Call for Papers
Manchester Tech Festival 2024
28 Oct 2024
8 Nov 2024
Manchester, United Kingdom
manchestertechfestival.co.uk
Designed by the community for the community, Manchester Tech Festival is Manchester’s only year-long celebration of our city’s tech ecosystem. With over 40 events through the year culminating in a two-week festival, we aim to connect every aspect of the tech community to facilitate recruitment, learning and growth.
Bigger than ever, this year’s core festival will take place between the 4th and 8th November across a number of venues in Manchester including Brooklyn Heights, Barclays Digital Security Hub (DiSH) and the iconic Victoria Baths.
This year, surrounding the core festival we will be hosting a number of fringe events with our partners. This will take place between Monday 28th October and Friday 1st November.
From panels to presentations, across the two weeks, we have over 200 speaking opportunities across 20 different tech topics including StartUp ScaleUp, Cyber Security, Tech 4 Good, Pathways into Tech, Cyber, Software Engineering, Tech Quality and more!
So, whether you’re a seasoned speaker or its your first time, we are looking for a diverse range of speakers to bring our festival to life. We are proud of our truly inclusive and vibrant community and look forward to receiving your application.
Call for Papers
01 Jan 2024
14 Jun 2024
Talk Topics
Manchester Tech Festival is split into several different tracks, that are showcased across the entire week. We are looking for presentations in the following core areas:
Leadership, Pathways into Tech, Product, Tech Quality, Software Engineering, UX, Women in Tech, Tech for Good, Diversity & Inclusion, Neurodiversity in Tech, Start Up Scale Up, Cyber, Data and Cloud & DevOps, LGBTQ+ In Tech
In addition, we welcome applications that cover:
AI, AR, Blockchain & Cyrpto, Digital Transformation, Ecommerce, FinTech, Infosec, Innovation, Machine Learning, Mobile, Pathways into Tech, Product, Recruitment, Retail, Sustainability.
Who can apply?
Manchester Tech Festival is all about inclusion, whether you have spoken publicly before or attended a panel makes no difference to us. We encourage you to submit your ideas if there is something you feel passionate about, you’ve made a discovery or want to share your experience in the tech industry. No Idea is a bad idea!
All we ask is that you are available to speak any day during our core festival between the 30th October and the 3rd November.
Key Dates
- June 14th Applications Close
- June 14th Selection Panel
- June 28th - July 19th Speakers informed of outcome**
**Please note that this period of time will include contacting successful speakers to assess if they are able to speak at the festival. With over 150 speaking opportunities this can take unto 3 weeks to process and not hearing from us at the beginning of this period does not mean you have been unsuccessful.
Our Judging Process
Once you have submitted your application, a minimum of three expert judges will score your application in four main areas:
- Relevance. Is your talk relevant to the categories you have chosen and the attendees of the festival
- Creativity. Is your talk something new? Is it interesting and will it engage the audience?
- Accuracy. Is your talk factually correct and can the content be substantiated if challenged?
- Easy to understand. Is your talk easy for our audience to understand or is it just too tech heavy?
We will also take into consideration any previous speaking experience, but don’t let this put you off applying if you are new to speaking, we will simply use this to gauge where you would be best placed within the festival if you are selected!
Once your applications are scored, they will be compared with other applications by our entire judging panel on the 14th June. If selected you will receive an email with an offer to speak at the festival and must confirm this offer to us by the deadline given.
event fee
Free Access to the entire festival except from the Leadership Day