We loved seeing so many of you at our Annual General Meetup 2025 on Wednesday 5 February. A big thank you to our speakers who made the event such an interesting and informative occasion, and to our partners and sponsors for supporting our work and enabling us to bring the community together in this way. Thank you also to our hosts The Showroom Workstation, and crucially, to everyone who came and contributed to a brilliant atmosphere and night of socialising, and supported The Archer Project. Read on for some highlights from the night.

We learned…

The Mentoring Scheme: Sarah Lister, our Mentoring Scheme Manager, explained that through the 78 successful pairings made so far, the Sheffield Digital Mentoring Scheme is delivering a ripple effect through the community and city. She reflected on the ways that mentoring is bringing people together in a face to face context, bridging the gap between ‘isolated to included’, and as a result improving communication and connectivity in the city.

Sarah also shared that many mentees who have recently moved to Sheffield are signing up to the scheme to help them ‘land in a new city’. As word spreads, we hope the scheme will help to attract more talent to the region.

Sarah appealed to the audience for more female mentors to sign up, and to consider who in their networks – colleagues and friends – might need a bit of help and could become a mentee, tapping into the amazing pool of experienced mentors on the scheme.

If you would like to get involved in the Mentoring Scheme, either as a mentor or mentee, email sarah@sheffield.digital or visit our webpage for more details.

The Digital Skills Audit: Presenting the results of the second Digital Skills Audit, Mel Kanarek, Sheffield Digital Co-founder and Director, walked us through some of the early findings. A sense of economic uncertainty and instability was a key theme, and results showed over 50% of companies had reduced staff numbers in the past 12 months, with many remaining unclear about future recruitment plans.

The survey showed that, despite noise in the wider media about a return to office-based environments, our sector was sticking to mainly hybrid and remote working styles. Perhaps the most positive result from the survey was the increased participation in questions around diversity. Many companies shared what they are already doing to improve recruitment practices and make their workplace inclusive and accessible to more people in society.

The full report from the Sheffield Digital Skills Audit will be available to download in March 2025. Keep an eye on our LinkedIn page, newsletter and blog to see it first.

The Members Board: Just four months after our Members Board met for the first time, representative for micro-companies, Jilly Cross took to the stage to share their priorities and plans.

She was keen to stress that the Board is taking a ‘talk less, do more’ approach and after just two meetings, they are setting actions and delivering on them. Jilly explained that current priorities include building user profiles for the community to help Sheffield Digital deliver better user experiences through the website, events and other services.

From a personal perspective, she reflected on her experience of moving to Sheffield from North London almost two years ago, saying, “Moving up here has really changed my view of what a business community looks and feels like. How you communicate and support each other, we’ve never felt so welcome.”

The Sheffield Innovation Spine: Charlotte Thompson was the evening’s keynote, and her presentation and interview with Mel Kanarek gave us all a lot to think about. Charlotte provided insight into what it takes to create an environment for knowledge intensive businesses to thrive in the city.

She explained that a current lack of clustering is holding Sheffield back from fulfilling the potential of our knowledge based businesses. Companies and assets that are spread out cannot realise the advantages of colocation, and Charlotte referred to Sheffield Technology Parks as a small-scale model of success, citing collaboration and access to support as key ingredients for enhanced innovation.

Charlotte’s closing message was very clear: she needs people and businesses in Sheffield to help shape the project, either by sharing your own space requirements and/or joining a focus group in the Spring. You can do so by emailing: participate@sheffieldinnovationspine.com.

We raised…

Over £500.00 from ticket sales alone for an important local charity, The Archer Project, and further donations were made through the evening. Joe Logan, Head of Fundraising at the charity, spoke about the role it is playing in supporting people experiencing homelessness to build a better, more rewarding life. He raised awareness of the charity’s impact, sharing statistics from 2024 including:

• 1223 individuals supported
• 13,273 breakfasts served
• 11,172 lunches served
• 5,906 hours of volunteering from supported roles

Joe also emphasised the growing strain on the charity’s services, describing a 72% increase in people accessing their services since 2022. This makes the support of local people and businesses even more crucial, if you can help, please make a donation.

We celebrated…

Award wins, growth, birthdays, anniversaries, new products, projects and partnerships… Businesses and people in our community gave us lots to share and be cheerful about.

The evening’s speakers also gave us reason to celebrate as we look ahead. The Mentoring Scheme will deliver more and more impact as it continues to grow and transform careers; in Charlotte’s capable hands, we are excited to see the Sheffield Innovation Spine vision taking shape and raising the bar for our city centre; the Digital Skills Audit has given us valuable data to continue chiselling away at the regional skills gap, and our Members Board is enthusiastic, passionate and driven to improve Sheffield Digital and make us the best organisation we can possibly be. Exciting times ahead!

If you missed it…

We were delighted to have the skills of student videographer Jack Kelly on hand at our AGM. Jack filmed every talk and is busy editing away so that we can share the content on our YouTube channel very soon. Watch this space!

Again we’d like to thank our members for your continued support and contributions, and our Ecosystem partners and Associate Sponsors, without whom, we simply wouldn’t be able to do what we do.

Here’s to another great year!