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[LSI] Trends Shaping the London Tech Scene by Andy Oram Copyright © 2016 O’Reilly Media, Inc.. Trends Shaping the London Tech Scene, the cover image, and related trade dress are trademar

[LSI]

Trends Shaping the London Tech Scene

by Andy Oram

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Table of Contents

Trends Shaping the London Tech Scene 1

Highly Skilled Staff—Where Do They Come From? 2

Pitching In 4

Setting Up Shop 5

Government: We’re Here to Help You 11

Life in London 13

v

Trends Shaping the London

Tech Scene

Figure 1-1 London does have unicorns

Finance, journalism, trade, the arts, government—London has beenknown as a world leader in these areas for centuries Computertechnology doesn’t arouse such an immediate association with Lon‐don, but since the mid-2000s it has steadily taken hold in all those

1

areas of London activity and has created a vibrant, independentbusiness environment of its own While not as “hot” as Silicon Val‐ley (no Facebooks or Apples have been launched in London, and fewunicorns), London’s tech scene obeys its own “slow and steady”growth model.

This report aims to be a comprehensive view of the computer tech‐nology scene in London: where it stands, some of its origins, who’sparticipating in it, and what feeds its strengths

I happen to be examining the phenomenon of computer technology

in London at an odd moment, because many people attribute itsrobustness to Britain’s presence in the European Union The Britishhave notoriously just come away from a historic vote that, over thenext few years, will undo that relationship, while trying to maintain

as close a business and cultural connection to the Continent as pos‐sible Although this report does not examine politics or take on thedicey task of predicting the impact of the Brexit, we will examineLondon’s ties to the continent and the impact of these ties on thetech scene

Highly Skilled Staff—Where Do They

Come From?

London’s highly international workforce benefits from fine universities

in Britain and across the continent But they also take learning into their own hands, creating numerous free and paid forums for com‐ puter training.

London is a whirlpool that sweeps in programmers and data scien‐tists not only from all over Great Britain but also from Europe, theBritish Commonwealth, and the rest of the world Given the short‐age of qualified technical staff worldwide, it’s salient to consider howpeople get these skills In particular, British universities are an excel‐lent source of data scientists It’s hardly necessary to remind readersthat British mathematicians stood at the very dawn of the computerfield These include not just Alan Turing, but also such people as thecreators of EDSAC, claimed to be “the first practical general purpose

stored program electronic computer”, at Cambridge University in1949

2 | Trends Shaping the London Tech Scene

An Education Cornucopia

Yodit Stanton, the head of OpenSensors.io, suggests that morerecently, British universities picked up the need for more data scien‐tists from England’s strong financial sector, one of the earliest fields

to recognise the critical importance of such skills Now, she says,London is one of the best places to get quant skills, making it easier

to build a data-focused business

London also benefits from the fine universities across Europe, many

of them free to attend It’s generally easy for educated people fromany country to move to London, because they learn English as part

of their training Although there is some diversity in the tech field, itdoes not reflect the diversity of London itself Technology staff tend

to come from other parts of Europe, rather than Asia or Africa.Most of the technologists I talked to thought the Brexit would haveminimal impact on London’s appeal for foreign computer experts,but some foreigners are seriously reconsidering their choice to livethere What I am hearing extends beyond dry calculations concern‐ing the Brexit’s financial impacts on the computer field, and entersinto a kind of grief over the newly revealed, less welcoming atmos‐phere shown by the vote, particularly as that atmosphere mightaffect them and their family members

Close to Home

Once in London, technologists need to learn new skills According

to Simon Wardley, a researcher for the Leading Edge Forum in areas

of competition and strategy, many people used to satisfy their needfor ongoing education through the Open University However,increases in that institution’s fees have led some job hunters to con‐sider it prohibitively expensive

Luckily, educational opportunities of all types have risen to address

the pressing need for computer science education The Guardian, a

leading newspaper, printed an article listing just a few of theseopportunities, which include many that will be familiar to program‐mers outside the UK and others that are UK-specific Some are foradults, some for children Some are held online and others face-to-face

According to Martijn Verburg—CEO of jClarity, as well as co-leader

of the London Java Community (LJC) and the London CTO com‐

Highly Skilled Staff—Where Do They Come From? | 3

munity—coding bootcamps train people over periods of up to threemonths, showing the depth of learning More than one of my corre‐spondents highlighted Skills Matter, which offers meet-ups, formallectures, and online videos of earlier lectures Henry Garner men‐tioned Makers Academy, a bootcamp-like environment for learning

to become a full stack developer with a focus on Ruby on Rails andJavaScript He said that around 30% of its graduates are female, animportant achievement in a coding culture that is still male-dominated He also praised Codebar.io, a non-profit that brings involunteers to provide accessible learning opportunities via eveningsessions that draw 20 to 50 attendees And techmums offers work‐shops in digital technologies to mothers

Meetups are also well-attended in London, a phenomenon we’ll look

at in the next section

Pitching In

London tech players eagerly pursue networking opportunities Each community holds numerous meetups each month, and there’s also cross-pollination between communities.

The previous section mentioned the generosity shown by expertprogrammers who volunteer for Codebar.io Other volunteer groupsmarshal programmers and data scientists to aid social causes Forinstance, DataKind signs up data scientists to do pro bono work forcharities

Like many cities, London has a rich meetup culture Its size allows aproliferation of events on the same topic Some of my correspond‐ents reported that many people attend meetups just for networkingpurposes (particularly contractors who change jobs frequently), but

it appears that many meetups involve authentic learning and com‐munity building Popular sessions can draw 80 people Verburgpoints out that meetups cross-promote speakers and events, such aswhen the co-lead of the Java meetup keynoted at the London PHPconference a few years ago

One of the earliest meetups, according to Verburg, was the LondonJava Community, which now boasts 5,500 members and claims asignificant impact on the global Java community In addition tohosting its own event almost every week, the London Java Commu‐nity has spun off several related groups, including Groovy, Clojure,Scala, JBoss, Docklands, CTOs, Graduate Developers, and Front

4 | Trends Shaping the London Tech Scene

End developers Verburg also links the London Java Community tothe Software Craftsmanship meetup.

