Tech Events in Manchester

We organise friendly informal networking events for people in Tech to share ideas, learn from each other, and make new connections.

Who are the events for?
People working in tech who want to connect with others in the Manchester tech community, including:

• Software engineers
• Product managers
• Data / AI professionals
• Startup founders & operators

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🍕 Action Required: get 20% off food & drinks 🍹

To attend, please become a member at OkGather for only £2.99 p/m (only takes 1 minute to join) and you will also get 20% off food & drinks at the gathering (show your OkGather profile at the bar). This small membership fee means we can keep running the gatherings, cover our costs and help more people meet new people! 🥳

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You’ll meet people who are:

• Working in software engineering, product, data, AI, or startups
• Building projects, products, or growing their careers in tech

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Why should you join?

• Learn from others working in tech
• Expand your network to help your career
• It could lead to collaborations or new opportunities
• It’s a lot of fun!

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✨ How it works
Secure your place and join a group of people working in and around tech.
Just arrive at the venue:

• Grab a drink, find the group, and settle in
• Ask the bar staff for the ****"****Manchester Tech Network" table booking
• Expect a friendly, welcoming group and a great atmosphere 👋

Have better conversations

• You’ll be surrounded by people interested in tech and building things
• Discussions are naturally more engaging and relevant 🤝

Build connections + opportunities

• Meet people you can stay in touch with
• Learn from others in the space
• Potentially collaborate on projects or opportunities ⚡

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📍 Location
We host events at relaxed venues in central Manchester:

• Easy to get to locations
• Pubs or bars with a good atmosphere
• Spaces that are ideal for conversation 🍻

Spots are limited to keep the group high quality.

If you work in tech and want to meet others in your space, you’ll get a lot from this 👋

Find Your Message: A Public Speaking Workshop for Future ProductTank Speakers

Big THANKS to Craig Millar, Resonate Speechwriting who trains speakers, including for TEDx talk who's kindly offered to deliver this training for FREE for ProductTank members!

And another big THANKS to Grayce, who has kindly offered to host this event in their office and provide food and drink.

About this event
The success of ProductTank has always depended on members being willing to stand up and generously share their hard-earned lessons, ideas and experiences.
But giving your first talk can feel daunting.
Most people worry about confidence, structure, or whether they have anything worth saying. It's easy to wait until you feel "ready" - but the reality is that very few speakers ever do.
The good news is that impactful speaking isn't about being naturally confident or highly polished. It's about having a useful idea and caring enough to share it. And with a little exploration, we often discover that our experience is more valuable to others than we realised.
To help develop future ProductTank speakers, we're delighted to offer this free interactive workshop, led by experienced speaker coach Craig Millar.
Whether you're hoping to speak at ProductTank one day, another industry event, or simply want to communicate your ideas more effectively, this workshop will help you take the first step.

Who is this for?
This workshop is for ProductTank members who:

• Feel they might like to speak at ProductTank one day, but don't quite feel "ready" yet.
• Wonder whether they have anything valuable enough to talk about.
• Have ideas and experiences but aren't yet sure how to turn them into an engaging talk.
• Would like to communicate their ideas with greater confidence, clarity and impact.

No previous public speaking experience is required, just a willingness to explore and discuss your ideas and experiences with others.

What you'll do
Through practical exercises and small-group discussions you'll:

• Recall experiences that could become engaging talks.
• Identify the lessons your audience will find most valuable.
• Learn practical techniques that make talks easier to prepare and deliver.

By the end of the workshop, you'll have started developing a talk that you could continue refining for ProductTank or any future speaking opportunity.

About the workshop leader
Craig Millar is a speaker coach who has spent the past decade helping leaders, technical experts and more than 30 TEDx speakers turn their experience into talks that audiences remember.
He believes that everyone has valuable experiences worth sharing, they simply need the right process to uncover and shape them.

