Channelling Pittsburgh

Silicon Valley grandee, tech venture capitalist and Y-Combinator accelerator founder Paul Graham recently posted this piece about how Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania could become a startup hub.

Here's his summary of what he said the 300k population city could do:-

• Encourage local restaurants
• Save old buildings
• Become bicycle-friendly
• Take advantage of density
• Make CMU [the local university] the best
• Promote tolerance

These objectives sound pretty familar to anyone living in Leicester, don't you think?

He including a particularly interesting section about what universities should or shouldn't do to encourage enterprise:-

"Shouldn't universities be setting up programs with words like 'innovation' and 'entrepreneurship' in their names? No, they should not. These kind of things almost always turn out to be disappointments. They're pursuing the wrong targets. The way to get innovation is not to aim for innovation but to aim for something more specific, like better batteries or better 3D printing. And the way to learn about entrepreneurship is to do it, which you can't in school."

Hear, hear!

Paul Atkinson - RIP

I recently learnt of the untimely death of Paul Atkinson of Leicester-based Atkinson Design Associates.

You can read a full obituary in Design Week but it's astonishing that Apple's chief designer Sir Jonthan Ive's college design teacher is almost completely unknown in Leicester.

I'd barely got to know Paul when he passed away. He was so full of first-rate ideas for art galleries and design festivals, not to mention his own design output. He was the driving force behind the seminal Design Leicestershire book.

He did so much to celebrate our local design talent - shouldn't we do something to celebrate him?

The Best Kind of Business Events

Business owners often feel like they should be networking more but what sort of events work best and who should be running them?

I’ve tried to answer this question by outlining and critiquing four common event formats….

1. Generic Business Exhibitions

These sorts of events are most often run by public sector organisations or chambers of commerce who wish to be seen to ‘support business’ as a box-ticking exercise. Typically, they will be open to any sort of business exhibitor to rent a stand.

Events like these strongly self-select generic business services companies as exhibitors – companies such as lawyers, accountants and marketing agencies who can sell to the widest section of visitors. They are pretty much useless to companies selling to new or niche markets.

These events can make for a nice fun day away from the office but are rarely productive for either exhibitors or visitors. The exceptional few exhibitors who do make it work usually have a product so desirable that there are far better, more scalable means of promoting their services.

By about 2pm these are typified by a large number of tired people in suits aching to sit down. The only real winners are the event venues, roll-up banner printers and suit dry cleaners.

2. Industry-Specific Exhibitions

A.k.a. “plumbers’ conventions” – these events pack large numbers of similar businesses into a single hall and trade on exhibitors’ fear of missing out.

These exist in all industries and are the sorts of things you will see at Earls Court, ExCel or the NEC.

These events can be good for visitors who have a particular purchase in mind but they are very much dog-eat-dog for the exhibitors. They tend to attract 'tyre-kickers' rather than ideal customers who will love exhibitors' products.

Exhibit if you’re launching a new product and want to get feedback or talk to the press but be prepared to come away with no leads at all. They can work well as a focal point for meeting existing or prospective clients by prior arrangement: "I'll be at Exhibition X - come and say hi".

3. Presentation Lectures

Speeches from businesses who have ‘made it’ are a common sight at events as organisers aim to bask in the presenter’s reflected glory. In actual fact, such speakers rarely share any meaningful advice (least of all accounts of the mistakes they made) and attendees’ inspiration on the day can often fade into feelings of inadequacy afterwards.

Speakers at such events tend to have their own promotional (or egotistical) agenda or are being paid to speak – none of these motivations augur well for lasting impact on the audience.

If you’re going to go to these sorts of events, make sure you’re one of the speakers otherwise go watch The Apprentice instead!

4. Community and Ecosystem Events

These are events where the participants leave their sales patter at the door and focus on learning, sharing and getting to know each other properly.

These are by far the best sorts of events but they require participants to take a “rising tide lifts all boats” attitude instead of seeing business as a zero-sum game.

They tend to favour open networks in specific geographic-areas like cities, where there is a likelihood of the participants meeting regularly in the future.

Examples of such events include hackathons, art festivals, startup weekends, masterclasses and mentoring sessions. They are a common sight in startup communities and creative groups where participants share similar problems but are not in competition with each other.

The power of these events is that they help nurture communities far more and over a longer period of time than any other event format.

The idea of a business community can seem pretty oxymoronic when everyone is taking part in a race-to-the-bottom fight to sell stuff, but for innovative, creative and intellectual property-based businesses especially, they are an incredibly powerful way of sharing knowledge and growing local ecosystems collaboratively.

These sorts of networks are the secret sauce that give rise to Silicon Valleys or artistic movements. Crucially, these work best as self-organised events which are led by the participants and supported (but not led) by public sector organisations.

Leicester Comedy Festival, now in it's 23rd year, is a brilliant example of an ecosystem event. As well as being a vehicle for top-class established comedians, it helps nurture new talent, supports venues all over the city and is a fantastic PR and economic draw for the Leicester.

                                                                                                                       

Next time you consider attending a business event, ask yourself why the exhibitors or presenters are there. If you don’t like the answer, then it’s probably time to run your own event. It’s surprisingly easy to do and you can start small using tools such as Meetup.com or Eventbrite.

Aim to build (or contribute to) a community rather than just hosting a one-off event. Focus on something that helps your whole industry rather than just your particular profession. 

For example, a plumber is far more likely to attract homeowners if there are electricians and kitchen fitters at the event too. Encourage advice-sharing rather than hard-selling.

If you're a public sector officer, why not get to know and support the ringleaders of existing groups better instead of running expensive generic events yourselves? Your efforts will be far better targeted and will support people who have a long-term vested interest in the success of your area.

