Manchester — Week of 19 Oct 2026

with Mark Harrison (Senior Director of Engineering, Disney)

A full-day summit at the Treehouse Hotel built for engineering and technology leaders, deliberately structured to spend as much time on the room as on the stage. The morning brings experienced technology leaders onto panels covering the current set of hard problems: leading through organisational change, building engineering cultures that hold, working out what AI actually changes for a team, leading remote, and influencing at board level. The afternoon is the real point of the day, handed over to facilitated roundtables where attendees bring their own situations rather than listen. Nine until half five at Blackfriars Street. Why go: Manchester has plenty of engineering meetups and very little aimed at the people managing the managers. If you are wrestling with a reorg or a flat engineering culture, this is the room with peers who have done it. Best for heads of engineering, CTOs and principal-level leads.

Creativity. Culture. Careers. Bringing together emerging talent, creative professionals, industry leaders, educators, brands, & more.

with Professor Sir Bashir M. Al-Hashimi (CBE FRS FREng, King's College London)

The first Manchester Turing Lecture, a new series from Digital Futures bringing internationally recognised research and technology leaders to the city, held in room G.003 at Alliance Manchester Business School. The inaugural speaker is Professor Sir Bashir M. Al-Hashimi CBE FRS FREng, Senior Vice President for Research and Special Initiatives at King's College London, known for work on computer engineering and energy-efficient computing that sits inside billions of devices. His talk is The Future of Scientific Research: Intentionally Designed Human-AI Collaboration, on how AI is reshaping every stage of the research workflow, from literature review and hypothesis generation through experimentation, analysis and publication. Two and a half hours on the Booth Street West campus. Why go: a first edition with a speaker of this standing sets the tone for the whole series, and the subject matter matters well beyond academia. Best for researchers, R and D leads and deeptech founders.

A Manchester Institute of Innovation Research seminar at Alliance Manchester Business School with Professor Erik Stam of Utrecht University, where he is Full Professor of Strategy, Organization and Entrepreneurship and academic director of the Center for Entrepreneurship. Stam presents work on entrepreneurial ecosystems in Africa. The problem he sets up is that data on the conditions for productive entrepreneurship across the continent is scarce, which makes it very hard to improve those conditions in a context-specific way. His team pulled from public, private, global and African sources to build a dataset of 21 indicators measuring seven dimensions of national entrepreneurial ecosystems. One hour, late afternoon, with an online option as well as the room. Why go: Stam's ecosystem framework is one of the more cited in the field and this is a rare chance to question it directly. Best for policy people, ecosystem builders and researchers.

Build a creative career that can adapt and thrive. ABC Projects: Built to Last brings together emerging talent, freelancers, the industry

Join us in Manchester for the ultimate AliExpress Alibaba e-commerce masterclass & merchant meetup!

A hands-on DMLab session at SODA, Manchester Metropolitan's School of Digital Arts, for Disabled and non-Disabled musicians and technologists working on accessible music technology. This session starts a collaborative project to design and build an accessible MIDI instrument. The group will look at past DMLab designs and try to arrive at an original concept that removes access barriers, allows real musical expression, and stays cheap and practical to build. The co-design approach is deliberate: newer makers pick up basic electronics, coding, 3D printing, laser cutting and enclosure design alongside more experienced people. All experience levels welcome, musicians and non-musicians alike. Why go: it is a genuine build session rather than a talk about inclusion, and the output is a real instrument. Best for hardware tinkerers, creative technologists and anyone working on accessibility in product design.

A tabletop cyber incident exercise run at 47 Lloyd Street - teams work an unfolding scenario together. Practical for anyone with incident-response responsibility, whatever their day job.

The Manchester Statistical Society hosts Daniel Dresner, Professor of Cyber Security at the University of Manchester, at Cross Street Chapel. Dresner's argument, delivered with more literary reference than most security talks manage, is that humanity's response to new technology swings between banning everything and pressing the button to see what happens, and that there is very little genuinely new under the sun. Technology, on this reading, is mostly a matter of speed. He is sceptical of AI's comparative adjectives, preferring to call it alleged intelligence, and traces how the field ended up detached from the body of practice that should ground it. Two hours in one of the city's oldest learned societies. Why go: a security professor being properly rude about AI hype, in front of an audience of statisticians who will push back. Best for anyone tired of credulous AI talks.

How do we ensure that AI isn’t used to further enrich tech CEOs at the expense of workers and our planet?

