A new conference established to support the expanding cloud computing community in the North of England is scheduled to take place in Newcastle this October. The AWS North Community Conference, powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Leighton, an AWS software development company, will gather the regional technology community, alongside national and international speakers.
The event is designed to encourage discussions and cultivate a community capable of shaping the future of cloud computing with AWS. Prolific North, Dynamo North East, and Accenture are also endorsing the event, which is the first of its kind to be hosted in the North East. It will take place at The Catalyst on Thursday, 16th October 2025, and is intended to offer the North East AWS community a platform to co-innovate and to demonstrate the work occurring in the region on an international stage.
The organisers have secured a speaker lineup that includes AWS Hero, Sheen Brisals, who has been responsible for innovation within lego.com, and Allen Helton, host of the ‘Ready, Set, Cloud’ tech blog and podcast. The schedule also includes presentations from Luca Mezzalira, a solutions architect at AWS, and AWS Community Builder, Ricardo Cino.
Steve Morland, CTO at Leighton, has been instrumental in developing the conference. He said: “We’re delighted to be running the AWS North Community Conference. There’s a real gap in the region for a place where our professionals can come together and innovate so to be able to organise an event of this calibre, with the support of organisations such as Dynamo North East and Prolific North, is great.
“It’s really important that the North East has the infrastructure in place to support our talent with their continued professional development. Leighton’s decision to fund the conference will allow us to create that and the backing from AWS has really bolstered our ability to put on a conference of such high quality.
“The event will help to really foster collaboration across the AWS community and give opportunities for everyone to learn and develop in their own way. By making sure that we have an event which is closer to home, but that also equals some of the other events happening nationally and even internationally we will be able to engage more of what is a thriving ecosystem in this region.”
Al Alzein, Membership Engagement Manager at Dynamo North East, commented: “This is a landmark moment for the region, as the North East hosts a technical conference of this scale for the first time in recent history. It’s fantastic to see AWS community leaders like Steve Morland and Lee Gilmore driving this forward, bringing together talent, world-class expertise, and ambition to further strengthen our region’s thriving tech sector. A huge thank you to the team at Leighton for investing significant resources to make this community conference possible. We encourage all AWS users in the region and beyond to get involved – this is an excellent opportunity for CPD and networking.”
Over the course of the day, the conference will unite AWS practitioners and technical experts, developers and engineers, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), tech innovators, industry managers, academics, and students to examine how AWS is transforming the technology landscape. It will also explore how the sector can collectively modify its approach to designing, building, and scaling software solutions.
In addition to the future of the regional tech sector, speakers will also deliver presentations on topics including modernisation, artificial intelligence (AI), serverless computing, containers, modern cloud architecture, and migration. Registration details are available via the provided link.
Image source: LinkedIn
