On Monday morning I gave a short talk at the SheffEX tradeshow, as part of a conference session called “The Future of Business in Sheffield”. Also speaking at the session were former Sports Minister, and now strategic advisor to the Nuclear AMRC, Richard Cayborn, Richard Wright, the executive director of the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce, Richard Jones, the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of Sheffield, and business coach and consultant Andy Hanselman who introduced the audience to a group of impressive young entrepreneurs he has been working with.

it was an interesting session, and a good opportunity to strengthen relationships between the digital sector and the broader business community in the city, and especially the Advanced Manufacturing Park and all the related activity around it and the new Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District. I very much look forward to carrying on those conversations and enabling more connection between firms in both sectors.

Anyway, here are my notes to show (digressions notwithstanding) what I spoke about:

I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about our digital industries, what a year 2015 has been, and what we are looking forward to in 2016.

Firstly, I suspect that 2015 may come to be seen as quite a watershed year.

It is the year that Sheffield Digital was founded of course, and I’ll talk more about our work later, but as well as a local association, it is also the year that Tech North was founded as the northern arm of Tech City UK, tasked with building the digital component of the government’s Northern Powerhouse strategy.

Perhaps as important as this, though, is that we have seen the arrival of two major employers in the digital sector. Sky Bet, who are building a development capability of around 200 people, and Home Office Digital who are building one of at least 100. These are high-tech, high-value jobs that, according to this year’s Tech Nation report, each supports more than five other jobs in the wider economy.

The recruitment drives of these two employers are changing the landscape locally, as senior talent is drawn out of our existing firms, and salaries are driven upwards, forcing those firms to hire and train up less experienced people, providing opportunities for emerging talent and enhancing the talent pool. And is also drawing talented people up from London and from other parts of the North – people who have told me they have moved partly because believe that moving to Sheffield will now not negatively affect their career progression, as there are now enough people here working at the cutting edge of digital design and software development to not regress in comparison to London and other major cities.

I can’t underestimate how important this is.

The digital sector in Sheffield is burgeoning. In addition to backfilling people, a lot of our firms are growing on top of that and there are many open positions. We are working with the community to make these jobs more visible and to aggregate data about them, and with Tech North to feed in jobs data alongside the other northern regions.

And naturally a big focus for us as well is training and skills. On the one hand we are working with the LEP’s Skills Bank, the Universities, the College, the UTCs and other local providers to make training fit for purpose for our digital firms. And on the other, we are mapping the skills picture to give employers a simple view of all the ways they can attract and nurture talent, and how they will be supported in doing so.

Excellent new facilities like the new media centre at Hillborough College, and the new UTC2 with it’s Computing specialism are tremendous assets for us to have in this regard.

In addition, I think that next year is also going to be characterised by grass-roots learning as computing becomes more embedded in school curricula, a whole series of opportunities for learning are being made available, from the expansion of after-school code clubs, coder dojos, to Django Girls, and the Cafe and Generation Code events that teach whole families to code together.

This grass-roots aspect of the industry is crucial, and it is a key focus for us to make sure the ecosystem of grassroots organisers and volunteers is healthy and well supported. There are more than 20 regular monthly technology meetups in this city, covering a very broad range of technologies, and it is these meetings that allow interested people from across the experience spectrum to meet and exchange knowledge and know-how. This is where much of the talent and ideas come from that will create businesses and prosperity for this city in the near future.

The best example of this is perhaps Sheffield’s digital maker movement, where grassroots organisations such as Access Space, and more recently Sheffield Hardware Hackers, and the new ‘making shop’ Makers on Abbeydale Road, are exploring what new small-scale digital manufacturing and Internet of Things technology is capable of, and empowering communities around those capabilities.

2016 is the Year of Making here in Sheffield, and we are looking forward to our digital makers showcasing their craft and work across many disciplines.

We would very much like to use that opportunity to bring the whole of the local digital making scene together, with capabilities being developed at both universities, and in our neighbourhoods across the city as a legacy of the Sheffield Community Networks initiative, as well as the new Maker Hub sited at Castle House, which in April was awarded £3.5m to develop by the Chancellor to boost the cities ability to combine manufacturing and digital technology together.

One of the major takeaways from this year’s Tech Nation report (and I should point out that the surveying for next year’s report has been conducted and that more than twice as many Sheffield firms responded as last year, which has also served well to raise our city’s profile), is that while this city creates very profitable firms, it doesn’t create enough of them. And in addition, of all the new firms created in the city, the proportion of technology firms is very low.

Startups are therefore extremely important, and it was therefore hugely exciting to see so many young Sheffield firms in Tech North’s Northern Stars competition. Northern Stars was set up this year as a major showcase for northern start ups to reach the attention of London-based and international investors, and involved local competitions in 7 northern cities, before 23 teams were invited to the finals in Manchester a couple of weeks ago. Of those 23 teams, seven were from Sheffield – the largest contingent, along with Manchester, of any single city. And of those 7 firms, three were selected to be among the winning ten – Airstoc, Receptive and In-Part. Honourary mentions to Pimoroni, Deliverd, Foodbank App and Polen.

In addition, the regular Startup Weekends run by the enterprise unit at Sheffield University has produced many successes, including most recently Bro! and Olofo who are both currently competing in the Global Startup Battle.

Northern Stars will run again next year, and hopefully our native accelerator DotForge will return to the city as well – it is currently running a social-tech round in Manchester, followed by a health-tech round in Leeds, starting in January.

In addition, these initiatives have been joined this year by a new accelerator, called Sheffield SmartLab, which is a joint initiative by Sheffield City Council and Amey/Ferrovial. The lab is intended to attract innovative projects to address challenges the city faces – in the first running of the initiative, those challenges relate to adult social care and increasing the vibrancy of our high streets. The Lab has attracted ten projects – five seeking to address each challenge area and they will be looking to pilot their solutions here in the city in 2016.

So, we are looking forward to 2016 with a huge amount of positivity, there are many specific events to look forward to, but most of all we are looking forward to developing the city’s offer to digital people, and the ecosystem of digital firms. If there are two things I would wish for most, they would probably be this:

Firstly, we are aware that there have been discussions this year around establishing and promoting the Sheaf Valley as a tech-corridor – we think this would represent a tremendous boost to our sector and would support such an initiative however we can.

Secondly, we want our industry to be more inclusive. Both towards Sheffield communities, and the city’s population, but also with regard to the rest of the business community, authorities and policy makers.

Most of all we are looking forward to bringing people together, we can reach so many more people and do so much more good when we combine our efforts effectively. This is exemplified by our upcoming Christmas Party, which is a joint event between The Showroom Workstation, Business Sheffield, Tech North and Sheffield Digital. One huge event is so much better than 4 separate small ones!

Thank you.