Today, we presented the draft findings of our Tech City report to an expert rountable of stakeholders and entrepreneurs at Google Campus. A very stimulating debate!
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
No Tie Zone
Despite the title "No-tie Zone," they came to the NLA conference on Tech City in ties. They were mostly estate agents after all.
From an anthropological perspective, it was interesting to see how the property industry is engaging with the Shoreditch community whose growing tech/ digital cluster is attacting so much attention. Creative tech-types might not naturally gel with the men-in-suits, but give them a bike rack, exposed brickwork and a flexible lease, and the two groups might find common ground.
Elizabeth Varley, CEO of the successful coworking space TechHub - made famous after PM David Cameron chose to launch the government Tech City policy from here on its first birthday - spoke of the importance of flexible contracts in the start-up world where the office needs of fast-growing start-ups are difficult to predict. For TechHub, she said she managed to negotiate a good deal on rent with Derwent, who own the building. Incidentally I chatted to someone involved in the deal who said the ground floor, where TechHub is located, had proved difficult to lease and had been empty for some time before TechHub moved in. One priority for Andrew Sissons, Head of Regeneration Delivery at Hackney, is the provision of affordable workspaces such as TechHub: one way of managing the inflation in property prices caused as the cluster attracts attention.
Andrew Bridges, Managing Director of Stirling Ackroyd, predicted the ownership of the area will change. The tech and creative types may shift to Haggerston and Dalston, where costs are 30 perecnt cheaper. The challenge for Stirling Ackroyd is how to bring larger sites on board due to fragemented ownership: an argument that suits the government's rationale for allying the Olympic Park - where large spaces are plentiful - to the Old Street cluster.
Celine Thompson, Head of Leasing at Derwent London, spoke of the high ceilings and flexible, inspirational spaces her clients are looking for. They are calling this a White Collar Factory (terrible name) with 5 pinciples: 1. Tall ceiling; 2. Smart servicing; 3. Simple passive façade; 4. Deep plan and 5. Concerete structure. Basically it means flexible floor plate and being able to open the window.
Hammerson is the largest landowner in Tech City area. Andrew Hilston, Assistant Director of Development, gave a very interesting presentation of the Goodyard site, now awaiting planning permission. Plans are inspired by New York's Highline and foresee an urban park on top of railway arches. In the meantime, there is room for temporary uses such as the pop-up retail centre BoxPark (a joint venture with Hammerson (retail, office expertise) and Ballymore (resi)).
For me, perhaps the most interesting presentation came from Peter Bennett of the City of London Corporation. I had not appreciated the City's role in spotting and nurturing this particular cluster of activity, but now I know the corporation is not entirely focussed on finance. Ten years ago, the City invested in property that it thought might help grow the cluster, mainly just outside City boundary (Bonhill St, now home to Google Campus, Smithfield Innovation Warehouse, among others).
Finally, Steve Edge, who bills himself as a Prophet, Madman, Wanderer, spoke of the colour that first brough artists to the area. “My big problem is when lawyers and accountants come in and then it will be time for us the artists to move out,” he said.
From an anthropological perspective, it was interesting to see how the property industry is engaging with the Shoreditch community whose growing tech/ digital cluster is attacting so much attention. Creative tech-types might not naturally gel with the men-in-suits, but give them a bike rack, exposed brickwork and a flexible lease, and the two groups might find common ground.
Elizabeth Varley, CEO of the successful coworking space TechHub - made famous after PM David Cameron chose to launch the government Tech City policy from here on its first birthday - spoke of the importance of flexible contracts in the start-up world where the office needs of fast-growing start-ups are difficult to predict. For TechHub, she said she managed to negotiate a good deal on rent with Derwent, who own the building. Incidentally I chatted to someone involved in the deal who said the ground floor, where TechHub is located, had proved difficult to lease and had been empty for some time before TechHub moved in. One priority for Andrew Sissons, Head of Regeneration Delivery at Hackney, is the provision of affordable workspaces such as TechHub: one way of managing the inflation in property prices caused as the cluster attracts attention.
Andrew Bridges, Managing Director of Stirling Ackroyd, predicted the ownership of the area will change. The tech and creative types may shift to Haggerston and Dalston, where costs are 30 perecnt cheaper. The challenge for Stirling Ackroyd is how to bring larger sites on board due to fragemented ownership: an argument that suits the government's rationale for allying the Olympic Park - where large spaces are plentiful - to the Old Street cluster.
Celine Thompson, Head of Leasing at Derwent London, spoke of the high ceilings and flexible, inspirational spaces her clients are looking for. They are calling this a White Collar Factory (terrible name) with 5 pinciples: 1. Tall ceiling; 2. Smart servicing; 3. Simple passive façade; 4. Deep plan and 5. Concerete structure. Basically it means flexible floor plate and being able to open the window.
Hammerson is the largest landowner in Tech City area. Andrew Hilston, Assistant Director of Development, gave a very interesting presentation of the Goodyard site, now awaiting planning permission. Plans are inspired by New York's Highline and foresee an urban park on top of railway arches. In the meantime, there is room for temporary uses such as the pop-up retail centre BoxPark (a joint venture with Hammerson (retail, office expertise) and Ballymore (resi)).