"No matter how good the speakers were at the start, Craig managed to help them develop their skills and become ready to deliver a great TEDx talk."
Yousif Hussin, TEDx Organiser

"I am blown away by how some great and simple tools are so effective."
Helen Herd, Global Head of Sustainability, McBride Plc

"Craig will improve your speech tenfold. The value of a good speech and presentation is huge."
Kavita Sahai, Serial Entrepreneur

Learn more at www.resonatespeechwriting.com

Event details
Location: Grayce, 1st Floor Hilton House, Hilton Street, Manchester M1 2EH
Time: 6:00pm–8:30pm

Every conference speaker gave their first talk once
The turning point wasn't becoming more knowledgeable. It was realising that the experience they already had could genuinely help other people.
If you've ever thought, "Maybe I'd like to speak at ProductTank one day," this workshop is for you.

Please note

• Tickets are free but places are limited.
• If your plans change, please update your RSVP so someone else can attend.
• We may take photographs during the event for community and promotional purposes.
• Venue and event details may be subject to change.

Join us for September's PBIMCR meet-up

When: Thursday 24th of September 2026
Time: arrive for 5:30pm with talks starting from 6pm start prompt
Address: Canopius Group - 100 Barbirolli Square Manchester M2 3AB
Complimentary drinks & pizza provided by our hosts Canopius Group & sponsors Robert Walters

Leon Gordon

Session Title

Microsoft Fabric is powerful, but without the right monitoring and governance in place, it can quickly become a black box of ballooning costs, failed refreshes, and unclear ownership.

In this interactive session, we’ll break down:
The real-world governance challenges teams face in Microsoft Fabric
What Microsoft offers out-of-the-box and where it falls short
How to monitor your data estate, refreshes, and usage in a meaningful way.

Proven strategies to track, forecast costs, audit, and optimise your Fabric environment.

We’ll also showcase how you can enable data teams to:
- Score their governance maturity
- Monitor all of your capacities, refresh and workspace activity in real-time
- Get AI-powered recommendations to improve platform performance
- Make informed decisions across cost, access, and risk

Whether you’re a CTO, BI lead, platform owner, or Power BI pro, this session will equip you with practical tools and a smarter mindset to take full control of your Fabric environment.

Bonus: Live demo of governance scoring and AI-powered Fabric optimisation monitoring in action.

Vito Schittone
Title:
Advancing Your Career in Data
Vito’s session is built on his experience, learning, and skills developed over more than a decade in the industry.
He has 12 years of experience across five sectors, and within two years of graduating, while working as a Medical Laboratory Assistant, he was already leading national analytics. He drove adoption of a previously under‑used tool and delivered analytics valued in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. Over the following ten years, he progressed from Information Management Officer to Chief Technology Officer (CTO), leading SaaS development for commercial use. During this period, he automated over 7,500 working hours in under a week and built multiple enterprise‑level solutions.

Vito holds 12+ recognised Microsoft certifications with an average score of 850/1000, including Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE): Data Management and Analytics as well as Microsoft Certified: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect. He describes himself as a Power BI and Fabric specialist, and is the founder of Data Driven Innovations (DDI), which has grown to around 1.5k members after just three sessions.
He uses a practical, experience‑driven approach and summarises the session with his own quote:

“The advantage of learning from someone who talks the talk and walks the walk is that real‑world experience collapses the learning curve, revealing in minutes what others take years to try, and often fail, to explain.” — Vito Schittone

Topics Covered: Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Analysis Services, Azure AI, OneLake, Real-Time Data

1st time attendees what to expect:
Engaging tech talks/demos/presentations and an opportunity to network in a friendly community environment with complimentary drinks and pizza served.

PyDataMCR September Talks

THE TALKS

Empathy Data in LLM's - Part II - Lucy Stafford-Hughes

Building on her previous talk in Sept 25 on Empathy Data in LLM's, this talk explores the development of stable interaction patterns in large language models using anchoring and identity containers as a method looking at reducing hallucinations and improving response context and accuracy.

