Tech events in manchester

Open Data Manchester's annual Halloween session, run with PyData Manchester: a room of data people telling each other about the times data went badly wrong. The format is short community talks - bad statistics, nonsense correlations, data mangled badly enough to cause real damage. The organisers cite an air traffic control mix-up that cost millions and a Google Maps error that led to the wrong house being demolished. Anyone can claim a slot by emailing the organisers beforehand, submit a story anonymously to be read out, or take one of the quick-fire slots held back for the night itself. Doors 18:00, talks 18:30, close 20:30, at Altogether Otherwise on Hanover Street opposite the NCP Shudehill car park. Ticketed, and a code of conduct applies. Why go: failure post-mortems told by the people who lived them teach more than another best-practice talk, and this is the one night a year Manchester's data community does it deliberately. Best for analysts, data engineers and anyone who owns a pipeline.

FUEL Manchester's breakfast panel at No.1 Circle Square, sponsored by GM Business Growth Hub and Nybble with support from Bruntwood SciTech, built around founders giving growth advice rather than a keynote. The confirmed line-up includes Sam White, founder and chief executive of Stella Insurance, Thomas Keighley, co-founder and chief executive of urfuture, Sid Sethi of Specscart, Fergal O'Connor of Buymedia, Phil McCabe of Hybrid Solutions Group, Hannah Smith of Red Rock, Gabriel Erinle of GAME FM, Janine Smith of GM Business Growth Hub and Ram Gupta of Nybble, alongside former England rugby league head coach Shaun Wane. The panel is free and open; a second part puts 25 selected businesses into masterclass pods with experts, by separate application. Why go: nine operating founders on one morning panel, free, before work. Best for early-stage founders in Greater Manchester weighing a growth push.

A practical session on how modern scams actually work, built around the point that the old tells have stopped working. Attackers now use genuine login pages, real tooling and the target's own actions, so spotting a fake by looking for spelling mistakes or a dodgy URL no longer gets you very far. Driscop run it as a walk-through of real examples rather than a lecture, followed by a quick-fire challenge to test what people picked up, a guest speaker, and an hour of networking with drinks. Three hours at Campfield in the city centre, free to attend. Why go: it is pitched at everyone, not just security teams, which makes it a rare thing to send non-technical colleagues to without losing them. Best for operations, finance and founder-level staff who sign off payments.

with António Morais (Machine Learning Engineer, Elastic) · Akbar Gumbira (Machine Learning Engineer, Elastic) · Shade Obiti (Cybersecurity Analyst, Accenture)

Two talks on the unglamorous end of running AI agents: getting the right context into them, and what happens when one gets taken over. António Morais and Akbar Gumbira, both machine learning engineers at Elastic, cover building better context with visual intelligence and semantic retrieval - how to feed agents the right material and serve the models behind them reliably. Shade Obiti, a cybersecurity analyst at Accenture, follows with a live demo of a compromised AI agent that keeps coming back after the obvious security measures are in place. Hosted by Manchester AI at Accenture's Circle Square office. Registration is gated: RSVP yes, complete the organiser's form, and bring photo ID on the night. Why go: retrieval quality and agent security are where most production AI work actually goes wrong, and both talks come from people shipping it. Best for ML and platform engineers.

A monthly founders' coffee morning at Clockwise on Dickinson Street, run on the last Thursday. The format is deliberately bare: no speeches, no presentations, no selling. You turn up, get a coffee, and the hosts introduce you to someone rather than leaving you to work the room. The ticket is 17.50 pounds and includes a coworking day pass, so most people stay and work afterwards. Attendance is founders only and subject to host approval, which keeps the recruiters and agencies out. Why go: Manchester has plenty of evening networking and very little in the morning that is actually restricted to founders. The day pass makes it worth blocking out rather than dropping into for an hour. Best for early-stage founders who want conversation without a programme.

with Stephanie Ronan-Chlond (AI filmmaker and researcher, )

