Fusion is a meetup for the Tech-passionate, with a focus on engaging, thought provoking talks in an informal and sociable space. We hold them in the well-connected city centre of Birmingham and since 2015 our events have proudly showcased local talent alongside industry specialists from further afield, all sharing knowledge and innovation with our Fusion family.

Our focus is to bring the local Tech community together over insightful talks, good food, and conversation; a networking event 

About Fusion Meetup

This month we want to put a some of our tech community friends in the spot light at Fusion and invite them to tell us all about their groups and what their mission is, and how they are working towards achieving it.

Infobip is a global leader in omnichannel engagement. We help our clients and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications & grow their businesses.

Joining us on the 23rd we will have our awesome 2023 Headline sponsors, Infobip. They have been an incredible support this year and we have loved working with them. The team have achieved so many awesome things, we can't wait to see what next year holds for them!

Infobip

This talk is a survival guide on how to cope when we feel intimidated by those around us and/or online who seem to have it all figured out. Imposter syndrome is a buzzword that is commonly misunderstood, we'll be delving into the 6 different ways it shows up, how it affects us, and building a toolkit to help us recognise and celebrate our wins.

Amber Shand

Dealing with imposter syndrome, perfectionism & procrastination

There’s a very good reason that the organisers of the Black Hat security conferences don’t use their host venues’ own infrastructure. In fact there are many: ethical hackers learning and testing their skills, not-so-ethical hackers looking for targets, and a lot of legal implications too. In this talk I’ll take you behind the scenes at the network and security operations centres for the conferences worldwide, to share more details, stories and plain-text credentials.

Developer Relations and Technology Innovation @ Palo Alto Networks

James Holland

Behind the curtains at "one of the most hostile networks in the world"

We've all seen the job title but what does a Staff Software Engineer do? In this talk I will reflect on how I became a Staff Software Engineer and the first 12 months in the role. I'll cover my own growth in the role as well as the organization's growth of the role around me.

Andrew Fitzpatrick

12 months as a Staff Software Engineer

Its time for the final Fusion of 2023 and what a year its been!

Huge thanks to our headline sponsors for this year, Infobip. What a brilliant team! We've loved every minute of working with them, and hopefully they'll be joining the Fusion fun in 2024! 😉

The next Fusion event will be held at Studio Venues, Cannon Street, Birmingham on Thursday November 23rd at 6pm.

Joining us for another year, we have All-Greek Street food. If you came to Fusion last September, you will know how good their food was! Can't wait to get our hands on one of their famous gyros!

(﻿Please state dietary requirements upon booking)

H﻿uge shout out, and A LOT of love goes to our amazing 2023 Headline Sponsors, Infobip. We watching Mike Elsmore play around with the WhatsApp Chatbot at the last Fusion event. He'll be back with us for Fusion on September 14th, so feel free to grab him for a chat to find out more about the cool stuff Infobip are getting up to.

You think you've seen everything, but the web platform continues to beguile and amaze us with cool new features for creating animations more effectively. In this talk, Chris Mills walks through view transitions, scroll-driven animations, popovers, and some more fun things besides. It won't be as good as the other 15 sequels, but it'll be better than Fast & Furious 10.

Chris Mills

Nu-school CSS and JavaScript animation shizzle, Part 17

In this talk, Angie will showcase some of the work that demonstrates exciting AI applications deployed in the real world, as well as the challenges and opportunities of implementing this powerful technology in practical settings.

A﻿ngie Ma

AI in the real world

As a B2B Fintech AI company in the order-to-cash market, Sidetrade manages over 700m payment experiences networked across more than 38m buyers and 4000 sellers. We discuss market inspiration from VC firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, research firm Gartner & incredible tech companies such as Gitlab to build a game changing & market winning big data platform in 2023.﻿

Luke Hennerley

The future of big data platforms

Company culture and employee happiness is something that can sometimes be overlooked due to the day to day pressures of a business operating and performing, but did you know that Companies with happy employees outperform their competition by 20% per year?

Through Hannah’s extensive experience of hiring within the software sector & building tech communities, she’ll provide you with a handy guide on how you can start the path to happiness at work with practical tips that will have immediate impact, and support with retaining happy, productive teams.

