IT’S being advertised as a social and networking event, but down the line it may well turn out to be something of a support group too.

North East New Tech launched last month in a room in Middlesbrough’s Boho One, and is designed to allow those involved with technology in the region to turn up, discuss thoughts and ideas and collect a few contact details for the future.

The Teesside digital development organisation’s director of cluster development Mark South said: “There’s a nascent group of people – from CEOs to artists and techies – that have never had the mechanism or opportunity to get in touch with each other in a certain way before. I spent time in a games company and in One North East, and I learned that people need to feel they belong to something, and not just a company. It doesn’t necessarily have to be business-led.”

The first North East New Tech was cooked up in less than a week, as a result of a conversation between South and Graphic.ly and Audacious founder Kevin Mann.

South said: “He said we needed to bring the community together a bit more. We didn’t want it to seem like just people in the Tees Valley working together, or people in Newcastle. We needed to work with everybody locally, because we need to build up a stronger sense of what we do here.

“We had the conversation at 4pm on a Tuesday, Kev called some people, and I had a chat around the office. We had another chat on Wednesday and decided we might as well do it on Monday. I sorted out some taxis to help people get over from Newcastle, and we arranged something for about 50 people.”