11 ms·

Connecting the UK Student Tech Scene

66 points by asronline 12y ago

Tinned_Tuna 12y ago
I agree that the UK Student tech scene is quite disconnected. There are quite a few computer science oriented student societies. For instance, at York (where I did my undergrad) there's HackSoc. There's an IRC channel somewhere on freenode with computer science societies from the uk. We're not completely disconnected, but we're slowly growing to the point that we can start collaborating and having friendly competitions.
- kragniz 12y ago
  Do you have the name of that IRC channel?
  - benchin 12y ago
    details are http://www.compsocs.uk/ http://www.compsocs.uk/
- benchin 12y ago
  I think we have the rivalry part pretty much nailed, especially in London ;) Really eager to see more on the collaboration side - societies working together to support the greater community: traditional CS backgrounds or not.
- asronline 12y ago
  Yeah, for sure! It's great to see a lot more events happening now. There's a pretty great Facebook group of all the 'Hackathon Hackers' in the UK too: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hackathonhackersuk/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/hackathonhackersuk/
ibisum 12y ago
My experience with the tech scene in the UK leads me to believe that it is the class system which has to be broached in order for this to be broken wide open. Too often in English society clear class division is used to keep people out of touch with each other - I saw very clear examples of this in the hackerspace scene, wherein I noticed with great dismay the typical 'sterotype-casting' of individuals, whose technological prowess was not insignificant, working against them. The idea of "dirty student techies stinking up the lab" was far too prevalent - even in the hackerspace scene. British culture takes too much pride in its classist attitudes, as embodied in much of its culture, and I think this definitely works against any effort to build a broader community. Generally, I'd hope that the 'tech classes' rapidly dissuade themselves of any of the so-called virtues of British classism, but this isn't something thats necessarily on the table. Too often, bigotry and prejudice gets in the way of technological progress; this is very much the case, in my experience, within the UK tech sector.
- simonbarker87 12y ago
  I can certainly say that I have seen very little of what you describe in the UK tech scene at least certainly not up in the North East where I am - perhaps London is different but I can't believe it is that different. And as far as "dirty students sinking up the lab goes", this is more likely an isolated case rather than the prevailing norm in my experience.
  - m0a0t0 12y ago
    It's rarely seen in normal society as well. I really don't understand where this person is coming from.
    - walshemj 12y ago
      Really I have seen this attitude recently in a FTSE 100 company and I am sure it was a factor in some of the many multi million pound fuckups they had.
      - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
        It's a huge factor in the UK's tradition of multi-million pound fuckups. There's a definite bias against people, especially clever people, who get stuff done. You're not supposed to do that here - you're supposed to get on by knowing the right people, talking a good game, and being above it all because of your social connections and money. Actual hands-on development work is for the little people. Occasionally one needs to say important-sounding things in public and hustle a little. But that's as practical as it gets. The irony is that the UK has world-class engineering talent, and a long history of real innovation. But the UK is the only country to have had - for example - its own working satellite launch platform, and thrown it away to save money. We genuinely have some of the worst political and business "leadership" in the developed world.
    - ibisum 12y ago
      Did you, by chance, pay for your own education?
willmw101 12y ago
UCL has been organizing well attended Hackathons, seed funding pitch competitions, partnerships with founders and accelerators as well as running its own mini incubator for the past few years. Even a quick skim on google would show a multitude of student (UCL) born startups that have succeeded: Loom, backed by Google Ventures and acquired by Dropbox this year + Vungle, raised $17MM series B this year. I understand that from a Kings perspective the tech scene looks weak, but to discredit the scene as a whole when UCL has been leading the way with significant success for the past few years, is misleading.
- tekacs 12y ago
  Similarly, the situation in Cambridge (and as I understand it Oxford) has been very solid for a very long time. There exist Computing and Technology (CUCaTS), Computing Facility (SRCF), Technology Enterprise (CUTEC) and Enterpreneurs (CUE) societies. The latter two have fallen somewhat out of favour and notice around the Computer Lab the last few years, but are still running strong attracting tech entrepreneurs from Physics and Engineering. There's a lot of focus on moving out to established tech companies (blame the recruitment fair and regular company events) but this outgoing year appeared to have a high fraction of the CS year attempting to work on startups in one form or another.
  - tfgg 12y ago
    As someone who has been at one of those institutions and is currently at the other, I haven't noticed much in the way of hackdays at either... Maybe it's changed at Cambridge, but I didn't see much sign of brewing collaborations at the time (beyond the creative-commons-or-public-domain-only file sharing network). In Oxford I can recommend Oxford Geek Nights (http://oxford.geeknights.net http://oxford.geeknights.net). It's not student run, but sometimes has students speaking and it's always interesting.
