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Dame Laura Kenny is a winner. Born six weeks prematurely with a collapsed lung, Kenny was advised by her doctors to take up sports to help improve her breathing patterns. The Harlow native fell in love with cycling, going on to six Olympic medals and the affections of Royal Mail, which painted not one but two postboxes gold in her honour. The Manchester Velodrome, she explained to a packed keynote auditorium at DTX Manchester, was a favourite haunt, with the structure itself capable of measuring a cyclist’s speed, cadence and heart rate straight to their coach’s tablet.
None of that would have mattered, though, without the support Kenny received from her teammates at Team GB. Technology can be transformational, she told her audience, but must be deployed in an environment where the user trusts not only in the supporting software but in their wider network. “When you’re part of a team, working for the same goal and for each other,” said Kenny, “There’s no feeling like it.”
Such a people-centred approach to transformational technology, such as generative AI, was no mere once-and-done topic at the day’s first event. From exhibitor stands to fringe stages, conversations and sessions ranged from building trust with customers and employees via improved security, including the employee voice in building AI products, to assuaging workforce fears around AI’s impact. The companies that actually practiced what they preached in this respect won the plaudits of at least one digital consultant at the event, who spoke to Tech Monitor anonymously. “It’s firms that foreground security and integrity around their data,” they said, “that I like.”
Upskilling advice from DTX Manchester
CIOs and IT managers would also be rewarded by investing time and resources into upskilling their teams to more effectively harness AI services, said Oliver Pickup. “I was particularly struck by learnings around how talent development underpins successful AI implementation,” said the panellist and founder of the eponymous Pickup Media. Multiple speakers agreed. At the Digital Strategy & Operations stage, HappySignals chief executive Sami Kallio could be heard telling his audience that the successful implementation of any IT project is always underscored by people engagement. Next door, in the Data & AI arena, director of customer engagement at ANS’s director of customer engagement Janet Robb reminded attendees that AI can only be successfully adopted when the reason for its deployment is successfully communicated to your workforce. “It’s the only way,” she said, “to get benefits out of the shiny stuff.”
AWS’ Gen AI and Data lead, Farhin Khan, echoed that sentiment. Khan said that leaders have a responsibility to communicate AI roadmaps to their stakeholders, create effective engagement strategies and listen to different voices in their employee communities – all the while understanding that some will be excited and others sceptical about the deployment of new technology. “You will have your innovators but also late majority adopters,” she said. Above all, winning the trust of would-be users “should be [your] North Star.”
It’s this emphasis on considering the needs of the user that makes DTX Manchester a standout event, said Ray Manash, customer success lead at ManageEngine. It’s a regional standout for technology conferences, he told Tech Monitor, not only because delegates get to learn about effective adoption strategies but also because vendors get to learn about customer needs. “We can check if our products resonate with the right prospects and consultants,” said Manash. It might not quite be data straight from the Olympic track, but it is a critical inside track for both technologists and product owners.
Leap of faith
Despite this, it’s clear that many CIOs still feel that they’re taking a merry leap into the unknown with AI. It’s a view that Andrew Allen seems to have heard many a time in his conversations with Microsoft’s customer base. As the company’s CDTO for government explained to the audience attending his main stage panel, however, building appropriate safeguards into the AI deployment process can help businesses take that step forward with confidence. Failing that, they can always wait – but, he added, “there will never be a perfect moment for the business or the data set,” he said.
Indeed, treating AI as any other business product and service, getting leader buy-in, improving literacy around its inputs and focussing on what business problem it is intended to solve is the way to make AI a success, said Suzanne Ellison, Lloyds Banking Group’s head of product, on the same panel. “Focus[ing] on the customer and business value,” she said, is the right way to unite teams behind AI and use it to attain your business’s future goals.
DTX Manchester was held at Manchester Central between April 2nd and 3rd 2025.
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