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For the researchers, the day was an invaluable opportunity to engage with local tech companies and leading innovators. As active participants, they contributed to discussions on emerging technologies while highlighting their own research contributions. 

Dr. Peter Butcher, a lecturer in Human Computer Interaction at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, noted: 

"Events like Digidol 24 demonstrate the close connection between the tech industry and academic research. They provide a platform to share our work and gain new insights from industry leaders." 

The group found inspiration in a keynote from Llion Jones, a globally recognised name in artificial intelligence and co-author of the game-changing AI transformer paper “Attention is all you need”, published in 2017 by Vaswani et al., introduced the Transformer architecture, a groundbreaking model that revolutionised natural language processing (NLP) and other machine learning fields. It is one of the most cited papers in AI and has formed the foundation for many state-of-the-art models like GPT, BERT, and others. His talk on AI advancements resonated with the researchers, sparking conversations about how AI could shape their future work. 

Paul Kinlan from Google also left a lasting impression with his insights into Chrome’s development. His talk emphasised the evolving role of web browsers in enhancing user experience, a topic of interest to several Bangor researchers focused on web technologies. 

The day culminated in a vibrant evening session organised by the North Wales Tech group, where lightning talks and informal networking set the tone. Researchers were particularly excited by contributions from: 

• Jo Hinchliffe, who spoke about leveraging technology for community development. 
• Sarah Roberts of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, who highlighted educational initiatives to empower young learners. 
• Dr. Peter Butcher, representing �鶹��ý�����, who presented his work on xreality visualisation software, sparking conversations about its applications in industry and academia. 

Both Digidol 24 and the North Wales Tech meetup underscore the strength of the North Wales’ digital technology ecosystem and the importance of collaboration between academia and industry. The event provided a unique opportunity for the university team to share their expertise while drawing inspiration from the region’s tech leaders. 

“It was a fantastic day to network, discuss our research, and gain valuable insights,” said Peter Butcher. “It’s events like these that foster innovation and collaboration.”