Lucy will look at observations across 2 different AI models on building stable patterns, including interaction with the latest research such as Anthropics work on emotion concepts and emotion vectors in Claude. The talk will also touch on why this matters for human-AI collaboration, and implications across future emergent behaviours.

Lucy is a consultant, writer, and AI researcher. Her areas of expertise include complex business systems, Agile ways of working, and human-AI interaction.

The meaning of lift - understanding marketing effectiveness - Josh Hayes (He/Him)

Data science is about more than just answering questions, it’s about understanding them. Often multiple stakeholders will ask the same, reasonable-sounding question, only for it to become clear that they actually all want something subtly different. The role of a data scientist in this case is to listen to the questions, understand what is actually being asked, and help the stakeholders to develop language to better communicate what they want to measure.

In this talk, Josh will talk through an example of this in marketing, discussing advertising spend, attribution modelling, and how we can measure and talk about the impact of campaigns.

Josh Hayes is a Senior Data Scientist at Autotrader, with nearly 10 years of experience across academia and industry. He holds a PhD in astrophysics, and has led teams of data scientists, analysts, and engineers at Natwest and Autotrader. Among various projects, he has led work calculating carbon emissions associated with financial lending, modelled evolution of the UK’s housing stock, and worked to improve real-time monitoring of key business metrics.

In addition to his professional work, Josh has a long history in public speaking to both technical and general audiences. He has featured at the Bluedot festival, worked as a contributor to BBC radio, and was a long-time presenter of the Jodcast astronomy podcast, alongside speaking at multiple academia and industry conferences.

LOCATION
We'll be at Autotrader, who are also kindly supplying catering. The capacity is limited to 50.
After the talks we'll all head somewhere local for some post-event socialising.

EVENT GUIDELINES
PyDataMCR is a strictly professional event, as such professional behaviour is expected.
PyDataMCR is a chapter of PyData, an educational program of NumFOCUS and thus abides by the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct: see https://pydata.org/code-of-conduct.html
Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with its contents.

ACCESSIBILITY
Toilets and venue are accessible.

SPONSORS
Thank you to NUMFocus for sponsoring Meetup and further support.
Thank you to Autotrader, Krakenflex and Horsefly Analytics for their ongoing support and sponsorship of PyDataMCR.

Manchester AI is back.

After a quiet few months, we're relaunching in person — hosted at Accenture's Circle Square office in the city centre. Same as always: real talks from people building real things, proper time to talk to each other afterwards, and no livestream. If you want to be in the room, you'll need to be in the room.

This is a community for data scientists, ML engineers, data leaders and the people actually shipping AI into production — not slideware, not hype. Two talks, Q&A, and networking over food and drink.

The talks

Raji Bhamidipati — Senior AI Product Manager, Finova
The POC That Never Ships: Baselines, Stop Criteria, and What Production Actually Costs

Half of GenAI projects are abandoned after the proof-of-concept. The problem is rarely the technology. Raji looks at what teams get wrong before they write a line of code — measuring a baseline, agreeing what would make you kill the project — and what production actually demands once the demo is over: evaluation, audit trails, cost per decision, and the handover to whoever runs it at 2am. Drawn from real work in a regulated environment.

Tomisin Alex-Aina — AI/LLM Solutions Architect, Accenture Centre for Advanced AI
When the Agent Clicks the Wrong Thing: A Practical Framework for Debugging, Testing and Designing LLM Agent Decisions

Agents are non-deterministic, which makes them hard to test, hard to debug, and hard to trust in production. Tomisin works on making enterprise agent systems observable, testable and production-ready, and shares a practical framework for understanding why an agent did what it did — and how to design so it does the right thing more often.