Hannah Mitchell

Creating 'Happy' at work

We're back for another exciting Fusion Meetup on Thursday, September 14th at 6:00 PM. The event will take place at The Studio Venues on Cannon Street in Birmingham.

We are currently finalising the line up but we can guarantee you'll be in for a treat! Updates to follow shortly!

DWP Digital are driving forward the digital transformation for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). As part of the UK’s biggest public service department, we are responsible for making a positive difference to the lives of 20 million. Whether our users need to claim benefit, get help finding a job, or understand their State Pension, we’re the team designing, developing, and delivering the world-class digital services they need.

D﻿WP Digital

In this talk Joe will explain the problems that occur when hundreds of thousands of customers all request to be paid millions of pounds at almost exactly the same time, and what they do to keep things running smoothly while that happens.

Joe Rowe

How we prepare for huge spikes in traffic as millions of our customers get paid early

This session will outline a framework for marketing a software start-up. From identifying your “why” (not what you do, but why people should care), to piquing the interest of your potential buyers, to making your customers love you so much they tell all their friends (hi Monzo!). The session will include lots of practical tips for non-marketers that will help you successfully sell your product or service.

Jayne Scarman

Marketing for software start-ups

Unless you have a Hollywood-perfect North American accent, you've probably had a frustrating showdown with your voice assistant. This frustrating occourancy can often be linked to the limited datasets many Speech technologies use. As the popularity of AI and the use of Speech technologies grow together, the limitations of speech technologies create real and serious access limitations. Enter the Common Voice project, a free, CC0 licensed dataset focused on enabling anyone to build with world class voice datasets that intentionally support marginalised languages and diverse accents. We'll look at some of the hows and whys of using diverse datasets for voice, before covering some of my favourite resources for learning to dip your toes into working with Speech AI.

Jess Rose

Teaching Computers To Ducking Listen

Technology has moved leaps and bounds in the last 100 years, and even more so in the last 20 years. This quick talk is about how far we have come, how amazing technology is, and what can be done by gluing X & Y together super simply. But how it is all set by fundamental principles that haven't changed in millennia?

M﻿ike Elsmore

The future is here, and it started 5000 years ago

We've finally got the summer Fusion date booked in and this time we're mixing things up a little bit! Fusion will be held at 

 (Old Municipal Bank) opposite the library.

We're so excited to be working closely with The University of Birmingham, and having had some wonderful and super insightful meetings with the team at The Exchange we are really excited about trying out this venue.

Fusion will be held on the top floor in the Assembly room and we'll have a great break out space next to that for food and drinks. There will also be an opportunity to look around the building and view the old bank vaults in the basement.



Brrrrrrringing the flavour by the bucket load, we'll be joined by our pals at Habaneros!!

Expect jam packed burritos filled with a main of your choice and all the toppings



Rob Barnes

Secure Developer access to production workload

A cautionary tale on the dangers of having bad actors in your supply chain and ways of minimising their impact.

R﻿yan Lee

Who let the cat out of the bag?

How DWP set about developing a new set of microservices using NextJs, Spring, Lucene and MongoDB to build a job search engine for claimants on Universal Credit, and what they found works well when building a continuous deployment pipeline.

Tom Chamberlain

Developing Microservices for a Job Search Engine at DWP

ChatGPT has taken the tech world by storm, but what techniques were needed to get us here? Vanessa (CompSci BSc and Developer @ Majestic) walks us through the process of training AI using her wit and unorthodox illustrations

Vanessa Kostadinova

Another ChatGPT Talk

We're back for the first Fusion Meetup of the year! 🎉

For in person tickets, the event will start at 6pm, for online tickets the stream will start at 7pm. We will have a short break in between talks and will hold Q&A after the main talks only. There will be a chance to talk with the other speakers during the interval and after the event.

This article was first published by Meetup group, Women in Tech Birmingham, as part of their 

 series. Check out their upcoming events 

Meet Hannah Mitchell, Founder of Birmingham tech group, Fusion, who shares her thoughts on the tech community in Birmingham, her advice for anyone looking to start their career in tech, and much more!

