the formal programme from 10:00. Fiona Aldridge gives the keynote at 10:20. At 10:45 an executive leadership panel on delivering the Life Sciences Jobs Plan is chaired by Gino Martini of PHTA, with Fiona Aldridge of the Skills Federation, Yvonne Ryan of Skills England and Faye Treloar of Cogent Skills. The room is life sciences companies, NHS, universities and colleges, training providers, government, investors and sector bodies. Free. Why go: the commissioners, regulators and skills bodies medtech founders usually chase separately are all here at once. Best for healthtech and life sciences founders, and clinical innovation leads.

Birmingham Tech Week's day for companies past the startup stage, at The Studio from 10:00. The programme stays on the mechanics of growth. A panel at 12:25 on local versus global fundraising puts investors and founders together on whether to raise close to home or abroad, covering networks, strategic support and how investor expectations differ by market. Pitch, please! at 13:05 is a practical session on presenting when the business depends on it. At 13:45 Lucy Colson, a fractional COO and startup fundraising consultant, covers what investors assess before they say yes, from the growth story to the strength of the leadership team. Free. Why go: scale-stage content is thin on the ground outside London, and this is built around founders who have been through it. Best for founders and leadership teams hiring, raising or entering new markets.

CyberQ Group and Drop Table run a roundtable at Alpha Tower on Suffolk Street Queensway on identity as the real attack surface, 10:00 to 12:00. The premise is in the title: attackers overwhelmingly use legitimate login paths rather than breaking in. The session covers how authorised access gets exploited, where access control actually fails in practice, and how to build resilience in from the start rather than bolting it on. Stijn de Voogd, Chris Woods and Joel Hughes lead it, and the roundtable format keeps it candid rather than presentational. Free, in person, two hours. Why go: credential and session abuse is where most UK breaches now start, and a roundtable gets you other people's incident experience rather than a vendor's slide deck. Best for security engineers, IT leads and CTOs.

Mercia Ventures opens its own office at The Colmore Building on Colmore Circus Queensway for a panel with founders from its portfolio, 16:00 to 18:30, as a Birmingham Tech Week fringe event. The premise is that a scale-up is defined by a handful of pivotal decisions, some of which unlock growth and some of which become expensive lessons. Founders from high-growth businesses talk through theirs: hiring senior leaders, entering new markets, fundraising, product strategy and the founder-level problems nobody puts in a case study. The organisers are explicit that it is lived experience rather than theory, including the mistakes that nearly derailed things. Free, with the investment team around afterwards. Why go: portfolio founders speaking in their investor's office tend to be more specific than panellists on a conference stage. Best for founders and operators scaling past the first growth stage.

Birmingham's digital and DevOps community meets at x+why Foundry on Brindley Place, 17:30 to 20:00, with two talks and pizza. Mark Sawle opens with Reimagining CI/CD, arguing that the field has barely moved in a decade and is still stuck with brittle plugins and complex builds, with no good answer to the question everyone asks mid-incident: what changed. His case is that the real product of CI/CD was never pipeline execution but the knowledge of how code becomes a running service, and no tool holds it. Bukola Jimoh follows on tracing agentic systems, and why observability, evidence and accountability matter once agents are doing the work. Free, pizza and drinks provided. Why go: two sharp, opinionated talks rather than tool demos, from a community that has kept going for years. Best for platform engineers, SREs and engineering managers.

Birmingham Tech Week's technical day at the ICC, built for software engineers, developers, architects and technical teams rather than executives, with practitioner talks instead of high-level commentary. Keynotes from Steve Wade of Platform Fix on the communication habits engineers tend to skip, and from AI engineer Akash Joshi on why an API that works fine for a developer leaves an agent guessing. Nick Heap and Astrid Bowser of OneAdvanced ask who buys what you build when delivery is very fast. The programme covers infrastructure, AI tooling, DevOps, cybersecurity, developer experience and large-scale system design. Paid, not free: the organiser's registration page states tickets are £25 plus VAT, and programme partner DevOps Society circulated a £20 standard and £18 community rate on 13 October. Registration and refreshments from 08:00, welcome from TechWM chair Jason Sahota at 09:15, close at 16:00. Why go: the week's only room pitched at people who actually ship, and the agent-readiness and platform talks sit ahead of where most teams are. Best for engineers and technical leads.

Birmingham Tech Week closes with the West Midlands Tech Awards black tie dinner at The ICC from 19:00, followed by entertainment and dancing. Six categories are awarded: Startup of the Year, Scaleup of the Year, Tech Leader of the Year, Frontier Tech Champion, Diversity Champion and Tech for Good. Entrants must be registered in the West Midlands Combined Authority area, and judging runs through independent review, shortlisting and a final panel. Nominations closed on 31 July, so the shortlists are set. Tickets are on sale; the price is not published on the listing page. Why go: the closing night pulls in the companies and people who have had the year, and the room is more relaxed than anything earlier in the week. Best for anyone building visibility in the regional ecosystem, and for teams worth celebrating.

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.

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 short practical workshop at Birmingham Rep on using AI to work more efficiently and open up new ways to earn, run by AND Capital Projects.

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.