Binary Festival brings together the North's digital and creative community
By Bruntwood
2018 will see the return of Liverpool’s Binary Festival, which Bruntwood is proud to be supporting, bringing together the digital and creative community in the North.
The North is home to over 280,000 tech workers, with numbers rising fast; but this still only accounts for 18% of tech workers across the UK.
There is a great need within the North for cities to band together for a more joined up approach to tech. While each city is building its own reputation for digital and tech, it is clear that together the cities could achieve so much more.
Speaking at the Binary Festival launch in November, Richard Gallagher, Chair Tech North discussed the difficulty in getting northern cities to work together, likening it to Ramsbottom’s Black Pudding Throwing Competition in Ramsbottom. “The Black Pudding Competition is a modern day reenactment of the War of the Roses, 600 years later we are still dealing with the Lancashire Yorkshire [divide].”
“Uniting the North isn’t as easy as you’d think. You take that tribalism and rivalry across the 14,000 square miles of the north, and you try and get Newcastle to work with Liverpool or Manchester or Leeds or Sheffield. They’re used to working in their world and getting the best out of their location. Tech North had to elevate itself above that and ask what helps the North overall. What things can we share across the regions.”
This is what the work of Tech North and the Binary Festival aims to do; bringing digital and tech talent from across the North together.
“For me, the point of Tech North was to put the words ‘tech’ and ‘north’ in the minds of people. A lot of people don’t realise how big the tech economy is and is becoming,” said Herb Kim, Binary Festival director and Board Director at Tech City UK.
“If you look across the last 30 years of British economic history, I would struggle to find an industry that has grown more or been more significant to our economy then digital and creative. Things like banking, finance and pharmaceuticals may be big, but they have always been big.”
Colin Forshaw, Bruntwood’s Regional Lead for Liverpool, said “The Liverpool city region has become one of the UK’s leading centres for digital innovation and entrepreneurship. Binary Festival allows businesses across the sector to gather together and it provides a showcase for the diversity of talent available on our doorstep.
Bruntwood is always eager to support initiatives that expand the cultural vibrancy of our core cities and connect like-minded business owners and creative thinkers. We are hugely proud to be a principal partner this year and we are looking forward to working with the Binary team to help deliver the most eye-catching and insightful festival to date.”
The main highlight of the Binary Festival will be a range of ‘Binary Keynotes', which will feature inspiring talks from speakers with new and fascinating insights.. The Binary Keynotes for 2018 will include talks by:
Paul Smith from Hyperloop One, the start-up promising to revolutionise train travel
Steve Rotheram, Metro Mayor of Liverpool who is looking to digital connectivity to help spur economic growth
Andy Kent, CEO & Founder of Liverpool’s Angel Solutions
Natalie Haywood, MD & Founder of the LEAF Tea Shop chain
The Binary Gatherings will include workshops topics such as:
Virtual & Augmented Reality hosted by Draw & Code
Artificial Intelligence hosted by Mando
YouTube for Business by Curly Productions
The Fine Art of Tea Tasting by LEAF
The full line-up of keynotes and gatherings will be announced in mid-January 2018.
Find out more about the Binary Festival 2018 here.