Hi Hannah and thanks for chatting to us! To quick off, what do you do and what does a typical working day look like for you?

I am one of the Co-Founders of the Fusion Group. We are a community focused company with the sole aim of creating opportunities for self improvement and growth. I do this by finding people new roles that match their goals and aims, as well as organising Fusion Meetup and specific workshops to create new learning opportunities. So day to day for me can be really varied, but I’m lucky enough to feel so passionately about what I do.

I get a lot of joy from educating and coaching people on how to create a positive work culture and environment. We spend so much of our lives at work, we should be prioritising making that as rewarding and as enjoyable as we can. There are so many stats out there to show the impact of having a happy, supportive, collaborative work culture on both employee and business productivity, and growth and retention. It’s a no brainer, and I’ll continue to shout about it from the rooftops! 😊

What is your favourite thing about working in the tech sector?

I find technology fascinating, it’s hard not to!

The rate at which technology is moving is incredible, and the amazing things that have been achieved and created using technology have changed and shaped the world we live in today. It is so rewarding to be working with people whose work is having a positive effect on peoples’ lives daily, whether that be in medical advances through technology, access to education and even making day to day tasks easier.

Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to meet some super talented people who I have learnt so much from and have supported me so much with Fusion Meetup. We have a great tech community here in Birmingham, it is something I’m so proud to be a part of.

You mentioned you’re passionate about creating a positive work environment. What would be your advice to either employees or employers on how to make changes towards this? a positive work culture?

First of all, and probably one of the easiest things to implement is recognition. Make recognition a priority, as employees, as employers, and business owners. This doesn’t need to be a grand gesture or gold trophy presentation ceremony, just a quick email or shout out to say ‘Thanks for your input today, you’ve made a positive impact and the work you’ve done has been great.’ A little goes a long way. Try to think how you felt when someone said you’d done a job, and when the last time someone said it to you!

Make the most of 1:1’s! This shouldn’t be a box ticking exercise! If you’re a team member then make sure to set your own agenda. And if you’re a team leader, encourage the team to decide on what areas they would like to discuss before the 1:1 happens. They may all have different topics of importance, but allow this to happen, rather than a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

Finally I feel we need to educate ourselves better on how we can support neurodiverse individuals in the workplace. There’s a huge pool of super talented people out there and we as a society need to improve our awareness and understanding to create more inclusive work environments. I personally plan on taking a course in this topic because I think it’s a really important step to creating more positive workplaces.

What would 12 year old you think about your career today?

I wanted to be a paramedic for so long, as long as I can remember, so I’ve taken a very different path! I’ve always loved working with people and in my role I get to work with people in different capacities, whether that’s helping someone write their first CV or prepare for an interview, to supporting businesses on how to build happy, productive teams, all the way to working closely with the tech community and other meetup organisers to create something awesome here in Birmingham.

I think 12 year old me wouldn’t have expected to take this path, but would love the variety and meeting so many incredible, inspiring people.

As another Meetup organiser and someone who is well ingrained in the Birmingham tech community - how would you describe it to someone who has never dipped their toe in before?

It’s a really exciting time for the Birmingham Tech Community, because we are starting to see the tech meetups work closely together and the creation of TechMids has really helped facilitate that.

The Birmingham Tech community is inclusive and vibrant. There are so many amazing like minded individuals to meet. I get that going to these events can sometimes feel daunting, so look at the smaller group first and start from there.

You will make new friends as well as having access to support and advice for all things tech related. People have found new opportunities through the tech community and with the amount of incredible speakers we have joining these events, you are sure to learn something new that could spark a new found interest in your own personal journey with tech.

The Tech Community and Meetups strive to create a safe space for minority groups and encourage and welcome diversity! Let’s face it, diversity is a superpower and the more people we have from different walks of life the better our community will be.

We have seen a positive shift in the demographic of our meetups over the last five years and it’s been so nice to see.

What would your top tips be for someone looking to start a career in tech?

Attend local technology meetups and chat to the meetup organisers! They will introduce you to some great people who may soon become mentors, peers and give you some real tips on what to do to get started. One of your first stops should absolutely be Codebar Birmingham – it’s really relaxed, super friendly and a great place to get started. What I love about this meetup is that it’s inclusive with a focus on bridging the diversity gap in tech – although everyone is welcome!