A full-day hands-on workshop on generative AI for people who make things - film, writing, images, music - with no technical background assumed. Stephanie Ronan-Chlond runs it. She is a documentary-trained filmmaker who spent fifteen years producing for UK broadcasters and now works with brands and creatives on AI storytelling. The day covers how generative models and LLMs actually work, ChatGPT for writing and ideation, image generation with a side-by-side look at Midjourney and Nano Banana, the current state of AI video and audio tools, and where ethics sit in a working practice. At SEESAW on Princess Street, 11am to 5pm. Places are capped at 25. Bring a laptop; a few shared ones are available, and a setup email goes out after booking. Why go: most AI-for-creatives sessions are a demo reel. Six hours, a cap of 25 and a practitioner at the front make it a workshop instead. Best for freelance creatives and small studio teams working out what to actually adopt.

with Dr Colin Williams (Principal Cyber Security and Resilience Specialist, CDS Defence and Security)

The second of nine monthly seminars in the Meat the Machine series, on the history of cybernetics and what it implies for how people and machines end up working together. This session is on the Ratio Club - the dining and discussion group that British life scientists, mathematicians, engineers and physicists formed after Norbert Wiener published Cybernetics in 1948. Alan Turing was a member, and his engagement with the club and its people fed into his later work. Dr Colin Williams leads it; he is a principal cyber security specialist at CDS Defence and Security with around three decades in UK government and public sector, and researches the history of cybernetics alongside that. Free, in person at the University of Manchester, 1pm to 3pm, run through Digital Futures. Why go: the current argument about machine intelligence keeps rediscovering questions this group was already arguing about in 1949, in this city. Best for people who want the long view rather than another model release.

The Thursday Gathering turned over to Grow AI, a 12.8 million pound partnership between Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Manchester, funded by the Local Innovation Partnerships Fund, to build out the AI cluster across Greater Manchester. The session introduces the Challenge AI Labs, which put corporates, SMEs, community groups, academics and students together on problems in four frontier sectors. The first Lab is health, run with Health Innovation Manchester, and the challenges are shaped by the people who own the problem rather than handed down. Selected companies go on to build with NHS partners and academics; Creative and Digital, Advanced Materials and Manufacturing, and Net Zero follow. Venture Cafe's usual format applies: open doors, no ticket barrier, three hours of sessions and conversation. Why go: this is the clearest public read yet on how Grow AI money will actually be spent, and the Labs are recruiting participants in the room. Best for founders and researchers with something to put into a health AI challenge.

with Martin Brierley (Data & AI Practice Lead, ANS) · Ian Pike (Data & AI Solutions Architect, ANS)

A recap of FabCon Europe, the Microsoft Fabric and SQL community conference held in Barcelona, for people who could not get there. Martin Brierley, Data & AI Practice Lead at ANS, covers what the latest Fabric announcements mean for data engineering and enterprise AI readiness, drawing on seventeen years of enterprise architecture. Ian Pike, Data & AI Solutions Architect at ANS, gives live demos of the new features: tenant settings, Git integration and Direct Lake improvements, plus what the platform changes do to local data pipelines and licensing. Hosted by the Fabric & Power BI Manchester User Group at ANS in Hulme. Doors 5:30, talks 6:00 to 7:15, then pizza, drinks and open questions. First-timers welcome. Why go: conference recaps are usually slide dumps. Two practice leads doing live demos of features they have already tried against real pipelines is more useful. Best for data engineers and analysts on the Microsoft stack.

with Jonny Muir (Designer and two-time Umbraco MVP, )

Jonny Muir - designer, computer scientist and two-time Umbraco MVP - on how service design shapes what a digital project actually becomes, and on treating Umbraco as a platform rather than a content management system. The talk covers the Wayfinder framework, Block Grid and the wider package ecosystem, Umbraco Automate for declarative workflows, and where AI fits into that way of working. Pizza and networking from 6pm, talk at 6:45. Hosted by the Manchester and North West Umbraco Meetup at CTI Digital's Peter Street office. Why go: CMS meetups usually stay on implementation detail; this one starts from how the service is designed and works back to the build. Best for developers and designers on content-heavy projects, whether or not they use Umbraco.