For me, perhaps the most interesting presentation came from Peter Bennett of the City of London Corporation. I had not appreciated the City's role in spotting and nurturing this particular cluster of activity, but now I know the corporation is not entirely focussed on finance. Ten years ago, the City invested in property that it thought might help grow the cluster, mainly just outside City boundary (Bonhill St, now home to Google Campus, Smithfield Innovation Warehouse, among others).
Finally, Steve Edge, who bills himself as a Prophet, Madman, Wanderer, spoke of the colour that first brough artists to the area. “My big problem is when lawyers and accountants come in and then it will be time for us the artists to move out,” he said.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Tech City Ambassador
Queen Mary university invited me to listen to Ben Hammersley, the government's ambassador to Tech City, talk on the cluster's past, present and future. I'm hoping he was having an off day. His presentation was a slightly wooly, leftist manifesto against making money. Bizarre.http://www.kernelmag.com/yiannopoulos/2077/this-aint-a-relationship-its-a-sinking-ship/
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Three visions for Brussels
One disappointment is the area around my old appartment, the Place du jardin aux fleurs, not far from the canal. During the three years I lived there, the local authorities turned the square beneath my window into a real garden of flowers, a welcome change from the parking lot it had once been. The social housing behind us was also in for an uplift, with tree planting and sports facilities. The area, where I was mugged three times including once on my doorstep, seemed ripe for change - and it did for a while. It hasn't quite taken off however, and a night out in the area had me instinctively keeping a much beadier eye on my purse than I feel the need to in London. Despite some trendy loft-style canal side housing, efforts to improve the area have not yet been enough and the area risks sinking back unless there is a sustained and amplified approach.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Sharing Digital Experiences in Brussels
I was delighted to be invited by The Lisbon Council to share lessons from Tech City at a high-level roundtable on SMEs and technology in Brussels.
It was great to share experiences in my old stomping ground. One lesson I'll be immediately taking home with me, thanks to an inspiring presentation by SonicAngel's Bart Becks, is the growing importance of crowd funding for financing innovation. Legislation protecting consumers from parting with their cash is still murky, and operators seem to be working in a grey legal limbo. But the success of Kickstarter and similar ventures combined by the difficulties for European entrepreneurs of raising cash means this is an area to watch.
The event coincided with the publication of Wired for Growth and Innovation: How Digital Technologies are Reshaping Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses and Empowering Entrepreneurs, by Anthony D. Williams and Ann Mettler Wired.
It was great to share experiences in my old stomping ground. One lesson I'll be immediately taking home with me, thanks to an inspiring presentation by SonicAngel's Bart Becks, is the growing importance of crowd funding for financing innovation. Legislation protecting consumers from parting with their cash is still murky, and operators seem to be working in a grey legal limbo. But the success of Kickstarter and similar ventures combined by the difficulties for European entrepreneurs of raising cash means this is an area to watch.
The event coincided with the publication of Wired for Growth and Innovation: How Digital Technologies are Reshaping Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses and Empowering Entrepreneurs, by Anthony D. Williams and Ann Mettler Wired.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Just Boris
When a Brussels-based correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, Boris invented a "new mode of journalism," which Purnell calls the "'straight-banana' school of Eurosceptic reporting:" using humour to ridicule expense and waste purportedly caused by the European Commission. She quotes her sources as saying: "What he would say would never be simply untrue, but would be on the edge of what might happen."
Boris fed British prejudices of loony EU at a time when Europe was big news - Thatcher fell from power 17 months after Boris arrived in Brussels as a direct result of a 1990 EU summit - and became a powerful figure, so much so that the foreign ofice set up a Boris unit to rebutt negative Boris stories, Purnell says. It caused chaos in the Tory party - as Boris recalled in 2005 he was "sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall and I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazng, explosive effect on the Tory party. And it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of power." Interestingly, Purnell suggests that Boris' natural sentiments are pro-EU - a result of growing up in Brussels with a eurocrat father.
His subsequent career was characterised by friends in high places, high-jinks, wit - and a degree of luck. Witty perfomances on Have I Got News for You gave him a national platform and soon he was running for mayor. But a disorganised campaign initially saw him lagging Ken - until Consevative Party HQ imposed Lynton Crosby, an Australian political strategist known as the 'Wizard of Oz'. Boris HQ was transformed to become "more boot camp than bohemian hangout," as the Spectator regime had been - and Ken sented defeat.
The big question - where does Boris go from here? Purnell is convinced that even if noone else does, Boris' self-belief means he believes one day he could be prime minister.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Data geeks
If studying the East London tech scene has taught me anything, it is the growing importance of data. As this Economist article shows "the infrmation revolution is changing the way businesses operate."
Having studied economics at university level and spent 15 years in journalism trawling through official statistics (EU, national, OCED etc), I thought my quant skills were reasonably healthy. But it is the ability to exploit, not interpret, data that is ever more freely available.
Having studied economics at university level and spent 15 years in journalism trawling through official statistics (EU, national, OCED etc), I thought my quant skills were reasonably healthy. But it is the ability to exploit, not interpret, data that is ever more freely available.
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