Python programmer Nic Tollervey says that a typical month in thePython community includes a general meetup with traditional talks,

a Coding Dojo (social programming for all levels of experience, now

in its eighth year), a PyLadies chapter, a PyDataLondon gathering(which regularly attracts 200+ people to meetings), a Django UserGroup London (DJUGL) meeting, a Python Project Night (designedfor people to collaborate on “side projects”), and some special inter‐est groups such as Python in fin-tech meeting in the financial dis‐trict Teachers and developers often meet to share experience andknowledge, demonstrating the dedication that busy people in thetech community show in volunteering their time

Lorna Mitchell, a tech lead who is currently a developer advocate atIBM, reports similarly rich offerings for PHP developers In addi‐tion to PHP meetups, there are meetings devoted to Drupal, Word‐Press, and frameworks built on PHP—something every night of theweek

Popular meetups can schedule the same presentation in differentparts of town on different evenings, making travel easier for people

in those districts Several meetups focus on women, such as DjangoGirls and the aforementioned PyLadies Stanton runs a “Women inData” meetup with more than 1,000 members

Setting Up Shop

The startup scene is very fertile in London, and to some extent in many parts of the UK But entrepreneurs have to get creative with funding, because risk-taking is still less common than in the US, and money doesn’t flow at the same volumes in the UK Employee reten‐ tion can also be difficult, as well-trained staff constantly seek better jobs.

People outside Britain tend to be unaware of British successes in thecomputer business For example, people don’t necessarily associatethe well-known chip manufacturer ARM, whose products can befound throughout the embedded industry, with the UK, despite itsbeing headquartered in Cambridge (though it was recently bought

by a Japanese company)

Setting Up Shop | 5

Embedded Technology

Much of the glow of London’s technology scene remains hiddenbecause it serves the many other sectors of the economy, such as thefinancial district, rather than spawning standalone computer com‐panies like Twitter Simon Wardley points out that local tech compa‐nies provide online services in real estate, small business lending,overseas money transfer, and music (Shazam in particular) Fooddelivery services, which have websites that accept orders, are alsomuch more popular here than in the US Tollervey points out thatBank of America employs thousands of Python developers in Lon‐don And large multinational computer firms have opened Londoncentres, such as Google (nicely settled in a building painted in outra‐geous orange and green) and Facebook (We will examine the strat‐egy of attracting such large firms in the section on government later

in this report.) UK-based firms tend to get acquired before they getlarge on their own; a well-known example being Google’s 2014 pur‐chase of the artificial intelligence firm DeepMind

Punctuated Evolution

Several of my correspondents traced the history of tech opportuni‐ties, mentioning a crisis in employment for programmers during thedot-com bust of the early 2000s Technologist Simon Wistow notesthat lots of people who lost their start-ups at that time took refuge inthe media The BBC in particular used this opportunity to launchinnovative, integrated online sites (The BBC is insulated from busi‐ness trends because it is funded by a tax on the owners of televisionsets.) James Duncan, who has moved between private and govern‐ment tech work, says that the BBC innovations, historic though theymay be, stayed locked within the BBC—much of what its techemployees learned did not enter general practice until they took

other jobs The Guardian has also, more recently, championed inno‐

Duncan sees a key difference between US’s Silicon Valley and Lon‐

don: Silicon Valley produces core technology, such as database engines, whereas London consumes these technologies and produces

end products, such as the online companies mentioned earlier

On the start-up end of the business range, London has many prom‐ising companies breaking new ground in technologies on the earlyside of the hype cycle Tollervey cited blockchains and cryptocurren‐cies (which the traditional financial sector has funded generously),green energy marketplaces, 3D printing, and the Internet of Things.Wardley sees interest and advances across the UK in robotics, virtualreality, augmented reality, genetic engineering, biomanufacturing,and artificial intelligence

Made of Money

The business models and growth strategies for London-based techcompanies are tied to funding opportunities, which most technolo‐gists find to be less available than in the US Each stage of fundinghas its own challenges and opportunities There is a widespreadsense that London (for all its financial heft) has fewer venture capi‐talists than San Francisco or New York But consulting firm ownerFrancesco Cesarini, citing a recent VC forum, calls these impres‐sions into doubt and claims that VC funds in the UK are only a bitsmaller than what’s available in Silicon Valley In the UK, however,sale prices for companies tend to be smaller at exits (sales by found‐ers) and there are fewer unicorns

Some correspondents have noticed that old English families areputting their money into computer companies, so that as Governorputs it, “investment is getting increasingly posh” This is nothingnew in British history Even in the 1600s, landed aristocracy grewinterested in the burgeoning trade, and later they funded the minesand factories of the Industrial Revolution There was less of a con‐tentious gap between the landowning class and the bourgeoisie inGreat Britain than in other parts of Europe

Many people therefore tap friends and family to start a business;crowdfunding has also been used Nuno Job, who moved to Londonafter a career in San Francisco and runs a consultancy firm, suggeststhat the lower intensity of business activity in London makes it eas‐ier to succeed than in the Silicon Valley

Setting Up Shop | 7