NW Digital Futures Conference 2025

On 23 October 2025, ATU will be hosting the first annual NW Digital Futures Conference on behalf of our tertiary partners in the North West Tertiary Education Cluster (NWTEC). The conference will showcase national and international expertise examining the opportunities and challenges associated with the increasing pace of digital transformation. The one-day event will attempt to identify the key digital trends of relevance to the North West cross-border region for the medium and longer term. The event will address digital skills for employment and will include Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, Data Analytics, Software Engineering, FinTech, RegTech, and Advanced Manufacturing.

The venue is ATU Letterkenny’s An Dánlann centre, a large multi-purpose event space that will cater for an audience of approximately 300 on the day. The audience will be the innovative digital employers from across this cross-border region together with key national and regional stakeholders from the development agencies and the tertiary education sector.

NWTEC is a well-established strategic alliance of all four publicly funded tertiary education providers in the North West City Region: Atlantic Technological University (ATU), Ulster University (UU), North West Regional College (NWRC) and Donegal Education and Training Board (Donegal ETB). The conference is a commitment under the North West Digital Employment Pathways Training Hub (NW DEPTH) project - supported by the PEACEPLUS Programme and managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB). NW DEPTH will deliver an innovative portfolio of upskilling and reskilling training courses in digital and cybersecurity skills to over 2,000 individuals over the next four years.

This conference build on two previously successful NWTEC conferences and we expect to have ministerial input from both Ireland and Norther Ireland again this year. This inaugural conference is important to the NWTEC partners as it will be the first significant NW DEPTH initiative and I would be very pleased if you could offer your insight to the conference by participating on one of our planned expert panels.