The evening

• 5:45pm — Doors, food, drink and networking
• 6:15pm — Welcome
• 6:20pm — First talk + Q&A
• 7:05pm — Second talk + Q&A
• 7:50pm — Open networking
• 8:30pm — Close

Please read before you RSVP
This event is hosted inside Accenture's office, so entry is controlled by building security. A few things to know now, so nothing catches you out:

• RSVP here to reserve your place. Closer to the event we'll send round a short registration form — you'll need to complete it with your first and last name to get on the security list. We'll email it to everyone who's RSVP'd, in good time.
• Everyone attending must register individually. If you're bringing someone, they need to RSVP and complete the form in their own name too — we can't add "+1" guests to the security list, so anyone not individually registered won't be let in.
• On the night you'll need photo ID (a work ID is fine) matching the name you register with. Anyone not on the security list, or without matching ID, can't be admitted — that's Accenture's rule, not ours.
• This is an over-18s event.
• The registration form will also ask about any dietary or accessibility needs — please flag anything there so we can sort it in advance.
• Places are limited and we expect this to fill, so RSVP early. If your plans change, please update your RSVP so someone else can take the spot.
• It will be hosted by Oluwadara Adebobola

Doors are at 5:45 — come straight from work, grab food, and settle in.
See you there.

We're be back on Wednesday 30th September after a summer break with the usual format...drinks, food and 3 great speakers!

Location: Grayce, 1st Floor Hilton House, Hilton Street, Manchester M1 2EH
Big thanks to Grayce for hosting us again!

Speakers: Julian Bass, Nire Adetimehin and Bevan Broadbent...

Julian Bass: Julian Bass is an author researcher and consultant who has studied product ownership in large-scale offshore software development projects for over a decade. His research findings show how large-enterprise practitioners use a team-based product ownership model in multi-national projects. Julian’s book “Agile Software Engineering Skills” argues that early career software development practitioners need a combination of technical, collaboration and process skills. He is Professor of Software Engineering at University of Salford and Founder of Red Ocelot Ltd. Julian has a PhD in systems engineering from University of Sheffield, is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.

Talk title: Managing Technical Debt: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Talk description: Technical debt is a metaphor for the unwanted complexity that accrues in software as new features and changes are repeatedly added to a system. Following current best practice, teams regularly set aside a proportion of their development effort to mitigate technical debt. Yet technical debt is not accrued uniformly and does not create impact equally in different parts of the software landscape. So, how can you find out how much technical debt that you have? How do you know where is it? Are you overspending? Or are you building-up problems? We’ll explore the good, the bad and the ugly or managing technical debt.
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Nire Adetimehin: Nire Adetimehin is a Product Marketing Manager who works at the intersection of strategy, storytelling and execution. She has experience across B2B and B2C SaaS, helping teams stay aligned around customer needs and bring products to market with clarity.

Talk title: Are Customers Still Kings? How SaaS Products Can Remain Customer-Centric in a Fiercely Competitive Market

Talk description: Every SaaS company claims to be customer-centric, but are their product decisions proving it? This talk explores practical ways teams can stay close to customers, avoid reactive feature-chasing and build around the outcomes users actually value.
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Bevan Broadbent: Bevan is a Leadership Coach. After 20+ years in Product Leadership with JLR, Kingfisher, Boohoo, Portswigger, Gamma and many more, he now helps others (those that will let him) grow into leadership more powerfully than they believed possible.

Talk title: Why I left Product, and why you should stay

Talk description: After 20+ years I chose to leave my first love - Product, and immersed myself in a new love - Coaching.
How a career founded on ruthless prioritisation can lead to life changing pivots.

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Why you should come?
Networking with fellow product people 👋

• Great talks from local and national speakers 🎤
• Food 🍕and drink 🍺
• We welcome people from all backgrounds!

We're a friendly bunch, our typical crowd includes:

• senior product leaders
• startup founders
• mid-level PMs
• new PMs
• people looking to get into Product
• engineers/developers
• designers
• people who work with product teams - and just want to learn more.

Whatever your situation, come along and say hello.