Smashing The Factory Whistle

It's official - Leicester has a tech sector!

My lobbying TechCityUK.com last year seems to have paid off as we have been featured on their 2016 Tech Nation report (page 30): http://www.techcityuk.com/technation/

I appreciate there's always a certain amount of spin associated with such reports but they do serve to highlight a more ambitious mode of business which I think Leicester needs to latch on to. We have a 'factory whistle’ mindset where too many of those who do start their own businesses do not aspire beyond the freelance, consultant or professional services agency models.

This seems to be echoed by official business support agencies who seem to value job creation over all other aspects of business growth. No one can argue against creating jobs but what about the quality, sustainability and wealth-creation potential of those jobs?

Our business development agencies rightly focus on our strengths in particular industry sectors (https://www.llep.org.uk/strategies-and-plans/sector-growth-plans/) but we hear less about the nature of specific businesses that are supported. Are we shipping pies or pie recipe books?

I’ve spent 14 years working in the software and creative industry in Leicester and have increasing experience of the ‘Silicon Valley’ tech startup model. These are a world away from the traditional Leicester hosiery mills but it sometimes feels like the city’s aspirations haven’t moved on from there.

I would like to see people from all sectors move higher up the food chain and break out of the "selling time for money" business model that so many are stuck in (myself included to some extent).

Creative and innovative people are the key to this, there are loads of them in Leicester and they inhabit all industries and all walks of life but you can't really call them a 'sector'. If J.K. Rowling or Mark Zuckerberg turned up in Leicester there would be a huge media scrum but who is giving meaningful support to those who aspire to these sorts of intellectual property-based business models?

My own small efforts in this regard have been to establish a growing tech startup community in the city but I would like to see a much wider community of IP-based businesses. I think the secret is in the cross-disciplinary mixing and getting people to aspire beyond the factory whistle:-

Copywriters can become authors.

Coders can sell apps or SaaS applications.

Actors can become playwrights.

Art workers can become artists.

Designers can license their designs.

Scientists and engineers can license patents.

These sorts of ideas almost always start with individuals and very small teams and it all seems a world away from the 'big hitters' that our economic development people seem to favour. But these are where the world-changing ideas and businesses come from and I beleive Leicester has the all right raw materials for the sort of 'indie' scene that nurtures these.

I don't think the 'sector' approach is helpful here. Technology pervades all areas of life nowadays but try getting an app or a website off the ground without a graphic designer, marketeer or lawyer (not to mention the person who had the idea in the first place who could be from any industry.)

Local success stories like Jadu or CrowdLab (both technology-based but both born out Leicester's creative industry) are testament to this.


What do you call it?

Like Wiley, we kind-of have a naming issue. 'Intellectual Property' sounds like something that only a law firm would talk about, 'Tech' and 'Creative' are too skill-specific, 'Startups' can either mean Silicon Valley or just any new business. 'Innovation' is over-used by the public sector and has connotations of just tech/labs.

What's the right label for creative and innovative businesses that trade on their intellectual property or run scalable Silicon-Valley business models and who do not sell their time for money? Suggestions please...


What needs to be done?

1. Leicester City Council should prioritise getting a city centre co-working space over building Docks 2, 3, 4 and 5 or trying to build a cookie-cutter science park.

2. The LLEP need to come and meet the micro-businesses instead of hiding behind their dreadful Biz Gateway website - get out of City Hall guys!

3. Our universities need open their doors to the outside world and realise that they're not necessarily the best environment for getting businesses off the ground. Knowledge transfer is a two way street! 

4. Makers, Artists, Coders, Writers, Scientists, you need to plan your route to quitting the day job, build your own communities and lead our well-intentioned public sector supporters rather than expect them to build everything for you.

Charles Landry, author of The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators once described cities like Leicester as "places where good ideas come to die” - are we going to accept this label? 

Leicester Needs a Community Co-working Space

The time is right for Leicester to have a large city-centre co-working space.

Co-working spaces are large, mostly open-plan offices which provide somewhere for freelancers and early-stage entrepreneurs to work cheaply and without commitment. They are a common sight in cities across the World. As well as somewhere for people to work, they also provide a ‘village hall’ for a wider constituency of event organisers (whether involved in business or not.) They are typically open to everyone throughout the day, with evening and weekends access to paying members.

Impact Hub Islington

Support for the first couple of rungs of the entrepreneurial ladder (conceiving ideas and finding other people to work with) is patchy in Leicester as I have touched upon before. Public sector support has historically only kicked-in once someone has a business plan and is ready to commit to renting a proper office.

A co-working space would help fill that gap, creating a fertile environment where a diverse bunch of people from different backgrounds can mix, share ideas and plan enterprises. The potential as a vehicle for graduate retention through getting recent De Montfort University and University of Leicester graduates to stay in Leicester rather than brain-drain to London or elsewhere is significant. It also creates a nursery for new business which compliments existing provision like LCB, Dock, Makers yard and Phoenix which are aimed at more established businesses.

DMU’s Innovation Centre co-working space has been a success in terms of the actual facility and helpful support staff and there is a lot that can be learnt from it. However, the 9-5 opening hours are unworkable for anyone involved in a serious startup and the on-campus location creates a perception of belonging to DMU rather than the wider community.

Other venues such as LCB Depot, Phoenix and local coffee shops can work on a casual basis but they tend to be noisy, have patchy opening hours and aren’t big enough to achieve that ‘critical mass’ that lends itself to frequent serendipitous meetings with interesting people.

There are potential locations at Pioneer Park or Friars Mill but these sites are too far off the radar of students who would be a key potential user group.

