Manchester is mega-exciting at the moment. Along with everything Doug Ward‘s awesome work getting central government to put some money into Manchester, I also set up technw.

technw is where I decided to get all the tech event organisers in the area together. We have a slack group so we can work together to make things better, we’ve also started adding to a shared calendar and advertising with a shared twitter account so we can be a one-stop shop for events in the area. As part of this I went round chatting to MadLab, Manchester Digital and Doug from Forward to find out what was going on in the rest of the ecosystem and how we can all fit in and work together.

A nice fallout is that there is also a slack group for all the local creatives to get together and chat, go sign up! http://mcrtech-slack.herokuapp.com/

The way I see it, with these four groups, we have some great representation from across the board:

technw – representing local tech community
madlab – representing local community
mcrdig – representing local businesses as an independent trade body, voice and influence with council, government and education sector.
forward/spaceportx – representing startups and entrepreneurs

I’m fully aware we have lots of other awesome bodies and groups in the community. Would love to hear more about them! With these four groups working together we can really start to make stuff happen!

I’ve just been elected as a member of Manchester Digital council, and did some work withMadLab the other month teaching unemployed women in Greater Manchester digital skills. I’ve got so many ideas on what we can do next to make things even better in this city, will keep you all updated!