Manchester Digital has seen another year of growth, which is reflective of the industry as a whole and demonstrates the increase in demand for organisations such as ours in helping businesses access the support and talent they need.
This year has also seen the election of a new government; the Northern Powerhouse become more tangible and Tech City’s subsidiary Tech North spring into existence. So, plenty of factors that have had an impact on our members making it even more important that there is an independent representative voice championing industry issues with regional and national government.
2015 really feels like the year that Manchester got the recognition it deserves and we have had quite a platform nationally and globally. However 2016 is certainly not a year to rest on our laurels, there is still much to be done.
The skills shortage is still affecting the growth and development of many of our members and we continue to work with industry and education to help to bridge the gap. This year we finally bit the bullet and invested a significant amount of time into helping the public sector understand the skills issues and how they can be solved. I am hopeful that as a result, we will see some significant investment into this area in 2016.
We’re nearly into the second year of running our training courses and we’ve got even more planned for 2016 as we help businesses to upskill their staff and bring employees up to speed on all things digital.
We launched the first Manchester Digital conference which peeked beneath the bonnet of the digital industry in the region and launched the findings from our SWOT. Joining up the ecosystem; better promotion of the city and its capabilities; lack of business leadership and a poor talent pipeline were all highlighted as issues by the Manchester Digital Council. These will be areas of focus for us throughout 2016 and we will be launching several new products and services to tackle them.
We saw quite a few changes to the infrastructure of Manchester Digital, saying goodbye to Tony Foggett after 3 years of being the Chair and welcoming Graham Benson, CIO of rentalcars.com as his replacement. Several new members were elected to the Council giving us broader representation and reflecting the fact that we are now home to a growing number of corporates and ecommerce companies as well as digital agencies and software houses.
It is important to us that our relationship reaches beyond business owners and into the community and by working in partnership with organisations such as McrFRED, NUX, nDPM and Mage Titans we have been able to deliver nationally significant, high quality conferences in the region.
The team and I look forwards to working with you in 2016 and wish you a Merry Christmas and hope that your websites remain resilient on Boxing Day.
Katie Gallagher, Managing Director of Manchester Digital