    - tekacs 12y ago
      It's improving at Cambridge, but slowly.
gordonguthrie 12y ago
Techmeetup http://techmeetup.co.uk/ http://techmeetup.co.uk/ already covers all of Scotland and has goodish contacts with UCL and Seedcamp and stuff...
radicality 12y ago
I went to Imperial College London, graduated last year – we've also organized a couple of hackathons in the past years, and hosted the main Seedcamp event in 2012. There is also the Imperial Ventures and Imperial Create Lab. I can say that the amount of student tech scene stuff in Imperial has increased over the 4 years I was there, during year 1 I can't really remember any events like that, so it's good the community is picking up speed in the right direction. But as you say, what's important is that the different universities are not disconnected – organizing+advertising hackathons and hosting big events like Seedcamp is a good way to connect the students across universities.
refrigerator 12y ago
Great post! I can completely relate to what was described in the first paragraph - before going to university my impression was that loads of people would be working on cool projects (not even necessarily tech-related) and that it would be really inspiring, but unfortunately when I got there this wasn't the case at all. I got the feeling that there was more cool tech stuff going on at London universities, but word never really got round to us. Our entrepreneurship society (Oxford Entrepreneurs, OE hereafter) seemed to be really disconnected with the 'tech society' (Oxford CompSoc) and the majority of people attending OE events were MBAs/other grad students. (The new OE committee are working hard to change this though) I think HackCampus is a great idea and is exactly what the UK tech scene needs. We (OE) are about to hold our first ever hackathon this November open to all students at all universities, and it seems many other universities are also starting to do the same, so a way to connect UK students interested in this kind of stuff is needed now more than ever. Best of luck to HackCampus and KCL Tech Society! Edit: I should add that a lot of Oxford alums have gone on to do really cool stuff, but I think a lot can be done to interest more undergrads in tech/entrepreneurship.
- asronline 12y ago
  Thanks, man! Keep us in the loop with your hackathon. We'd love to get the word out. :)
- gearhart 12y ago
  As an Oxford grad who used to go to a lot of OE events, I agree with you completely (and have definitely encountered the OP's disappointment!). I set up my first company in Oxford just after I left a few years ago, and there was almost nobody else there - 6 months later, we decided to move to London to find a bigger tech scene. Since, we've built a company almost exclusively out of London and Oxford technical graduates, and we've just started an internship programme this year (and they're awesome). If you'd like any involvement from inside the industry, get in touch, we're really keen to build a stronger relationship! The same goes for any technical student groups - if you're engaged enough to organise or attend tech events then you are what the London tech scene needs. That's toby at http://gearhart.co.uk/ http://gearhart.co.uk/ if you want to get in touch :)
flurdy 12y ago
For more a startup mostly tech career fair in London there is the popular Silicon Milkroundabout. https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/ https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/ Milkround 8 is in November.
royroyroys 12y ago
last couple of years, the 3beards have been pretty good at organising tech events like 'art hackathons' and hackathons with companies in London. think a tech scene doesn't need to be exclusive to students.
EmlynC 12y ago
I am committee member of the PyData London Meetup and I'd argue that the tech scene in London is simply more vibrant outside of the universities at the various meetups, hacker spaces and conferences so often you are better served going to those than a University society. There is a certain amount of red tape organising events at Universities (my basis for this is KCL and Imperial) unless they are either explicitly educational and you often have to liase with security so we've had a lot less friction by engaging tech companies to host meetings. You get the industry links by making use of their facilities, you get students, devs and business types and in all honesty companies in Silicon Roundabout are gagging to look cool and host a meetup. Saying that, I'm about to start post-doc work at KCL (been here since Undergrad) so I'll be kicking around for the next 3 yrs so I'll be signing up.
- asronline 12y ago
  This is very true as well. There is a lot happening outside of University that is easy to access. Or at least in London. KCL has actually been a lot more accommodating since KCL Tech started to take off post-hackathon. We've got great plans in store for the coming year too. Do drop by and say hi! Looking forward to meeting at our events :)
- lclarkmichalek 12y ago
  It's a real pity though, because there is one group I never see at PyData; undergrads (and this is true for many other meetups). And that could be seen as a problem; every tech scene needs its supply of mindless idealists if it wants to produce a reliable stream of start ups.
  - EmlynC 12y ago
    Hey Laurie. To be honest, if the undergrads can knock out presentations as good as your presentation on DOTA2 analysis then, we, at PyData London should be actively trying to get more undergrads to come to our meetup. An unbalanced group is, as you say, a problem. The key is to get a wide gamut; people with ideas and some idea of implementation, flat-out implementation people (devs and designers), business people and investors. A lot of the undergrads I know are green but they often have a lot of energy, ideas and can be fine coders.