More generally, for anyone looking at any career - be authentic! Recruiters tend not to be well liked (we’re not all bad!), so sometimes it’s hard to get people to take advice without feeling like they are being sold too! I think the only thing I’ve managed to do to combat that, is to be as authentic as possible. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I’ve always been an honest, open person. I think showing vulnerability is a good thing, and we should all do more of it. It’s what makes us human.

Women in Tech interview Hannah from Fusion

In this blog post we hear from DWP Digital's Yanju, who tells us all about settling into her new role as a Product Manager and what life is like at DWP Digital. She also talks about her journey into tech and her experience so far of the local tech scene in Birmingham.

DWP Digital is focused on digital transformation at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), we build and maintain user-friendly digital services that enable millions of people to access the help, advice, and financial support they need. We have millions of users, from people who need to claim benefit, get help finding a job, or understand their State Pension, we’re the team designing, developing, and delivering the services they need.

I work with the cross-cutting service design team in the service orchestration space.We are responsible for cross-cutting assumptions attached to the Health Transformation Programme (HTP). The Health Transformation Programme is one of the largest programmes in government, impacting an estimated 5.8 million people in 2025/26. The aim is to make the process for Personal Independent Payments (PIP) and the Health Assessment Service simpler, more user-friendly, easier to navigate and more joined-up for claimants. While delivering better value for money for taxpayers.

As a product manager I work with various stakeholders across strategic and operational areas to ensure alignment towards the HTP service vision. It is really motivating and fulfilling working on a programme of this size and scale. What I enjoy most is knowing that millions of people will be positively impacted by the work I’m doing.

I started my career as a relationship manager in a leading financial services company where I was able transition into digital roles including product marketing, user experience and product management. I have since worked in several other organisations across various industries, before recently joining DWP Digital.

In my career journey so far, I’ve been able to do some amazing work in the tech industry and as a result I was endorsed as a UK global exceptional talent; one of the reasons I moved to the UK. I plan to continue driving digital transformation and making positive impact in my role at DWP Digital as it provides the opportunity to apply learnings and skills from my previous experiences over the years.

As an impact and purpose driven individual, I always want to do more and be more. So, when I was considering my next career move, I was looking for an organisation that had clear ambitions. I wanted a place where I could do my best work, be myself and make an impact. I also wanted somewhere that truly appreciates the power of diversity and the value that offers.

DWP Digital’s ‘Digital With Purpose’ message and what this meant resonated with me. I looked at DWP Digital’s LinkedIn and 

 and found that every interaction supported this message. I read blog posts and interviews from colleagues working on impactful initiatives and I was impressed by their personal experiences and thrilled by the opportunity to proffer solutions that make a positive difference to millions of citizens.

When I saw the role of product manager advertised within the health function located in the new Birmingham hub, I was happy to apply because my tech experience and health academic background was a perfect match for the job description.

Now, here I am a few months into the role. So far it has been interesting, and I feel like I’ve already started making significant difference with my involvement in such an important transformation programme. I can’t wait to see how things unfold in the near future.

I moved to Birmingham a little over a year ago because it has an exciting blend of everything. It’s a great place to live and work for young people, especially if you have a family. There’s a fine blend of buzz and serenity. It’s a diverse place with easy access to other cities, good schools, shopping, sports, fun activities and of course the tech scene.

The Birmingham tech scene is one of the fastest growing in the UK and is becoming more established every day. It’s the best place to be. I’m part of the UK global talent community, Female Techpreneur and other tech communities, and I often attend meet ups with other techies.

As part of DWP Digital’s partnership with Fusion, I recently attended their quarterly meetup on 13 July. This was a great opportunity for me to get involved more with the community. I love meeting people, learning from others, and building relationships, so I really enjoyed connecting to friendly likeminded people in a sociable and relaxed environment. A talk from Monzo on how they prepare for huge spikes in traffic and keeping operations running smoothly was particularly interesting.

DWP Digital opened the Birmingham Hub just over a year ago. It’s exciting to be one of the pioneer members of the digital team in the Hub. When I saw the workspace, I was pleasantly surprised, the collaborative spaces, the level of detail, and accessibility considerations. It’s a perfect example of a modern digital workspace.