with Dr Alexander Thompson (Workshop lead, NIHR HRC in Emergency and Acute Care) · Dr Matthew Parkes (Workshop lead, NIHR HRC in Emergency and Acute Care)

The first of a two-part workshop on building the evidence the NHS actually buys on, rather than guessing at it. Part two follows on 20 January 2027. This day is about the problem rather than the study design. Short talks and discussion work through how patients, clinicians, NHS payers and investors each define an unmet need differently, and participants apply those four lenses to their own technology. The rest covers what is already known in your area, which study your project needs at its current stage, and how to show the NHS the problem is worth paying to solve. No economic modelling background is assumed. Led by Dr Alexander Thompson and Dr Matthew Parkes. At the Core Technology Facility on Grafton Street. 100 pounds covers both workshops, lunch included. Why go: the gap between a working healthtech product and an NHS purchase order is an evidence gap, and almost nobody runs a workshop on it. Best for founders and clinical leads heading towards procurement.

The monthly meeting of NSManchester, the city's Swift, iOS and Mac developer group, held on the first Monday at Neo on Charlotte Street. The format is short talks from members followed by time in the room. Speakers for a given month are usually confirmed close to the date rather than in advance, and the group publishes the decks afterwards in its public talks repository on GitHub, which doubles as a record of what the Manchester iOS scene has been working on. Hosted by Tim and Chris B. 6pm to 8pm. Why go: it is the only standing Apple-platform developer group in Manchester and it has kept going for years, which matters more than any single month's line-up. Best for iOS and macOS developers who want local people to ask rather than a forum.

The fifth workshop in the Manchester NatWest Accelerator's 12-week Sales Accelerator, on organising and tracking business data well enough to make sales decisions from it. The session covers why a CRM matters, how to structure one so it tracks leads, customers and performance, which sales metrics are worth measuring, and real founder examples of data changing a sales strategy. It closes with an Action Lab where you set up or improve your own CRM. Coffee and networking from 09:30, intro and key concepts at 10:00, a CRM implementation case study at 10:30. Free, at the NatWest Accelerator hub in Spinningfields. Individual workshops can be taken without joining the full programme. Why go: practical CRM hygiene rather than sales theory, and the Action Lab means you leave with something actually configured. Best for early-stage founders still running sales themselves with no system behind it.

A ninety-minute workshop at the NatWest Accelerator's Spinningfields hub for business owners and leaders who know AI matters but have not worked out where it fits in their own operation. The session explains the technology in plain English, walks through ways it is already being used in ordinary businesses, and then works with attendees to identify where it could save time in theirs. It is a working session rather than a keynote, and it runs over lunch, which keeps it to a single slot in the diary. Part of the Accelerator's Catalyst Events programme, open beyond the accelerator cohort. Why go: most AI sessions in Manchester are either vendor demos or deep technical talks, and this is neither. Best for owner-managers and senior leaders at non-tech companies who want a shortlist of candidate use cases they can act on.

with Phoebe Wakeman (Co-founder, Vitmedics) · Paul Forster (Founder, Western Advocates for Health and Medtechs (WAHM))

A fireside chat on getting healthtech out of research and into the market, followed by an open social for Manchester's health and medtech community. Phoebe Wakeman, co-founder of Vitmedics, is interviewed by WAHM founder Paul Forster on turning research into a product, finding a route to market, and the lessons learned on the way. The organisers' framing is blunt: they want to show healthtech products can reach market and be honest about what that takes. The room is mixed by design, with founders and startup teams, university researchers and NHS innovators, investors and ecosystem supporters. Tickets are Roundtable Attendee or Ecosystem Supporter, some requiring host approval, and anyone holding a ticket for the afternoon founders' roundtable gets in free. The exact address is shared on registration. Why go: the one Manchester room this month putting NHS innovators, healthtech founders and investors in the same place, with a founder being specific about what her route to market actually cost. Best for anyone commercialising health research here.