The fortnightly Manchester Tech Network evening drinks at Slug and Lettuce on Deansgate. Informal, no presentations - software engineers, product managers, designers, UX practitioners, data and AI people, and startup founders and operators from across the Manchester tech community.

with Abdullah Taufique (Speaker, Not published)

A breakfast session at DiSH on cyber security diligence in M&A - what buyers look for, what sellers should have ready, with Abdullah Taufique.

Whether you're considering SentinelOne, managing it day-to-day, or simply curious about how the platform is evolving and making waves in the market, this series is for you. The idea is simple: create a local community where we can share experiences, hear the latest updates, swap ideas with peers, and connect with the SentinelOne and Integrity360 teams in a relaxed setting.

TIC Manchester and NVIDIA host a watch party at Sister in the Renold Building for NVIDIA founder and chief executive Jensen Huang's GTC keynote, delivered live from GTC Berlin. GTC keynotes have become one of the fixed points in the AI calendar, where new technologies and NVIDIA's bets on the direction of computing get announced. This one is expected to cover accelerated computing and AI infrastructure, open models, physical AI and the technologies starting to reshape industries. The Manchester room joins NVIDIA partners doing the same thing worldwide. Five hours from half nine, free, with time afterwards to talk about what landed. Why go: watching a keynote alone at your desk tells you what was announced; watching it with Manchester's AI community tells you what people building here think it means. Best for AI engineers, infrastructure people and investors.

Greater Manchester's flagship annual innovation event, at Manchester Central, bringing SMEs, startups, universities, investors, policymakers and the region's business support organisations into one hall. The day runs innovation showcases from some of the region's more interesting businesses, live demonstrations across AI, advanced manufacturing, green technologies, life sciences and emerging sectors, speaker sessions on where innovation is heading, and structured networking rather than the open-floor sort. Funding and support organisations are present with information on what is actually available. Half nine to half three, Windmill Street. Why go: it is the one day a year when the region's innovation funders, universities and support agencies are all in the same building and reachable without a diary request. Best for founders looking for grant funding or a university partner, and for anyone mapping the Greater Manchester support landscape.

She Scales is the NatWest Accelerator's monthly female founders connection and co-working morning, run across every Accelerator hub in the UK and here at the Manchester hub in Spinningfields. The standing format is a dedicated space for women building and growing businesses to share experience and work alongside each other. This month's session is an interactive workshop on cyclical energy and sustainable performance, drawing on women's health research to look at how hormonal changes across the menstrual cycle affect focus, motivation and response to stress, and what to do with that rather than work against it. Ninety minutes from ten, with co-working either side. Why go: the regularity is the value here, this is a standing room rather than a one-off, and the Accelerator cohort is a useful network to be inside. Best for women founders in Greater Manchester at any stage.

Free Cyber Essentials training in Manchester. Understand Danzell, get assessment-ready and ask our assessors. Lunch and parking included.

A free ninety-minute guided walking tour of Alan Turing's Manchester, starting at Piccadilly Station, led by Alan O'Donohoe, a computing teacher and Turing enthusiast. Turing arrived in Manchester in 1948 at the start of the digital age and the city was his home and workplace for the last six years of his life, the period in which he did much of his foundational work on computing and machine intelligence. The walk covers why he came here, the locations tied to his life and work, and the connections most Mancunians have never heard. Attendees get a printed guide to repeat the route or pass on. Part one of the Manchester Computing History series, with coffee afterwards. Why go: Manchester's claim to the modern computer is told badly most of the time, and this does it properly, for free, over a lunch hour and a half. Best for anyone who works in software here and has never looked up.

An informal in-person meetup from Adria Solutions for people in Manchester's tech and digital sector who are currently between roles — a chance to compare notes on the market, share leads and get practical input on applications and interviews.

A free careers fair at the Bridgewater Hall for women and non-binary students and recent graduates from science, technology, engineering and maths courses, run by STEM Women. The format is straightforward: graduate employers take stalls, attendees move between them talking directly to recruitment teams about internships and graduate roles, asking the questions that do not fit in an online application. Registration is required and the organisers warn they may cancel orders from people outside the stated criteria when the event is near capacity. Two and a half hours from half one, free. Why go: for employers it is one of the few concentrated routes to women graduating into technical roles in the North West, and for candidates it replaces a month of applications with an afternoon of conversations. Best for final-year students, recent graduates and anyone hiring graduates into engineering or data teams.

