Leeds Digital Festival smashes expectations with 134 events online

Leeds Digital Festival smashed the number of online events it was expecting to put on after organisers had to make an eleventh-hour pivot when Britain was placed into lockdown.
Stuart Clarke, director at Leeds Digital Festival, says he can't wait for September when we go again.Stuart Clarke, director at Leeds Digital Festival, says he can't wait for September when we go again.
Stuart Clarke, director at Leeds Digital Festival, says he can't wait for September when we go again.

Organisers were anticipating around 50 online events to be put on at the open platform festival but instead saw a total of 134 take place over the two weeks between April 20 and May 1.

The tech event has had to be split into two this year following the coronavirus outbreak. The physical element of the festival is now set to take place between September 21 and October 2.

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Stuart Clarke, director at Leeds Digital Festival, said: “We’d been planning our fifth physical festival for six months and were looking to announce the full line-up of events when it became apparent that a lockdown would happen, which would mean the full cancellation of the festival.

“However, we’re a digital festival and as Paul Berwin, one of our directors said, ‘If we can’t put on a virtual festival, who can?’.”

The 134 events looked at subjects ranging from artificial intelligence and fintech to managing remote working and putting environmental issues at the top of tech firms’ agendas.

Mr Clarke said: “We even had the launch of a new national organisation that promotes online safety, with support from a Government minister.

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“We’re still running the numbers, but initial feedback has shown that some event organisers have seen five times the number of attendees from their usual numbers.

“We also had attendees from over 30 countries around the world.”

Despite the success of the first part of Leeds Digital Festival, Mr Clarke concedes that an extra couple of weeks to plan the online element would have made a difference as most event organisers were busy setting themselves up as remote workforces at the time.

He added: “It was interesting that only 53 out of the 134 events were originally planned as physical events.

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“The rest were new to the festival. This suggests that we can grow the virtual side, even alongside a physical festival.”

Organisers are keen to ensure that there is a good blend of physical and virtual in every festival from now on.

“I can’t wait to get back to physical networking and collaborating and there are some events, such as the Festival Awards, that only really work physically,” Mr Clarke said.

He added: “However, virtual events can open up a whole new audience to us and allow us to push the festival brand worldwide, helping to promote the talent and innovation we have here in the Leeds City Region.

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“As well as attracting attendees from all over, we also had a dozen or so events organised by firms outside of Yorkshire, including a couple outside of the UK.”

A key tenet of Leeds Digital Festival since it was founded back in 2015 has been championing collaboration in the region’s tech sector.

Mr Clarke said: “As ever, we were overwhelmed with the collaboration within the Leeds’ tech and digital community. You could feel that people wanted this to be a success and helped us by promoting not only their own but other events on social media.

“We have such a strong and collaborative tech sector in Leeds and it felt great to still be able to keep the collaboration going.”

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Rather than seeing the lockdown as a disruption and cancelling the physical festival, organisers viewed it as an opportunity to get two bites of the cherry – dividing the festival into two parts.

Mr Clarke added that he can’t wait for September “when we go again”.

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