66 points by asronline 12y ago

I agree that the UK Student tech scene is quite disconnected. There are quite a few computer science oriented student societies. For instance, at York (where I did my undergrad) there's HackSoc. There's an IRC channel somewhere on freenode with computer science societies from the uk. We're not completely disconnected, but we're slowly growing to the point that we can start collaborating and having friendly competitions.

kragniz 12y ago
Do you have the name of that IRC channel?
- benchin 12y ago
  details are http://www.compsocs.uk/ http://www.compsocs.uk/
benchin 12y ago
I think we have the rivalry part pretty much nailed, especially in London ;) Really eager to see more on the collaboration side - societies working together to support the greater community: traditional CS backgrounds or not.
asronline 12y ago
Yeah, for sure! It's great to see a lot more events happening now. There's a pretty great Facebook group of all the 'Hackathon Hackers' in the UK too: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hackathonhackersuk/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/hackathonhackersuk/

ibisum 12y ago

My experience with the tech scene in the UK leads me to believe that it is the class system which has to be broached in order for this to be broken wide open. Too often in English society clear class division is used to keep people out of touch with each other - I saw very clear examples of this in the hackerspace scene, wherein I noticed with great dismay the typical 'sterotype-casting' of individuals, whose technological prowess was not insignificant, working against them. The idea of "dirty student techies stinking up the lab" was far too prevalent - even in the hackerspace scene. British culture takes too much pride in its classist attitudes, as embodied in much of its culture, and I think this definitely works against any effort to build a broader community. Generally, I'd hope that the 'tech classes' rapidly dissuade themselves of any of the so-called virtues of British classism, but this isn't something thats necessarily on the table. Too often, bigotry and prejudice gets in the way of technological progress; this is very much the case, in my experience, within the UK tech sector.

simonbarker87 12y ago
I can certainly say that I have seen very little of what you describe in the UK tech scene at least certainly not up in the North East where I am - perhaps London is different but I can't believe it is that different. And as far as "dirty students sinking up the lab goes", this is more likely an isolated case rather than the prevailing norm in my experience.
- m0a0t0 12y ago
  It's rarely seen in normal society as well. I really don't understand where this person is coming from.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Really I have seen this attitude recently in a FTSE 100 company and I am sure it was a factor in some of the many multi million pound fuckups they had.
    - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
      It's a huge factor in the UK's tradition of multi-million pound fuckups. There's a definite bias against people, especially clever people, who get stuff done. You're not supposed to do that here - you're supposed to get on by knowing the right people, talking a good game, and being above it all because of your social connections and money. Actual hands-on development work is for the little people. Occasionally one needs to say important-sounding things in public and hustle a little. But that's as practical as it gets. The irony is that the UK has world-class engineering talent, and a long history of real innovation. But the UK is the only country to have had - for example - its own working satellite launch platform, and thrown it away to save money. We genuinely have some of the worst political and business "leadership" in the developed world.
  - ibisum 12y ago
    Did you, by chance, pay for your own education?

willmw101 12y ago

UCL has been organizing well attended Hackathons, seed funding pitch competitions, partnerships with founders and accelerators as well as running its own mini incubator for the past few years. Even a quick skim on google would show a multitude of student (UCL) born startups that have succeeded: Loom, backed by Google Ventures and acquired by Dropbox this year + Vungle, raised $17MM series B this year. I understand that from a Kings perspective the tech scene looks weak, but to discredit the scene as a whole when UCL has been leading the way with significant success for the past few years, is misleading.

tekacs 12y ago
Similarly, the situation in Cambridge (and as I understand it Oxford) has been very solid for a very long time. There exist Computing and Technology (CUCaTS), Computing Facility (SRCF), Technology Enterprise (CUTEC) and Enterpreneurs (CUE) societies. The latter two have fallen somewhat out of favour and notice around the Computer Lab the last few years, but are still running strong attracting tech entrepreneurs from Physics and Engineering. There's a lot of focus on moving out to established tech companies (blame the recruitment fair and regular company events) but this outgoing year appeared to have a high fraction of the CS year attempting to work on startups in one form or another.
- tfgg 12y ago
  As someone who has been at one of those institutions and is currently at the other, I haven't noticed much in the way of hackdays at either... Maybe it's changed at Cambridge, but I didn't see much sign of brewing collaborations at the time (beyond the creative-commons-or-public-domain-only file sharing network). In Oxford I can recommend Oxford Geek Nights (http://oxford.geeknights.net http://oxford.geeknights.net). It's not student run, but sometimes has students speaking and it's always interesting.
  - tekacs 12y ago
    It's improving at Cambridge, but slowly.