I’d call it a 5-star office, it even has a lovely view of the Birmingham library and environs. It is located at the new Arena Central development, a central location which is easy to get to with good transport links.

We have a hybrid working pattern, which means you can blend office working with working from home, I typically go into the Hub twice a week. I enjoy working in person with colleagues and building personal relationships.

The flexible working is helpful for a great work life balance.

In my 13 years of experience working in several organisations, of a range of different sizes, I can say that I am very impressed with the development opportunities on offer at DWP Digital.

There is a deliberate intent to ensure that employees are constantly learning. Training opportunities are promoted well, with open communication on what is available.All you need to do is indicate interest, its up to you but if you are interested there is lots available.

My line manager is amazing and very supportive. We’re encouraged and given time away from the day job to learn. I’ve attended multiple workshops and conferences already, including leadership trainings. I’m a strong believer in continuous learning so I can improve my skills and stay up to date with trends in the industry.

I have an amazing multidisciplinary team that is very collaborative. There is a great sense of purpose and motivation in the team, we all share the same vision and desire to do the best for the citizens and DWP. Colleagues are open to new ideas and change; we want to keep making things better and improving.

I’m part of the DWP Women’s Network and the Product Profession Practice network.

The practice has a Microsoft Teams group and ‘lunch and learn’ sessions where we talk about different topics.

DWP Digital is such a diverse working environment where it’s not just your work that’s valued but you are valued too. DWP Digital is truly ‘Digital With Purpose’.

'Settling into a new role, new city and a new tech scene' - Yanju from DWP Digital

Pretty good, much more relaxed than I was middle of October time! We’ve survived 2020 and here we are!

It was an experience, which I think is the diplomatic way of putting it. The last five/six years of my life have been spent around running events, chatting to people, and making connections, and then all of that got turned on its head. I have never spent so much time in my house that’s for sure!

So what has got you through the last year?

I set up an office in the living room rather than in my bedroom. It meant I had a separation between working and relaxing. Keeping a routine was so important as its really easy to fall into the trap of not going to bed early and waking up late. Also having the kitchen next door meant I wasn’t taking breaks, so I started actually having breakfast and lunch away from my screen and not taking breaks at my desk.

Lots of lights too!! I’ve brought a light therapy lamp actually which has been great!

We saw you and the HTM team take on the challenge of running the hackathon virtually!! First of all congratulations, it was a huge success. The collaboration between teams was amazing, the submissions were so strong and so well thought out. How did you find it all?

Absolutely knackering!! The week before was the hardest because we were working 14/15 hours days, to get set up, make sure the stream was running. The last day was also really intense as we had to do all the judging and film the closing ceremony and stitch the sponsor videos together – all things you don’t need to think about when you are doing it person.

Rightly so, we don’t trust tech, so it was easier to have recordings rather than live streaming. With there being so many people involved there was lots of different elements to juggle doing it virtually.

What was the biggest challenge running HTM5?

Trying to transition the skills we have as a team to running in person events, which is a completely different beast to running it online. The second challenge was maintaining the same community feel. Something that’s key to HTM is this welcoming community that makes people feel like they are a part of something during the event, because it wouldn’t be hack the midlands without that. Trying the keep that community feel existing within the online context was definitely one of the biggest challenges.

We started planning HTM5 in October 2019 and by the following March we had to switch things up due to lockdown and had to start thinking about ways we can make it delightful for everyone, and make everyone feel like they are a part of it all. How do we maintain the community feel? How can we go above and beyond to make sure people have a good time and feel included? It’s really hard to emulate the in person events, where you have a really cohesive community.

There is such a huge emphasis on community at HTM, as well as collaboration, skills transfer, learning from peers etc. What sort of solutions did you come up with to keep that going?

We kept all engagement within the Discord server rather than having separate chats on MS teams, Zoom etc. Charlie and the team built a great bot, where you can create channels so can interact with your team in the server. That obviously came with its own challenges!! We accidently made 100 channels and spammed the discord with them!!

