Organising GDG Cloud Manchester
I've joined the Google Developer Groups community in the North West as an organiser. Google Developer Groups (GDG) are free, local meet-ups for anyone interested in technology, run by volunteers. Our chapter, GDG Cloud Manchester, builds a community for tech people across the North.
My first event
The first event I helped organise was a Manchester meet-up on Wednesday 17 September 2025, 6 to 8pm, at Lloyds Banking Group's Westminster House. We had three speakers, including a Google Developer Expert:
- Marton Kodok (Google Developer Expert): "Reducing BigQuery bills with BI Engine capacity orchestration"
- Olorunfemi Davis: "The AI in Your Pocket: Building Offline Gemini Apps with the Browser"
- Paul Gledhill: "Build high-performance apps for the edge with Wasm in Go"
AI, cloud, data or web: there was something for everyone, plus food, drinks and plenty of time to meet people.
How it went
It was one of our best meet-ups yet. Marton travelled all the way from Romania to share real-world BigQuery savings, and the deep, technical questions afterwards showed what our community is made of. Paul showed how Wasm in Go can replace complicated Python scripts, and Olorunfemi got everyone running Gemini Nano straight in Chrome, with no internet needed. Thank you to Lloyds Banking Group for hosting us, and to Paul Gledhill and Alistair Grew for organising it with me.
Since then
In November 2025 we ran a hands-on Accelerate AI with Cloud Run workshop, with Richard Bannister from Google on building AI agents. In May 2026 we tried something new: an open mic night, where I opened with a talk.
Come along
Everyone is welcome. You can join the community and see what's coming up on the GDG Cloud Manchester page.
First shared on LinkedIn.