with Laura Hughes (Head of Data, Softwire)

Laura Hughes, Head of Data at Softwire, on why data transformation projects fail in ways software projects do not. She spent her early career as a full-stack engineer before moving into data strategy, governance and data engineering about five years ago, and the talk comes out of noticing that data projects are run differently from the agile software teams she came from - and that the problems they hit are rarely the ones anyone planned for. She covers what good data architecture looks like in practice and what separates a business transformation that lands from one that stalls. Architecting Manchester's meetup at the Department Bonded Warehouse. Doors 17:00 with pizza and drinks, talk at 18:00, finished by 19:30. Free; tell the organiser in advance about dietary requirements. Why go: data governance talks are usually given by consultants selling a framework. This is a practitioner describing what went wrong. Best for data engineers, architects and anyone being handed a data migration to lead.

with Harry Chyshkala (Speaker, Twilio) · Valdis Strautinš (Speaker, Twilio)

A lot of what people build with AI comes down to conversations - chat, voice, messaging - and this is Twilio's Manchester builder meetup on what that looks like in practice. Three talks from people shipping it. Harry Chyshkala, CTO at IC Studio, on what a real SMS pumping fraud case taught him. Valdis Strautins, founder and CEO of WD Market, on getting AI agents to write code you would actually merge. Rob Pickering, founder of Polite.ai, on using agents to build, review and improve user-facing voice services. Doors 18:00 with food and drinks, welcome 19:15, talks 19:30 to 20:30, networking until 21:00. Free, at Colony King Street. The second ticket release requires host approval, so register well ahead. Why go: voice and messaging agents in production is a narrower and more useful conversation than the general AI-meetup circuit manages. Best for developers, tech leads and founders already building with LLMs.

A one-day conference on what schools actually do with assessment data, run by Equin as part of its Data In Schools Conference series and pitched at primary schools. James Pembroke, Director of Strategy at Insight, and Richard Selfridge, education data consultant at the same firm, lead the keynote sessions. Joshua Perry of Smartgrade and Carousel runs a step-by-step session on stripping work out of school data processes, and a Making Data Meaningful panel brings in Hilary Fine, Assessment Lead at Smartgrade, and Vicky Merrick, CEO and founder of Merrick-Ed, with further panellists still to be announced. There are slots for delegates to put their own experience in the room. 08:30 to 15:00 at The Studio on Lever Street. GBP 75 including lunch and refreshments, refundable up to seven days before. Why go: the people building the tools and the people using them in the same room, arguing about workload rather than dashboards. Best for school data leads, and for edtech builders selling into primary education.

with Drew (Rusty) Carroll (Innovation coach, Independent)

A small-group coaching session on moving an innovative idea towards an actual outcome: a new partnership, a commercial route, or a bigger funding bid. Drew (Rusty) Carroll, an external innovation coach Manchester Digital met at its Digital Environment conference, facilitates. The format is deliberately open. Attendees can listen, or put their own problem in the room and draw on the group's experience. It is the first of a planned monthly series, so expect a small, repeat-heavy room rather than a one-off audience. Two hours, free, in Room 4.204 at University Place, with capacity capped at 30. Manchester Digital asks anyone who books and then cannot attend to release their place in advance. Why go: coaching rather than content, with a cap low enough that you will actually get airtime on your own idea. Best for researchers and founders stuck between a promising idea and a route to market.

The weekly Venture Café Thursday Gathering, this edition on Focused Research Organisations and where they sit in the UK funding landscape - the model built for science that is too large for a single lab and too early for a company, and the question of what funds that work here. Venture Café evenings run as a set of sessions plus open networking across three hours rather than one talk, at SISTER on the Renold Building site. Free, with registration through the Venture Café community platform. The full session list is published closer to the date. Why go: focused research organisations and the money around them get discussed far more in London than in Manchester, and this is the city's standing room for research-heavy founders. Best for deep tech founders, university spinouts, and anyone raising against a science roadmap rather than a revenue one.

