Paul Rouke - Usability Professional

Mike Butcher of TechCrunch UK has recently been blogging about the idea of a ‘TechHub’ in London. It’s an idea that he has personally championed:

So I am hereby serving notice that TechCrunch UK is going to start campaigning for a Digital Hub for the UK.

The working title for this concept is “The TechHub”.
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Unfortunately this is going to sound boringly London-centric. But I think it ought to be in London. Why? Simple really. Money, access and the networks inside London.

I’m not sure that this idea holds much water. London has a number of major problems, mostly related to cost, which are major obstacles for small companies. London’s major claim to a role in the software eco-system comes from the fact that the financial services sector employs a lot of very able people developing and maintaining their software infrastructures (one of my favourite developer-bloggers, Kirk Wylie, is one of these). But the London financial services sector is in deep trouble right now. Moreover, office space is very costly in London compared to pretty much anywhere else in Europe, never mind the rest of the UK. The ‘London premium’ on salaries required just to get people to work there is an unavoiable fact. What’s unique about Silicon Valley is that its whole identity is bundled up in the idea of innovation, technology and entrepreneurship – the technology and software industries dominate there. London, on the other hand, is a centre of culture, tourism, history, government, finance and countless other things. The software industry will only ever be a small part of what London does and these other industries all compete for valuable space, resources and labour.

I’d like to argue against the idea of a single Tech Hub. Britain (or, more to the point, England) is a small country and there really isn’t much need to focus all of our attention on one area, particularly one that is already over-crowded. Travel between London and Manchester is doable in under two hours by train and this could be cut further if plans for a high speed rail link are approved. This would allow for startups to take advantage of the much lower costs of locating in, say, Manchester without losing touch with London and vice versa.

But if we do need a Tech Hub as Mike Butcher insists, where would I place it? Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’d vote for Manchester.

Why? The North West of England already has a number of advantages. The number one advantage as far as I’m concerned is the growing strength of the local developer community. There are a number of grass-roots groups in existence for networking between people working in the digital/tech sector – these are not top-down imposed groups funded by some quango or other, but private community initiatives to promote the North West tech community’s growth. The umbrella group for these, North West Digital Communities helps to ensure cross-fertilisation of ideas amongst the groups. The GeekUp community already holds regular meetings in Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Chester and Preston. Web development is well represented with groups for Ruby, Drupal, .NET and PHP. The PHP group in particular has grown extraordinarily in a short space of time and will, later this month, be holding the PHPNW08 Conference. Jeremy Coates deserves huge acclaim for driving this forward.

In addition, AgileNorth plays a role in promoting agile development practices and the Northern User Experience group is a growing forum for discussion of usability issues. The startup company sector is represented by NW Startup 2.0, which brings together innovators, venture capitalists and local tech companies for regular meetings and workshops. The notion that it’s all grim up north isn’t borne out by the facts.

If there’s anything that the North does badly, it’s probably self-promotion. Years of industrial decline as the manufacturing industry of the 20th century has withered away have left their mark and a lot of people don’t yet feel ready to shout about the good things that are happening. But what’s happening here is an organic, grass-roots growth of clusters of talented, passionate people who are interested in innovation. You can’t create that by coming up with clever branding ideas, blog memes or ‘campaigns’; nor can you create it merely by throwing money at it. It requires passion, inventiveness and talent, combined with the right environment to enable the expression of these attributes. The North of England does a lot better on these scores than many people would think.

Following hot on the heals of our e-commerce platform launch, I am delighted to welcome Rob Knight into my team as Lead Technical Architect for PRWD.

Remarkable Individuals

Cementing the businesses strategy of only employing remarkable individuals, as part of the initial discussions on the strategy of the business and what Rob would bring to the business, he took part in our Psychometric Testing process, with our recruitment partner Psycuity.

The testing process, handled fantastically by Ian Hudson, Director at Pyscuity, provided the kind of insight into Rob’s skills, expertise, aptitude and long term potential which we would never have been able to determine through a traditional recruitment process.

Fulfilling Long Term Ambitions

With developing innovative web applications, business systems and enterprise level e-commerce solutions an integral part of PRWD’s services, not only have we recruited someone who can lead the technical architecture and system development process, but for Rob I am fully confident he has found the type of company in which he can realise his full potential and fulfil one of his long term ambition’s of being recognised as being a remarkable individual.

On joining the business, Rob said:

Working for PRWD is a fantastic opportunity for me to work at the cutting edge of web application development. I’m looking forward to creating innovative solutions for our clients, building on the excellent platforms already established.

As a developer, it’s important to me that I work to the highest standards of technical excellence, stretching my personal capabilities and learning new and interesting skills along the way. I hope to enhance the reputation of PRWD for delivering high-quality web applications and I hope that my contribution will be to deliver good value for our clients. On a personal level, I think that this is a very interesting time to be working in this industry, with the constant change and innovation that it requires. PRWD is well-placed to make the most of these changes and I am happy to be in a position where I can be on the leading edge.

Hitting the Ground Running…!

All that remains for me to say is welcome to the team Rob, and we can’t wait to kick-off the analysis phase of your 1st business modernisation project, not to mention driving the evolvement of our e-commerce platform!