Manchester may boast an incredibly rich industrial heritage, but its future is firmly rooted in the digital. The city has established itself as the UK’s biggest tech hub outside of the capital, a testament to its youth, talent, creativity, and relentless pursuit of innovation. Indeed, a recent Manifesto for the Northern Tech Economy proposed Manchester serve as the anchor for a “Northern Tech Nexus”, positioning itself as the UK’s Silicon Valley.
It’s a style of bullish confidence and ambition long associated with the city and, for its and the wider region’s tech community, DTX Manchester offers the perfect opportunity to both showcase that spirit to IT decisionmakers from some of the world’s biggest brands, and turbocharge the next phase of growth.
Held on 20-24 May, DTX Manchester styles itself as “the North’s biggest digital transformation event”, with particular focus on empowering enterprises to improve connectivity and integrate cutting edge enterprise technologies, exposing IT leaders to some of the best talent, technology and thought leadership available on the market today.
DTX Manchester incorporates myriad events and attraction beyond the traditional enterprise IT agenda, not least Code100, a live coding competition where local tech talent competes head-to-head, with audience following every line of code in real time. There are also various extracurricular sights and sounds likely to appeal to delegates – retro video games, a Dr Who experience, even the Batmobile “Tumbler” from Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.
But the event’s beating heart lies in a conference programme that speaks to both the quality of attendee, and growing pull of DTX Manchester as a must-attend event.
A variety of perspectives
It draws from Big Tech, emerging talent, local and global institutions, multinationals, and even fields as varied as psychological illusionism and motorsport. Beyond the main stage, events are also help across multiple thematic platforms, including advanced threat protection, cloud and infrastructure, digital and IT strategy, and data and AI. Enterprise IT leaders of all stripes will never be left lacking for choice or insights.
Keynote interviews highlight a commitment to looking beyond the purely technological. At a time of growing reported burnout in the IT function, celebrity illusionist Derren Brown will discuss “rethinking the pursuit of happiness”, a look at strategies to avoid career fatigue and even “harness the surprising value of anxiety”; while Paralympian and cross-bench peer Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson will be on stage outlining how the lessons learned from winning 16 Paralympic medals, breaking 30 world records and placing first in 6 London Marathons are now being translated into an entirely new career path – and can be adopted by those in attendance.
But senior leaders and evangelists from bodies such as Sophos, AWS, TechUK, Lloyds Banking Group, BT, and Siemens amount for the bulk of the educational programme. For example, Ciaran Martin, founding chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (and the former head of cyber security of GCHQ), will speak on the security issues that should be keeping CISOs up at night – and how everyday businesses stay on top of the latest threats and targets. Among various other highlights are panels on trends in digital “customercentricity”; driving greater digital inclusivity and social mobility; delivering higher sustainability standards in IT; and the creation of more successful malware and better zero trust defences.
Focus on security
Indeed, cyber forms a major pillar of the event as a whole. Sophos is participating in two such sessions. The first, taking place at 11am on the Wednesday, is titled Using GenAI to Proactively Strengthen your Cybersecurity. Led by director of product management David Mareels, it will look at the impact on visibility, analysing and prioritising threat detection from the growing attack surface; how GenAi can be used across MDR and XDR to help security teams streamline their operations; and how GenAI is reshaping the future of threat detection as a whole.
Then, on the Thursday at 11am, a panel discussion on the Advanced Threat Protection stage: “The call is coming from inside the house – How to better hunt threats across your security estate”. Moderated by Cyber Data Law Solicitors managing partner Emma Green, the speaker lineup includes Muhammad Khan, head of cyber security at Bridgewater Finance Group; James Mason, who leads enterprise cybersecurity at Qinetiq; and Alistair Macrae, senior global solutions consultant for Sophos. With dwell time dropping, panellists will debate how can enterprises can best spot, investigate and address threats at speed; best practise when it comes to layering controls along the cyber-attack-chain to minimise disruption and lessen impact; and emerging strategies for accurately pinpointing anomalous activity.
The quest for new angles, answers and solutions is a recurring motif across all three days. Indeed, in what promises to be the largest gathering of enterprise IT and digital professionals that the North has ever seen, DTX Manchester reflects and provides a foundation for arguably the most exciting tech story happening in the UK right now. The home of the industrial revolution is playing a growing and fundamental role in the delivery of its digital equivalent.
There is still time to register for DTX Manchester. Get your tickets now.
