Bradford Digital's Tech Tuesday — notes
Practical AI, proper community
On Saturday I was at Bradford Live for the joyous and celebratory Gorillaz gig, my first time in that building in something like thirty years. On Tuesday I was back, for Bradford Digital's Tech Tuesday: the tenth event in a series that has quietly become one of the most genuine things going in Bradford's digital community, and this year part of UK Tech Week.
I'll say upfront: I was one of the sponsors for the event, through Office of Wilson. Bradford has given me a lot over the past thirty-odd years and this felt something worth giving something back to.
I missed the morning sessions, arrived after lunch, so I was starting off with a fascinating session with Professor Ciprian Dan Neagu of the University of Bradford, who framed AI as the sixth industrial revolution — Industry 6.0, characterised by humanisation and human-centred AI. His research examples included a digital twin of Saltaire UNESCO World Heritage Site, which gave me a small jolt of recognition: I live there.
Tim Burnett's talk, "From anxiety to adoption: practical AI for business," was built around two ideas: "human first" — AI isn't replacing us, and we need to stay in the driver's seat — and "AI forward" — this is happening, and the question is how we shape our relationship with it rather than whether we engage. A couple of things stuck with me: the point about shadow AI, the gap between what organisations officially sanction and what people are actually using; and a deceptively plain prompting tip — treat it like a junior colleague. Give it context, explain your intent. Unremarkable on the surface, but it cuts through a lot of mysticism.
The Innovation Panel brought together Andy Jack (Expert OS), Jordan Finneran (Pimsical), and Lucy Smith (Thistl). The sharpest exchange was around the pull of shiny technology. Jordan put it plainly: people forget they're supposed to be solving problems. Andy's version: the barrier to building has dropped so far that the question has shifted from "can we?" to "should we, and for whom?" Both things felt true, and like things that get lost in the hype.
The Business Panel, chaired by Dom Burch and featuring Rebecca Fitzgerald (YBS), Karen Crutchley (Schofield Sweeney), Matthew Grogan (Freeman Gratton Holdings), Annelise Turner (GIG Retail), and Jez Bristow (Jadamedo Consulting), brought a more grounded perspective on what adoption looks like inside larger organisations. The most centring take of the afternoon: start by asking people what eats their time, what's repetitive, what stops them finishing at a reasonable hour — then find the right tool to address it, which may or may not involve AI at all. What struck me was less the tactical advice than the values underneath it.
That thread ran through all three sessions — not AI taking jobs, but what we choose to do with the capacity it returns. Several people, across very different kinds of businesses, kept coming back to relationships as the thing that matters most and that automation can't replicate.
Bradford Digital has been running since October 2023, driven by a genuine community feel. Being at Bradford Live on Tuesday gave the tenth event a scale it deserved. But it also made me pine a little for the intimacy of the regular gatherings at Assembly Bradford — the creative energy of that space is central to what Bradford Digital is. What both venues share is the thing that matters: a room of people who are genuinely curious, willing to share what they're working through, and invested in something good for the city.
The best line of the afternoon came from Jez Bristow: saving someone four or five hours a day isn't really about productivity. It's about what they choose to do with those hours instead. That felt like a good underline for the whole day.
Phil Myerscough has been making the case that innovation is happening in Bradford right now, and quietly building the community to prove it — on top of his day job. He's right. And that consistency matters as much as any individual event.
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