Our recommendations, along with those from other sector bodies and skills providers from across the South Yorkshire economy, have now been reviewed and the SYSA has published the draft LSIP, including a “Roadmap for Delivering Change”, which summarises what the SYSA intends to do in order to address the challenges it has uncovered. The background

In South Yorkshire, the LSIP is being led by Doncaster Chambers, in partnership with the Chambers of Barnsley, Rotherham and Sheffield. Evidence provided by employers about their skills needs, as well as engagement with skills providers, will enable the skills system to be more responsive to local challenges and opportunities, and better equip learners to

We don’t want to focus on sales opportunities or being sold to, but instead on engagement, collaboration and knowledge exchange with other digital business leaders in the city. We want to foster conversations about how our digital tech and media firms can work together for their benefit and the benefit of the city. Here’s a

I joined the steering committee that had been put together to develop the idea of a Sheffield based UTC in 2012. This was after Richard Wright, then chief executive of the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce, came to a meeting of the Creative and Digital Industries Sector Group I was hosting. He wanted participants for a

We wanted something that we could send out physically every three months so that there is a continual drum-beat saying hey, pay attention to us, there’s amazing things going on here, and Sheffield might be different than you think it is! It was amazing to hold the first ever version in our hands in the

The term “Digital” is used in many places throughout the plan, but we feel it is often used too loosely and should be qualified wherever it appears, in order to clarify the specific aspect of ‘digital’ under discussion. In order to help to better define terms, we have written a short primer and glossary for

The purpose of the Showcase events is to get together to celebrate digital products, services, campaigns and experiences that are made in Sheffield and to introduce audiences both online and off to the people who made them. People who attend learn about our tech industry across the whole range of markets and application areas, and

From Triple-A video games, to media platforms for inmates; from major reality TV series to immersive data visualisations; from engineering in virtual reality to places where kids can build things from cardboard and code, we’ve been warmed and inspired by the fantastic things that are produced right here on our doorstep. You can see these

The Meta-Meetup is an opportunity for event organisers to meet and exchange tips, collaborate and pool resources in order to make each other’s events more successful. Many of the meetups are ‘tech meetups’, but not all – the meta-meetup is open to anyone who organises regular events around particular topics or for specific communities in

When we set up Sheffield Digital back in 2015, one of the very first things we wanted to do was to bring together all the tech-related events that happen in Sheffield into a single calendar we could publish. The Sheffield Geeks community had already been using the Open Tech Calendar to curate a local meet-up calendar,

The purpose of the Showcase events is to shine a light on the things that are produced in Sheffield’s digital tech industry across the whole range of markets and application areas. It’s a regular opportunity to get together to celebrate the people and teams who are doing great work. People who attend learn about what

Sheffield has a long history of computing and applied software development stretching back decades. Indeed, The University of Sheffield was one of the very first educational institutions in the world to offer Software Engineering as an undergraduate degree in the 1980s, and the city has been fertile ground for collaborations between academia and industry in

Economic Figures Some of the statistic we use are from public sources, but others are original pieces of analysis compiled for us by Dr Andrew Johnston at Sheffield Business School. The 2018 Tech Nation Report estimated the total number of people engaged in digital technology roles in the Sheffield and Rotherham tech cluster at 22,034.

Here are a link to Coadec‘s guidance document, along with a recording of Dom’s presentation and the Q&A panel with additional contributions from Paul Driver from DCMS, Kathleen O’Donnell from Fragomen and Glenn Jacques from BRM Solicitors. The briefing Document: No deal: Guide for Startups (Coadec, 2019) Dom Hallas’ briefing Q&A Panel Contact For further

We cover 4 engagements in this September update: A First Tuesday Business Breakfast at C/M/S. A Sheffield Digital Board Meeting. An economy.SHF meeting. A Sheffield Hallam University Department of Computing Industrial Advisory Board meeting. Some context… We have four main objectives when we engage in these fora: Improve the opportunities for business and individuals in

Briefing for the local Tech sector Attend this briefing to find out about the key issues that will impact tech and digital companies in the event of a no deal outcome and what you can do to make sure that your business is fully prepared for all eventualities. Areas of focus will include steps to

