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| Turing Festival | |
|---|---|
| Name | Turing Festival |
| Genre | Technology conference |
| Location | Manchester, United Kingdom |
| Years active | 2016–present |
| Founder | Elemental Labs |
| Attendance | 2,000–5,000 (annual) |
Turing Festival The Turing Festival is an annual technology and software conference held in Manchester, United Kingdom, gathering developers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and policy influencers. It concentrates on software engineering, artificial intelligence, data science, cybersecurity, and startup ecosystems, attracting participants from institutions, companies, and civic organisations across Europe and beyond. The event convenes practitioners from industry, academia, and government for talks, workshops, hackathons, and networking.
The Festival positions itself at the intersection of software engineering practice and applied research, featuring speakers from Google, Microsoft, Amazon (company), Meta Platforms, Inc., OpenAI, DeepMind, IBM, Intel Corporation, NVIDIA, ARM Holdings, Red Hat, Canonical (company), GitHub, Atlassian, Salesforce, Stripe, Inc., Twilio, Spotify Technology S.A., Netflix, Uber Technologies, Inc., Airbnb, Inc., LinkedIn, Oracle Corporation, SAP SE, Accenture, Capgemini, ThoughtWorks, GCHQ, National Health Service (England), European Commission, UK Research and Innovation, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University College London, Imperial College London, University of Manchester, Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Princeton University, Harvard University, Yale University, University of Edinburgh, ETH Zurich, Turing Institute, Royal Society, Manchester City Council, Tech Nation, Nesta, Seedcamp, Y Combinator, Index Ventures, Balderton Capital, Accel (company), Sequoia Capital, Bloomberg L.P., The Guardian, Financial Times, Wired (magazine), MIT Technology Review, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, BBC News, Channel 4, ITV.
Founded in 2016 by Elemental Labs and local technologists, the Festival emerged during a period of rapid growth in UK startup accelerators and research centres, aligning with initiatives from Manchester Tech stakeholders and municipal strategies influenced by Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Early editions featured collaborations with Turing Institute, University of Manchester, The Alan Turing Institute, and regional incubators such as The Sharp Project and FutureEverything. Over successive years the event expanded amid broader developments associated with Brexit, Digital Strategy (United Kingdom), and pan-European research frameworks like Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, adapting programmatic emphasis toward machine learning, privacy regulation, and cloud-native architectures championed by companies such as Docker, Inc. and Kubernetes maintainers from the CNCF. The Festival persisted through the COVID-19 pandemic alongside hybrid conferences including Web Summit and SXSW, integrating remote sessions similar to examples from O'Reilly Media and ACM SIGCOMM.
Programming spans keynote talks, technical workshops, panel discussions, lightning talks, and hackathons. Keynotes have featured leaders from OpenAI, DeepMind, Google DeepMind, Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, Fastly, Mozilla Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, Linux Foundation, Kubernetes, Apache Software Foundation, Python Software Foundation, Rust Foundation, ECMWF, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reuters Institute, Royal Academy of Engineering, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Association for Computing Machinery, British Computer Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Royal Society of Arts, Royal Institution, Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council (United Kingdom), European Centre for Digital Competitiveness, Confidentiality Advisory Group, and industry trade groups like TechUK. Workshops often teach tools from TensorFlow, PyTorch, Scikit-learn, Pandas (software), Jupyter Notebook, Keras, Hugging Face, Grafana Labs, Prometheus (monitoring), Elastic (company), PostgreSQL, and practices exemplified by Continuous integration, DevOps advocates from Jenkins (software) and GitLab. Community events include meetups associated with Women Who Code, Codebar, Black Tech Week, Manchester Digital, and university student societies from Oxford University Computing Society, Cambridge University Technology and Enterprise Club, and others.
Notable presenters have included researchers and executives formerly or currently affiliated with Alan Turing, Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Yann LeCun, Fei-Fei Li, Demis Hassabis, Ilya Sutskever, Dario Amodei, Andrej Karpathy, John Giannandrea, Jeff Dean, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Tim Berners-Lee, Ada Lovelace scholars, and leaders from organisations such as DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research Cambridge, IBM Watson, Facebook AI Research, Apple Inc., Amazon Science, Salesforce Research, NATO Communications and Information Agency, European Defence Agency, UNESCO, World Economic Forum, OECD, European Investment Bank, Innovate UK, Nesta Challenges, Techfugees, Refugee Council, Big Society Capital.
Coverage by outlets including The Guardian, Financial Times, BBC News, Wired (magazine), MIT Technology Review, and TechCrunch has framed the Festival as part of Manchester's tech renaissance alongside redevelopment projects tied to Northern Powerhouse agendas. Academic citations and policy briefs from The Alan Turing Institute, UK Data Service, Office for National Statistics, House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, and think tanks like Institute for Public Policy Research have referenced dialogues that took place at the Festival on AI ethics, data governance, and workforce development. Critics from some civil society groups such as Privacy International and Big Brother Watch have challenged corporate narratives presented at certain sessions. Comparative analyses reference peer events like FOSDEM, PyCon, React Conference, Develop:Brighton, QCon, and GOTO Conferences.
The Festival is organized by Elemental Labs in partnership with academic institutes including The Alan Turing Institute, University of Manchester, and industry partners such as Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, NVIDIA Corporation, and regional sponsors including Manchester Metropolitan University and Manchester City Council. Funding sources combine corporate sponsorship from venture firms like Seedcamp and Balderton Capital, ticket revenue, grants from bodies like UK Research and Innovation and philanthropic support from organisations such as Wellcome Trust and Royal Society. Commercial exhibition space is sold to vendors including IBM, Oracle Corporation, SAP SE, Atlassian, Red Hat, Canonical (company), Elastic NV, and local digital agencies.
Attendee figures have ranged from roughly 2,000 to over 5,000 annually, comprising software engineers, data scientists, researchers, startup founders, venture capitalists, policymakers, and students. Delegates come from companies and institutions such as Accenture, Capgemini, ThoughtWorks, Bloomberg L.P., The Financial Times, BBC News, NHS England, Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), UK Parliament, European Commission, City of Manchester, and universities across Europe and North America. The Festival reports efforts to improve diversity through partnerships with Women Who Code, Code First Girls, Ada Lovelace Day, and funded scholarship programmes supported by sponsors including Google and Microsoft.
Category:Technology conferences