Having nurtured Leicester’s startup community and also been involved with other groups such as Creative Coffee, it’s my belief that such a space needs to be situated within or near the triangle formed by Cultural Quarter – DMU – University of Leicester. The proximity of the railway station is also relevant for connections to London and other local cities.

My understanding is that co-working spaces tend to be comparatively low-cost re-fits compared to new build spaces such as Dock. They don’t need to be glamorous Grade-A office space, indeed the Berlin-style ‘shabby-chic’ can often be an attractor to the sorts of people who typically use them.

I don't know what the finance numbers look like but this feels like something that might need public sector funds to get off the ground but should fund the on-going costs itself through membership fees. This seems to be what happens elsewhere.

Having an independent organisation responsible for the day-to-day may also be desirable to avoid any financial dependency or ownership perception issues. It may be worth exploring some of the established franchises out there such as Impact Hub, WeWork, TechHub or Innovation Warehouse. It might also be worth looking at Antenna in Nottingham as a comparison with a similar-sized city.

I note that Leicester Hackspace are currently looking for a new venue and there is an obvious attraction to having them under the same roof as more software or design-orientated users.

This is not a particularly radical idea. There are hundreds of examples of such spaces in cities of a similar size to Leicester and worldwide and there are any number of franchises, models and providers from which best practice can be gleaned.

My personal interest is as A) a space to run events for the Leicester tech startup community which I organise and B) as a place to meet people with great ideas for win-win joint ventures for my web and app development business.

I have already had positively-received discussions with a number of organisations and groups including the two universities, the city council and the LLEP as well as the grass-roots business communities that I am involved in. If you're interested in being involved in this discussion with potential stakeholders then please drop me a line at ben@ultimateweb.co.uk

If you think a co-working space might be somewhere you would want to work yourself then I would encourage you to joing the new meetup group created by Edward Woolley from our local startup community: http://www.meetup.com/Leicester-Co-working/.

UPDATE 21/04/16: If you are interested in using a potential Leicester co-working space, please fill out this brief survey to help understand current demand: http://goo.gl/forms/QfZsAQ2q2p

UPDATE Autumn 2017: We now have a serious project underway to open a Leicester coworking space and are accepting sign-ups from prospective tenants: http://leicestercoworking.co.uk/.

20 Ways That Universities Can Encourage Enterprise

I’ve been working with universities for a number of years, watching how they wrestle with the increased pressure to ‘do business’. I’ve seen some first-rate ideas come from academics and go on to succeed as viable businesses and I’ve seen some dreadful ham-fisted attempts to ‘own’ business too.

Here’s my tech entrepreneur’s take on how universities can develop a more enterprising culture:-

1. Adopt a default position of laissez-faire on all “incidental” staff intellectual property. “Incidental” defined as not directly related to core research or “not what you were paid to discover”. You could make this conditional on said IP being declared to your organisation.
   
2. Distinguish between patentable and non-patentable ideas. Universities should certainly protect applicable ideas with patents and license them to the highest bidder but many highly viable business ideas are not protectable and trying to ‘own’ them is often likely to stifle them. Academics write books all the time and universities don’t make claims on their copyright so why should code or business plans be any different?
   
3. Keeping non-patentable ideas secret in order to protect them is usually a mistake. The chance of someone stealing a business idea is much lower than you think and sharing ideas with a wider constituency of trusted people is the very best way of getting valuable feedback, advice and introductions.
   
4. Clearly state IP and enterprise policy to staff rather than just tucking it away in employment contracts. Express it in a welcoming and supportive way (e.g. “if you’ve had an idea, we’ve got your back”) rather than treating it purely as the “possession” of the institution. An open hand can hold more than a clenched fist.
   
5. Do not assume that academic staff and students are incapable of functioning in business. This approach will undermine the inexperienced people and alienate the capable ones, risking the creation of a black market or losing people altogether.
   
6. Implement fast decision making on licensing. Some universities can take months to decide what should happen to a business idea — for many startups that’s enough time to build the product and start selling it! Be like Stanford and let experienced KTP staff make the call on it rather than having to run it by academic committees.
   
7. Operate a consensual, negotiated approach to equity or royalty shares as opposed to arbitrary or default percentage expectations. Every contributor to a business (staff, students, departments, the university, investors, external business people) should be rewarded fairly according to their contribution over the lifetime of a business. “The idea” is only one component of a successful business and hoarding ideas will yield 100% of nothing.
   
8. There are plenty of amazing outcomes for universities beyond just earning money from IP. These include economic and societal impact, learning opportunities for staff and students, closer relationships with host cities, wealth and job creation for the surrounding region, better graduate retention in the region plus the general reputational value to the university. Be like Stanford and seek the best outcome for ideas not just the institution’s pocket.
   
9. Become an Easy Access IP partner to allows companies and individuals free access to technologies so new products and services can be developed that will benefit society and the economy.
   
10. Publicise university IP and expertise in a searchable format to let the outside world know what you’ve got (hat tip to DMU deputy vice chancellor Professor Andy Collop.)
    
11. Business people are not all sharks intent on robbing you blind (any more than academics are all public-spirited saints!) Build close trusting relationships, especially with businesses in your local area and you will generate good karma that will be paid back for years to come.
    
12. Consider offering a special deal for businesses utilising university IP or expertise that locate near to your institution and/or employ university staff, students or graduates. Can you offer them free business accommodation, free legal advice or preferential consideration in IP rights deals? Establish a ‘special deal’ or a Bayh-Dole Act for your city.
    
13. Allow staff and students sabbaticals to start a business with the right to return guaranteed. This should be no more difficult to administer than maternity/paternity leave or industry placements and is far better than losing them altogether. Returning staff and students will bring back new experiences (whether they succeed or fail) that will enrich the university.
    
