Tech Events by TechWM

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.

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'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.

An evening dinner at the Council House connecting the region's universities, spinout founders and the investors who back them. Part of Birmingham Tech Week's investment programme, focused on turning West Midlands research strength into commercial companies.

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.

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 four-hour cyber-community social at The Eastside Rooms during Birmingham Tech Week, 17:00 to 21:00. The official fringe programme states that no sign-up is required, and lists no separate event page, programme or speakers, so the fringe listing is the only public source.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

Birmingham Tech Week opens with its strategic session for senior leaders at The REP, 08:30 to 12:00. This one is invite-only. TechWM says so on its own event page and there is no public registration link, so you need an invitation from the Birmingham Tech Week events team to get in. Arrival and networking from 08:30. Lucy Hedges hosts the official kick-off at 09:30, followed by Richard Parker, Mayor of the West Midlands, and Andy Hague, CEO of TechWM, with a State of the Nation address on the region's position. At 10:25 a panel called Mind the Gap takes on what the West Midlands has to get right over the next decade, with Steve Rigby, CEO of Rigby Group, Julie Nugent, CEO of Coventry City Council, and Kit Windows-Yule, Alan Welby and Jacqueline De Rojas. Edwina Dunn gives the keynote at 11:20. The programme sticks to AI adoption, industrial transformation, investment, talent and infrastructure, with a West Midlands lens on advanced manufacturing, mobility and clean energy. There is no ticket price. Why go: this is where the region's tech policy and investment agenda gets set for the year. Best for founders, investors and executives who need to be in that conversation rather than reading about it, and who can get an invitation.

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.

TechWM flagship AI and Future Tech Forum. Named speakers from VirtualSpeech, AND Digital, and Motion Dynamics. Supported by WMCA, DSIT, and Innovate UK.