The Digital Showcases are for industry pros and the general public alike – the format is similar to a talk show, with guests invited on stage to explain their projects by showing the work and process with images or short videos. The host is our own Chris Dymond, who will ask questions to delve into

The purpose of the Showcase events is to shine a light on the things that are produced in Sheffield’s digital tech industry across the whole range of markets and application areas. Together we celebrate the people and teams who are doing great work and we educate people about what our tech industry is all about,

The Digital Showcases are for industry pros and the general public alike – the format is similar to a talk show, with guests invited on stage to explain their projects by showing the work and process with images or short videos. The host is our own Chris Dymond, who will ask questions to delve into

This is a guest post written by Ar’ City festival director, Zak Ahmed from youth learning agency AALFY, who explains what it’s all about and how to get involved. More than half the world’s population now lives in cities, yet, the conversation about how cities grow is often focused on policy and technology rather than

Qualification process Once again, Sheffield is hosting a qualifying round of the Global WER Contest. The WER European Open will take place on the 27th and 28th July at the University of Sheffield’s Octagon Theatre. 90 kids from all over the UK will be competing, along with teams from China, Turkey and Mexico. They will

Much of the digital work created here, from new software platforms to marketing campaigns, video games to art installations, is recognised around the world but little known in its home city – our Showcase series brings this work to a wider local audience. The event was once again held in association with The Platform –

In each of our Showcase events we invite 4 or 5 individuals or groups who are responsible for producing significant digital work to the stage to tell us about their achievements. We’ve decided to change the format somewhat from the first event back in November, and instead of 10 minute presentations, we are asking presenters

In pursuit of this, we now have a plan in place, along with a small pot of seed funding from Sheffield City Council, to get a prototype off the ground and help us to produce the first two issues. In order to do this, we need some design help and are looking to partner with

This is a guest post from Jono Kirk. Jono is a Sheffield-based tech enthusiast, childminder and boxing instructor. Get in touch with him on Twitter at: @elastos_sheff The group is for blockchain enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and developers interested to learn more about the new secure, decentralised “Internet 3.0”. Let’s talk about smart contracts, DApps, the internet

This is a summary of all the information he gathered there – it’s perhaps not for the general interest, but if you’re an individual or firm interested in getting involved in computing education, it could be invaluable. –– Chris It was a great opportunity to meet people who are working to improve the teaching of

Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe to the RSS feed The WEP has been a global competition since 2013, and these Sheffield kids are the first to represent the UK in the world finals, and it’s amazing to hear them talk to so passionately about their work and the competition. Winning their spot

We really want more of the great digital work that gets done in our city to be known about and celebrated more widely, especially by young people who might consider choosing a career in the industry. From new software platforms to marketing campaigns, video games to art installations, immersive XR experiences to digitally fabricated products,

Many of the event organisers run well-established meetups, but there were also several new series in the early planning stages. The venue was Spaces at Acero, which recently opened in the Digital Campus. Spaces, who are based in Amsterdam and now operate workspaces all over the world, have fitted out the ground floor of the

Yes, I am going to be one of the judges for these awards, which are being held on the 20th November in Marble Arch, but the deadline to enter is now fast approaching and I would like to get more Sheffield firms to put an entry in. One of the things I like very much

What’s it all about? Perhaps more than anything, we wanted a way for us to give everyone the space and opportunity to shape what we do going forwards. We are still working on the programme and will release more information about the evening as we firm things up, but we can say that we will:

Who are Kollider Projects? Kollider was founded by Nick Morgan and Adrian Hackett as a vehicle to “orchestrate collections of projects that generate social, cultural and economic regeneration.” They believe that, “…people and their ideas lie at the heart of innovation and are focussed on uncovering, scaling and selling IP, innovation and talent, rewarding innovation

First of all, it’s worth mentioning at the start that ‘Sheffield Free Public WiFi’, as its SSID will be named, is looking like it will be the largest and densest city WiFi system in the whole of the country by the end of the Phase 5 rollout, by which point it will have deployed more

Mark Gannon, who is Director of Business Change and Information Solutions at Sheffield City Council, is leading the effort along with counterparts at Rotherham Council, to develop a bid for Sheffield and Rotherham covering the two city centres and the urban conurbation between them. But he needs support from companies and organisations who would like

