Back to uni

I was delighted to be invited by Prof John Tomaney to lecture second year planning students on Tech City. As it was the second last day of term, I was a little concerned about attention spans. However I shouldn't have worried: a few tales of exotic cocktails and funky bars captured their imagination.

London Borough of Hackney CSSI - Making the Most of Tech City Review

I was delighted to be asked to attend Hackney Council's scrutiny review 'Making the Most of Tech City.'

This discussion is intended to help LBH understand how it can help the growing digital economy industry on its patch, and find out what support employers / businesses need to harness the opportunities of the potential workforces on its doorstep and tap into the talent and skills of the local community.

 I belive passionately in the potential of the digital economy for sections of the population who have traditionally not had the same access to opportunity. The digital economy not only appeals to young people who might be turned off by more conventional careers, but it is also a profession where the best are often self-taught (take Steve Jobs, for example). 

In the research I conducted for Centre for London, I found a great willingness among the Tech City entrepreneurs to give back to the community. Although the paperwork and requirements of official apprenticeship schemes might be too onerous for these often very small companies, there are plenty of other ways to engage them: drop in mentoring sessions or individual mentoring coaching were some of my suggestions.

Demos report: Feeling the Effects

Today, the Demos report I have been working on with Jonathan Birdwell, Under the Influence: Feeling the Effects, was launched in the House of Commons. We were lucky to have

Andrew Griffiths MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group, Simon Antrobus, CEO of Addaction, and Mary Glover, author of Drugs, alcohol and parenting: a workbook for children, to discuss the findings.

The Daily Mail chose to cover the report saying women drinkers pass their bad habits onto their children, and The Independent said parents should drink less in front of their children.

Presenting the findings, Jonathan said our report is not about telling parents not to drink in front of kids, but making them aware of impact of alcohol misus. Andrew Griffiths says the report chimes with govt thinking: not about nanny state but nudging parents to change their behaviour. Simon Antrobus underlined the fact that early intervention and specialist family support in hard times are key to helping families cope.

Investing in Nigeria: Special Report 2012

Nigerian Vice President Namadi Sambo together with a high-level delegation including Minister of Finance Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the Minister of Trade & Investment Olusegun Aganga were in London for the 13th Honorary International Investor Council (HIIC). This coincided with the 2012 Financial Times special report Investing in Nigeria.

Algeria: Creating the path beyond oil

In today's Financial Times, Algeria talks about its post-oil and alternative energy strategy.

Dutch media

Was it my surname that prompted the Dutch journalist to call me, rather than the two Doctors I co-wrote A Tale of Tech City with? I enjoyed chatting with the De Volkskrant journalist Patrick van Ijkendoorn. As a former journalist, I am sometimes nervous about trusting journalists (!), but perhaps because he is not a British journalist, I felt quite relaxed. Unfortunately, I can't read the language of my distant relative (great-great grandfather I think) and the website had a paywall which stops me using Google Translate. However from the paper version, shown below, I can see I was quoted a couple of times!

GEMS Education

GEMS Education is a global education company that owns and operates over 100 international schools providing high quality holistic education to over 100,000 students from 125 countries. It is the largest kindergarten to Grade 12 private school operator in the world with over 50 years of education experience.

Apollo provides ongoing media relations and copywriting support for GEMS education.

Examples of recent coverage include in a two-piece (from London and Nairobi) article in The Guardian, and an opinion piece.

FSB and Tech City

I was delighted to speak last night at an event organised by the Federation of Small Businesses, one of the sponsors of our report on Tech City. The audience - full of suits and ties - was very different than the regular cool urbanite crowd of Tech City, which made for a very interesting debate. People had come because they wanted to know more about what is happening in this much-hyped part of London, and to understand what the digital economy or being part of this community could mean for them. They kept the panel - which included Pru Ashby, the Tech City expert at London & Partners, Ian Dowson, Author of “London as a Start up City,” and Andrew Humphries of the Tech City Investment Organisation - on our toes.

Kensington & Chelsea

I thought long and hard about the appropriate attire for convening a pre-meeting of the Market Streets Action Group (with the lovely Malcolm Allan of the Place Matters consultancy.) Formed in 2007 to secure the regeneration of the market streets of Portobello Road and Golborne Road, the group comprises councillors, residents, traders and local businesses. I tried to find the right mix between the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea smart, and market casual.I was rather pleased with my choice, particularly of footwear. What do you think?

Tech City and the EU

Just back from a lovely trip to Brussels for the Lisbon Council think tank's 2012 Single Market Entrepreneurs Summit. I was invited after contributing an article on Tech City for the SMEs in the Single Market:A Growth Agenda for the 21st Century publication. 

It was interesting to see how London's efforts to attract the cream of European (and elsewhere) tech and creative talent is regarded in the heart of Europe. Alex Farcet, co-founder and managing director of Startupbootcamp, said London is raising the game everywhere. However Richard Pelly, chief executive of the European Investment Fund, said cities should be realistic about their competitive advantages. Don't just compete for the sake of it, he urged, as that will only lead to wasted public money. As I waved the flag for London, a lady from Dublin heckled at the back. Meanwhile in Stockholm, the Nobel peace committee was gearing up to award a unity prize to the European Union.....

Apollo - and how nice it is to work with lovely people

I've been working with Apollo Public Relations for a while now, and it's a real pleasure. Delivering "good news, seriously," they have good clients and interesting work. But as well as being good at what they do, they are also really lovely people to work with and for.  

Rwanda

The Rwandan government has 1.5 pages (front page and p.5) in this Financial Times special report on doing business in their country.

New blog

I've started a new blog to promote my novel here. It's a bit of a departure from other things you might see on this page......