WordCamp Manchester returns as a barcamp rather than a conference: no fixed speaker programme, and the sessions are shaped by whoever turns up on the day. The format is built around structured conversations between the people who build, design and run WordPress sites, rather than talks delivered at them. It takes place in the Storehouse at Whitworth Locke on Princess Street, signposted from reception and fully accessible, with discounted overnight rooms for attendees. The Manchester WordPress User Group is the local community behind it. Timings beyond the morning start, and the ticket price, are not yet published, and the schedule page is still thin. Check both before booking. Why go: WordPress still runs a large share of Manchester's agency and client work, and a barcamp is where the unglamorous problems get discussed honestly. Best for agency developers and freelancers who want peers rather than a keynote.

with Jonathan Catton (Head of Data & Insights, Hallam)

A morning session for B2B SaaS marketers running account-based programmes, and for anyone trying to get their marketing data into a state an AI tool can do something useful with. Jonathan Catton, Head of Data & Insights at the agency Hallam, walks through how his team pulled scattered marketing data into one place and what changed once they had. Attendees then take their own questions to small tables with hosts, and the morning closes with open networking run by Silicon Mingle. Organised by Overfunded. Free, in person at Department Campfield, and no technical background is assumed. Why go: most ABM sessions stay at strategy level and skip the data plumbing that decides whether any of it works. Best for B2B marketers and growth leads at SaaS companies who own the numbers themselves.

UniCS, the University of Manchester's computer science society, runs the city's flagship student hackathon: a single-day build at the Nancy Rothwell Building, free to enter and open to undergraduates and postgraduates from any university. Check-in opens at 09:00, hacking runs 12:00 to 18:00, and judging and the closing ceremony finish around 21:30. Sponsor workshops run through the afternoon from NatWest, Reply, Tether and Neptune North. Food is provided. Over £70,000 in prizes is advertised, £3,500 of it cash across the top three. Everyone applies individually and teams form on the Discord or on the day. Hacker applications closed on 17 October. Why go: a complete idea-to-demo cycle in one day, judged, with engineers from NatWest, Arm, Codethink and Google in the building. Best for students who want something finished to show at interview rather than another coursework repo.

Join us for an exclusive 1-DAY MASTERCLASS! A day of networking and workshop session.

MISRA's public conference on where its coding guidelines go next, and what AI-assisted development means for code that has to be demonstrably safe. MISRA guidelines govern C and C++ in safety- and security-critical software: automotive, aerospace, medical devices, industrial control. The day covers the latest developments in the guidelines and gives users room to share how they are applying them in practice. The audience MISRA names is specific — developers writing to the guidelines, the internal reviewers and auditors who check that work, and managers accountable for safety-relevant projects. 08:30 to 16:15 at Delta Hotels Manchester Airport in Hale Barns. GBP 50 general admission. The agenda and speaker list are not published on the ticket page. Why go: the standards body itself in the room, which rarely happens outside the automotive supply chain. Best for embedded and safety-critical engineers, and the compliance people who sign their work off.

A one-hour fireside chat and book launch at the Portico Library asking a blunt question about AI: whose problems is it actually being built to solve. Jenny Garrett OBE and her daughter Leah-Sunshine Garrett are in conversation as part of the library's Portico Ubuntu: Queens in Print series. The pairing is the point — two generations on who gets designed for and who gets designed around as AI systems are built out. Doors 18:00, talk 18:30 to 19:30, at 57 Mosley Street. GBP 10, and suitable for ages 14 and over. Why go: a short, cheap counterweight to the build-first AI events filling the rest of the Manchester calendar, in one of the city's better rooms. Best for people shipping AI products who want the equity question put to them by someone outside tech.

Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants' annual user group for ADMS 6 - air quality dispersion modelling, new features and applied case studies. Technical audience.