14. Host events like postgraduate research festivals or enterprise conferences off-campus and nearer the general public and business community to help expose what you can do.
    
15. Treat knowledge transfer as a two way street. Universities may be great and inventing new things but most often the best people to execute those ideas are off-campus. Attempts at wholly in-house “spin-offs” do not have a great success rate. Great ideas do not care about the badge of the institutions involved — they just need the right set of people to conceive and execute them.
    
16. Get local entrepreneurs involved in university life and build trust with the local business community. This is a far better way of nurturing ideas and businesses and can create the opportunity for the win-win for the whole regional economy.
    
17. Don’t assume that big high-profile companies are necessarily the best businesses to have on campus. You could be just conditioning your graduates to work for The Man when many could gain a far broader range of experience by working in smaller businesses and startups (including their own.) Consider the value of nurturing a homegrown Blackboard, Udacity, Dropbox or even a ParticiPoll (shameless plug!)
    
18. Successful business communities (especially innovative, creative and technology-orientated ones) tend to be loose networks whereas universities tend to be hierarchies. Don’t assume your rank in your organisation will be meaningful outside of it and don’t make outsiders have to wade through your bureaucracy to get things done.
    
19. Encourage or invest in local, off-campus co-working spaces, incubators and accelerators that create the right environments for ideas and skills-sharing between academics, students, local businesses and the wider public.
    
20. Recognise that enterprise is a culture not an academic subject. It is much more like research (especially methodology such as lean startup) than teaching and the only way to learn it is by doing it.
    

Startups in Leicester: How The Public Sector Can Help

Business support for innovative startups in Leicester is not focused on the right things and this symptomatic of a common misunderstanding of what a startup really is.

Public sector organisations often often assume that startups are just young SME companies. They also often end up supporting business services agencies rather than teams focussed on innovative and scalable business ideas.

As a result, support schemes often require startups to write business plans, incorporate, register for VAT, rent office space etc, before they have worked out a clear business model. At best, jumping through these hoops makes extra work for startup entrepreneurs when they should be focussed on prototyping and validating their product. At worst it can be a waste of everyone's time and money.

Young SMEs who are already establishing the paraphernalia of business (office, telephone number, business cards, etc) are certainly worthy of support but they are not really startups and their needs are quite different to startups.

SMEs tend to sell their time and expertise for money which tends to limit their ability to grow. Startups strive to create scalable products with a global reach like Facebook, Dropbox or Twitter. Typically startups derive their income from intellectual property, global sales or subscription-based income.

Again, absolutely nothing wrong with accommodating and nurturing business-to-business SMEs (I've run one such firm myself for the last 12 years) but they are less likely to create profound innovation or help turn your city into a thriving Tech City or Silicon Valley.


What Are Startups and How Can They Be Supported?

The reality is that a true startup is nothing more than an informal bunch of people with a wild idea and the enthusiasm to see where it can take them.

Stanford professor and Lean Methodology pioneer Steve Blank defines a startup as:-

"An organisation formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model".

These are very speculative organisations who are highly innovative but have a high 'failure' rate. These frequent 'failures' however do not mean bankruptcies and lay-offs - they mean quickly testing business ideas and gaining insight without spending lots of money or over-formalising. They are experiments not companies.

Such innovative organisations should not be pressurised into formalising their businesses prematurely but they are absolutely worthy of support.

Key things that startup entrepreneurs really need include:-

• Sources of inspiration for business ideas.
• Opportunities to meet diverse potential co-founders.
• Moral support and mentoring from peers.
• Informal access to experts in their field.
• Education on quickly validating business ideas and building prototypes (especially Lean Methodology.)

Above all, they need the support of an entrepreneurial ecosystem as championed by Brad Feld in his pioneering book Startup Communities, based on his experience in Boulder, Colorado. Feld is very clear that these need to be entrepreneur-led grass-roots communities rather than top-down public sector initiatives but that doesn't mean that the public sector has no place in an entrepreneurial ecosystem. It just requires a more nuanced, light-touch approach where the public sector feeds rather than leads entrepreneurial activity.

Here are some examples of ways in which the public sector in Leicester could help startups:-

• Fund cheap, large-scale, low-commitment co-working space close to the universities and cultural quarter but let startup-friendly organisations run things.
• Make it easier for community organisers to access free or cheap event venues (especially in the evenings) to spread knowledge.
• Promote existing startup activities to help accumulate a critical mass of participants. 
• Build better bridges with the universities to break the still-present town-and-gown mentality.
• End the artificial pigeon-holing and separation of 'technology' and 'creative' businesses - they need each other.
• Open public sector data to the public to support the civic hack community.

Leicester already has a small but flourishing startup community which I helped found at the beginning of 2013 based on Brad Feld's wisdom. We've gone from a couple of meet-ups a month to typically 5-10 with a wide range of activities including startup weekends, hackathons, seminars and mentoring sessions. We also have the beginnings of a base camp for activities in the form of accelerator and co-working space Incubate Leicester which opened its doors earlier in May 2014.

If Leicester aspires to produce its own Facebook or be a Silicon Valley then it needs to prioritise developing an entrepreneurial culture over ploughing into expensive copycat science parks or giving perks to SMEs. The good news is that raw materials are all around us with two great universities, a cosmopolitan population and a flourishing creative business community.

We've already had some enthusiastic, albeit limited, support from Leicester City Council, University of Leicester and De Montfort University, particularly with hosting startup events. However, there is a lot more potential for support in the way of facilities and activities which focus on informality, serendipity and the growth of the ecosystem.

