Equal Experts is proud to be a part of the Manchester Tech Festival, which runs for two weeks from 28 October. Here are some of the highlights to look out for, including the Tech Leadership Day that we’re sponsoring on 4 November.

Innovation has always had a home in Manchester. It’s a hub where forward-thinking people have consistently found a way to connect ideas with applications: from the first commercially viable canals and railway stations through to the world’s first test-tube baby, the development of Graphene and the first computer capable of storing its own programs. Manchester is often where technology gets to work.

Equal Experts is proud to be a member of the tech community in the city, through our home base for Equal Experts North. We’re equally proud to be supporting the Manchester Tech Festival, which runs for two weeks from 28 October. Equal Experts is sponsoring the Festival’s Tech Leadership Day on 4 November, which aims to equip leaders to empower the type of results-driving innovation the city is so famous for.

Join us for Tech Leadership Day, and broaden your diet beyond low-hanging fruit

The Leadership Day has a great line-up of speakers exploring all of the different aspects of innovating to solve problems: from balancing empathy and technology in company culture to building practical product strategies, to enabling productivity for remote-working teams. It’s a space where people at all stages of their leadership journey can come together to share experiences, learn and grow. I loved the sense of community I felt at the event last year, and I know from experience how valuable these opportunities to share ideas can be. That’s one of the reasons I was keen to record a quick video with the Manchester Tech Festival, that explains what to expect from the Leadership Day, and why it’s worth making time for, even if you don’t consider yourself a natural networker.

I’m particularly looking forward to hearing Equal Experts’ Global Head of Product, David Cox, explore the dangers of a phrase that you hear perhaps too often when businesses are planning their digital transformation strategies. 

David’s session is titled Organisations starve on a diet of low-hanging fruit, and it’s a reminder that, if we’re serious about innovation solving problems, we can’t always follow the path of least resistance. Equally, we can’t keep prioritising tasks with a value that everyone immediately understands, and keep postponing those for which the business case is more complicated. Low hanging fruit is tempting – but it’s not always as nourishing for your business as it looks.

If you’re anywhere near Manchester on 4 November, I’d urge you to book a ticket and come along. David has some great stories to share that show how consistently favouring the easy and obvious leads to product debt that can be impossible to pay down. It’s a great reminder that innovation involves embracing difficult challenges. That’s where great tech leadership comes in.

From tapping the human brain’s superpowers to embracing generative AI, don’t miss our speaker sessions

Across the two weeks of the Manchester Tech Festival, you’ll find plenty of other Equal Experts speakers in sessions that are designed to help empower technology shapers:

At the Women in Tech event on 29 October, our Principal Consultant Product Management, Julia Bellis will be sharing techniques for embracing uncertainty in software development. It’s a state of mind that human beings aren’t inherently comfortable with (and aren’t always great at discussing), but which is fundamental to working with technology. Learning how to work with uncertainty can play a big role in unlocking your organisation’s potential for innovation.

Engagement Manager Matt Ballantine will be taking to the main stage of the festival on 6 November, to discuss Apophenia, the human brain’s inherent, precious ability to make sense of random data. In his Hacking Apophenia session, he’ll reveal simple routines and tools that can help you use this phenomenon to generate new ideas and overcome barriers in discussions.

On 7 November, it’s the turn of Strategic Advisor Peter Petrovics, who will be sharing insights from Equal Experts’ experience launching Europe’s largest, generative AI-driven conversational FAQ service. It’s a real-world application of the most talked-about technology of our time, and Peter will use it to explore themes around overcoming hurdles to generative AI innovation, avoiding hallucinations, and gaining customer acceptance.

The Manchester Tech Festival is a great event that gets better each year. I’m really looking forward to the chance to share ideas and connect with the wider tech community, hear from our customers, and help drive further innovation in the city and beyond.

I’ll see you there!

Click here for more information and details about the Manchester Tech Festival events.