Event timings
6:00pm start - Networking (drinks and food)
6:30pm - Talks (3x 20-min talks + 5-min Q&A)
8:00pm - Talks finish - more networking - drinks and food
8:30pm - Close
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Please note:

• Speakers and venue are be subject to change.
• We sometimes take photos at our events for community and promotional use. By attending, you’re happy for any photos you appear in to be used in this way.
• Your name will be used for registration and check-in purposes only.
• Tickets are free but limited — please update your RSVP if you can’t make it so someone else can grab the spot.

Strive welcomes you to 'Tech and Business Networking', an event for tenured and newcomers at Rain Bar! Event is 18+. Limited Tickets.

Strive welcomes you to 'Tech and Business Networking', Manchester's hottest networking event! We are set in the perfect central location for all to join.

Are you interested in tech and business? Want to elevate your career? Meet Consultants, Analysts of all types, Bankers, Software Engineers, Entrepreneurs, and more who are active in the space or are eager to get started.

**This will be a multi-vertical event**********

There will be professionals with backgrounds in the arts, finance, tech, real estate, healthcare, and more. Come with an open mind, and leave with connections that wouldn't be possible otherwise!

Pack some business cards and come with an open mind!

Meet your future business partners, employers, coworkers, investors, and friends. You don't want to miss this opportunity to expand your network and create a brighter future.

We will have a space for our event to check-in.

The event will go from 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM(feel free to come at any point in this timeframe).

Name tags will be provided.

Business casual dress code. Job fair attire.

Remember - it's not about who you know today, it's who you'll meet tomorrow!

We look forward to meeting you at the event!

Sincerely,

Strive Networking Team

Refund requests are permitted up to 24 hours after purchase, so long as we are not within 48 hours before the event start time. Refunds will be made in full and repaid to your method of payment. Note that we are unable to reimburse for eventbrite fees.

Disclaimer: By attending Strive Networking events you agree to photos/videos taken during the event being used to promote future events.

MCR.Leaders (the new name for Leaders Connected) is back and we can't wait to host you all on Thursday 1st October from 6pm at Castlefield Rooms (above Alberts Shed) in Manchester.

A big thanks to our sponsors Equal Experts who have very kindly offered to support MRJ on the evening

What do we have planned?

• 3 x fireside chats with technology leaders - Beccy Weeks (Chief AI Officer), Mikey Smith (Chief Product & Technology officer) & James Leech (Chief Product & Technology Officer)
• BBQ Food
• Free Bar
• Sponsor prizes
• Loads of networking opportunities.

Introducing our speakers:

Beccy Weeks: Chief AI Officer @ Citation Group
https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccyweeks1/

"I believe in purposeful innovation... technology that solves real problems and creates measurable value, not transformation theatre.

I've led technology organisations through every methodology shift of the past two decades.....AI is the most significant capability shift I've seen. But most organisations are approaching it wrong...The gains come from redesigning how decisions get made and where human judgement actually matters. I've learnt this the hard way."

Recognition:
→ National AI Awards 2025 - Winner, AI Innovation; Finalist, AI Adoption (cultural mindset shift)
→ Top 30 Software CTOs in Europe 2024 (Neon River)
→ Women in IT Awards 2018 - Finalist

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Mikey Smith: Chief Product & Technology Officer @ Simple Online Healthcare
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeysmithuk/

Mikey is an inspiring and forward-thinking AI First technology leader with more than 20 years’ experience building software, scaling engineering organisations and leading transformation across industries including retail and financial services.

Having led technology teams of c.100 people, Mikley has a proven track record of creating high-performing engineering cultures, scaling teams effectively and delivering complex technology programmes. His leadership style is grounded in empathy and servant leadership, with a strong belief in empowering engineers, creating clarity and aligning people behind a common purpose.

More recently, Mikey has become a passionate advocate for AI-First Engineering, rethinking traditional approaches to software development and building a new product engineering function around smaller, highly effective, AI-enabled pods.

