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The Utrecht-based network for IT professionals IT Circle Nederland is now collaborating with U-tech. The partnership was announced through the network's June newsletter. In practical terms, the collaboration takes the form of roundtable sessions on Diversity & Inclusion, a topic that has been on the network's agenda for some time.
The second edition of these sessions took place on 22 May 2026. A follow-up meeting, titled 'DE&I: The Real Conversation on Inclusion', is scheduled for 25 June 2026. Both sessions are aimed at IT professionals who want to discuss inclusion issues in the sector in a confidential setting.
Alongside the partnership announcement, IT Circle Nederland also published a retrospective on 2024. It centres on stories, experiences and practical solutions shared by members, with an emphasis on what mutual knowledge exchange within the community has yielded.
IT Circle Nederland is based on the Europalaan in Utrecht and focuses on connecting IT professionals and organisations. The network organises professional sessions, networking events and knowledge-exchange meetings. Members also have access to CLICK, the network's own community platform for knowledge sharing and inspiration.
The network explicitly positions itself as a place where professionals can share experiences in a confidential environment. That principle also underpins the roundtable sessions on Diversity & Inclusion: the format is designed to enable open conversations that are less likely to take place in larger, public settings.
Few details about the exact scope of the partnership with U-tech are currently available beyond what is stated in the newsletter. What is known is that the collaboration is initially focused on the joint organisation of the DE&I roundtables. Whether the two parties will also work together in other areas, such as technology, training or events, has not been communicated.
U-tech itself is not introduced further in the announcement. IT Circle Nederland mentions the partnership in the context of its broader 2026 agenda, in which community building and thematic sessions play a central role.
The 2024 retrospective published by IT Circle Nederland describes what was shared within the community over the past year. Member stories, experiences gained and solutions put forward form the common thread. The network uses the retrospective to illustrate the value of the community based on what was concretely exchanged, rather than through quantitative growth figures or reach statistics.
The format aligns with the way IT Circle Nederland typically presents its activities: the emphasis is on the substance of conversations and the connections between members, not on scale or membership numbers.
Diversity and inclusion have been on the agenda of Dutch tech employers and networks for some time, partly as a result of labour market tightness in the IT sector and growing attention from investors and policymakers regarding team composition. Closed roundtable meetings are an approach that is increasingly seen among industry associations and networks that find the topic difficult to address concretely in larger conference settings.
For founders and HR leaders in the tech sector, the format adopted by IT Circle Nederland and U-tech may offer a practical alternative to the usual conferences and webinars. Whether the approach is scalable or will be rolled out more broadly depends on how the upcoming sessions are received.
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