The digital hub of the North: ConferenceLeeds celebrates the return of Leeds Digital Festival

The Leeds Digital Festival, the North’s largest digital festival, takes place between 16th – 27th April 2018 and is a city-wide, open platform celebration of all things digital within the city. Since its birth in 2016, the festival has grown in numerous ways, with 150 events and an expected 15,000 attendees.

Leeds is one of the most innovative digital hubs in the UK, now being home to over 3,500 digital and technology companies across a range of industries. Furthermore, Leeds now has a digital GVA of £688 million with a growth potential of 92% , and the upcoming Leeds Digital Festival will further shine a spotlight on the city’s digital strengths.

The Festival is an extremely unique experience, which really demonstrates how Leeds is leading the way in discussion and innovation in the tech industry, with the event at the envy of other cities. We are extremely excited by the schedule planned to continue to watch not only our digital sector, but Leeds as a hosting city, thrive.

With less than a week to go until the Festival, ConferenceLeeds highlights some of the exciting events that those attending can look forward to.

Highlighted events at this year’s festival include the full-day conferences FinTech North and TechEdge, hosted by Whitecap Consulting and Sky Betting & Gaming respectively, which will see a host of specialist speakers from around the world divulge knowledge in these areas. Other programmes include Branded3’s Leeds Loves Search, Trinity Mcqueen’s Policing the Digital Playground and Netpremacy’s insights into the Google Cloud Platform.

Leeds’ healthcare sector strength and leadership in medical innovation and data research will also be highlighted throughout the festival. Leading healthcare companies such as NHS Digital, the Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC), Leeds Institute of Data Analytics (LIDA) and Open Data Institute (ODI) will all be hosting a range of events showcasing their most recent cutting-edge projects and hosting workshops.

Elements of the Festival programme also aim to address diversity in the digital sector, including the discussion ‘Where are the women in tech?’, which is a collaboration between Swedish government-backed Java4Women and UK-based Virtual Pair Programmers.

Finally, the festival also shines a spotlight on some of the city’s most popular creative spaces, which also offer excellent conferencing facilities and delegate experiences. This includes the recently-opened Platform, a Bruntwood office space that is officially launching its tech hub at part of Leeds Digital Festival on Monday 16th April. Platform recently received a portion of this year’s Leeds Tech Fund, alongside Duke Studios, who are both offering their spaces to host events during the festival, alongside further exciting food and drink venues Headrow House, Belgrave Music Hall & Canteen and Arc Inspirations, all extremely unique to Leeds.