gordonguthrie 12y ago

Techmeetup http://techmeetup.co.uk/ http://techmeetup.co.uk/ already covers all of Scotland and has goodish contacts with UCL and Seedcamp and stuff...

radicality 12y ago

I went to Imperial College London, graduated last year – we've also organized a couple of hackathons in the past years, and hosted the main Seedcamp event in 2012. There is also the Imperial Ventures and Imperial Create Lab. I can say that the amount of student tech scene stuff in Imperial has increased over the 4 years I was there, during year 1 I can't really remember any events like that, so it's good the community is picking up speed in the right direction. But as you say, what's important is that the different universities are not disconnected – organizing+advertising hackathons and hosting big events like Seedcamp is a good way to connect the students across universities.

refrigerator 12y ago

Great post! I can completely relate to what was described in the first paragraph - before going to university my impression was that loads of people would be working on cool projects (not even necessarily tech-related) and that it would be really inspiring, but unfortunately when I got there this wasn't the case at all. I got the feeling that there was more cool tech stuff going on at London universities, but word never really got round to us. Our entrepreneurship society (Oxford Entrepreneurs, OE hereafter) seemed to be really disconnected with the 'tech society' (Oxford CompSoc) and the majority of people attending OE events were MBAs/other grad students. (The new OE committee are working hard to change this though) I think HackCampus is a great idea and is exactly what the UK tech scene needs. We (OE) are about to hold our first ever hackathon this November open to all students at all universities, and it seems many other universities are also starting to do the same, so a way to connect UK students interested in this kind of stuff is needed now more than ever. Best of luck to HackCampus and KCL Tech Society! Edit: I should add that a lot of Oxford alums have gone on to do really cool stuff, but I think a lot can be done to interest more undergrads in tech/entrepreneurship.

asronline 12y ago
Thanks, man! Keep us in the loop with your hackathon. We'd love to get the word out. :)
gearhart 12y ago
As an Oxford grad who used to go to a lot of OE events, I agree with you completely (and have definitely encountered the OP's disappointment!). I set up my first company in Oxford just after I left a few years ago, and there was almost nobody else there - 6 months later, we decided to move to London to find a bigger tech scene. Since, we've built a company almost exclusively out of London and Oxford technical graduates, and we've just started an internship programme this year (and they're awesome). If you'd like any involvement from inside the industry, get in touch, we're really keen to build a stronger relationship! The same goes for any technical student groups - if you're engaged enough to organise or attend tech events then you are what the London tech scene needs. That's toby at http://gearhart.co.uk/ http://gearhart.co.uk/ if you want to get in touch :)

flurdy 12y ago

For more a startup mostly tech career fair in London there is the popular Silicon Milkroundabout. https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/ https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/ Milkround 8 is in November.

royroyroys 12y ago

last couple of years, the 3beards have been pretty good at organising tech events like 'art hackathons' and hackathons with companies in London. think a tech scene doesn't need to be exclusive to students.

EmlynC 12y ago

I am committee member of the PyData London Meetup and I'd argue that the tech scene in London is simply more vibrant outside of the universities at the various meetups, hacker spaces and conferences so often you are better served going to those than a University society. There is a certain amount of red tape organising events at Universities (my basis for this is KCL and Imperial) unless they are either explicitly educational and you often have to liase with security so we've had a lot less friction by engaging tech companies to host meetings. You get the industry links by making use of their facilities, you get students, devs and business types and in all honesty companies in Silicon Roundabout are gagging to look cool and host a meetup. Saying that, I'm about to start post-doc work at KCL (been here since Undergrad) so I'll be kicking around for the next 3 yrs so I'll be signing up.

asronline 12y ago
This is very true as well. There is a lot happening outside of University that is easy to access. Or at least in London. KCL has actually been a lot more accommodating since KCL Tech started to take off post-hackathon. We've got great plans in store for the coming year too. Do drop by and say hi! Looking forward to meeting at our events :)
lclarkmichalek 12y ago
It's a real pity though, because there is one group I never see at PyData; undergrads (and this is true for many other meetups). And that could be seen as a problem; every tech scene needs its supply of mindless idealists if it wants to produce a reliable stream of start ups.
- EmlynC 12y ago
  Hey Laurie. To be honest, if the undergrads can knock out presentations as good as your presentation on DOTA2 analysis then, we, at PyData London should be actively trying to get more undergrads to come to our meetup. An unbalanced group is, as you say, a problem. The key is to get a wide gamut; people with ideas and some idea of implementation, flat-out implementation people (devs and designers), business people and investors. A lot of the undergrads I know are green but they often have a lot of energy, ideas and can be fine coders.