Turning Off Traffic Lights - Part 2

A couple of years ago I blogged about the counterintuitive idea of removing traffic lights to reduce traffic congestion, accidents, pollution & road clutter.

More recently we have seen the results of the fantastic traffic re-engineering scheme in Poynton, Cheshire which shows how much better roads can be for all users.

This morning I was lucky enough to witness an outage of the traffic lights at the junction of Fosse Road and Hinckley Road in Leicester (one of the first junctions to have lights I believe).

Did this lead to crashes, road rage and general chaos?

Absolutely not. What I saw was a textbook example of how Leicester drivers can behave in a sensible and conscientious way when faced with an ambiguous traffic situation. Drivers spotted the lights were out, approached the junction with care and filtered off politely, stopping to allow nervous pedestrians to cross too. In addition, the typical queues that I witness at this junction every morning on my walk to work were completely absent.

Here's a rather shaky phone video of what I witnessed:-



Update 12/06/13 - here's how the junction is at the same time of day with the traffic lights working:-

City of Culture Bid: Looking Beyond Diversity

I was delighted to learn that the City Mayor has given the green light to Leicester's bid to be the 2017 City of Culture.

However, I already have nagging doubts about the direction this might be taking.

It's the flogging of the word 'diversity' that concerns me. We've made diversity our official civic religion in Leicester but I think we should place more emphasis to the ways in which we mix to give us the best chance of winning City of Culture.

Let's be clear, my wife is of a different race, religion and nationality to me and we have two lovely mixed-race daughters. My life is richer and more interesting as a result. I also think it's absolutely essential to continue the battle for equality so that that the diverse people in this city can all feel equally represented and respected. But diversity alone is just a statistic and having diversity doesn't necessarily mean harmony or cultural significance. It's what we do with it that counts.

Leicester has done something with it, demonstrated by the extent of blending, mixing and intermarriage between different groups of people. This is something to celebrate because A) it is somewhat unique to Leicester and B) is a living testament to the efforts in race relations and community cohesion that this city is rightly famous for.

I took my five year old (mixed Anglo-Singaporean-Indian) daughter to Chinese New Year party at one of her schoolmate's houses the other day. There were around 10 children there and all but one of them were mixed race. This is backed up by recent census data and it's high likely that mixed race people will become the majority in places like Leicester in the next 50-100 years.

Even our existing 'monocultural' festivals such as the Caribbean Carnival, Diwali celebrations and St Georges Festival are becoming increasingly mixed events, both culturally and racially. This is one of those exciting times when new culture emerges.

To me, mixing is one of the most culturally significant things about Leicester but it rarely gets much attention because it tends to happen quietly and without fanfare in our homes, workplaces, schools, etc. Also, those who participate in mixing are not one single cultural or political group whose voices get heard clearly.

Regarding the City of Culture bid, it's absolutely right that Leicester should bid for this and I think we have a great chance of winning. But I also think we need to do more than just celebrating our individual immigrant groups - something which was born out of a desire to welcome newcomers (noble though that is) -  and put more emphasis on new home-grown, hybrid and shared culture.

Already, the first item posted on the Leicester bid's Facebook page was the question "Who is your favourite international artist? Who would you invite to Leicester when we become City of Culture in 2017?" To me, this question implies that authenticity and value can only be acquired from outside and suggests an underlying lack of confidence or awareness of the richness of our home-grown talent. Any bidding city with enough money can import performers from across the World but then there's a big risk that the whole exercise will degenerate into an unoriginal 'World Music' kludge rather than something that truly represents us.

Instead, I believe we should be uncovering and celebrating the culturally unique things that our city has produced (through cultural mixing or otherwise) - the food, music, art, science, sport, business, language, humour. etc. If diversity is to be a selling point then we should be looking at how other mixed cities like New York or Rio de Janeiro celebrate their collective uniqueness not just their ethnic statistics.

Let's celebrate the fruits of diversity, not just the facts of it.

Here are just a few suggested examples of the sorts of mixing that Leicester has produced or nurtured:-

• Interfaith sport (such as the Imams vs Clerics cricket match in 2006)
• Gok Wan (Anglo-Chinese heritage)
• White Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims
• Laurel Aitken ("Godfather of Ska")
• Welcoming a new mosque
• Cornershop
• Curry pubs (e.g. Paddy's Marten Inn or the Rifle Butts)
• Engelbert Humperdinck (Anglo-Indian heritage)
• The Empire (formerly St Mark's church - award-winning restoration by a Leicester Muslim businessman)
• Bali Rai  (author, inspired by Sue Townsend and Roald Dahl)
• Ajmer Singh Mataru (first British policeman to wear a turban)
• Jadoo (movie release imminent)
• Ju-Lees Asian Veg stall at Leicester Market (English market traders who can speak Hindi and Gujarati to their customers)
• Riaz Khan (former Baby Squad casual)
• Please suggest more...!

Help Me Build a Tech Startup Community in Leicester

Last year I blogged about the City Mayor's Knowledge Economy Summit which aimed to kick-start discussions on how Leicester can drive prosperity though technology and innovation.

Stakeholder (noun): person or organisation with a vested interest who has to be consulted for political purposes but generally gets in the way of progress.

Cynicism aside, I did leave this meeting wondering what such an event really offered for me as the owner of a small business with entrepreneurial ambitions. Back then it was hard to put my finger on what was missing and my original post could only express a few hunches.

Then I read Startup Communities by Brad Feld and had a bit of an epiphany. Feld's book details precisely how he helped make Boulder, Colorado one of the best locations in the world for start-ups.