Addiction and families

I have been working with Demos on a research project that looks at how a problematic relationship with alcohol among at least one parent can impact on parenting and children’s perceptions of alcohol. This includes assessing the impact of ‘family-based interventions’ and the extent to which they focus on parenting support and preventing the transference of problem behaviour to the children of alcoholics.

It is a theme I have been researching for some time for my debut novel, Twisted Ladder, is being represented by the Dystel & Goderich literary agency. It is a study of addiction, and its hereditary implications.

You can read more here about the Demos project.

The Golden Age of French cinema - and other stories

The summer edition of the Invest in France journal is now out. It is the first that I have put together. I chose to focus on French cinema partly because of the success of The Artist, a film that I can't imagine having been made elsewhere, and also to recognise the growing numbers of foreign filmakers turning to France, among them Britain's Ken Loach. I also enjoyed discovering more about the French water cluster in the South of France after we chose Languedoc Roussillon as our focus region.

More Tech City press

Two weeks after the launch of our Tale of Tech City report, it is still being talked about! Which can only be a good thing.

Latest is a short piece I collaborated on for Estates Gazette - as Deputy London Mayor Kit Malthouse said at our launch, maybe not all tech entrepreneurs have heard about Tech City, but 100% of property industry professionals have!

The FT ran a piece the day after the report, and The Observer covered our scenarios for future growth.

The Guardian published a second piece, this time on their local government network by Dr Sean Carey, a social anthropologist leading a research project on Digital Shoreditch for the University of East London. Interestingly, his points about the white-male makeup of the cluster reflect those I made when speaking at the Place East London conference, when I fessed up to my social anthropology roots!

And the academics have been talking, both at LSE's Spatial Economics Research Centre, and at UCL's CASA.

The business community is talking about us too!

Algeria

Algeria is celebrating 50 years of independence, as noted in the Financial Times. We spent a wonderful three days in the country during the celebrations: lovely people, lovely food, and a wealth of opportunities. That's me making friends with the mascot of the environment ministry.

Tale of Tech City is out!

Such was the demand for our report on Tech City that the Wall Street Journal, BBC Online and The Independent either got ahold of a leaked copy (not from us!) or broke the embargo after the toothpaste was out of the tube.  

The report, by myself, Dr Max Nathan and CfL Deputy Director Rob Whitehead, is now available for free download here: http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/ataleoftechcity

Meanwhile, media interest continues unabated, starting with The Guardian, whose Tech Editor Charles Arthur called me yesterday for an interview, the first time since my 2007 book Schizophrenie Francaise was published that I'd been on the recieving end of journalists questions.

At today's event, where Rob was interviewed for BBC London (to feature on the lunchtime news), it was standing room only.

Meanwhile, the regeneration community was paying attention, notably Richard Florida, the 'government's guru' known for his 'creative class' concept, writing in Altantic Cities. Reports also in
in ELR News, and Reneration & Renewal.

The Tech community, of course, had plenty to say, including at Tech World and of course, on Twitter under #techcity.

A piece I wrote for The Tech City Insider on connectivity appeared under the headline Techs and The City, a title we toyed with for the report.

The property industry, who Deputy London Mayor Kit Malthouse said today will determine in which direction the cluster moves, was well represented at the event, and will soon be reading about the report. An article by myself and Sandra Jones of Ramidus Consulting, who has done her own research with the EGi property database, will appear in Estates Gazette on July 14.

No doubt there will be more to come. On Twitter, debate suggests how our report is digested will be important - as well as follow up research on how the cluster can best serve the local community, and on the tech scene more broadly across London and further afield. As TechCrunch Europe Editor Mike Butcher said in a tweet (@mikebutcher) "It's the report after this one that counts."

A Tale of Tech City

The books have arrived! So exiting to see the fruit of almost a year's research, starting with my dissertation and continuing with the good folks of Centre for London, notably my co-authors Dr Max Nathan of LSE and Rob Whitehead, CfL's Deputy Director. You won't get to read it before Monday, when we launch the report with fanfare - alongside Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse, Hackney Mayor Jules Pipe, Wired Editor-at-large and the PM's Tech City Ambassador Ben Hammersley, and entrepreneurs including Matt Biddulph, who coined the term Silicon Roundabout, and Sarah Wood from Unruly. Copies of this beautiful book will be available for free download at http://www.centreforlondon.co.uk/

Place East London

I had been sucking honey and gargling salt since Saturday, when I lost my voice almost entirely, and it worked. Fortunately my voice held out for my Tale of Tech City talk at the Place East London conference in Old Stratford Town. I kept most of my powder dry for the July 2 launch of the Centre for London project I have been working on, but still there was plenty to say.

The brief was what could Tech City mean for East London jobs? I said our in-depth analysis shows the much-hyped cluster is larger than anyone had previously thought, but the entrepreneurs within it are less diverse than London SMEs or British digital economy firms. To open access to a wide group requires rethinking the entrepreneurship culture, making financing easier for people without contacts to rich people, encouraging skills training and networking in local populations, and a more female-friendly environment (a theme from my undergraduate anthropology degree).

I came after Sir Robin Wales who spoke about Newham's great efforts - and success - about getting local people into jobs with some of the new employers (not least Westfield) coming to town. GLA Chief of Staff Sir Edward Lister told how the £9-24 billion cost of the Olympic Games will be the "least expensive of the projects" planned to upgrade infrastructure in East London.Newly annointed London Legacy Development Corporation Chief Daniel Moylan closed the event vowing that the park would not become a "shard of prosperity" - like Canary Wharf.

Thanks to the wonderful Jackie Sadek and Ross Sturley for organising a wonderful event.