He is particularly passionate about how AI can augment engineering teams, accelerate delivery and fundamentally change the way technology organisations are structured and operate.

Despite operating at CTO and executive level, Mikey remains deeply connected to engineering. He regularly pairs with engineers, mentors teams and explores emerging technologies firsthand, ensuring he understands both the opportunities and the real-world complexities facing modern engineering teams.

A strong believer in using data to drive better decisions, Mikey combines technical depth with calm, empathetic leadership and an ability to inspire people at every level of an organisation.

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James Leech (Chief Product & Technology Officer) @ Sainsburys
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesleechdigital/

James is a highly accomplished technology, product and AI leader with extensive board-level experience as a CTO, Managing Director and Chief Product Officer.

Today, as Director of Technology for Customer, Loyalty & Channels at Sainsbury’s, he is helping lead technology and product innovation across one of the UK’s largest retailers, spanning digital and in-store experiences, Nectar, Nectar360, MarTech and the wider customer ecosystem.

At the forefront of Sainsbury’s AI journey, James is leading the adoption of AI and Agentic AI across customer, colleague and retail technology — from AI-powered personalisation and intelligent automation to autonomous agents, exploring how emerging technology can transform customer experience, colleague productivity and commercial performance.

Throughout his career, James has built and scaled high-performing technology, product and engineering teams, led major digital transformations and turned emerging technology into measurable business value. A passionate advocate for innovation and AI-first thinking, he brings together commercial acumen, deep technology expertise and product leadership to challenge how organisations build, operate and grow.

This session is a group workshop run by Simon Kirkham.

Where to invest technically is one of the most crucial decisions we make as engineers and leaders, but most of the time it comes down to "I think this is the important bit".

There's rarely a concrete rationale, and it's hard for anyone else to scrutinise – which are two of the things that make a decision a good one.

This is a hands-on session introducing some techniques you can use to look at a system, technical or not, and see it more clearly.

We'll use Wardley Mapping and Domain Mapping to work out what's slowing you down, where your time and money are best spent, and what's best left alone entirely.

Date: Wednesday 7th October
Venue: Bonded Warehouse (M3 4AP)

5pm – doors open (network, have some pizza and grab a drink)
6pm – workshop
7:30pm – pub / home (please don’t feel bad if you need to leave early)

Pizza and drinks will be provided as usual. If you have any special dietary requirements, please let me know ahead of time.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) conference in Manchester, United Kingdom

Tech leadership conference in Manchester, United Kingdom

Law firms don’t lack tech. They lack trusted spaces to understand it. LegaltechLive® is where real conversations and decisions happen.

Most legal tech events talk at you.
LegaltechLive® Open Mic gives you the mic.

This is where law firm leaders, IT directors, COOs, COLPs, innovation teams and trusted legal technology experts come together to talk openly about the challenges firms are actually trying to solve.

The room creates the conversation.

Expect:

✔ Real challenges
✔ Practical insight
✔ Live technology demonstrations
✔ Honest, peer-level conversation
✔ Introductions to people who can help

Every Open Mic is shaped by the room, but conversations typically include:

• AI adoption and readiness
• Legal technology and integration
• Data and knowledge management
• Operations and process improvement
• Compliance, risk and cybersecurity
• Client experience
• What's actually working inside law firms

Hear what law firms are really thinking.
Real priorities, challenges and experiences.

Discover expertise that can help.
Meet people with practical experience of solving the challenges being discussed.

Build relationships that continue beyond the evening.
Because sometimes the most valuable conversation is the one you weren't expecting to have.

People often tell us:

"It doesn't feel like networking."

"You've built something different."

"People genuinely want to help."

That's intentional.

It's about bringing the right people and the right expertise together around the challenges law firms are trying to solve.

Relationships come before sales.

People first. Real talk. Real relationships. Real solutions.

LegaltechLive® — Where law firms discover trusted expertise.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) conference in Manchester, United Kingdom

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