As far as we can tell, they are operating legally and have not caused any undue nuisance or problems to our direct knowledge. But we are aware that some people have had negative experiences, especially walking to the train station late at night when the club is open, and we wonder whether these are shared

About the Sheffield Things Network The Sheffield Things Network is a group of people who are creating a community-owned internet of things network across the city. It is one of hundreds of communities across the world who are doing so under the Amsterdam-based “Things Network” umbrella. The technology they are using to do this is

About the supplier day The Council are keen to take a multi-vendor approach to making its Technology 2020 Strategy happen. This event is an opportunity for you to find out exactly what that means and how you can get involved. This is from the Eventbrite page for the supplier day: “Sheffield City Council is constantly

They asked us whether we would be willing to meet with a delegation of senior Chinese economic statisticians, who were interested in the digital economy for mutual exchange and learning. About the delegation The delegation consisted of 17 statisticians from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of the People’s Republic of China, who are currently

Urban Flows Observatory is founded by the University of Sheffield’s departments of Civil & Structural Engineering and Automatic Control & Systems Engineering. It is studying the city’s energy and resource flows as part of a three-year, multi-million Euro international academic collaboration. As part of this project, the observatory is launching a public competition to help

We’re using this post to publish outputs from Sheffield First Annual Digital Conference, which took place on Wednesday 15 November, 2017. Content made available so far (either embedded or linked to in this page): Trello Boards √ Catherine Howe Keynote slide deck √ Lighting Talk slide decks √ Social media storify √ Content yet to be added: All

About 15 of us gathered at the Google Digital Garage last week for the second Meta-Meetup – the meetup for people who run, or would like to run, meetups and tech events. Everyone got to meet and chat for the first 45 minutes while people arrived. And Google laid on pizzas and soft drinks for

Back at the beginning of the Summer, which feels like an awfully long time ago now, we held the first ever Sheffield Meta-Meetup at the Google Digital Garage at Barkers Pool. We wanted to bring together as many meetup organisers as possible, so they could network, share knowledge about their events and talk about what

Mark Gannon, Director of Business Change and Information Solutions at Sheffield City Council, has published the alpha version of the Council’s ‘Digital Coalition’ plans on Medium, and you can now read about them here. As many of you know, especially those who listened to episode 2 of our (awesome, by the way) podcast, we have

As many of you know, this Summer we welcomed Sheffield City Council on board as a Regional Partner. What you may not know is the extent to which that relationship is part of a much broader discussion about how we, and others, can combine forces to help push forward digital agendas across the city: in

Sheffield-based recruitment firm, Benchmark, has been commissioned by the Sheffield City Region to conduct research looking specifically at skills gaps and hard-to-fill vacancies in the region. Part of this research is a survey asking employers’ opinion and it would be great to get as many digital and tech employers into the report as possible. The

As many in the local tech scene will know, the Digital Snapshot Report was launched earlier this month at a lovely event at DINA on Cambridge Street. This is the fourth in a series of reports commissioned by Prof Vanessa Toulmin, Director of City & Cultural Engagement at the University of Sheffield. They are designed to

We’ve got a good thing going on in Sheffield I’ve written before about the entrepreneur ecosystem here: about how friendly everyone is and how introductions are readily made. My friend Elizabeth Shassere echoes this, writing about her first forays into entrepreneurship in this city. I was commissioned in January to write a report on the

The Platform is a series of regular events hosted by the Showroom/Workstation for people in the creative industries to present and talk about their work. They usually take place on the last Thursday of the month, and for the March event Sheffield Digital were asked to curate the programme (we’ve done this several times before

On Tuesday the 28th February, we conducted the second in our series of Digital Policy ‘Conflabs’. The purpose of these conflabs is to bring people together to explore and discuss issues of relevance to the digital tech community in Sheffield, and to provide a forum for the community to openly engage with policy-makers, organisations and

Background In the March 2015 Budget, the UK Treasury pledged £11m in capital funding to create three digital technology hubs in the North in order to stimulate economic activity as part of the ‘Northern Powerhouse’. This funding was divided between Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield, with Sheffield’s initiative given the moniker ‘MakerHub’ in order to connect