Put simply, Brad Feld's 'Boulder Thesis' is that it is entrepreneurs who must lead a knowledge economy and that everyone else (local government, universities, chambers of commerce, investors) can only feed it.

Suddenly the pervasive 'top-down' mentality that I had seen amongst politicians, local government, Quangos and indeed some businesses became blindingly obvious. It's not that these people are a 'problem' - far from it - most are extremely supportive but they are not entrepreneurs and their agenda and the time they take to do things is just different. Entrepreneurs are people who want to start things yesterday whereas local government tends to move at glacial pace and is stuck in a 5-year re-election calendar.

But entrepreneurs do not need to wait for innovation centres to be built or for matched-funding for their projects. Not that these things aren't welcome but they tend to follow enterprise rather than stimulate it.

What Leicester does have in great abundance is diverse, clever people from our businesses though to our universities. Indeed Leicester puts Brad Feld's hometown of Boulder, Colorado (population 100k, one university, low diversity) in the shade when it comes to raw materials.

Following Feld's 'Boulder Thesis', what I want to create is a business community which encourages collaboration, joint ventures, start-up companies and generally helping each other out.

Leicester's existing creative business community is also a source of inspiration although collaboration there tends to be based more on traditional client-supplier relationships than a true start-up community.

Here are some ideas for the sorts of activities I am in the process of organising for 2013:-

• Regular networking sessions for entrepreneurs (e.g. Open Coffee format)
• Seminars and lectures from entrepreneurs and mentors
• Civic hackathons and competitions
• Mentoring sessions from business experts

This will require a change of mindset from some people. It requires the courage to share potentially marketable ideas with other people, openness to creating joint ventures or spin-off companies, the ability to embrace rather than stigmatise failure and a general willingness to help each other out. It's not about traditional touting of one's business for a fee.

If this sounds if interest to you or you think you could contribute to getting things started then I'd love to hear from you. Email me at ben@ultimateweb.co.uk

Update 17/12/2012: I'm running a Christmas Meetup on Wednesday 19th December to get this underway: http://leicesterstartups2012.eventbrite.co.uk/ - if you're a startup or involved with startups then please join us.

Update 20/12/2012: Here are my presentation slides from last night's inaugural Leicester Startups event: http://www.ultimateweb.co.uk/leicestertechstartups.pdf

Update 16/01/2013: Next event is an Open Coffee networking session at Phoenix Cafe Bar on Wednesday 23rd Jan at 10am which will then happen fortnightly. Sign up here: http://opencoffeeclub040113.eventbrite.co.uk/

FINAL UPDATE: Leicester Tech Startups is now a thriving group - full details of events and activities at www.leicesterstartups.com

Leicester on the Map, Literally.

Leicester South MP Jonathan Ashworth took David Cameron to task in parliament last week when he apparently got Leicester and Birmingham muddled up. Mr Ashworth's response was to send Mr Cameron a map with Leicester and Birmingham clearly marked on it.

Whether this was a case of genuine geographical ignorance or just an attempt to duck a question remains to be seen but it did remind me just how much Leicester gets overlooked in so many situations.

I believe there is a perennial failing with much of Leicester's public relations efforts, namely that despite our many USPs, the vast majority of British people do not have the foggiest idea where the city is.

Terry Wogan famously nailed this when he described Leicester as The Lost City. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that people think Leicester is much further North, perhaps because of our reknowned Indian-origin population. How are we going to attract investment from London-based companies, for example, if they think we are just up the road from Bradford?

Jonathan Ashworth is right to get a map out but we need to do this on a much grander scale. before we can harp on about how great we are we need to first make sure that people know where we are located.

I would like to see our promotional agencies commission a survey of people in key British cities (and maybe even some foreign ones?) to see what proportion of people know where Leicester is located. I'm literally talking about getting people to stick a pin in a map. I believe this would not only highlight the challenge we face but also give a useful benchmark for future public relations work.

I think this would bring into focus just how invisible Leicester is, despite being Britain's tenth largest city. Campaigns to put Leicester 'on the map' should worry about the literal meaning of this as much as the metaphorical one.

For a start, we should tackle the absence of promotional signage on the road gateways to our city which epitomises Terry Wogan's characterisation of a city "constantly mentioned in traffic reports but 'otherwise unknown to mankind'". In addition, our companies and organisations should be encouraged to stick a location map on all their promotional literature like the one we put on the back of our company brochure:-

Broadband Connectivity in Leicester - Feedback from Businesses Sought

I’ve been invited to attend a City Council hosted workshop called “Leicester’s Digital Future” on Wednesday 10th October and would like to have input from Leicester's business community about broadband and other Internet connectivity in the city.

Text of the invite:-


"This issue is clearly vital to the prosperity of the City and of all our citizens. New technologies and capacities have the power to radically impact on how our public services are organised and delivered and on private sector competitiveness. Whilst our city has benefited in the past from quality infrastructure, we need now to be thinking collectively about our futures. The session will cover how current government policy to encourage superfast broadband etc may impact on the city and the county. It will review current broadband provision within the city, note the pipeline investment anticipated, take the temperature from the business community on this issue and start to discuss how the city might benefit from advances in new technologies. It is hoped that a specific outcome will be some ideas for how we need to organise ourselves across both across the public, private and voluntary sectors."


