Tune in to the future of tech & design
SIGNAL 2027 gathers 40+ builders, designers and researchers for two days of talks, hands-on labs and late-night demos you'll be quoting all year.
Speakers Worth Travelling For
Founders, researchers and design leads sharing what they actually shipped — no vendor pitches, no filler.
Mara Kessler
Chief Design Officer,
Lumenframe
David Oyelaran
Founder & CEO,
Fieldnote AI
Sofia Reyes-Muniz
Principal Engineer,
Cobalt Robotics Lab
Tomas Wren
Head of Prototyping,
Studio Parallax
Amara Ndiaye
Research Director,
Open Interfaces Institute
June Liu
VP Product,
Hexwave
Rafael Brandt
Staff Engineer,
Northlight Systems
Zadie Cornwall
Type Designer & Author,
Foundry Nine
Two Days, Zero Filler
Every slot earned its place. Switch days below to plan your route through the programme.
Opening Keynote: Signals Over Noise
Mara Kessler on why the next decade of products will be won by teams who design for attention, not against it.
KeynoteShipping AI Features People Actually Use
David Oyelaran shares Fieldnote's brutal internal scorecard for deciding which AI ideas live or die.
TalkLab: Prototyping With Creative Code
Hands-on with Tomas Wren — build a kinetic interface from scratch in 90 minutes. Bring a laptop, leave with a demo.
Hands-on LabDesign Systems at Planetary Scale
How Lumenframe's 40-person design org keeps 900 engineers shipping consistent UI across six platforms.
TalkThe New Physical: Robots in Real Workplaces
Sofia Reyes-Muniz on the unglamorous engineering that makes robotics deployments survive contact with reality.
TalkDemo Night & Opening Party
Twenty teams, five minutes each, one very loud room. Voting by glow-stick. Food trucks and DJs until midnight.
Keynote: Interfaces After the Screen
Amara Ndiaye maps the research frontier — voice, gesture, ambient computing — and what's actually ready to ship.
KeynoteType Is the New Brand
Zadie Cornwall on why the smartest companies of 2027 are investing in custom typefaces instead of rebrands.
TalkLab: Zero-Downtime Infrastructure Games
Rafael Brandt runs a live failure drill — teams compete to keep a production system alive as he breaks it in real time.
Hands-on LabRoadmaps Are Lies (Good Ones)
June Liu's candid teardown of how Hexwave plans product in public without promising the impossible.
TalkClosing Panel: The 2030 Stack
All eight headliners, one stage, zero prepared answers. Audience questions drive the whole session.
PanelFarewell Social on the Roof Terrace
Sunset, city views and the good coffee cart. Swap contacts before everyone scatters back across the globe.
The Foundry,
Manchester
A converted Victorian ironworks in the heart of the Northern Quarter — exposed brick, cathedral ceilings, and enough power sockets for a small nation. Three stages, a dedicated lab floor and a rooftop terrace for the golden-hour debriefs.
Five minutes on foot from Piccadilly Station, surrounded by the city's best coffee, and step-free throughout.
Pick Your Ticket
Every ticket covers both days, all talks and demo night. Labs and extras scale with your tier.
Early Bird
- Both days — all talks & keynotes
- Demo Night & opening party
- Lunch, snacks & bottomless coffee
- Digital talk recordings
Standard
- Everything in Early Bird
- One guaranteed hands-on lab seat
- SIGNAL swag kit & badge pack
- Networking app access
VIP
- Everything in Standard
- Priority lab booking — all sessions
- Speaker dinner, night one
- Front-row keynote seating
- Rooftop lounge access all weekend
Group rates for 5+ · Student tickets £99 with valid ID · Full refunds until Feb 12, 2027
Powered by teams who build the future
Don't Lose The Signal
SIGNAL 2025 sold out nine weeks early. Lock in your place now and we'll see you in Manchester this March.