Young Manchester runs a hack in the Pariser Building on green-economy problems - young people building and pitching ideas with technical mentoring on hand.

A relaxed and friendly networking event in Manchester for entrepreneurs, freelancers, and business builders to connect.

A Network One evening at The Anthologist in St Peter's Square aimed specifically at Manchester's fintech community: startup founders and product builders, developers, investors and finance professionals working on what comes next in financial technology. The organisers are clear about the format, which is no pitches and no panels, just a few hours of conversation. The stated audience spans payments platforms, decentralised finance, traditional finance with a technology angle, and students in finance, economics or computer science who want to see the sector up close. Three hours from six, city centre. Why go: Manchester's fintech scene is real but scattered across banks, scale-ups and the university, and sector-specific rooms like this are the cheapest way to see who else is here. Best for fintech founders and developers, and worth noting FinTech North's full conference follows on 26 November.

THE networking event in Manchester! Connect with tech entrepreneurs, tech investors, startup founders, and industry innovators.

A panel evening for people job hunting in UX, built around recruiters and hiring managers who actually read the portfolios. The panel covers what makes a candidate memorable, how to pitch your skills when the role description is vague, and how hiring decisions get made on the other side of the table. Ladies That UX Manchester run it, with Hippo and MoneySupermarket sponsoring. Doors at 6pm with food and drinks, a build-your-own-business-card session at 6:30, and the panel at 7. Speaker names were still to be announced when this was written. Photography happens on the night; you can ask staff not to be photographed. Why go: the UK UX market is tight and this is one of the few Manchester rooms where the people doing the hiring take questions directly. Best for designers and researchers who are looking now, or expect to be.

WILD & WILD Manchester — Official Launch Event Connect. Learn. Grow. Rise.

A collaborative afternoon for recruitment agency leaders to find solutions to common challenges that empower change and productivity.

You’re passionate about your startup but you’re not ready to quit your day job and that’s okay. Running a business while working full-time is one of the ha

A second October edition of the same legal technology forum series.

Venture Cafe Manchester marks a year of Thursday Gatherings at Sister in the Renold Building, and uses the anniversary to show what came through it. The programme features Papermill, a document engine for AI workflows whose typesetting adapts generated reports, contracts and compliance packs to changing data, and mushroom plus, a Manchester pre-seed molecular farming startup raising mushroom protein content up to tenfold towards meat-level density. The centrepiece is a fireside chat with ARIA chief executive Kathleen Fisher at six, live-illustrated by John Cooper, who spends the evening building an interactive mural of the city's innovation ecosystem that attendees are invited to add to. Three hours, drop in, no ticket. Why go: the ARIA conversation alone justifies the trip, and the anniversary pulls in a year's worth of the community at once. Best for founders, researchers and anyone who has been meaning to try Venture Cafe.

A Few Nagging Questions, Film Screening and Q+A with Director Paul Sapin

Aware Digital's digitalThursday returns with a PPC edition: pints, pizza and practical talk about what is actually working in paid search and paid social right now, aimed at marketers and growth people at Manchester digital and tech businesses.

A KPMG-hosted business forum at One St Peter's Square.

Practically AI's October meetup at AZoNetwork's offices in NEO on Charlotte Street, with two talks on the same theme: as AI takes on more of software engineering, the engineering fundamentals matter more rather than less. Phil Whittaker walks through the stages teams pass through as they move from simple prompting to managing context, building agent harnesses, and eventually running reliable autonomous development loops and graphs, looking at what each stage solves and what new problems it creates. The session keeps returning to the traditional practices, testing, architecture and observability, that make any of it work. Doors from six, talks from half six. Why go: most agentic-AI talks are demos; this one is about what breaks at each step and why your existing engineering discipline is the thing that saves you. Best for software engineers and leads actually shipping AI-assisted work.

**Pre-Registration is REQUIRED. Joining link -** [https://streamyard.com/watch/UfgxUjvUG5Ef](https://streamyard.com/watch/UfgxUjvUG5Ef?utm_source=luma) # ​AI for Work: Turning AI Into Your Everyday Work Assistant ​**October 22 at 1:00 PM ET** **45-minute live webinar** ​AI is already changing how we work, but how do you move beyond simply asking ChatGPT or Claude questions and start using AI to actually get more done? ​Join **Ashleigh Bilodeaux, GTM AI Engineer at Zoom**, for a practical session on using AI to streamline everyday work, improve productivity, and build smarter workflows. ​Drawin