My initial thoughts, based partly on my experience with running web development agency Ultimateweb, are as follows:-

1. In terms of standard broadband the city centre isn't too bad - agree?
2. Some outlying suburbs struggle to get good broadband speeds.
3. Rural areas often have very poor coverage which could affect the ability for city-based firms to sell services that rely on fast connections.
4. Is poor broadband putting off inward investment (cf. residential broadband being a consideration for home buyers)?
5. Will wire/cable delivered broadband will become obsolete in the near future? Would it be better to concentrate on getting the next generation of wireless/4G/SuperWiFi connectivity?
6. Is city-wide free WiFi like Swindon attempted anything more than a gimmick?
7. Is the city too reliant on a small number of incoming backbone pipes? Are we resilient or are we too reliant on pipes to London, etc?
8. What are the likely digital services that businesses and their customers will use in the future and what sorts of capacities will they require?
9. Why did Leicester miss out on the Everything Everywhere 4G rollout when smaller cities such as Derby & Hull are getting it? Are we lobbying effectively for early access to new Internet connectivity services?

If good Internet connectivity is essential to your business and you have any strong feelings about this issue then please get in touch or leave comments below.

Connecting Leicester

Fantastic to read about Connecting Leicester, which appears to be a joined-up, heritage-led approach to regenerating much of Leicester City Centre.

I do hope this marks the end of the piecemeal or blank slate approaches to development which viewed each plot of land in isolation and viewed any development as good development.

I do worry about how much of this will actually happen - we've had more than our fair share of grand schemes that have come to nothing - but it's got a lot going for it.

Do go and visit the website or one of the roadshows some of which are in some fantastic buildings such as Wyggeston's House on Applegate (which I'm embarrassed to say I had not set foot in until yesterday):-

Building a Time Machine

Most people (and that includes most residents) see Leicester primarily as a red brick and concrete city and their sense of its history is anchored to that. Much of the earlier historic built environment has been lost or is fragmented and it’s understandably difficult to visualise how the fabric of the city looked in the past.

As well as the fact that Leicester’s hidden history is fascinating, we miss out on a huge opportunity to foster civic pride and a better sense of civic identity.

DMU academic, Dr Douglas Cawthorne’s new AHRC funded Digital Building Heritage project offers a fantastic chance to visualise the past both through digital modelling like the Virtual Roman Leicester project and also digital locative tools to explore archived media.

We know there are terabytes of photos, videos, sketches, audio and texts squirrelled away in academic departments, heritage groups’ archives and in the homes of residents.

My dream would be to collate and present this data in exciting, interactive formats that will allow citizens to peel back and browse the layers of the city’s history. I’m particularly excited about the idea of being able to do this within a real-life building (call it a “museum” if you like) as well as on devices and web browsers.

Technology to harness and reveal this data in exciting ways (Virtual Reality, 3D Modelling, Augmented Reality, Locative Media, etc.) is already mature and straightforward to harness. What is more difficult is opening the silos of data and getting people to share what they have.

My colleagues at Leicester Civic Society are stoked about this project and we would encourage anyone with an interest in Leicester’s history (particularly those with data to contribute) to step forward and contact Douglas.

Finally, I think Digital Building Heritage Project isn’t a very engaging name so any suggestions for a catchy project name would be welcomed. My suggestion is “Leicester Time Machine” which I think lends itself to a tardis-like physical venue that could have the feeling of being bigger on the inside than out.

Networking, innovation and why we all need to get out a bit more often

I attended the Knowledge Economy Summit last week at my alma mater the University of Leicester. Holding the event was pledge number 85 in the new City Mayor's 100 days programme.

Attended by a mixture of academics and businesspeople, the principle aim of the meeting was to discuss how the relationship between the two could be enhanced so that Leicester can develop a real innovation culture in the same way that it has in the creative and cultural arena.

It was a constructive and friendly event but what was apparent from this is just how fragmented the connections between various organisations, sectors and individuals are. Yesterday's event is not the first time I have witnessed this. I recall the early days of the City Centre Management Board where it transpired that some of the different retail traders groups barely new each other - not a great place to start for promoting the city's retail offering. I've also seen it with the heritage bodies who, for a long time had very little communication despite overwhelming overlaps in their aims.

I don't see this as necessarily a bad reflection on Leicester people, I have no reason to believe they are inherently more parochial or tribal than anywhere else. However, I do think that a variety of factors including political leadership problems, old boy networks, recent immigration, high turnover of residents have probably all played their part in keeping people in little pockets rather than working together.

What I have seen is when people do get together and the ice breaks then the results can be striking. The successes of city centre management are a case in point as are the increasing collaboration of the heritage groups to put heritage and history firmly back on the agenda.

The diversity of people in Leicester can stop being just a 'raw material' and instead be a major asset if people are willing to cross boundaries and trust each other. The more networking and mixing opportunities such as last week's event the better. As I said in the meeting, it's important to remember that the 'soft' networking is just as important as specific goal-orientated meetings between say academics and businesses. All of the major cultural and industrial movements from the Renaissance to Silicon Valley happened when large groups of people from different disciplines got the opportunity to mingle.

Here are some off-the-cuff ideas for kick-starting an innovation culture in Leicester:-

• Take the "build networks not destinations" mantra and apply it to the innovative people in the city. If we build the network we will also become the destination. (hat tip also to Dr Alan Cann of University of Leicester)
• Hold, encourage or promote regular events which include 'soft networking' like Cafe Scientifique, Creative Coffee Club or Skeptics in the Pub and don't try to take over what existing groups already do well.
• Host lectures and seminars by world class speakers from innovative businesses, organisations and universities a bit like Amplified Leicester or TED (could we tempt TED into running a conference in Leicester?).
• Create a newspaper, newsletter, blog or blogroll of innovative projects, products and research happening in Leicester a bit like Leicester Shire Promotions' Big It Up campaign or even my little city PR project Leicester On The Map.
• Celebrate successful Leicester innovators and encourage them to stay and invest in the city.
• Get participants used to sharing ideas rather than hoarding them, unnecessary non-disclosure agreements and patents can stifle innovation.
• Discourage non-competition clauses in employment contracts as per Californian law
• If money is to be spent on new buildings and facilties, build networking, collaboration and serendipitous encounters into the fabric of the building (compare New Walk Centre with LCB Depot!).
• Create open LinkedIn, Facebook or Google groups for people interested in promoting innovation to keep the conversation and connections going after face-to-face meetings.
• Smash the separation between science and arts - have scientists and technology people in the LCB Depot and artists in the forthcoming Leicester Innovation Centre (and stop calling areas names like 'Science Park' or 'Cultural Quarter'). Scientists and artists are both creative and innovative - think like Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci.
• Get help from outside. Bring in people who have personal experience of places that have succeeded and remember that sometimes 'stakeholders' can be handbrakes.
• Read this book: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steve Johnson which stresses how innovation comes when people interact in 'coral reef' communities rather than from the genius of solitary individuals.