A demo day run inside NatWest's Manchester Accelerator hub, where a hand-picked group of entrepreneurs pitch to a panel drawn from the Manchester ecosystem, NatWest's own team and founders who have raised before. The panel gives live feedback on each pitch: structure, delivery, the questions that get asked and the ones that trip people up. The afternoon runs 14:00 to 17:30 at the hub on Spinningfields Square, with networking during and after. Free, and open beyond the pitching cohort, so you can come to watch. Why go: watching four or five founders get picked apart kindly, in order, teaches you more about your own deck than a week of reading will. Best for pre-seed and seed founders in Greater Manchester about to start raising, and anyone who wants to see what investors in this city actually ask.

CONEXEN's Manchester November edition - curated introductions for founders, operators and investors rather than open-room networking.

with Gareth Ford Williams (Director of Accessibility, Double FW Ltd and CAN) · Llara Geddes (Solutions Director, AND Digital) · Emily Webber (Consultant, Tacit) + 1 more

Natter Community's day conference at Autotrader on transparency in digital products, with Gareth Ford Williams on accessibility, Llara Geddes of AND Digital, Emily Webber and Rachel Morgan-Trimmer. For designers, researchers and product people.

Somewhere in your business right now, someone is probably using AI you don't know about. Not maliciously. Just because there's no sanctioned way to do it properly, so people quietly route around the gap. That's not a discipline problem. It's a design problem.

Three back-to-back hour-long workshops run by Google trainers on using AI in day-to-day business work, rather than a talk about where AI is heading. The first covers productivity on complex projects, drafting with Gemini, research with NotebookLM and workflows in Google Workspace. The second applies the same lens to customer service, content and automated research for decisions. The third is marketing-specific: audience research in NotebookLM, campaign content with Gemini and performance reporting in Google Analytics 4. Each session includes live demonstrations, and no prior AI experience is assumed. It runs 09:00 to 12:00 in Manchester city centre; the venue is confirmed by email to registered attendees. Free and fully funded, so places are limited and businesses must be Greater Manchester trading organisations to qualify. Why go: the most hands-on free AI session in the city this month, and the only one that walks through the tools with a trainer in the room. Best for owners and marketers who tried Gemini once and stopped.

Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants' user group for ADMS-Urban and ADMS-Roads - urban and roadside air quality modelling for practitioners.

with Kirsty Mason (Keynote speaker, )

A 100-person conference for technology and data leadership built around the theme 'Show Me the Money: The AI Accountability Reckoning'. CIOs, CTOs and AI leaders discuss where AI and data spend is actually returning value, with keynote, panel discussions and networking.

with Beth Rogers (Public Policy Manager, IAB UK) · Si Hunt (Insight & Planning Manager, IAB UK) · Eliza Lyons (Member Services Manager, IAB UK) + 1 more

IAB UK brings its AI programme north for an afternoon on AI in advertising and media: regulatory developments, findings from the State of AI in Advertising report, and how agencies and advertisers are actually applying the technology — followed by networking drinks.

The November edition of Datacove's Manchester data community night, with two talks and a long networking tail. Fiona Pye, Senior Data Analyst at AutoTrader UK, talks about two years embedded in a backend development team: what moving between analytics and engineering changed about how she works, and what the developers got back in understanding of the data they produce. Jonas Almesri, co-founder of GenSight.AI, follows on AI visibility — how large language models decide which brands they see, believe, cite and recommend, and the measurement problems his team is working on as agents move from recommending to buying. Drinks and nibbles from 18:00, talks around 18:30, close at 20:00, then a nearby pub. Free, at DiSH in Heron House. Datacove runs four of these a year in Manchester. Why go: two speakers who actually do the work, on the two questions data teams are being asked right now. Best for analysts, data engineers and anyone responsible for being found by AI.

In-person events made to share the processes used by freelancers, founders and teams.

EcommerceCamp's day on applied AI in ecommerce at the Lowry Hotel - merchandising, search, content and customer service, for people running online retail rather than researching it.

A free, volunteer-led community day for data and AI practitioners working in the Microsoft ecosystem — Microsoft Fabric, Azure SQL, Power BI and applied AI — with practical talks, hands-on sessions and plenty of time to compare notes with other engineers, analysts and data leaders.