More Bang For Your Digital Union Buck

This April, it will be 3 years since we rebooted Digital Union following us taking the reigns from Gateshead Council.

There’s been so much happening since then, and we hope you agree that in that period, we have come along way and Digital Union has become a force to be reckoned with.

We are now part of Digital Leaders groups at both the NELEP and North of Tyne Combined Authority, and sit on the DDCMS sponsored National Tech Cluster Group, all of which help policy thinking at both regional and national level. This has been vital to ensure our part of the sector is included in future interventions and funding plans and we are having a great deal of success here so far.

We have also forged meaningful partnerships with the region’s universities following our role in Creative Fuse, and are beginning to work with them to help develop your talent pipeline with similar work beginning with the colleges we partner with.

On a final note we are leading on the One Region, One Sector, One Statement piece working with all other digital and tech organisations in the region to produce a document that finally says “This is what the NE Digital and Tech Sector looks like.”

So, given that it’s been 3 years, we have come to the point where we need to tweak the membership offer and raise your subs ever so slightly.

In doing this we are increasing the offer to our members and are adding some new features to the membership offer.

In terms of networking, we have increased the amount of opportunities from 6 to 10 by adding quarterly Members-Only Drinks with DU events (next one on Wednesday 13th March if you haven’t signed up, first drink is on us!). We’ll be promoting the new ‘Buddy Up’ scheme where we want to find mentors within our network for those that would benefit from one, and finally, you will continue to enjoy discounts to an increasing amount of team training opportunities.

With more to come in the next year we are really strengthening the offer continually and working hard to represent you in more and more effective ways. So lets stay strong as part of the Union!

-Jim Mawdsley, CEO of Generator and Head of Digital Union