We also took an idea from Hack Quarantine where we created check points so people could chat about what they’ve done each day. Another thing I encouraged people to do was to drop into chats to see what everyone is doing and offer help. I think having that extra communication really helps, and it encourages people to talk in Discord community channels.

Discord was great shout Tom, it worked so well!

Its such a flexible platform, being able to write a bot allows you to get creative. Having the mix of text and voice chat too was great, and the ability to have multiple meetings going on at once.

Are you getting paid by Discord for Advertising?

I would shill for Discord purely based on how useful it’s been…I say wearing a discord t-shirt!

Something you want to tell us Tom? Are you starting work with them next year?

I wish! Discord if you’re reading this interview, feel free to chuck us some money or some nice clothes! Is this how product placement works?

Over the HTM years, what would be your favourite submission of all time?

That is one of the hardest questions you could have asked, there has been so many amazing submissions. There was one called Dance Auth – where you danced the password. You would train it a dance move and by the user completing the dance move correctly would gain authorisation.

We could have a lot of fun with something like that!!

So any Tom Goodman plans or HTM plans for 2021?

Well, we’re coming towards the end of my PHD which is terrifying!

HTM wise it’s not clear whether by October will we be able to run in person events, but we might start planning to run one online again. By the time that we know that we can run events in person, will we have enough time to work that out. Its hard to judge. The main thing for us was protecting our attendees, our community, and the wider society. It can be really easy to think online is easier as you don’t have physical logistics, but then actually when we got into the meat of it there was a lot more work putting HTM on line that any of us had anticipated. However, now we have that knowledge, we not only have the infrastructure to do it again, but we also know what we can improve on.

Ages! We tend to start planning the next HTM straight after the one we’d just done, which is not exactly healthy, but it gives us the most time. We had everything sorted for last years to physically go ahead by March, and then we had to start all over again. So, we started online planning in March, it was bit slow as we had a lot of deep discussions about how we can preserve the feeling of HTM online. It took a lot of discussion, lots of brain storming, we had to work out how can we carry on the same way, how will out reach work? How will we get sponsors? We got a lot done last year considering – new website, the Discord server, a high number of attendees etc.

Whilst its not the same as running an in person event, and once we get the chance to go back in person, of course we will, given the curveball we were thrown in March it went really well.

There’s an element of HTM that we really love, which is encouraging people who don’t have experience to come along and get involved

What’s the best tip you have for a tech newbie, for someone who wants to get involved in tech?

That’s exactly the position that was in in 2015. I was in the very fortunate position that I had gone to University and there was a really great society president Jack Weardon who took me under his wing and took us to hackathons. The biggest thing for me was chatting to people, and the more people you get to know the more part of the community you feel.

The best advice would be to go to events like HTM, or check out SoC, Hackference (note to self, bully Mike Elsmore to run this again). Chat to people and ask for help or direction. You do not need to have prior experience, it’s not about building the most polished incredible project and winning, but you can equally win by coming and showing that you learnt lots of great stuff. The most important thing is learning, and now everything is online, sign up to events and there’s lots of free ones too! Have confidence in the fact that people do not expect and huge amount from you when you are new and if they do, they are dicks.

My advice to people who are already in the community and have experience – be patient, be the person that is encouraging those people to be in tech, take them under your wing, point them to events! They are at the start of their journey, help them along because you were once in their position. If we are not those people, then people won’t want to get involved, especially people from underrepresented groups and disadvantaged backgrounds who currently don’t have as bigger place in tech, and that is a real shame.

That’s great advice to finish on Tom, and some really key points there that people of all ability levels can take on board.

Once again congratulations on the success of HTM5 and thank you for all the work you put into the Birmingham Tech community.

We’re looking forward to hopefully seeing you this year for a coffee, IN PERSON!!

Last Event

November 2023

Dealing with imposter syndrome, perfectionism & procrastination

Behind the curtains at "one of the most hostile networks in the world"

12 months as a Staff Software Engineer

About Fusion Meetup

Fusion Blog

Women in Tech interview Hannah from Fusion

'Settling into a new role, new city and a new tech scene' - Yanju from DWP Digital

Fusion chats with HackTheMidland’s Tom Goodman

Past Events

November 2023

September 2023

July 2023

March 2023