Leicester is a bit like a party with bunch of really interesting and different people who don't yet know each other very well. Whether this is a crying shame or a wonderful opportunity for innovation depends on whether your glass is half full or half empty!

Critical Mass Cycle Rides

I went to my first Critical Mass Cycle Ride in Leicester a couple of weeks ago. These are held on the last Friday of the month and a lot of fun as well as a great way for cyclists to own the streets. Despite being smaller, these are arguably better events than SkyRide as they are entirely grass roots events on the open road.

Turn-outs at the Leicester rides are growing and are approaching the 200 riders mark which is amazing. Here are some ideas for making it even bigger and better:-

1. Invite newly elected mayor Peter Soulsby to attend
2. Break a record for largest critical mass or most riders in costumes.
3. Get a celebrity along
4. Do a charity fund raiser
5. Give it a blog and get that auto-posted on Facebook & Twitter (I can help with that!)
6. Do a recruitment prize/bounty for whoever brings the most newbies.
7. Buy all newbies a drink at the end
8. Run a weekend ride to attract more families with kids.
9. Run a Critical Mass ride in conjuction with another event

The next ride is on 27th May 2011, meeting at 6pm at Orton Square beside Curve.

Questions for Mayor Candidates

I'm going to tonight's mayoral 'Big Debate' at DMU which will hopefully be more enlightening than the damp squib put on by the BBC at Curve last week.

Below are some of my ideas for questions.

Which one(s) shall I ask if I get the opportunity? Does anyone have any other suggestions?

1. People in the county look down on Leicester and outsiders don't even know where it is. What will you do to solve Leicester's public relations problem?

2. Why did it take an EDL riot to bounce us into celebrating what we all have in common?

3. Why do we invest so much time and money on new stuff whilst letting our existing stuff decay?

4. Decisions are made largely behind closed doors and public consultations happen after the deal is done. What would you do to end the cult of secrecy in Leicester local government?

5. Mixed raced children are the third largest birth group in Leicester. Do you think Leicester's cultural agenda reflects this properly?

6. Why is civic pride so lacking in Leicester and what will you do about it?

7. What would you do to encourage equality for all road users rather than priority for cars?

8. Do you think faith schools lead to more or less social harmony?

9. What will you do to end the "yes to anything" approach to urban planning?

10. Leicester aspires to retain graduates from our two universities. Why then are we allowing undergraduates to become increasingly isolated in 'student ghettos' surrounding the universities?

How to Rate a Mayor?

I've just been following an interesting Twitter conversation thread between local politicians and Leicester Mercury reporters about how the elected Mayor's salary should be set. It struck me that almost any salary figure you pluck out of thin air will seem arbitrary because there aren't many comparable roles and being a politician is just altogether 'different' from other jobs.

What seems right to me is that the Mayor should give value for money and one way of assessing this would be some fundamental Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure against.

So class, for your homework I would like you to suggest suitable KPIs for the Mayor of a large diverse city. You have until May 5th to hand in your work. Here are some suggestions:-

• School results
• Rates/tax receipts
• Life expectancy of citizens
• Average travel time to work

Turning Off Traffic Lights

A chap called Martin Cassini is trying to convince councils that the secret to saving our roads from pollution, gridlock and accidents is to turn off traffic lights. Sounds crazy? Have a look at his piece on BBC Newsnight from a couple of years ago:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/7187165.stm
(watch the report video clip)

After a small but successful pilot at a junction in Portishead he came within a whisker of getting Bristol City Council to trial this but they lost their nerve yet this sort of thing has been shown to work in a number of European towns and cities.

This idea may not be a panacea but any potential reduction in congestion, pollution, accidents, fuel consumption, roadside paraphernalia and daft cycle lanes has got to be worth exploring. What's particularly compelling about this is that it avoids the knee-jerk and hypocritical 'war on motorists' which much of current green transport rhetoric seems to involve. Instead, all road users are treated as equals.

Could 'Environment City' Leicester be the place to properly pioneer this, perhaps under the auspices of a bold new elected Mayor?

More details of Martin Cassini's campaign here:-
http://www.fitroads.com/
http://www.facebook.com/#!/FiTRoads
http://twitter.com/FiTRoads

Leicester Webcams

Search for Leicester webcams and the only thing you'll find are the Jamcams on the BBC website (click on the dots on the map to launch them - exciting stuff I'm sure everyone would agree!)

Surely we can do better than this? It doesn't exactly help disabuse outsiders' perceptions of a drab featureless city where nothing happens.

Here's some suggestions for better locations:-

Clocktower
Highcross
Castle Yard
Orton Square
Guildhall
Town Hall Square
New Walk
Whole City (from Bradgate Park maybe?)
Grand Union Canal
DMU/UoL Campuses
Belgrave Road

Any other suggestions?